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I often sang for her, and she liked everything I sang Italian stornelli, old-fashioned American negro songs, and even the very light modern French chansonnette, when there was any melody in them. There were two other arm-chairs at the table, destined for W. and me. I will say W. never occupied his.
Frequently, these verses, called "stornelli" and "rispetti," are composed by the peasants themselves, women as well as men; the language is the purest and most classical Italian, such as is spoken at the present day in the provinces of Siena, Pistoja, &c., very much less corrupted by foreign idioms or adaptations than what is spoken, even by cultivated persons, in Florence itself.
A similar spirit has always inspired the popular German song, a simple and beautiful reverence for the unknown, the worship of heroism, a vital sympathy with the various manifestations of Nature. Without the fire of the French chansons, the sonorous grace of the Tuscan stornelli, these artless ditties, with their exclusive reliance on true feeling, possess an indescribable charm.
The incident closed in much mirth and friendliness. In the village were also billeted many Italian troops, who used to fill the night with song, long after most of us had gone to bed: "'Addio, mia bell', addio! Cantava nel partir la gioventù," which is never very far from the lips of any Italian soldier, and those endless stornelli, which to an invariable tune they multiply from day to day.
The French and Italians also had huts close by, and I spent several evenings playing chess with them, or talking, or listening to the mandolin and the singing of Italian stornelli. One young Italian, in particular, I remember with some affection, a certain Lieutenant Prato, a mandolin player of great skill and a very charming personality.
But he wrote very many charming little poems breathing the warmest aspirations of the somewhat extreme gauche of that day, especially some stornelli after the Tuscan fashion, which met with a very wide and warm acceptance. I remember one extremely happy, the refrain of which still runs in my head. It is written on the newly-adopted Italian tricolour flag.
She produced also a number of pen-and-ink drawings illustrating these stornelli, which I still possess, and in which the spirited, graphic, and accurately truthful characterisation of the figures could only have been achieved by an artist very intimately acquainted intus et in cute with the subjects of her pencil.
Observing that the starlings, stornelli, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something from their nests and dropped it upon the ground about as often they brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every Instance, lost about two inches of the tail.
But he was conquered by the young Englishwoman's translation of his favourite, and, I think, his finest work. It is a thoroughly trustworthy and excellent translation; but the execution of it was child's play in comparison with the translations from Giusti. She translated a number of the curiously characteristic stornelli of Tuscany, and especially of the Pistoja mountains.
And here again it is impossible to make any one, who has never been familiar with these stornelli understand the especial difficulty of translating them. Of course the task was a slighter and less significant one than that of translating Giusti, nor was the same degree of critical accuracy and nicety in rendering shades of meaning called for.
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