When I demanded these of my guide, he promptly satisfied me, and in a
few moments, there in the Chiaja, we stood at the foot of such a public
staircase. I had no wish to climb it, but I found it more charming even
than I remembered. All the way to the top it was banked on either side
with glowing masses of flowers and fruits and the spectacular vegetables
of the South, and between these there were series of people, whom I
tacitly delegated to make the ascent for me, passing the groups
bargaining at the stalls. Nothing could have been better; nothing that I
think of is half so well in New York, where the markets are on that dead
level which in the social structure those above it abhor; though there
are places on the East River where we might easily have inclined
markets.
Other associations of that far past awoke with my identification of the
hotel where we had stayed at the end of the Villa Nazionale. In those
days the hotel was called, in appeal to our patriotism, more flattered
then than now in Europe, Hotel Washington; but it is to-day a mere
pension, though it looks over the same length of palm-shaded,
statue-peopled garden.
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