As summer comes on and the evenings grow warm, begin the street serenades,—­sometimes like that of Lindoro in the opening of the “Barbiere di Sevilla,” but generally with only one voice, accompanied by a guitar and a mandolin.  These serenades are, for the most part, given by a lover or friend to his innamorata, and the words are expressive of the tender passion; but there are also serenate di gelosia, or satirical serenades, when the most impertinent and stinging verses are sung.  Long before arriving, the serenaders may be heard marching up the street to the thrum of their instruments.  They then place themselves before the windows of the fair one, and, surrounded by a group of men and boys, make proclamation of their love in loud and often violent tones.  It seems sometimes as if they considered the best method of expressing the intensity of their passion was by the volume of their voice.  Certainly, in these cases, the light of love is not hidden under a bushel.  Among the Trasteverini, particularly, these serenades are common.  Some of them are very clever in their improvisations and imitations of different dialects, particularly of the Neapolitan, in which there are so many charming songs.  Their skill in improvisation, however, is not generally displayed in their serenades, but in the osterias, during the evenings of the festas in summer.  There it is that their quickness and epigrammatic turn of expression are best seen.  Two disputants will, when in good-humor and warmed with wine, string off verse after verse at each other’s expense, full of point and fun,—­the guitar burring along in the intervals, and a chorus of laughter saluting every good hit.

In many of the back streets and squares of the city, fountains jet out of lions’ heads into great oblong stone cisterns, often sufficiently large to accommodate some thirty washerwomen at once.  Here the common people resort to wash their clothes, and with great laughter and merriment amuse themselves while at their work by improvising verses, sometimes with rhyme, sometimes without, at the expense of each other, or perhaps of the passerby,—­particularly if he happen to be a gaping forestiere, to whom their language is unintelligible.  They stand on an elevated stone step, so as to bring the cistern about mid-height of their body, and on the rough inclined level of its rim they slash and roll the clothes, or, opening them, flaunt them into the water, or gather them together, lifting their arms high above their heads, and always treating them with a violence which nothing but the coarsest material can resist.  The air to which they chant their couplets is almost always a Campagna melody.  Sharp attacks are given and as sharp repliques received, in exceeding good-humor; and when there is little wit, there is sure to be much laughter.  The salt is oftentimes pretty coarse, but it serves its purpose.