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Updated: April 30, 2025
"The old Contadina would make a charming picture; but a picture of the Campagna, sleepy with purple haze, would be more like you." "Am I then so sleepy?" inquired her friend. "O, no, not sleepy. You know I don't mean that. But so quiet; and always with some sort of violet or lilac cloud for a dress.
In a few moments they vanished from him, as dreams and spectres do, leaving him at liberty to pursue his quest, with no impediment except the crowd that blocked up the footway. He had not gone far when the peasant and the contadina met him. They were still hand in hand, and appeared to be straying through the grotesque and animated scene, taking as little part in it as himself.
But most of all it's the deep yellow light that enchants you and tells you where you are. See it come filtering down through a vine-covered trellis on the red handkerchief with which a ragged contadina has bound her hair, and all the magic of Italy, to the eye, makes an aureole about the poor girl's head.
I was attacked by one of those fierce impulses that forbade me to rest or think or sleep, and, as usual, I hurried out for one of those long aimless excursions I had latterly grown accustomed to. At the open street-door stood the proprietress of the house, a stout, good-natured contadina, with her youngest child Pippa holding to her skirt.
That she is, in some passages, a little not vulgar but almost vulgar, with a dash of the contadina, is undeniable; and she certainly has not a delicate ear, and often sings false; yet, when that tempestuous warbling in her throat breaks forth, and the flush of her heart's blood hurries over her face and empurples her neck, why then "bow the high banners, roll the answering drums," and shut up, if you wouldn't be torn to pieces by a London mob.
They entered, with many obeisances, through the old gate of floreated wrought iron, and stopping there, about forty yards away, they piped, while a girl, in the usual contadina dress, clashed her cymbals and danced not ungracefully. The Father, who either did not like music or did not like it of that sort, sighed, rose from his seat, and went into the house by an open French window.
On a tapestry-covered dormeuse, by the open window, and carefully protected with gauze curtains from the glare of the coming noon, reclined a handsome woman of middle age, so like, and yet so strangely unlike 'Lora Delcor, that my dusky blooms quivered and fretted with emotion, as the contadina closed the door behind us.
The contadina, with sudden energy, snatched off the encircling linen, when out struggled scratching, grinning, and screaming what the doctor in his fright fully believed to be a demon, but what Tito recognised as Vaiano's monkey, made more formidable by an artificial blackness, such as might have come from a hasty rubbing up the chimney.
I was lulled to sleep by the well-rhymed charms of that rustic maiden `prettier than the turnip-flower, `with a cheek more savoury than cheese. But to get such a well-scented notion of the contadina, one must lie on velvet cushions in the Via Larga not go to look at the Fierucoloni stumping in to the Piazza della Nunziata this evening after sundown."
I have seen washerwomen in the Trastevere who were perhaps as handsome as she; but even the head-dress of the Roman contadina contributes less to the dignity of the person born to wear it than the sweet and stately Arlesian cap, which sits at once aloft and on the back of the head; which is accompanied with a wide black bow covering a considerable part of the crown; and which, finally, accommodates itself indescribably well to the manner in which the tresses of the front are pushed behind the ears.
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