The next day Cæsar awoke at nine, jumped out of bed, and went to breakfast. Laura had left word that she would not eat at home. Cæsar took an umbrella and went out into the street. The weather was very dark but it held off from rain.
Cæsar took the Via Nazionale toward the centre of town. Among the crowd, some foreigners with red guide-books in their hands, were walking with long strides to see the sights of Rome, which the code of worldly snobbishness considers it indispensable to admire.
Cæsar had no settled goal. On a plan of the city, hung in a newspaper kiosk, he found the situation of the Piazza Esedra, the hotel and the adjacent streets, and continued slowly ahead.
“How many people there must be who are excited and have an irregular pulse on arriving for the first time in one of these historic towns,” thought Cæsar. “I, for my part, was in that situation the first time I clearly understood the mechanism of the London Exchange.”
Cæsar continued down the Via Nazionale and stopped in a small square with a little garden and a palm. Bounding the square on one side arose a greenish wall, and above this wall, which was adorned with statues, stretched a high garden with magnificent trees, and among them a great stone pine.
“A beautiful garden to walk in,” said Cæsar. “Perhaps it is an historic spot, perhaps it isn’t. I am very happy that I don’t know either its name or its history, if it really has one.” From the same point in the Via Nazionale, a street with flights of steps could be seen to the left, and below a white stone column.
“Nothing doing; I don’t know what that is either,” thought Cæsar; “the truth is that one is terribly ignorant. To make matters even, what a well of knowledge about questions of finance there is in my cranium!”
Cæsar continued on to the Piazza Venezia, contemplated the palace of the Austrian Embassy, yellow, battlemented; and stopped under a big white umbrella, stuck up to protect the switchman of the tramway.
“Here, at least, the weight of tradition or history is not noticeable. I don’t believe this canvas is a piece of Brutus’s tunic, or of Pompey’s campaign tent. I feel at home here; this canvas modernizes me.”
The square was very animated at that moment: groups of seminarians were passing in robes of black, red, blue, violet, and sashes of contrasting colours; monks of all sorts were crossing, smooth-shaven, bearded, in black, white, brown; foreign priests were conversing in groups, wearing little dishevelled hats adorned with a tassel; horrible nuns with moustaches and black moles, and sweet little white nuns, with a coquettish air.
The clerical fauna was admirably represented. A Capuchin friar, long-bearded and dirty, with the air of a footpad, and an umbrella by way of a blunderbuss or musket under his arm, was talking to a Sister of Charity.
“Undoubtedly religion is a very picturesque thing,” murmured Cæsar. “A spectacular impressario would not have the imagination to think out all these costumes.”
Cæsar took the Corso. Before he reached the Piazza Colonna it began to rain. The coachmen took out enormous umbrellas, all rolled up, opened them and stood them in iron supports, in such a way that the box-seat was as it were under a campaign tent.
Cæsar took refuge in the entrance to a bazaar. The rain began to assume the proportions of a downpour. An old friar, with a big beard, a white habit, and a hood, armed with an untamable umbrella, attempted to cross the square. The umbrella turned inside out in the gusts of wind, and his beard seemed to be trying to get away from his face.
“Pavero frate!” said one of the crowd, smiling.
A priest passed hidden under an umbrella. A tough among the refugees in the bazaar-doorway said that you couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a priest, and the cleric, who no doubt heard the remark, threw a severe and threatening look at the group.
It stopped raining, and Cæsar continued his walk along the Corso. He went a bit out of his way to throw a glance at the Piazza di Spagna. The great stairway in that square was shining, wet with the rain; a few seminarians in groups were going up the steps toward the Pincio.
Cæsar arrived at the Piazza del Popolo and stopped near some ragamuffins who were playing a game, throwing coins in the air. A tattered urchin had written with charcoal on a wall: “Viva Musolino!” and below that he was drawing a heart pierced by two daggers.
“Very good,” murmured Cæsar. “This youngster is like me: an advocate of action.”
It began to rain again; Cæsar decided to turn back. He took the same route and entered a café on the Corso for lunch. The afternoon turned out magnificent and Cæsar went wandering about at random.
THE CICERONE
At twilight he returned to his inn, changed, and went to the salon. Laura was conversing with a young abbé. “The Abbé Preciozi.... My brother Cæsar.”
The Abbé Preciozi was one of the household of Cardinal Fort, who had sent him to the hotel to act as cicerone to his nephew.
“Uncle has sent the abbé so that he can show you Rome.” “Oh, many thanks!” answered Cæsar. “I will make use of his knowledge; but I don’t want him to neglect his occupations or to put himself out on my account.” “No, no. I am at your disposition,” replied the abbé, “His Eminence has given me orders to wait on you, and it will not put me out in the least.”
