698
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The fast express leaves Venice at 2 o’clock every afternoon and is due in Udine, the capital of Fruili, at 4:20. It first traverses the massive viaduct, which rises above the blue lagoon, which is ever dotted with orange and red lateen-sails. The salt marshes and sluggish waterways we see sleeping tranquilly on our right like a worn- out combatant, the sacred fortress of Margera, so gloriously defended in 1849 by a few brave men in the Italian rebellion against foreign rule, when the Austrians hemmed the volunteers in on every side except that of the city. There another more dreaded foe, the “ cholera,” wielded the scepter. All had surrendered but this handful of stanch hearts, and still they fought on, single-hand, until in the baptism of their own blood and misery the dross engendered by the ease of centuries was washed from their characters and every Venetian was born again a hero.
The train crosses the hot, rich Venetian plains; then it turns to the East and seems to lose itself on the verdant plain of Fruili, the great Patria or fatherland, from which the Venetians fled a thousand years ago before the devastating hordes of bloody Attila, surnamed “the plague of God.” Now all is pretty, prosperous, peaceful; the waving fields of grain, the rippling water-courses, sparkle in the sunshine. The neat roads, leading to well filled barns, are planted in avenues of great shade trees; the peasant houses are large, the meadows are rich, and the gray cattle fat and sleepy. All seems to speak of contentment and repose and one is aroused with a kind of a moral shock at sight of the old Mahin country house, with its memories of turbulence and war. For, by an irony of fate, this beautiful home of the last of the Doges of the Venetian republic, was chosen as a resting place by the modern Caesar, Napoleon I., when he was studying the peace of Campoformido, which forged the chain of Venetian slavery to Austria. Here on this very spot it was welded upon the neck of the once proud Venetian republic with gold rung from her children by purchasing Austria to furnish the conqueror (alas! a born Italian) with the sinews necessary to carry on to fresh fields of misery his conquering banners and their attendant train of woes.
The train whistles twice. The modern suburbs of a prosperous little city come in sight. The past is lost in the present. The thirty thousand inhabitants of Udine greet you with the clatter of iron foundries, cotton and flour mills and a hundred other great industries—young life, young enterprise, have conquered. United Italy has arisen, strengthened by that long period of suffering. We pass through the turreted city gate and you gaze in wonder upon gushing fountains, electric lights, gas burners, tramways, and telephone wires interlaced curiously among the ancient palaces. A miniature parliament existed on the citadel of Udine centuries before the proud barons of England compelled King John in 1215 to sign the Magna Charta, assuring to their descendants liberty and representation. This little Patria can, therefore, boast of having been one of the oldest countries in Europe to possess a representative assemblage by election and by inheritance, divided into two bodies, called the Peers and Commons. These met yearly in Udine to decide on all that concerned the well being of the country, and this parliament only ceased to exist when Napoleon conquered Italy.
We can not linger. Time is flying, and we must hasten on that you may become acquainted with the people up in the hills around the castle and learn to love them a little before we part.
The carriage spins out of the gate at the other end of the town and away between the Indian corn-fields, called there Turkish grain, and the vineyards. The road is macadamized and very white. It is flanked on either side by deep ditches and mulberry trees which have been cropped into a resemblance to chubby, rotund personalities. There are millions of them, stretching row upon row, as far as the eye can reach. Their leaves serve to feed the silkworms, for you are in Italy, which produces one- fourth of the silk consumed in the world, and in one of the two provinces which yields the most silk in Italy.
The peasant men who pass salute respectfully, but the women here are very proud, reserved and dignified, and never bow unless they are acquainted. The strong soft