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Updated: June 17, 2025
Peppino usually took half an hour off and came about noon to wherever I was sketching to fetch me to lunch. One morning as we walked along nearly every man we met smiled and said to him "Buona festa, Peppino," and he smiled and returned their salutes with the same words. He accounted for it by saying it was his onomastico the day of the saint whose name he bears.
Since then the tree of liberty has come down with a crash and we have had another festa as noisy on that occasion. Revolution and counter-revolution, Guerazzi and Leopold, sacking of Florence and entrance of the Austrian army we live through everything, you see, and baby grows fat indiscriminately. For my part, I am altogether blasée about revolutions and invasions.
The performance begins with a prologue by Mercury which is nothing but a short argument of the whole plot. 'Mercurio annunzia la festa' is the superscription in the original, evidently suggested by the appearance of 'un messo di Dio' with which the religious rappresentazioni usually open.
When Marina returned slowly through the little square, Murano was awake; the painted sails of the fishing-boats were tacking in the breeze, the activities of the simple homes had commenced, women with their water-jugs were chatting round the well, detaining little ones clinging to the fringes of the tawny mantles which hung below their waists; a few stopped her with greetings; here and there a child ran to her shyly their mothers, from the low cottage doorways, calling to them that "the donzel Marina had given them festa."
So closed this festa of Florence in the grand-ducal days, bright in gay gear and alive with everybody, from prince to contadini. Then he came in happy touch with the impulsive, laughing, singing, dark-haired Italians, and to the finer aspects of their nature he was partial.
I was told by a large manufacturer in Florence, that having a great number of orders on hand, and knowing extreme distress to prevail among his workmen's families, he offered double wages to any one who came to work on a "festa" day, but that only two out of a hundred responded to his offer.
What airs of condescension and of an almost insufferable protection they had assumed! Now, that she recalled the faces of Judge Valdez, and other men of years and position, she understood that there had been in them something out of tone with the occasion. In the atmosphere of the festa she had only felt it. In the solitude of her room she could apprehend its nature.
The shepherd might draw himself away, perchance, with a mingling of caste-feeling and of superstition, from some poorer villager of the sect of the "Linobambaki" a dark, unkempt figure, with his scarlet fez, his string of undressed poultry hanging from his shoulder, even on this day of festa when the saints give all good Christians holiday!
It actually plants bare spaces; it has instituted a "Festa degli alberi" akin to the American Arbour Day, whereby it is hoped, though scarcely believed, that the whole of Italy will ultimately be replenished with trees; it encourages schools of forestry, supplies plants free of cost to all who ask for them, despatches commissions and prints reports.
But the Count, being possessed of a nervous temperament which called for constant motion, could not long remain inactive, and now, having poured his extravagant devotion into his sweetheart's ears, he rose, saying: "I must go to the village. The baker, the confectioner, the butcher, all have many things to prepare for the festa, and I must order the fireworks from Messina.
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