point
to the mark of Dr. Johnson's, while the flamboyancy of the cooking
revealed to me the real reason of the decline and fall of Rome. I am
afraid I should be telling the story of our own decline and fall had we
sent off articles and received cheques every day. Fortunately, the
intervals were long between the feasts, but unfortunately our digestion
can never again be imperilled at the _Falcone_, for they tell me it has
gone with the _Ghetto_ and so many other things in the Rome I knew and
loved.

By the middle of the winter we gave up the _Posta_ and went to the
_Cavour_ instead. I don't know how we had the heart to, for the _Cavour_
never had the same charm for us, we never got to like it so well. It was
too large and popular for friendliness, the officers carried their
ceremony and gorgeousness to a room apart, and the _padrone_ and his
waiters were too busy for more than one fixed smile of general welcome.
But then there, if we paid for our dinner by the month, it cost us next
to nothing by the day, and our Letter of Credit allowed as narrow a
margin for sentiment as for clothes. Moreover, the dinner was good as
well as cheap. And when the streets of Rome were rivers of rain, as they
often were that winter, it was brought to our rooms in a dinner pail by
a waiter, after he had first come half a mile to submit the _menu_ to
us, and in that cold, bleak interior, wrapped in blankets, a _scaldino_
at our feet, a newspaper for tablecloth, we made a picnic of it,
freezing, but thankful not to be drowned. And on great holidays, the
_padrone_ spared us a smile all to ourselves as he offered us, with the
compliments of the season, a plate of _torrone_ and a bottle of old wine
from his vineyard.

III

With dinner the night was but beginning and smiles must have faded had
we lingered over it indefinitely. I learned to my astonishment, however,
that hours could be, or rather were expected to be, devoted to the
drinking of one small cup of coffee, and that always near the
_trattoria_ was a _cafe_[A] which provided the coffee and, at the cost
of a few cents, could become our home for as long and as late as might
suit us. In Philadelphia after dinner coffee had been swallowed
promptly, in the back parlour if we were dining alone, in the front if
people were dining with us, and I was startled to find it in Rome an
excuse to loaf at a convenient distance from the domestic hearth for
Romans with apparently nothing to do and a