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Little carts, laden with firkins of grapes, and donkeys with the same genial burden, brushed passed our vettura, finding scarce room enough in the narrow street. All the idlers of Acquapendente and they were many assembled to gaze at us, but not discourteously. Indeed, I never saw an idle curiosity exercised in such a pleasant way as by the country-people of Italy.
He grouped himself with a lovely Diana at the Vatican, with some of Raphael's Madonnas and the statue of Perseus, with Beatrice Cenci and the wildflowers of our journeys by vettura, besides a few other faultless treasures deeply appreciated by me. We all noticed Mr. Browning's capacity for springing through substances and covering space without the assistance of time.
This one might be a clock-peddler from Connecticut. He is mounted in a one-seat vettura,, and his horse is quietly eating his dinner out of a bag tied to his nose. There is nothing unusual in the fellow's dress; he wears a shiny silk hat, and has one of those grave faces which would be merry if their owner were not conscious of serious business on hand.
I tell about the fine gowns I make for my ladies, and Luigi has so many stories about the grand forestieri and all their strange caprices, and then Marc Antonio and his wife come in, and he tells us about the ladies and gentlemen he drives out in his vettura, and she describes the fine linen she makes for her ladies. Well, if signori live for nothing else, they give us a great deal of pleasure.
"I am glad you do not," she said, colouring. "If you did " He was lighting a cigarette. "If I did?" The little momentary flame of the match was reflected in his blue eyes. "I should go away and not come back again." "Well, I do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get a vettura with a good horse."
The word comes from the Italian word vettura, which means a travelling carriage, and it denotes the man that owns the carriage, and drives it wherever the party that employs him wishes to go. Thus there is somewhat the same relation between the Italian words vettura and vetturino that there is between the English words chariot and charioteer.
There are no lamp-posts in Terni; and as it was growing dark, and beginning to rain again, we at last inquired of a person in the principal piazza, and found our hotel, as I expected, within two minutes' walk of where we stood. May 26th. At six o'clock this morning, we packed ourselves into our vettura, my wife and I occupying the coupe, and drove out of the city gate of Terni.
Provided with a letter of recommendation to the abbot they set forth from their rooms at early morning by vettura and from Pelago onwards, while Browning rode, Mrs Browning and Wilson in basket sledges were slowly drawn towards the monastery by white bullocks. A new abbot, a little holy man with a red face, had been recently installed, who announced that in his nostrils "a petticoat stank."
He squeezed my hand as I got into the vettura, and told me not to mind the Lalla people were wicked, and their ill-wishes would return upon their own heads. A handful of ten-cent pieces, or their Roman equivalent, would have stopped the whole outcry and changed it into blessings; but I think my father would not have yielded had the salvation of Rome and of all Italy depended upon it.
Gazing there or recalling in after years its unclouded majesty the delighted pilgrim knows neither shade of disappointment nor doth he harbour one thought of decay. Where is the other building in the "eternal city," of which we can say thus much? Sir Henry Delme had engaged a vettura, which was to convey them with the same horses as far as Florence.
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