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At length the hospitably busy mercante di campagna has seated all his guests, and the work of the day may begin. Some half dozen or so of butteri and their aids enter the arena, which is thoroughly enclosed on all sides by high and secure palisades. The long cloaks are discarded now, as may be supposed. I hardly know when else the butteri are to be seen without them or on foot.
This operation takes place in the spring, generally in May; and the mercante di campagna whose herds of horned cattle, oxen, cows and buffaloes and droves of horses are to be marked on a settled day invites all his friends and acquaintance to come and see the operation.
This is not all: the mercante di campagna, who is not nobly born, who is not a priest, who has a wife and children, thinks he has a right to share in the management of the affairs of his country, upon the ground that he manages his own well. He points out abuses; he demands reforms. What audacity!
But enough has been said to indicate the social position of the mercante di campagna as it was, and for the most part still is. But, fine gentleman as he is, the wealthy speculator, if he would remain such, is not always at the hunt or lounging in the Corso. Perhaps two or three of these functionaries are in attendance upon him.
At Paris, when an advocate pleads a prince's cause, it is the prince who is the client: at Rome, it is the advocate. But the individual who is visited by the most withering contempt of the Roman princes is the farmer, or mercante di campagna; and I don't wonder at it. The mercante di campagna is an obscure individual, usually very honest, very intelligent, very active, and very rich.
The wealthy mercante di campagna lives in Rome therefore, and his wife and family take the lead in the rich, but not in the aristocratic, circles of the society of the capital.
A range of seats of rough planks, something in the form of the grand stand on a race-course, has been erected by the hospitable mercante di campagna, who is busily engaged in receiving and seating his numerous friends. Large droves of young horses, and still larger herds of bullocks and buffaloes, are assembled in a neighboring yard.
He learns that a man of the mezzo ceto, a man who passes his life on horseback, has harvested on his land so many sacks of corn, which have produced him so much money. The mercante di campagna comes, and confirms the intelligence, and then pays the rent agreed upon to the uttermost baioccho. Sometimes he even pays down a year or two in advance. What prince could forgive such aggravated insolence?
The present tiller of the soil occupies it on condition of rendering to the landowner the half of the produce of it, and this arrangement is conducted under the superintendence of a fattore. But the widespreading possessions of a Roman landowner are for the most part let to a speculator, who is termed a "mercante di campagna."
The principal passengers were Prince Souworf, Governor of the province of Riga, one of the most distinguished men in Europe; M. de la Rochefoucauld, attached to the French embassy; M. de Angelis, a highly educated and really distinguished mercante di campagna; M. Oudry, engineer of the Civita Vecchia railway: and a French ecclesiastic of a respectable age and corpulence.
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