“You will have dinner with us, Preciozi?” said Laura.
“Oh, Marchesa! Thank you so much!”
And the abbé bowed ceremoniously.
The three dined together, and afterwards went to the salon to chat. One of the San Martino young ladies played the viola and the other the piano, and people urged them to exhibit their skill.
The talkative Neapolitan turned over the pieces of music in the music-stand, and after discussing with the two contessinas, he placed on the rack the “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana.
The two sisters played, and the listeners made great eulogies about their ability.
Laura presented Cæsar and the Abbé Preciozi to the Countess Brenda and to a lady who had just arrived from Malta.
“Did you know Rome before?” the Countess asked Cæsar in French.
“No.”
“And how does it strike you?”
“My opinion is of no value,” said Cæsar. “I am not an artist. Imagine; my specialty is financial questions. Up to the present what has given me the greatest shock is to find that Rome has walls.”
“You didn’t know it?” asked Laura.
“No.”
“Dear child, I find that you are very ignorant.”
“What do you wish?” replied Cæsar in Spanish. “I am inclined to be ignorant of everything I don’t get anything out of.”
Cæsar spoke jokingly of a square like a hole in the ground, out of which rises a white column similar to the one in Paris in the Place Vendôme.
“What does he mean? Trajan’s column?” asked Preciozi. “It must be,” said Laura. “I have a brother who’s a barbarian. Weren’t you in the Forum, too?”
“Which is the Forum? An open space where there are a lot of stones?”
“Yes.”
“I passed by there; there were a good many tourists, crowds of young ladies peering intently into corners and a gentleman with a bag over his shoulder who was pointing out some columns with an umbrella. Afterwards I saw a ticket-window. ‘That doubtless means that one pays to get in,’ I said, and as the ground was covered with mud and I didn’t care to wet my feet, I asked a young rascal who was selling post-cards what that place was. I didn’t quite understand his explanation, which I am sure was very amusing. He confused Emperors with the Madonna and the saints. I gave the lad a lira and had some trouble in escaping from there, because he followed me around everywhere calling me Excellency.”
“I think Don Cæsar is making fun of us,” said Preciozi.
“No, no.”
“But really, how did Rome strike you, on the whole?” asked the abbe.
“Well, I find it like a mixture of a monumental great city and a provincial capital.”
“That is possible,” responded the abbe. “Undoubtedly the provincial city is more of a city than the big modern capitals, where there is nothing to see but fine hotels on one hand and horrible hovels on the other. If you came from America, like me, you would see how agreeable you would find the impression of a city that one gets here. To forget all the geometry, the streets laid out with a compass, the right angles....”
“Probably so.”
The abbe seemed to have an interest in gaining Cæsar’s friendship. Cæsar said to him that, if he wished, they could go to his room to chat and smoke. The abbe accepted with gusto, and Cæsar, being a suspicious person, wondered if the Cardinal might have sent the abbe to find out what sort of man he was. Then he considered that his ideas must be of no importance whatsoever to his uncle; but on the chance, he set himself to throwing the abbé off the scent, talking volubly and emitting contradictory opinions about everything.
After chattering a long while and devoting himself to free paradox, Cæsar thought that for the first session he had not done altogether badly. Preciozi took leave, promising to come back the next day.
“If he reports our conversation to my uncle, the man won’t know what to think of me,” reflected Cæsar, on going to bed. “It would not be too much to expect, if His Eminence became interested and sent to fetch me. But I don’t believe he will; my uncle cannot be intelligent enough to have the curiosity to know a man like me.”
During some days the main interest of the people in the hotel was the growing intimacy established between the Marchesa Sciacca, who was the lady from Malta, and the Neapolitan with the Pulcinella air, Signor Carminatti.
The Maltese must have been haughty and exclusive, to judge from the queenly air she assumed. Only with the handsome Neapolitan did she behave amiably.
In the dining-room the Maltese sat with her two children, a boy and a girl, at the other end from where Cæsar and Laura were accustomed to sit. At her side, at a table close by, chattered and jested the diplomatic Carminatti.
The Marquis of Sciacca was ill with diabetes; he had come to Rome to take a treatment, and during these days he did not come to the dining-room.
The Marchesa was one of those mixed types, unharmonious, common among mongrel races. Her black hair shone like jet, her lips looked like an Egyptian’s, and her eyes of a very light blue showed off in a curious way in her bronzed face. She powdered her face, she painted her lips, she shaded her eyes with kohl. Her appearance was that of a proud, revengeful woman.
