From the window-
sills and from ropes fastened across the streets flutter half-washed rags
and strange apparel. The height of the houses makes the narrow streets
gloomy even at midday. At night, save in a few main thoroughfares, there
is no light of any kind; but then, after dark at Rome, nobody cares much
about walking in out-of-the-way places. The streets are paved with the
most angular and slippery of stones, placed herringbone fashion, with ups
and downs in every direction. Foot-pavement there is none; and the
ricketty carriages drawn by the tottering horses come swaying round the
endless corners with an utter disregard for the limbs and lives of the
foot-folk. You are out of luck if you come to Rome on a "Festa" day, for
then all the shops are shut, and the town looks drearier than ever.
However, even here the chances are two to one, or somewhat more, in
favour of the day of your arrival being a working-day. When the shops
are open there is at any rate life enough of one kind or other. In most
parts the shops have no window-fronts. Glass, indeed, there is little of
anywhere, and the very name of plate-glass is unknown. The dark, gloomy
shops varying in size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their
wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets. A feeble lamp hung at the
back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the
darkness of their interiors visible.
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