XXI. DON CALIXTO IN THE CATACOMBS
Don Calixto and the Canon were very anxious to visit the Catacombs. Cæsar knew that the visit is not entirely agreeable, and attempted to dissuade them from their intention.
“I don’t know whether you gentlemen know that one has to spend the entire day there.”
“Without lunch?” asked the Canon.
“Yes.”
“Oh, no; that is impossible.”
“One has to sacrifice oneself for the sake of Christianity,” said Cæsar.
“You haven’t much desire to sacrifice yourself,” retorted Don Calixto.
“Because I believe it is damp and unwholesome down there, and a Christian bronchitis would not be wholly pleasant, despite its religious origin. And besides, as you already know, one must go without food.”
“We might eat something there,” said Don Justo.
“Eat there!” exclaimed Cæsar. “Eat a slice of ham, in front of the niches of the Catacombs! It would make me sick.”
“It wouldn’t me,” replied the Canon.
“In front of the tombs of martyrs and saints!”
“Even if they were saints, they ate too,” replied the Canon, with his excellent good sense.
Cæsar had to agree that even if they were saints, they ate.
There was a French family at the hotel who were also thinking of going to see the Catacombs, and Don Calixto and Don Justo decided to go the same day with them. The French family consisted of a Breton gentleman, tall and whiskered, who had been at sea; his wife, who looked like a village woman; and the daughter, a slender, pale, sad young lady. They had with them, half governess, half maid, a lean peasant-woman with a suspicious air.
The young lady confessed to Cæsar that she had been dreaming of the Catacombs for a long while. She knew the description Chateaubriand gives of them in Les Martyres by heart.
The next day the French family in one landau, and Don Calixto with the Canon and Cæsar in another, went to see the Catacombs.
The French family had brought a fat, smiling abbé as cicerone.
Five persons couldn’t get inside the landau, and the Breton gentleman had to sit by the driver. Don Calixto offered him a seat in his carriage, but the Breton, who must have been obstinate as a mule, said no, that from the driver’s seat he enjoyed more of the panorama.
They halted a moment, on the abbé’s advice, at the Baths of Caracalla, and went through them. The cicerone explained where the different bathing-rooms had been and the size of the pools. Those cyclopean buildings, those high, high arches, those enormous walls, left Cæsar overcome.
One couldn’t understand a thing like this except in a town which had a mania for the gigantic, the titanic.
They left the baths and started along. They followed the Via di Porta San Sebastiano, between two walls. They left behind the imposing ruins of the Baths of Caracalla and various establishments for archeological reconstructions, and the carriage stopped at the gate of the Catacombs.
They went in, guided by the abbé, and arrived at a sort of office.
They each paid a lira for a taper which a friar was handing out, and they joined a group of other people, without quite knowing what they expected next. In the group there were two German Dominicans, a tall one whose fiery red beard hung to his waist, and a slim one, with a nose like a knife.
IRREVERENT CICERONE
It was not long before another numerous group of tourists came out of a hole in the floor, and among them was a Trappist brother who came over to where Don Calixto and Cæsar were. The Trappist carried a stick, and a taper twisted in the end of the stick. He asked if everybody understood French; any one that didn’t could wait for another group.
“I don’t understand it,” said the Canon.
“I will translate what he says, to you,” replied Cæsar.
“All right,” answered the Canon.
“En avant, messieurs,” said the Trappist, lighting his taper, and requesting them all to do the same.
They went around giving one another a light, and with their little candles aflame they began to descend into the Catacombs.
They went in by a gallery as narrow as one in a mine, which once in a while broadened into bigger spaces.
In certain spots there were openings in the roof.
Cæsar had never thought about what the celebrated Catacombs would be like, but he had not expected them so poor and so sinister.
The sensation they caused was disagreeable, a sensation of choking, of suffocation, without one’s really getting any impression of grandeur. The place seemed like an abandoned ant-hill. The wide spaces that opened out at the sides of the passage were chapels, the monk said.
The Trappist cicerone contributed to removing any serious feelings with his chatter and his jokes. Being familiar with these tombs, he had lost respect for them, as sacristans lose it for the saints they brush the dust off of with a feather-duster. Moreover, he judged everything by an esthetic criterion, completely devoid of respect; for him there were only sepulchres with artistic character, or without it; of a good or a poor period; and the latter sort he struck contemptuously with his stick.
The marine Breton was irritated, and asked Cæsar several times:
“Why is that permitted?” “I don’t know,” answered Cæsar.
The monk made extraordinary remarks.