She ate with much nicety, opening her mouth so little that she could put no more than the tip of her spoon between her lips; with her children she talked English and Italian in equal perfection, and when she heard young Carminatti’s facetious remarks she laughed with marked impudence. Signer Carminatti was tall, with a black moustache, a hooked nose, well-formed languid eyes, lively and somewhat clownish gestures; he was at the same time sad and merry, melancholy and smiling, he changed his expression every moment. He was in the habit of appearing in the salon in a dinner-jacket, with a large flower in his button-hole and two or three fat diamonds on his chest. He would come along dragging his feet, would bow, make a joke, stand mournful; and this fluency of expression, and these gesticulations, gave him a manner halfway between woman and child.
When he grew petulant, especially, he seemed like a woman. “Macché!” he would say continually, with an acrid voice and the disgusted air of an hysterical dame.
In spite of his frequent petulant fits, he was the person most esteemed by the ladies of the hotel, both young and married.
“He is the darling of the ladies,” the Countess Brenda said of him, mockingly.
Laura had not the least use for him.
“I know that type by heart,” she asserted with disdain.
During lunch and dinner Signor Carminatti did not leave off talking for a moment with the Maltese. The Marchesa Sciacca’s children often wanted to tell their mother something; but she hushed them so as to be able to hear the bright sayings of the handsome Neapolitan.
The San Martino young ladies and the Countess Brenda’s daughter kept trying to find a way to steal Carminatti for their group; but he always went back to the Maltese, doubtless because her conversation was more diverting and spicy.
THE CONTESSINA BRENDA
The Countess Brenda’s daughter, Beatrice Brenda, in spite of her pea-hen air, was always endeavouring to stir up the Neapolitan and to start a conversation with him; but Carminatti in his light-hearted way would reply with a jest or a fatuous remark and betake himself again to the Marchesa Sciacca, who would make her disturbing children hush because they often prevented her from catching what the Neapolitan was saying.
She was not to be despised, not by a long shot, was Signorina Bice, not in any respect; besides being very rich, she was a beautiful girl and promised to be more beautiful; she had the type of Titian’s women, an opaline white skin, as though made of mother-of-pearl, plump milky arms, and dark eyes. The one thing lacking in her was expression.
She used frequently to go about in the company of an aristocratic old maid, very ugly, with red hair and a face like a horse, but very distinguished, who ate at the next table to Laura and Cæsar.
One day Carminatti brought another Neapolitan home to dinner with him, a fat grotesque person, whom he instigated to emit a series of improprieties about women and matrimony. Hearing the scandalous sallies of the rustic, the ladies said, with an amiable smile:
“He is a benedetto.”
The Contessina Brenda, fascinated by the Neapolitan, went to the Marchesa Sciacca’s table. As she passed, Carminatti arose with his napkin in one hand, and gesticulating with the other, said:
“Contessina. Allow me to present to you Signor Cappagutti, a merchant from Naples.”
Signor Cappagutti remained leaning back tranquilly in his chair, and the Contessina burst out laughing and began to move her arms as if somebody had put a horse-fly on her skirt. Then she raised her hand to her face, to hide her laughter, and suddenly sat down.
DANCING
As it rained a great deal the majority of the guests preferred not to go out. In the evenings they had dances. Cæsar did not appear at the first one; but his sister told him he ought to go. Cæsar was at the second dance, so as not to seem too much of an ogre. As he had no intention of dancing, he installed himself in a corner; and while the dance went on he kept talking with the Countesses Brenda and San Martino.
Various young men had arrived in the room. They exhibited that Southern vivacity which is a trifle tiresome to the onlooker, and they all listened to themselves while they spoke. The Neapolitan and two or three of his friends were introduced to Cæsar; but they showed him a certain rather ostentatious and impertinent coolness.
Signor Carminatti exchanged a few words with the Countess Brenda, and purposely acted as if he did not notice Cæsar’s presence.
The Neapolitan’s chatter did not irritate Cæsar in the slightest, and as he had no intention of being his rival, he listened to him quite entertained.
Cæsar noted that the San Martino ladies and some friends of theirs had a predilection for types like Carminatti, swarthy, prattling, and boastful South Italians.
The ladies showed an affectionate familiarity with the girls; they caressed them and kissed them effusively.
YOU ARE AN INQUISITOR
Laura, who was dancing with an officer, approached her brother, who was wedged into a corner, behind two rows of chairs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, stopping and informing her partner that she was going to sit down a moment.
“Nothing,” answered Cæsar, “I am waiting for this waltz to finish, so that I can get away.”
“You are not enjoying yourself?”
“Pish!”
“Nevertheless, there are amusing things about it.”
“Ah, surely. Do you know what happened to me with the Countess Brenda?”
“What did happen?”
