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Yet the fact is, that the Pope has placed its importation under an as stringent prohibition almost as the importation of heresy: perhaps he smells heresy and civilization coming in the wake of iron. The duty on the introduction of bar-iron is two baiocchi la libbra, equivalent to fifty dollars, or £12 10s., per ton; which is about twice the price of bar-iron in this country.
Some fifteen hundred or two thousand persons, many of them able-bodied men, receive fifteen baiocchi, sevenpence half-penny, per day, in return for which they pouter about with barrows, removing earth from the old ruins, or cleaning the streets, which are none the cleaner, or picking grass in the square of the Vatican.
I sat down one day on the steps of the temple of Vesta, which, though gray and crumbling with age, is one of the most beautiful of the ruins of Rome. Three boys came about me to beg a few baiocchi. The youngest boy, I found, was ten years, and the oldest fifteen. I took the opportunity of putting a few questions to them, judging them a fair sample of the Roman youth.
"Did you win anything?" asked Sora Nanna, with both her elbows on the table. "Five baiocchi." "It was worth while to pay ten baiocchi for another man's bad wine, for the sake of winning so much!" replied Sora Nanna, who was a careful soul. "Of course you paid for the wine?" "Eh of course. They pay for wine when they come here. One takes a little and one gives a little. This is life."
A wandering cigar-seller, with zigarri scelti, next demanded their attention, and Roejean commenced an inspection of the selected cigars, which are made by government, and sold at the fixed price of one and a half baiocchi each; even at this low price, the stock of the tobacco-factory paid thirteen per cent under Antonelli's direction.
Her assistant, a good-looking young man, in very white teeth and livery, sold some patent toothache drops: Solo cinque baiocchi il fiasco, S'gnore. Caper having seen the tooth extracted, cried, 'Bravissima! as if he had been at the opera, and threw some roses at the prima donna dentista, who acknowledged the applause with a bow, and requested the Signore to step up and let her draw him out.
Once in a while, the sadness of Lent is broken by a Church festival, when all the fasters eat prodigiously and make up for their usual Lenten fare. The great curtain is swaying to and fro constantly as they come and go, and a file of beggars is on the steps to relieve you of baiocchi.
Along the curbstones of the public walks, and on the steps of the churches, sit blind old creatures, and shake at you a tin box, outside of which is a figure of the Madonna, and inside of which are two or three baiocchi, as a rattling accompaniment to an unending invocation of aid.
Naturally, by the time we have finished, the Sagrestia will be open. Very good, Don Francis. But as to spending the night in the Sagrestia, shall I be impertinent if I tell you that by this time there is not a locanda in Florence that has not got a full and exact description of you and me, and not a landlord among them that would not hand you over for two baiocchi?"
A crowd has gathered round them, as usual; out of the windows and from the balconies lean the occupants of the houses near by, and the baiocchi thrown by them ring on the pavement below.
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