OUR fat Italian friend below stairs began to give us great amusement just then. Wherever he went he carried under his arm that square volume as fat as himself, in which Lizzie was at present pursuing her occult and bewildered studies. To see Domenico (for that was his name), coming to a sudden halt straight before you, blocking out all the light from that tiny passage which Mrs. Goldsworthy called her “hall,” and announcing, with a flourish of his dictionary, that he had something to communicate, was irresistibly comic certainly; but it was a little embarrassing as well. Domenico’s verbs were innocent of either past, present, or future. I presume he was quite above any considerations of grammar, except that supplied to him by nature, in his own language, and was not aware that such a master of the ceremonies existed to introduce him to the new tongue, which the poor fellow found so crabbed and unmanageable. I have heard of people managing to get on in foreign countries with a language composed of nouns and the infinitive of verbs (I honestly confess, that when I heard this story first, I had very vague ideas of what the infinitive of a verb was); a primitive savage language containing the possibilities of existence; eating, drinking, and sleeping; but quite above the conventional uses of conversation. Domenico’s ambition was far higher, but his information was absolutely confined to those same infinitives. He knew the word only as it stood in the dictionary—what were tenses and numbers to him? But you will perceive that a conversation conducted on these principles was necessarily wanting in precision, and that the conversing persons did not always understand each other with the clearness that might have been desired.
One clear spring morning, a few days after the party, I was going out about household affairs, when Domenico stopped me on the way to the door. He had his coat off, and the immense expanse of man in shirt-sleeves, which presented itself before me, cannot be expressed by description. As usual, he was smiling all over his face; as usual, his red lips and white teeth{182} opened out of his beard with a primitive fulness and genial good-humour; as usual, he seized his beard with one hand as he addressed me, opening out his big dictionary on the table with the other. “Signora,” cried Domenico, “the master my—me, of me,” first pointing at himself, and then, to make assurance sure, boxing his chest emphatically, “the my master,—Signora understand?—come back.”
“What?” cried I, “he has come back, has he, Domenico?”
Domenico nodded a hundred times with the fullest glee and rapture. “I—me—Domenico,” he cried, again boxing himself, that there might be no doubt of his identity, “make prepare.”
From which I divined that the master was not yet returned; and, nodding half as often as Domenico, by way of signifying my entire content and sympathy, foolishly concluded that I was let off and might pass. However, Domenico was not yet done with me.
“The Signora give little of the advice,” said Domenico, with unusual clearness, opening the door of his parlour, and inviting me by many gestures to enter. I looked in, much puzzled, and found the room in all the agonies of change. The carpet had been lifted, and the floor polished, which, perhaps, explained the sounds we had heard for some days. I cannot describe how the mean planks of poor Mrs. Goldsworthy’s little parlour, many of them gaping apart, looked under the painstaking labours of Domenico. He had contrived to rub them into due slipperiness and a degree of shine; but the result was profoundly dismal, and anything but corresponding to the face of complacency with which Domenico regarded his handiwork. The fat fellow watched my eyes, and was delighted at first to see my astonishment; but, perceiving immediately, with all the quick observation which our straitened possibilities of speech made necessary, that my admiration was by no means equal to surprise, his countenance fell. “He not pleases to the Signora,” said Domenico. Then he hastened to the corner where the rejected carpet lay in a roll, and spread a corner of it over the floor. I nodded my head again and applauded. Domenico’s disappointment was great.
“But for the sommere?” said Domenico with a melancholy interrogation.
“It is never so warm in England,—cold, cold,” I said, with great emphasis and distinctness. Domenico heard and brightened up.
“Ah, thank! ah, thank! not me r............