“When she came in and gave me her hand, she said: ‘How hot your hands are; mine are frozen.’ And she held my hands between hers. That was comical.”
“Comical! Why?”
“How do I know?”
“It is comical to you, because you see only evil motives. She held your hand. Who knows what she may be after? Who knows if she wants to get something out of you? She has an income of eighty or ninety thousand lire, perhaps she wants to borrow money from you.”
“No, I know she doesn’t.”
“Then, what are you afraid of?”
“Afraid! Afraid of nothing! Only it surprised me.”
“That’s because you look at everything with the eye of an inquisitor. One must be suspicious: be always on one’s guard, always on the watch. It’s the attitude of a savage.”
“I don’t deny it. I have no desire to be civilized like these people. But what does come to me is that the husband of our illustrious and wealthy friend wears in his breast that porte-bonheur, which I believe is called horns.”
“Of course; and you haven’t discovered that his family is a family of assassins? How Spanish! What a savage Spaniard I have for a brother!”
Cæsar burst into laughter, and taking advantage of the moment when everybody was going to the buffet, left the room. In the corridor, one of the San Martino girls, the more sweet and angelic of the two, was in a corner with one of the dancers, and there was a sound like a kiss.
The little blonde made an exclamation of fright; Cæsar behaved as if he had noticed nothing and kept on his way.
“The devil!” exclaimed Cæsar, “that angelic little princess hides in corners with one of these briganti. And their mother has the face to say that they don’t know how to bait a hook! I don’t know what more she could wish. Although it is possible that this is the educational scheme of the future for marriageable girls.”
In the entrance-hall of the hotel were the Marchesa Sciacca’s two children, attended by a sleeping maid; the little girl, seated on a sofa, was watching her brother, who walked from one side to the other with a roll of paper in his hand. In the entrance hall, opposite the hotel door, there was a bulletin, which was changed every day, to announce the different performances that were to be given that night at the theatres of Rome.
The small boy walked back and forth in front of the poster, and addressing himself to a public consisting of the sleeping maid and the little girl, cried:
“Step up, gentlemen! Step up! Now is the time. We are about to perform La Geisha, the magnificent English operetta. Walk right in! Walk right in!”
While the mother was dancing with the Neapolitan in the ball-room, the children were amusing themselves thus alone.
“The truth is that our civilization is an absurdity. Even the children go mad,” thought Cæsar, and took refuge in his room.
During the whole night he heard from his bed the notes of the waltzes and two-steps, and dancers’ laughter and shouts and shuffling feet.
THEY ARE JUST CHILDREN
The next day, Laura, before going out to make a call, appeared at lunch-time most elegantly dressed, with a gown and a hat from Paris, in which she was truly most charming.
She had a great success: the San Martinos, the Countess Brenda, the other ladies congratulated her. The hat, above all, seemed ideal to them.
Carminatti was in raptures.
“E bello, bellissimo,” he said, with great enthusiasm, and all the ladies agreed that it was bellissimo, lengthening the “s” and nodding their heads with a gesture of admiration.
“And you don’t say anything to me, bambino?” Laura inquired of Cæsar.
“I say you are all right.”
“And nothing more?”
“If you want me to pay you a compliment, I will tell you that you are pretty enough to make incest legitimate.” “What a barbarian!” murmured Laura, half laughing, half blushing.
“What has he been saying to you?” two or three people inquired.
Laura translated his words into Italian, and Carminatti found them admirable.
“Very appropriate! Very witty!” he exclaimed, laughing, and gave Cæsar a friendly slap on the shoulder.
The Marchesa Sciacca looked at Laura several times with reflective glances and a rancorous smile.
“The truth is that these Southern people are just children,” thought Cæsar, mockingly. “What an inveterate preoccupation they have in the beautiful.”
The Neapolitan was one of those most preoccupied with esthetics.
Cæsar had a room opposite Signor Carminatti’s, and the first few days he had thought it was a woman’s room. Toilet flasks, sprays, boxes of powder; the room looked like a perfumery shop.
“It is curious,” Cæsar used to think, “how these people from famous historic towns can combine powder and the maffia, opoponax and daggers.”
Almost every night after dinner there was an improvised dance in the salon. Somebody played the languorous waltzes of the Tzigane orchestras on the piano. The Maltese and Carminatti used to sing romantic songs, of the kind whose words and music seem to be always the same, and in which there invariably is question of panting, refulgent, love, and other suggestive words.
One Sunday evening, when it was raining, Cæsar stayed in the hotel.
In the salon Carminatti was doing sleight-of-hand to entertain the ladies. Afterwards the Neapolitan was seen pursuing the Marchesa Sciacca and the two San Martino girls in the corridors. They shrieked shrilly when he grabbed them around the waist. The devil of a Neapolitan was an expert at sleight-of-hand.
