The Rents Of The Like Flats, If
Vacant, Would Be A Quarter Or A Third Less, Though Again The Agents
Begin By Telling You That There Is Very Little Difference Between The
Rents Of Furnished And Unfurnished Flats.
The flats are in every part
of the old town and the new; and some are in noble sixteenth and
seventeenth century palaces, such as we are accustomed to at home only
in the theatre.
My own experience is that everybody, especially in
houses where there are no lifts, lives on the top floor. You pass many
other floors in going up, but you are left to believe that nobody lives
on them. When you reach the inhabited levels, you find them charming
inside for their state and beauty, and outside for their magnificent
view, which may be pretty confidently relied upon to command the dome of
St. Peter's. That magnificent stone bubble seems to blow all round the
horizon.
When you have taken your furnished flat, the same agency will provide
you a cook at ten or twelve dollars a month, a maid at seven dollars, a
lady's maid at eight or nine dollars, and so on; the cook will prefer to
sleep out of the house. Then will come the question of provisions, and
these seem really to be dear in Rome. Meats and vegetables both are
dear, and game and poultry. Beef will be forty cents a pound, and veal
and mutton in proportion; a chicken which has been banting for the table
from its birth will be forty cents; eggs which have not yet taken active
shape are twenty-five and thirty cents throughout winters so bland that
a hen of any heart can hardly keep from laying every day.
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