Explaining the life of the Christians in the earliest eras of Christianity, he said:
“In this century the habits of the pontiffs were so lax that the Pope had to go out accompanied by two persons to insure his modest behaviour.”
“Oh, oh!” said a young Frenchman, in a tone of vexation.
“Ah! C’est L’histoire,” replied the monk.
Cæsar translated what the Trappist had said, to Don Calixto and the Canon, and they were both really perplexed.
They followed the long, narrow galleries. It was a strange effect, seeing the procession of tourists with their burning candles. One didn’t notice the modern clothes and the ladies’ hats, and from a distance the procession lighted by the little flames of the candles, had a mysterious look.
At the tail of the crowd walked two men who spoke English. One was a “gentleman” little versed in archeological questions; the other a tall person with the face of a scholar. Cæsar drew near them to listen. The one was explaining to his companion everything they saw as they went along, the signification of the emblems cut in the tablets, and the funerary customs of the Christians.
“Didn’t they put crosses?” asked the unlearned gentleman.
“No,” said the other. “It is said that for the Romans the crux represented the gallows! Thus the earliest representation of the Crucified is a drawing in the Kirchnerian museum, which shows a Christian kneeling before a man with a donkey’s head, who is nailed to a cross. In Greek letters one reads: ‘Alexamenes adores his God.’ They say this drawing comes from the Palace of the Cæsars, and it is considered to be a caricature of Christ, drawn by a Roman soldier on a wall.”
“Didn’t they put up images of Christ, either?”
“No. You do not consider that they were at the height of the discussion as to whether Christ was ugly or beautiful.”
The tall gentleman got involved in a long dissertation as to what motives they had had, some to insist that Christ’s person was of great beauty, others to affirm that it was of terrible ugliness.
Cæsar would have liked to go on listening to what this gentleman said, but Don Justo joined him. The Trappist was in front of two mummies, explaining something, and he wanted Cæsar to translate what he was saying.
Cæsar did this bit of interpreting for him. The candles were beginning to burn out and it was necessary to leave.
The cicerone took them rapidly along a gallery at whose end there was a stairway, and they issued into the sunlight. The monk extinguished the taper on his stick, and began crying:
“Now, gentlemen, do you want any scapulars, medals, chocolate?”
Cæsar looked over his companions in the expedition. The Canon was indifferent. The old maritime Breton showed signs of profound indignation, and his daughter, the little French mystic, had tears in her eyes.
“That poor little French girl, who arrived here so full of enthusiasm, has come out of these Catacombs like a rat out of a sewer,” said Cæsar.
“And why so?” asked Don Calixto.
“Because of the things the monk said. He was really scandalous.”
“It is true,” said the Canon gravely. “I never would have believed it.”
“Roma veduta, fede perduta,” said Don Calixto. “And as for you, Cæsar, hasn’t this visit interested you?”
“Yes, I have been interested in trying to keep from catching cold.”
AGRO ROMANO
The landau that the Breton family was in took the Appian, Way, and Cæsar and Don Calixto’s carriage followed behind it.
They passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and were able to look ahead along the old road, on whose sides one sees the remains of aqueducts, which at evening-fall have a grandeur so imposing. Don Calixto and Don Justo were discussing a question of home politics.
On them magnificently indifferent, the broken sepulchres, the abandoned arches invaded by grass, the vestiges of a gigantic civilization, did not produce the least impression.
The coachman pointed out Frascati on the slope of a mountain, Albano, Grotta Ferrata, and Tivoli.
Cæsar felt the grandeur of the landscape; the enormous sadness of the remnants of aqueducts, which had the colour of rusty iron, beneath a sky of pink clouds.
At dusk they turned back. Cæsar felt a weight on his spirits. The walls of the Baths of Caracalla looked threatening to him. Those great towering thick walls, broken, brick-colour, burned by the sun, gave him an impression of the strength of the past. There were no trees, no houses near them; as if those imposing ruins precluded any life round about. Only one humble almond-tree held out its white flowers.
Don Calixto and the Canon continued chatting.
XXII. SENTIMENTALITY AND ARCHEOLOGY
Don Calixto and the Canon went away to Spain. Cæsar thought he was wasting time in Rome and that he ought to get out, but he remained. He kept wondering why Susanna Marchmont had left and never written him.
Twice he asked about her at the Hotel Excelsior, and was told that she had not returned.
One evening at the beginning of May, when he had managed to decide to pack up and go, he received a card from Susanna, telling him of her arrival and inviting him to have tea at the Ristorante del Castello dei Cesari.
Cæsar immediately left the hotel and took a cab, which carried him to the top of the Aventine Hill.