Cæsar admitted before his conscience that he had no plans, or the slightest idea what direction to take. The Cardinal, no doubt, did not feel any desire to know him.
Cæsar often proceeded by more or less absurd hypotheses. “Suppose,” he would think, “that I had an idea, a concrete ambition. In that case it would behoove me to be reserved on such and such topics and to hint these and those ideas to people; let’s do it that way, even though it be only for sport.”
Preciozi was the only person who was able to give him any light in his investigations, because the guests at the hotel, most of them, on account of their position, thought of nothing but amusing themselves and of giving themselves airs.
Cæsar discovered that Preciozi was ambitious; but besides lacking an opening, he had not the necessary vigour and imagination to do anything.
The abbé spoke a macaronic Spanish, which he had learned in South America, and which provoked Cæsar’s laughter. He was constantly saying: “My friend,” and he mingled Gallicisms with a lot of coarse expressions of Indian or mulatto origin, and with Italian words. Preciozi’s dialect was a gibberish worthy of Babel.
The first day they went out together, the abbé wanted to show him divers of Rome’s picturesque spots. He led him behind the Quirinal, through the Via della Panetteria and the Via del Lavatore, where there is a fruit-market, to the Trevi fountain. “It is beautiful, eh?” said the abbé.
“Yes; what I don’t understand,” replied Cæsar, “is why, in a town where there is so much water, the hotel wash-basins are so small.”
Preciozi shrugged his shoulders.
“What types you have in Rome!” Cæsar went on. “What a variety of noses and expressions! Jesuits with the aspect of savants and plotters; Carmelites with the appearance of highway men; Dominicans, some with a sensual air, others with a professorial air. Astuteness, intrigue, brutality, intelligence, mystic stupor.... And as for priests, what a museum! Decorative priests, tall, with white shocks of hair and big cassocks; short priests, swarthy and greasy; noses thin as a knife; warty, fiery noses. Gross types; distinguished types; pale bloodless faces; red faces.... What a marvellous collection!”
Preciozi listened to Cæsar’s observations and wondered if the Cardinal’s nephew might be a trifle off his head.
“Point out what is noteworthy, so that I may admire it enough,” Cæsar told him. “I don’t care to burst out in an enthusiastic phrase for something of no value.”
Preciozi laughed at these jokes, as if they were a child’s bright sayings; but at times Cæsar appeared to him to be an innocent soul, and at other times a Machiavellian who dissembled his insidious purposes under an extravagant demeanour.
When Preciozi was involved in some historic dissertation, Cæsar used to ask him ingenuously:
“But listen, abbe; does this really interest you?”
Preciozi would admit that the past didn’t matter much to him, and then with one accord, they would burst out laughing.
Cæsar said that Preciozi and he were the most anti-historic men going about in Rome.
One morning they went to the Piazza del Campidoglio. It was drizzling; the wet roofs shone; the sky was grey.
“This intrusion of the country into Rome,” said Cæsar, “is what gives the city its romantic aspect. These hills with trees on them are very pretty.”
“Only pretty, Don Cæsar? They are sublime,” retorted Preciozi.
“What amazement I shall produce in you, my dear abbé, when I tell you that all my knowledge in respect to the Capitol reduces itself to the fact that some orator, I don’t know who, said that near the Capitol is the Tarpeian Rock.”
“You know nothing more about it?”
“Nothing more. I don’t know if Cicero said that, or Castelar, or Sir Robert Peel.”
Preciozi burst into merry laughter.
“What statue is that?” asked Cæsar, indicating the one in the middle of the square.
“That is Marcus Aurelius.”
“An Emperor?”
“Yes, an Emperor and a philosopher.”
“And why have they made him riding such a little, potbellied horse?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“He looks like a man taking a horse to water at a trough. Why does he ride bare-back? Hadn’t they invented stirrups at that period?”
Preciozi was a bit perplexed; before making a reply he gazed at the statue, and then said, confusedly:
“I think so.”
They crossed the Piazza Campidoglio and went out by the left side of the Palazzo del Senatore. Down the Via dell’ Arco di Severo, a street that runs down steps to the Forum, they saw a large arch that seemed sunk in the ground, and beyond, further away, another smaller arch with only one archway, which arose in the distance as if on top of the big arch. A square yellow tower, burned by the sun, lifted itself among the ruins; some hills showed rows of romantic cypresses, and in the background the blue Alban Mountains stood out against a grey sky.
“Would you like to go down to the Forum?” said the abbé. “Down there where the stones are? No. What for?”
“Do you wish to see the Tarpeian Rock?”
