I cannot say,
however, that it was love of antiquities or divinity, or even scenery,
which led my steps Subiaco-wards. The motive of my journey was of a less
elevated and more matter-of-fact character. Some few days beforehand a
yellow play-bill-looking placard caught my eye as I strolled down the
Corso. A perusal of its contents informed me, that on the approaching
feast-day of St Benedict there was to be held at Subiaco the great annual
_Festa e fiera_. Many and various were the attractions offered. There
was to be a horse-race, a _tombola_, or open lottery, an illumination,
display of fire-works, high mass, and, more than all, a public
procession, in which the sacred image of San Benedetto was to be carried
from the convent to the town. Such a bill of fare was irresistible, even
had there not been added to it the desire to escape from the close muggy
climate of Rome into the fresh mountain-air,--a desire whose intensity
nothing but a long residence here can enable one to appreciate.
Subiaco is some forty odd miles from Rome, and amongst the petty towns of
the Papal States is a place of some small importance. The means,
however, of communication with the metropolis are of the scantiest. Two
or three times a week a sort of Italian _eil-wagen_, a funereal and
tumble-down, flea-ridden coach, with windows boarded up so high that,
when seated, you cannot see out of them, and closed hermetically, after
Italian fashion, shambles along at jog-trot pace between the two towns,
and takes a livelong day, from early morning to late at night, to perform
the journey.
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