He got out at the entrance to the garden of the Ristorante, went across it, and out on a large terrace.
There were a number of Americans having tea, and in one group of them was Susanna.
“How late you come!” she said.
“I have just received your card. And what did you do in Corfu? How did things go down there?”
“Very well indeed. It is all wonderful. And I have been in Epirus and Albania, too.”
Susanna related her impressions of those countries, with many details, which, surely, she had read in Baedeker.
She was very smart, and prettier than ever. She said her husband must be in London; she had had no news from him for more than a month. “And how did you know I was still here?” Cæsar asked her.
“Through Kennedy. He wrote to me. He is a good friend. He talked a lot about you in his letters.”
Cæsar thought he noticed that Susanna talked with more enthusiasm than ordinarily. Perhaps distance had produced a similar effect on her to what wondering about her had on him. Cæsar looked at her almost passionately.
From the terrace one could see the tragic ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars; broken arcades covered with grass, remains of walls still standing, the openings of arches and windows, and here and there a pointed cypress or a stone pine among the great devastated walls.
Far away one could see the country, Frascati, and the blue mountains of the distance.
As it was already late, the group of Susanna’s American friends decided to return by carriage.
“I am going to walk,” said Susanna in a low tone. “Would you like to come with me?”
“With great pleasure.”
They took leave of the others, went down the garden road, which was decorated on both sides with ancient statues and tablets, and issued on the Via di Santa Prisca, a street between two dark walls, with a lamp every once in a while.
“What a sky!” she exclaimed.
“It is splendid.”
It was of a blue with the lustre of mother-of-pearl; in the zenith a stray star was imperceptibly shining; to the west floated golden and red clouds.
They went down the steep street, alongside a garden wall. In some places, bunches of century plants showed their hard spikes, sharp as daggers, over the low walls.
There was a great silence in this coming of night. Among the foliage of the trees they heard the piping of sparrows. From far away there came, from time to time, the puffing of a train.
DESOLATION
They walked without speaking, mastered by the melancholy of their surroundings. Now and again, a peasant, tanned by the sun, with his little sack full of grass, came home from the fields, singing.
Cæsar and Susanna passed alongside of the Jewish cemetery, and stopped to look in through a grill. The wall hid the burning zone of twilight; a greenish blue reigned in the zenith.
They went on again. A bell began to ring.
Cæsar was depressed. Susanna was silent.
They crossed a street of new, dark houses; they passed by a little square with a melancholy church. The street they took was named for Saint Theodore. To the left, down the Via del Velabro, they saw an arch with many niches on the sides of the single opening.
A band of black seminarians passed.
“Poor creatures!” murmured Cæsar.
“Are you very sympathetic?” said Susanna, mockingly.
“Yes, those chaps rouse my pity.”
Now, on the right, the furious ruins of the Palatine were piled up: brick walls, ruined arches, decrepit partitions, and above, the terrace of a garden with a balustrade. Over the terrace, against the sky, were the silhouettes of high cypresses almost black, of ilexes with their dense foliage, and a large palm with arching leaves.
From these so tragic ruins there seemed to exhale a great desolation, beneath the deep, green sky.
Susanna and Cæsar drew near the Forum.
In the opaque light of dusk the Forum had the air of a cemetery. Two lighted windows were shining in the high dark wall of the Tabularium, and sharp-toned bells were beginning to ring.
They went up the stairway that leads to the Capitol, and on a little terrace they stopped to look at the Forum.
“What terrible desolation!” exclaimed Susanna.
“All the stones look like tombs,” said Cæsar. “Yes, that is true.”
“What are those three high open vaults that give so strange an impression of immense size?” asked Cæsar.
“That is what remains of Constantine’s basilica.”
For a long while they gazed at that abandoned space, with its melancholy columns and white stones.
In a street running into the Forum, there began to shine two rows of gaslights of a greenish colour.
As they passed down the slope leading to the Capitol, in a little street to the left, the Via Monte Tarpea, they saw a funeral procession ready to start. At that moment the corpse was being brought into the street. Several women in black were waiting by the house door with lighted candles.
The priest, in his white surplice and holding up his cross, gave the order to start, and pushed to the front of the crowd; four men raised the bier and took it on their shoulders, and the procession of women in black, men, and children, followed behind. Bells with sharp voices began again to sound in the air.
“Oh, isn’t it sad!” said Susanna, lifting her hand to her breast.
They watched how the procession moved away, and then Cæsar murmured, ill-humouredly:
“It is stupid.”
“What?” asked Susanna.