“Yes, man. But explain to me what this rock was.”
Preciozi got together all his information, which was not much.
They went by the Via Monte Tarpea, and came back by the Via della Consolazione.
“They must have thrown people who were already dead off the Tarpeian Rock,” said Cæsar, after hearing the explanation.
“No, no.”
“But if they threw them down alive, the majority of those they chucked down here would not have died. At most they would have dislocated an arm, a leg, or a finger-joint. Unless they chucked them head first.”
Preciozi could not permit the mortal effects of the Tarpeian Rock to be doubted, and he said that its height had been lessened and the level of the soil had risen.
After these explanations Cæsar found the spot of Roman executions somewhat less fantastic.
“How would you like to go to that church in the Forum?” said Preciozi.
“I was going to propose that we should go to the hotel; it must be lunch-time.”
“Come along.”
THE CHURCH AND COOKING
Cæsar had Marsala and Asti brought for the abbe, who was a gourmet.
While Preciozi ate and drank with all his jaws, Cæsar devoted himself to teasing him. The waiter had brought some cream-puffs and informed them that that was a dish every one ate that day. Laura and Preciozi praised the puffs, and Cæsar said:
“What an admirable religion ours is! For each day the church has a saint and a special dish. The truth is that the Catholic Church is very wise; it has broken all relations with science, but it remains in harmony with cooking. As Preciozi was a moment ago saying with great exactitude, this close relation that exists between the Church and the kitchen is moving.”
“I said that to you?” asked Preciozi. “What a falsehood!”
“Don’t pay any attention,” said Laura.
“Yes, my dear abbé,” retorted Cæsar, “and I even believe that you added confidentially that sometimes the Pope in the Vatican gardens, imitating Francis I after the battle of Pavia, is wont to say sadly to the Secretary of State: ‘All is lost, save faith and... good cooking.’”
“What a bufone! What a bufone!” exclaimed Preciozi, with his mouth full.
“You are giving a proof of irreligion which is in bad taste,” said Laura. “Only janitors talk like that.”
“On such questions I am an honourary janitor.”
“That’s all right, but you ought to realize that there are religious people here, like the abbé....”
“Preciozi? Why, he’s a Voltairean.”
“Oh! Oh! My friend....” exclaimed Preciozi, emptying a glass of wine.
“Voltaireanism,” continued Cæsar. “There is nobody here who has faith, nobody who makes the little sacrifice of not eating on Fridays in Lent. Here we are, destroying with our own teeth one of the most beautiful works of the Church. You will both ask me what that work is....”
“No, we will not ask you anything,” said Laura, waving a hand in the air.
“Well, it is that admirable alimentary harmony sustained by the Church. During the whole year we are authorized to eat terrestrial animals, and in Lent aquatic ones only. Promiscuous as we are, we are undoing the equilibrium between the maritime and the land forces, we are attacking the peaceful rotation of meat and fish.”
“He is a child,” said Preciozi, “we must leave him alone.”
“Yes, but that will not impede my Spaniard’s heart, my Cardinal’s nephew’s heart from bleeding grievously.... Shall we go to the café, Abbé?”
“Yes, let us go.”
THE MARVELLOUS BIRD OF ROME
They left the hotel and entered a café in the Piazza Esedra. Preciozi made a vague move to pay, but Cæsar would not permit him to.
“What do you wish to do?” said the abbé.
“Whatever you like.”
“I have to go to the Altemps palace a moment.”
“To see my uncle?”
“Yes; then, if you feel like it, we can take a long walk.”
“Very good.”
They went towards the centre of the town by the Via Nazionale. It was a splendid sunny afternoon.
Preciozi went into the Altemps palace a moment; Cæsar waited for him in the street. Then, together they went over to opposite the Castel Sant’ Angelo, crossed the river, and approached the Piazza di San Pietro. The atmosphere was wonderfully clear and pure; the suave blue sky seemed to caress the pinnacles and decorations of the big square.
Preciozi met a dirty friar, dark, with a black beard and a mouth from ear to ear. The abbe showed no great desire to stop and speak with him, but the other detained him. This party wore a habit of a brown colour and carried a big umbrella under his arm.
“There’s a type!” said Cæsar, when Preciozi rejoined him.
“Yes, he is a peasant,” the abbe said with disgust.
“If that chap meets any one in the road, he plants his umbrella in his chest, and demands his money or his... eternal life.”
“Yes, he is a disagreeable man,” agreed Preciozi.
They continued their walk, through the Piazza Cavallegeri and outside the walls. As they went up one of the hills there, they could see the façade of Saint Peter’s continually nearer, with all the huge stone figures on the cornice. “The fact is that that poor Christ plays a sad rôle there in the middle,” said Cæsar.
