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The exceedingly interesting amusement known as the Tombola is nothing more than the game of Loto, or Lótto, 'Brobdignagified, and played in the open air of the Papal States, in Rome on Sundays, and in the Campagna on certain saints' days, come they when they may. The English have made holiday from holy day, and call the Lord's day Sunday; while the Italians call Sunday Lord's day, or Domenica.
These pantaloons were made of a goat's skin; the long white wool, inches in length, left on and hanging down below the knees of the man, gave him a Pan-like look, and with the word tombola, suggested the lines of that good old song save the maledictory part of it: 'Tombolin had no breeches to wear, So he bought him a goat's skin, to make him a pair.
I had now, however, had enough of the "humours of the fair," and left the town without waiting to try my luck at the tombola, which was to come off directly High Mass was over. The nil admirari school are out of favour. In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact, to admire everything.
But, alas! life cannot be entirely conducted on these principles; man cannot live by Almavivery alone; and the Great Creature, having failed upon several theatres, was obliged to step down every evening from his heights, and sing from half a dozen to a dozen comic songs, twang a guitar, keep a country audience in good humour, and preside finally over the mysteries of a tombola.
"Here's the pyson at last, I says to myself; and when my turn came, I did as the others did, bowed to the sultan, feeling just like a tombola, and nearly going over; then I drank and what do you think it was?" "I don't know; go on." "Raspberry vinegar, and ah!"
These two expressions seemed to alternate, and even to mingle vaguely, upon the upturned lineaments of the waiting throng the hope of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some adverse decree. But a glance forward at the object of this universal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice nor a tombola.
'Irish-English, he answered; 'she is not the first woman out of Old Ireland masquerading as an Albanian nurse. She probably belongs to some English family who have pretensions. 'Ah bah! said Légume, 'it's monstrous, perfectly atrocious, ugh! Let us make a little tour of a walk. The tombola is finished. An Irish dressed up as an Italian execrable!
The tobacco-jar, the cigarette-holder, the three papers of shirt-studs, which were to have been the prizes of the tombola had the tombola come off, were made into a bundle with the music; the guitar was stowed into the fat guitar-case; and Elvira having thrown a thin shawl about her neck and shoulders, the pair issued from the café and set off for the Black Head.
The Piazza Navona, bearing on its face, on week-days, the most terrible eruptions of piles of old iron, rags, paintings, books, boots, vegetables, crockery, jackdaws, contadini, and occasional dead cats, wore on the Sunday of the tombola it was Advent Sunday a clean, bright, and even joyful look. It was a sublime spectacle. But the curtain rose; that is to say, the tombola commenced.
There is this excitement about the tombolas in the Piazza Navona, that occasionally a panic seizes the crowd, and in the rush of people to escape from the square, some have their pockets picked, and some are trampled down, never to rise again. Fortunately for Caper, no stampede took place on Advent Sunday, so that he lived to attend another grand tombola in the Villa Borghese.
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