“I say that it’s stupid to take pleasure in feeling miserable. What we are doing is absurd and unhealthy.”
Susanna burst into laughter, and when she said good-night to Cæsar she squeezed his hand energetically.
XXIII. THE ‘SCUTCHEON OF A CHURCH
“Susanna Marchmont,” Cæsar wrote to his friend Alzugaray, “is a beautiful woman, rich, and apparently intelligent. She has given me to understand that she feels a certain inclination for me, and if I please her well enough, she will get a divorce and marry me.
“I have discovered the reasons for her inclination, first in a desire to revenge herself on her husband by marrying the brother of the woman he has fallen in love with; secondly, in my not having made love to her, like the majority of the men she has known.
“Really, Susanna is a beautiful woman; but whereas other women gain by being looked at and listened to, with her it is not so. In this beautiful woman there is something cold, utilitarian, which she does not succeed in hiding by her artistic effusions. Besides she has a great deal of vanity, but stupid vanity. She has asked me if I couldn’t manage to acquire a high-sounding, decorative title in Spain.
“If Susanna knew that in my heart I keep up her friendship only through inertia, because I have no plans, and that her millions and her beauty leave me cold, she would be dumfounded; I believe that perhaps she would admire me.
“At present we devote ourselves to walking, talking, and telling each other our impressions. Any one would say that we intentionally play a game of being contrary; whatsoever she finds wonderful seems worthy of contempt to me, and vice-versa. It is strange that such absolute disagreement can exist. This Sunday afternoon we have been taking a long walk, half sentimental, half archeological.
“I went to get her at her hotel; she came down, looking very smart, with an unmarried friend, also an American and also very chic.
“The three of us walked toward the Forum. We passed under the arch of Constantine. A small beggar-boy preceded us, getting ahead and turning hand-springs. I gave him some pennies. Susanna laughed. This woman, who pays bills of thousands of pesetas to her milliner, doesn’t like to give a copper to a ragamuffin.
“We turned off a bit from the avenue and went up on the right, toward the Palatine. Among the ruins some women were pulling up plants and putting them into sacks. At the end of the road, on the slope, there were Stations of the Cross, and some boys from a school were playing, guarded by priests with white rabbits.
“It was impossible to go further, and we went down the hill toward the Piazza di San Gregorio. On the open place in front of the church that is in this square, some vagabonds were stretched out on the ground; an old man with a long hoary beard and a pipe with a chain, two dark youths with shocks of black hair, and a red-headed woman with silver hoops in her ears and a baby in her arms.
“The two young boys threw me a glance of hatred, and stared at Susanna and her friend with extraordinary avidity.
“What very false ideas must have been going through their minds! I might have approached them and said politely:
“‘Do not imagine that these ladies are of different stuff from this red woman who has the baby in her arms. They are all the same. There is no more difference than what is caused by a little soap and some money.’
“‘Let us go in and see the church,’ said Susanna.
“‘Good. Come along.’
“The church has a flight of stone steps and two cypresses to one side.
“We went into a court with graves in it, and stayed there a while, reading the names of the people buried in them. Susanna’s friend is a sort of little devil with the instincts of a small boy, and she went springing about in all the corners.
“When we came out of the church we found the square, deserted before, now full of people. During the time we had stayed inside, a numerous group of tourists had formed a circle, and a gentleman was explaining in English what the Via Appia used to be.
“‘These are the things that please you,’ Susanna said to me, laughing.
“I answered with a joke. The truth is that no matter how many explanations I am given, an ancient Roman always seems a cardboard figure to me, or at most a marble figure. It is not possible to imagine how bored I used to be reading Les Martyres of Chateaubriand and that famous Quo Vadis.
“From the Piazza di San Gregorio we took a steep street, the ‘Via di Santi Giovanni e Paolo,’ which passes under an arch with several brick buttresses.
“We came out in a little square, in an angle of which there is an ancient arcaded tower, which has tiles set into the walls, some round and others the shape of a Greek cross.
“The modern portico of the church has columns and a grated door, which we found open. Over the door is a picture of Saint John and Saint Paul; on the sides of it two shields with the mitre and the keys. On one, set round about, are the Latin words: Omnium rerum est vicisitudo; on the other is written in Spanish: Mi corazón arde en mucha llama.
“‘Is it Spanish?’ Susanna asked me.
“‘Yes.’
“‘What does it mean?’
“I translated the phrase into English: ‘My heart burns with a great flame’; and Susanna repeated it several times, and begged me to write it in her card-case.
“Her friend skimmed some pages in Baedeker and said:
“‘It seems that the house of two saints martyred by Julian the Apostate is preserved here.’