“Oh! Oh! My friend,” exclaimed the abbé in protest.
“A plebeian Jew in the midst of so many princes of the Church! Doesn’t it strike you as an absurdity?”
“No, not absurd at all.”
“The truth is that this religion of yours is Jewish meat with a Roman sauce.”
“And yours? What is yours?”
“Mine? I have not got past fetichism. I worship the golden calf. Like the majority of Catholics.”
“I don’t believe it.”
They looked back; they could see the dome of the great basilica shining in the sun; then, to one side, a little viaduct and a tower.
“What a wonderful bird you keep in this beautiful cage!” said Cæsar.
“What bird?” asked Preciozi.
“The Pope, friend Preciozi, the Pope. Not the popinjay, but the Pope in white. What a very marvellous bird! He has a feather fan like a peacock’s tail; he speaks like the cockatoo, only he differs from them in being infallible; and he is infallible, because another bird, also marvellous, which is called the Holy Ghost, tells him by night everything that takes place on earth and in heaven. What very picturesque and extravagant things!”
“For you who have no faith everything must be extravagant.”
Cæsar and Preciozi went on encircling the walls and reading the various marble tablets set into them, and ascended to the Janiculum, to the terrace where Garibaldi’s statue stands.
POOR TINDARO
“But, are you anti-Catholic, seriously?” asked Preciozi. “But do you believe any one can be a Catholic seriously?” said Cæsar. “I can, yes; otherwise I shouldn’t be a priest.”
“But are you a priest because you believe, or do you make believe that you believe because you are a priest?”
“You are a child. I suppose you hate the Jesuits, like all Liberals.”
“And I suppose you hate Masons, like all Catholics.”
“No.”
“No more do I hate Jesuits. What is worse, I read the life of Saint Ignatius Loyola at school, and he seemed to me a great man.”
“Well, I should think so!”
“And the Jesuits have some power still?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes, man. They give the Church its direction. Oh, nobody fools the Society. You can see what happened to Cardinal Tindaro.”
“I don’t know what did happen to him,” said Cæsar, with indifference.
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, Cardinal Tindaro decided to follow the inspirations of the Society and made many Jesuits Cardinals with the object that when Pope Leo XIII died, they should elect him Pope; but the Jesuits smelled the rat, and when Leo XIII got very ill, the Council of Assistants of the Society had a meeting and decided that Tindaro should not be Pope, and ordered the Austrian Court to oppose its veto. When the election came, the Jesuit Cardinals gave Tindaro a fat vote, out of gratitude, but calculated not to be enough to raise him to the throne, and in case it was, the Austrian Cardinal and the Hungarian had their Empire’s veto to Tindaro’s election in their pocket.”
“And this Tindaro, is he intelligent?”
“Yes, he is indeed; very intelligent. Style Leo XIII.”
“Men of weight.”
“Yes, but neither of the two had Pius IX’s spirit.” “And the present one? He is a poor creature, eh?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know....”
“And the Society of Jesus, is it on good terms with this Pope?”
“Surely. He is their creation.”
“So that the Society is really powerful?”
“It certainly is! Without a doubt! It has a pleasant rule, and obedience, and knowledge, and money....”
“It has money too, eh?”
“Has it money? More than enough.”
“And in what form? In paper?”
“In paper, and in property, and industries; in steamship companies, in manufactories....”
“I would make an admirable business manager.”
“Well, your uncle, the Cardinal, could get you put in touch with the Society.”
“Is he a friend of theirs?”
“Close as a finger-nail.”
Cæsar was silent a moment, and then said:
“And I have heard that the Society of Jesus was, at bottom, an anti-Christian organization, a branch of Masonry....”
“Macché!” exclaimed the abbé. “How could you believe that? Oh, no, my friend! What an absurdity!”
Then, seeing Cæsar burst into laughter, he calmed himself, wondering if he was making fun of him.
They went down the hill, where the monument to Garibaldi flaunts itself, to the terrace of the Spanish Academy.
The view was magnificent; the evening, now falling, was clear; the sky limpid and transparent. From that height the houses of Rome were spread out silent, with an air of solemnity, of immobility, of calm. It appeared a flat town; one did not notice its slopes and its hills; it gave the impression of a city in stone set under a glass globe.
The sky itself, pure and diaphanous, augmented the sensation of withdrawal and quietude; not a cloud on the horizon, not a spot of smoke in the air; silence and repose everywhere. The dome of St. Peter’s had the colour of a cloud, the shrubberies on the Pincio were reddened by the sun, and the Alban Hills disclosed the little white towns and the smiling villas on their declivities.
