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Updated: May 3, 2025
She Good gracious! Magro every day just now! I Do you know, Filomena, that I eat grasso? She Yes, and it is your duty to do so. I Why? She Because you are ill, and you must eat meat; the Pope himself ate meat when he was ill. Religion does not mean that we are to injure our health. I How do you know, Filomena, what Religion means? She From my Confessor.
As has been stated, in such a wooded country as the Matto Grasso there was always more or less of this, and Long had taken a critical survey of the rapids and noted the stuff which went plunging and dancing through them. Now, however, he was sure there was an increase, and a good deal of it consisted of large trees and logs, which must have been brought down by some cause more than ordinary.
"I smell a spy," replied the other, looking at Nigel. "Bing avast, bing avast!" replied his companion; "yon other is rattling Reginald Lowestoffe of the Temple I know him; he is a good boy, and free of the province." So saying, and enveloping themselves in another thick cloud of smoke, they went on without farther greeting. "Grasso in aere!" said the Templar.
Ruskin refers to a curious ceremony, instituted in the twelfth century, which was observed in Venice till 1549 "in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, patriarch of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado, and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced, not to death, but to send every year on 'Giovedi Grasso' sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch and the twelve pigs his clergy; and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack on Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the Doge and the Senate attacked and demolished with clubs."
The mounting madness culminated on Giovedi Grasso, the last Thursday before Lent, when the Piazzetta became the scene of ceremonies in which the Doge himself took part. These opened with the decapitation of three bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia.
The landlord, I was told, had been servant in an English family, and I was curious to see how he met the probable argument of the casual Anglo-Saxon after the latter's first twelve hours in his establishment. As he failed to appear I asked the waiter if he, weren't at home. "Oh," said the latter, "he's a <i>piccolo grasso vecchiotto</i> who doesn't like to move."
Last Thursday was the Giovedi Grasso, the great people's day of the carnival. In other years, from an early hour in the afternoon, there is a constant stream of carriages and foot-passengers setting from all parts of Rome towards the Corso. The back-streets and the ordinary promenades are almost deserted.
The Giovedi Grasso is a feast-day in Rome, and all the shops are shut, and their owners at liberty. All Rome, in consequence, seemed to be wending towards the Porta Pia. From the gate to the convent of St Agnese, a distance of about a mile, there was a long string of carriages, chiefly hired vehicles, but filled with well-dressed persons.
Now and again bursts of music, or the blare of discordant trumpets, reached our ears from the more distant thoroughfares where the people were still celebrating the feast of Giovedi Grasso, or the tinkle of passing mandolins chimed in with the rolling wheels of our carriage; but in a few moments we were out of reach of even such sounds as these.
He tells Lodovico how he had seen her son Cesare, who had grown into a very fine child "quale è grasso, dico grasso!" and how he had made the little fellow laugh.
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