“I assured them that that was an error. I happen to have been reading just a few days ago a book about Julian the Apostate, and it turns out that that Emperor was an admirable man, good, generous, brave, full of virtues; but the Christians had reason for calumniating him and they calumniated him. All Julian’s persecutions of Christians are logical repressions of people that were disturbing public order, and the phrase, Vencisti, Galileo, is a pious fraud. Julian was a philosopher, he loved science, hygiene, cleanliness, peace, in a world of hysterical worshipers of corpses, who wanted to live in ignorance, filth, and prayer.
“But Christianity, always a religion of hallucinated persons, of mystifiers, has never vacillated in singing the praises of parricides like Constantine, and in calumniating the memory of great men like Julian.
“Susanna and her friend considered that the question of whether Julian has been calumniated by history, or not, was of no importance.
“The truth is that I feel the same way.
“From the Via di Santi Giovanni e Paolo we came out into a small square by a church, which has a little marble ship in front of its porch. We saw that his street is named after the Navicella.”
A ROYAL IDYLL.
“By the side of the church of the Navicella, we passed the Villa Mattei, and Susanna wished to go in. What a beautiful property! What splendid terraces those in that garden are! What laurels! What lemon-trees! What old statues! What heavy shade of pines and live-oaks!
“Kennedy, who has an admirable knowledge of every corner of Rome, has told me that at the beginning of the XIX Century the Villa Mattei was the property of Godoy. King Charles IV and his wife were in Rome, living in the Barberini Palace, and they spent their days in the seclusion of the Villa Mattei; and while the favourite and the Queen, who had now become a harpy, walked in those poetical avenues, bordered with box and laurel, the good Bourbon, now an old man, walked behind them, his forehead ornamented like a faun’s, enchanted to watch them; I don’t know whether he was playing the flute.
“Susanna’s friend laughed at the thought of the good Charles IV, with his waistcoat and his long coat, and his satyr’s excrescences, and his rural flute; but the allusion did not find favour with Susanna, whether because she thought of her husband’s infidelities, or because she considered, that if her father gets to be the shoe-king, she will then have a certain spiritual relationship to the Bourbons. In the Villa Mattei we saw an ediculo, which rises at the edge of a terrace, amidst climbing plants. There, as an inscription says, Saint Philip Neri talked to his disciples of things divine. From the terrace one can see the Baths of Caracalla, and part of the Roman Campagna behind them.
“We came out of the Villa Mattei and left the Piazza, della Navicella and came down through a place where there is a wall with arches, under which some beggars have built huts out of gasoline cans. There is an eating-place thereabouts called the Osteria di Porta Metronia.
“Susanna’s friend consulted her book, and the result was that we found we were in the Vale of Egeria.
“From there we came out by a narrow road running along a wall, not a very high one, over which green laurel branches projected. We saw an obelisk at the end of the road, and the entablature of Saint John the Lateran. The group of statues, reddish brown, silhouetted against the sky, made a very strange effect.
“We started to go down by the Via di San Sisto Vecchio, which also runs along by a wall. At the bottom of the slope there is a mill, with a deep race. Susanna’s friend said she would enjoy bathing there.
“We came out, at nightfall, almost opposite the Baths of Caracalla.
“‘They ought to knock these ruins down altogether,’ I said.
“‘Why so?’ asked Susanna.
“‘Because they appear to be standing here to demonstrate the uselessness of human energy.’ Susanna was very little interested as to whether human energy is useful or useless.
“I am, because my own energy forms a part of human energy, and for no other reason.
“We came back past the Forum, but today we did not come upon any funerals. To demand that somebody should die every day and his corpse be carried out at twilight to feed tourists’ emotions, would, I think, be demanding too much.
“When we reached her hotel, Susanna let her friend go up first; and as soon as we were alone, she looked at me expressively, placing one hand on her breast, and said to me, in nasal Spanish:
“‘Mi corazón arde en mucha llama.‘
“I don’t believe it.”
XXIV. TOURIST INTERLUDE
TRAVELLING
“Susanna said to me: ‘I have some inclination for you, but I don’t know you well enough. If you feel the same way, come with me. Let us travel together? I am with her, and nevertheless I am convinced that what I am doing is a piece of stupidity.
“We spent this Sunday morning in the train. In the country we saw men at work with great oxen that had long twisted horns. In a swampy field some labourers were draining the ground with great effort. From the train we saw the island of Elba, and Capraia, and the sea as blue as indigo.
“‘Mare nostro,’’ said an elegant gentleman in a fluty voice, and pointed out something on the horizon which he said was Corsica, and he said that it can be seen from far away.