Preciozi pointed out domes and towers; Cæsar did not hear him, and he was thinking, with a certain terror:
“We shall die, and these stones will continue to shine in the sunlight of other winter evenings.”
THE VATICAN FAMILY
Making an effort with himself, he threw off this painful idea, and turning to Preciozi, asked:
“So you believe that I might have made a nice career in the Church?”
“You! I certainly do think so!” exclaimed Preciozi. “With a cardinal for uncle, che carriera you could have made!”
“But are there enough different jobs in the Church?”
“From the Pope to the canons and the Papal Guards, you ought to see all the hierarchies we have at the Vatican. First the Pope, then the Cardinals in bishop’s orders, next, the Cardinals in priest’s orders, then the Cardinal’s in deacon’s orders, the Secretaries, the compisteria of the Holy College of Cardinals, the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and the Pontifical Family.”
“Whose family is that? The Pope’s?”
“No; it is called that, as who should say, the General Staff of the Vatican. It is made up of the Palatine Cardinals, the Palatine Prelates, the Participating Privy Chamberlains, the Archbishops and Bishops assisting the Pontifical throne, the Domestic Prelates, who form the College of Apostolic Prothonotaries, the Pontifical Masters of Ceremonies, the Princes Assisting the Throne, the Privy Participating Cape-and-Sword Chamberlains, the Privy Numbered Cape-and-Sword Chamberlains....”
“Cape-and-Sword! Didn’t I tell you that that poor Christ plays a sorry part on the façade of Saint Peter’s?” exclaimed Cæsar.
“Why, man?”
“Because all this stuff about capes and swords doesn’t seem very fitting for the soul of a Christian. Unless, of course, the knights of the sword and cape do not use the sword to wound and the cape for a shield, but only wield the sword of Faith and the cape of Charity.... And haven’t you any gentlemen of Bed-and-Board, as they have at the Spanish Court?”
“No.”
“That’s a pity. It is so expressive,... bed and board. Bed and board, cape and sword. Who wouldn’t be satisfied? One must admit that there is nobody equal to the Church, and next to her a monarchy, when it comes to inventing pretty things. That is why it is said, and very well said, that there is no salvation outside of the Church.”
“You are a pagan.”
“And I believe you are one, too.”
“Macché!”
“What comes after all those Privy Cape-and-Sword Chamberlains, my dear Abbe?”
“Next, there is the Pontifical Noble Guard, the Swiss Papal Guard, the Palatine Guard of Honour, the Corps of Papal Gendarmes, the Privy Chaplains, the Privy Clerics, the suite of His Holiness. Next come the members of the Palatine Administration, the Congregations, and more Secretaries.”
“And do the Cardinals live well?”
“Yes.”
“How much do they make?”
“They get twenty thousand lire fixed salary, besides extras.”
“But that is very little!”
“Certainly! It used to be much more, at the time of the Papal States. Out of their twenty thousand lire they have to keep a carriage.”
“Those that aren’t rich must have a hard time.”
“Just imagine, some of them have to live in a third-floor apartment. There have been some that bought their red robes second-hand.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Are those robes so expensive?”
“Yes, they are expensive. Quite. They are made of a special cloth manufactured in Cologne.”
“Are there many Cardinals who are not of rich families?”
“A great many.”
“Well, you people have ruined that job.”
They went to Trastevere and there they took the tram. Preciozi got out at the Piazza Venezia and Cæsar went on to the end of the Via Nazionale.
A TALK ABOUT MONEY
“Where have you been?” asked Laura, on seeing him.
“I’ve been taking a walk with the abbe.”
“It’s evident that you find him more interesting than us women.”
“Preciozi is very interesting. He is a Machiavellian. He has a candour that is assumed and a dulness that is assumed. He plays a little comedy to get out of paying, at the café or in the tram. He is splendid. I think, if you will pardon me for saying so, that the Italians are damned close.”
“People that have no money are forced to be economical.”
“No, that isn’t so. I have known people in Madrid who made three pesetas a day, and spent two treating a friend.”
“Yes, out of ostentation, out of a desire to show off. I don’t like pretentious people.”
“Well, I believe I prefer them to skinflints.”
“Yes, that’s very Spanish. A man wasting money, while his wife and children are dying of hunger.... The man who won’t learn the value of money is not the best type.”
“Money is filthy. If it were only possible to abolish it!”
“For my part, son, I should like less to have it abolished than to have a great deal of it.” “I shouldn’t. If I could carry out my plans, all I should need afterwards would be a hut to live in, a garret.”
“Our ideas differ.”
“These people that need clothes and jewels and perfumes fairly nauseate me.... All such things are only fit for Jews.”
“Then I must surely be a Jewess.”