“While all we useless, unoccupied persons gathered in the dining-car, the people in the fields kept on working, bent over in the mud, draining the marshes.
“‘What a lot of effort those poor devils have to make to keep us alive.’ I said.
“‘We are not kept alive by them,’ retorted Susanna.
“‘No, we live off of other slaves, who work for us,’ I answered her. ‘Those out there serve to feed the officers, the effeminate priestlings, all the people that take part in the theatrical performance of the Vatican. Those unfortunates help to uphold the eight basilicas and the three hundred odd churches of Rome.’
“Susanna shrugged her shoulders and smiled.”
CLOSE TO
“Travelling with a woman one does not love, no matter how very pretty she is, produces a series of disenchantments. It seems as if one kept seeking defects and analysing them under the microscope. During these days that I have been accompanying Susanna, I have discovered a lot of physical and moral imperfections in her. There are moments in which she cannot conceal an egoism and brutality which are truly disagreeable; and besides, she is tyrannical, vain, and tries always to have her own way.
“We have been at Siena, which is a kind of Toledo, made up of narrow lanes. It was very hot. We were bored, especially she who has no artistic feeling.
“We have spent two days in Florence, a night in Bologna, another night at Milan, and after vacillating as to whether it would be better to go to Lake Como or to Switzerland, we have come to Geneva to spend a few days.
“Travelling like this in limited trains, one finds travelling more insipid than in any other fashion. All the sleeping-cars are alike, all the people alike, all the hotels alike. Really it is Stupid.
“It is still more stupid travelling with a woman who attracts attention wherever she goes. She attracts attention, that is all; she doesn’t awaken any liking. She cannot comprehend why, being a beautiful and distinguished woman, she has nobody who cares for her disinterestedly. She notices that all the smart young men who aim for her are simply coming to the beautiful rich woman.
“And she thinks they ought to be in ecstasies over her wit and over the repertory of ready-made phrases she keeps for conversation.”
A TIRESOME HOTEL.
“In this immense, luxurious hotel, situated two thousand odd metres above sea-level, as the announcement-cards stuck everywhere say, more than a hundred of us gather in the dining-room at lunch-time. The greatest coolness, the most frozen composure reigns among us.
“It is obvious that, thus harboured and united by chance in this hotel, we disturb one another; a wall of prejudices and conventionalities separates us. The English old maids read their romantic novels; the German families talk among themselves; some Russian or other drinks champagne while he stares with vague and inexpressive eyes; and some swarthy man from a sultry country appears to be crushed by the lugubrious silence.
“Through the windows one can see Lake Leman, closed in near here by mountains, blue like a great turquoise, ploughed by white, triangular sails. From time to time one hears the strident noise of a steamboat’s siren and the murmur of the funicular train.”
A MODEST FAMILY
“To this ostentatious hotel a family of modest air came two days ago. It was a family made up of five persons; two ladies, one of them plain, thin, spectacled, the other plumper and short; a merry girl, smiling and rosy, and a melancholy little girl, with a waxen face. They were accompanied by a man with a distinguished, weary manner.
“They are all in mourning. They are English; they treat one another with an attractive affability. The short lady, mother of the two girls, was pressing the man’s hand and caressing it, during lunch the first day. He kept smiling in a gentle, tired way. No doubt he was unable to stay here long, for he did not appear that evening, and the four females were alone in the dining-room.
“The two ladies and the fresh, blooming girl are much preoccupied about the pale little girl, so much so that they do not notice the interest they arouse among the guests. All the old ‘misses,’ loaded with jewels, watch the family in mourning, as if they were wondering: ‘How come they here, if their position is not so good as ours? How dare they mix among us, not being in our class?’
“And it is a fact; they cannot be; there is something that shows that this family is not rich. Besides, and this is extraordinary enough, it seems that they haven’t come here to look down on others, or to give themselves airs, but to take walks and to look at the immaculate peaks of Mont Blanc. So one sees the two girls going out into the country without making an elaborate toilet, carrying a book or an orange in their hands, and coming back with bunches of flowers....”
TRAGEDY IN A HOTEL ROOM
“This morning at lunch only one of the ladies appeared in the dining-room.
“‘Perhaps the others have gone off on some picnic,’ thought I.
“In the evening at dinner, the tall woman with the glasses and the larger of the two girls were at table. They didn’t eat, and disquietude was painted on their faces; the girl had flushed cheeks and swollen eyes.
“‘What can be happening to them?’ I asked myself.
“At that juncture, in came the short lady, with two vials of medicine in her hand, and put them on the table. By what I could hear of the conversation, she had just come from Lausanne, where she had gone for the doctor. The melancholy little girl, the one with the waxen face, must be ill.
“No doubt the family have come to Switzerland for the sake of the child, who is probably delicate, and have made a sacrifice to do so. That explains their modest air, and the rapid departure of the man who brought them.
“The three women gazed sadly at one another. What can the poor child have? I remember nothing about her, except her hair parted in the middle, and the pallid colour of her bloodless skin, and nevertheless it makes me sad to think that she is sick.
“I should like to offer myself to these women at this crisis; I should like to say to them: ‘I am a humble person, without money; but if I could be useful to you in any way, I would do it with all my heart; and that is more than I would do for this gang covered with brilliants.’
“The German who eats at the next table to the family understands what is happening, and he leaves off eating to look at them, and then looks at me with his blue eyes. At last he shrugs his shoulders, lowers his head, and empties a glass of wine at one gulp.
“The three women rise and go to their rooms. One hears them coming and going in the corridor; then a waiter takes their dinner upstairs.
“And while the family are desolate up there, down here in the ‘hall’ the ‘misses’ keep on looking at one another contemptuously, exhibiting rings that sparkle on their fingers, and which would keep hundreds of people alive; and while they are weeping upstairs, down here a blond Yankee woman, with a large blue hat, a friend of Susanna’s, who flirts with a youth from Chicago, is laughing heartily, showing a set of white teeth in which there shines a chip of gold.”
SUSANNA DOES NOT UNDERSTAND
“I have spoken to Susanna about the poor English girl, who, they say, is dying; and she has bidden me not to tell her sad things. She cannot bear other people’s suffering. She says she is more sensitive than others. How very comical!
“This fine lady, who thinks herself so witty and so sensitive, has an inner skin like a hippopotamus; she is covered with a magnificent egoism, which must be at least of galvanized steel. Her armour protects her against the action of other people’s miseries and pains.
“This woman, so beautiful, is of a grotesque egotism; one understands her husband’s despising her.
“I am leaving her with her millions and going away to Spain.”
PART TWO. CASTRO DURO
I. ARRIVAL. CÆSAR IN ACTION
During the night Cæsar Moncada and Alzugaray chatted in the train. Alzugaray was praising this first Quixotic sally of his friend’s.
“We are going to cross the Rubicon, Cæsar,” he said, as he got into the train.
“We shall see.”
Many times Alzugaray had heard Cæsar explain his plans, but he had no great confidence in their realization. Nor did this particular moment seem to him opportune for beginning the campaign. Everybody believed that the Liberal Ministry was stronger than ever; people were still away for the summer; nothing was doing.
Nevertheless, Cæsar insisted that the crisis was imminent, and that it was the precise moment for him to enter politics. With this object he was taking a letter from Alarcos, the leader of the Conservatives, to Don Calixto García Guerrero.
“Your Don Calixto will be at San Sebastian or at some water-cure,” said Alzugaray, taking his seat in the train.
“It’s all the same to me. I intend to follow him until I find him,” answered Cæsar.
“And you are decided to run as a Conservative?”
“Of course.”
“I hope you won’t be sorry later.”
“Pshaw! Later one jumps into the position that suits one. On these first rungs of political life, either you have to have great luck, or you have to go like a grasshopper, first here, then there. That is the take-off, and when you are there all the ambitious mediocrities unite against you if you have any talent. Naturally, I do not intend to do anything to exhibit mine. Spanish politics are like a pond; a strong, healthy stick of wood goes to the bottom; a piece of bark or cork or a sheaf of straw stays on the surface. One has to disguise oneself as a cork.”
“And later you will go on and make yourself known.”
“Naturally. Since I find myself in the vein for making comparisons, I will say that in Spanish politics we have a case like those in the old comedies of intrigue, where the lackeys pretend to be gentlemen. When I am once among the gentlemen, I shall know how to prove that I am more a master than the people surrounding me.”
“How conceited you are.”
“The confidence one feels in oneself,” said Cæsar ironically.
“But have you really got it, or do you only pretend to have?”
“What matter whether I have it or haven’t it, if I behave as if I had it?”
“It matters a lot. It matters whether you are calm or not in the moment of danger.”
“Calmness is the muse that inspires me. I haven’t it in my thoughts, but in active life you shall see me!”
The two friends stretched themselves out in their first-class compartment, and lay half asleep until dawn, when they got up again.
The train was running rapidly across the flat country; the yellow sunlight shone into the car; through the newly sowed fields rode men on horseback.
“These are not my dominions yet,” said Cæsar.
“We have two more stations till Castro Duro,” responded Alzugaray, consulting the time-table. They took off their caps, put them into the bag, Cæsar put on a fresh collar, and they sat down by the window.
“It is ugly enough, eh?” said Alzugaray.
“Naturally,” replied Cæsar. “What do you want; that there should be some of those green landscapes like in your country, which for my part irritate me?”
THE CLASSIC STAGECOACH
They arrived at Castro Duro. In the station they saw groups of peasants. The travellers with their baggage went out of the station. There were two shabby coaches at the door.
“Are you going to the Comercio?” asked one driver.
“No, they are going to the España,” said the other.
“Then you two know more than we do,” answered Alzugaray, “because we don’t know where to go.”
“To the Comercio!”
“To the España!”
“Whose coach is this one?” asked Cæsar, pointing to the less dirty of the two.
“The Comercio’s.”
“All right, then we are going to the Comercio.”
The coach, in spite of being the better of the two, was a rickety, worn-out old omnibus, with its windows broken and spotted. It was drawn by three skinny mules, full of galls. Cæsar and Alzugaray got in and waited. The coachman, with the whip around his neck, and a young man who looked a bit like a seminarian, began to chat and smoke.
At the end of five minutes’ waiting, Cæsar asked:
“Well, aren’t we going?”
“In a moment, sir.”
The moment stretched itself out a good deal. A priest arrived, so fat that he would have filled the vehicle all alone; then a woman from the town with a basket, which she held on her knees; then the postman got in with his bag; the driver closed the little window in the coach door, and continued joking with the young man who looked a bit like a seminarian and with one of the station men.
“We are in a hurry,” said Alzugaray.
“We are going now, sir. All right. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” answered the station man and the seminarian.
The driver got up on his seat, cracked his whip, and the vehicle began to move, with a noisy swaying and a trembling of all its wood and glass. A very thick cloud of dust arose in the road.
“Ya, ya, Coronela!” yelled the driver. “Why do you keep getting where you oughtn’t to get? Damn the mule! Montesina, I am going to give you a couple of whacks. Get on there, Coronela! Get up, get up.... All right! All right!... That’s enough.... That’s enough.... Let it alone, now! Let it alone, now!”
“What an amount of oratory that man is wasting,” exclaimed Cæsar; “he must think that the mules are going to go better for the efforts of his throat. It would be an advantage if he had stronger beasts, instead of these dying ones.”
The other travellers paid no attention to his observation, and Alzugaray said:
“These drivers drip oratory.”
While the shabby coach was going along the highway which encircles Castro hill, to the sound of the bells and the cracking of the whip, it was possible to remain seated in the vehicle with comparative ease; but on reaching the town’s first steep, crooked, rough-cobbled street, the swinging and tossing were such that the travellers kept falling one upon another.
The first street kept getting rapidly narrower, and as it grew narrower, the crags in its paving were sharper and more prominent. At the highest part of the street, in the middle, stood a two-wheeled cart blocking the way. The coachman got down, from his seat and started a long discussion with the carter, as to who was under obligations to make way.
“What idiots!” exclaimed Cæsar, irritated; then, calmer, he murmured, addressing Alzugaray, “The truth is, these people don’t care about doing anything but talk.”
As the discussion between the coachman and the carter gave signs of never ending, Cæsar said:
“Come along,” and then, addressing the man with the bag, he asked him, “Is it far from here to the inn?”
“No; it is right here, in the house where the café is.” THE INN
Sure enough, the inn was only a step away. They went into the damp, dark entrance, up the crooked stairs, and down the corridor to the kitchen.
“Good morning, good morning!” they shouted.
Nobody appeared.
“Might it be on the second floor?” asked Alzugaray.
“Let’s go see.”
They went up to the next floor, entered by a gallery of red brick, which was falling to pieces, and called several times. An old woman, from inside a dark bedroom where she was sweeping, bade them go down to the dining-room, where she would bring them breakfast.
The dining-room had balconies toward the country, and was full of sun; the bedrooms they were taken to, on the other hand, were dark, gloomy, and cavernous. Alzugaray requested the old woman to show them the other vacant chambers, and chose two on the second floor, which were lighter and airier.
The old woman told them she hadn’t wanted to take them there, because there was no paper on the walls.
“No doubt, in Castro, the prospect of bed-bugs is an agreeable prospect,” said Cæsar.
After he had washed and dressed, Cæsar started out to find and capture Don Calixto, and Alzugaray went to take a stroll around the town. It was agreed that they should each explore the region in his own way.