Chapter IV: Part ONE: Rome (3)

“I don’t know how to play, because I have no head for such things and I forget what cards have been played; but they gave me a little book on the game. I will lend it to you, if you like.”

“Yes, give me it.”

Cæsar read the book, learned the intricacies of the game, and the next few evenings he acquitted himself so well that the Countess of San Martino marched off to her room with burning cheeks and almost in tears.

“What a cad you are!” Laura said to him at lunch some days later, laughing. “You are fleecing those women.”

“It’s their own fault. Why did they take advantage of my innocence?”

“They have decided to go and play in Carminatti’s room without telling you.”

“I’m glad of it.”

“Do you know, _bambino_, I have to go away for a few days.”

“Where?”

“To Naples. Come with me.”

“No; I have things to do here. I will take you to the station.”

“Ah, you rascal! You are a Don Juan.”

“No, dear sister. I am a financier.”

“I can see your victims from here. But I shall put them on their guard. You are a blood-thirsty hyena. You like to collect hearts the way the Red-skins did scalps.”

“You mean coupons.”

“No, hearts. You like to pretend to be simple, because you are wicked. I will tell the Countess Brenda and her daughter.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“That you are wicked, that you have a hyena’s heart, that you want to ruin them.”

“Don’t tell them that, because it will make them fall in love with me. A hyena-hearted man is always run after by the ladies.”

“You are right. Come along, go to Naples with me.”

“Is your husband such a terrible bore, little sister?”

“A little more cream and a little less impertinence, _bambino_,” said Laura, holding out her plate with a comic gesture.

Cæsar burst out laughing, and after lunch he took Laura to the station and remained in Rome alone. His two chief occupations consisted in making love respectfully to the Countess Brenda and going to walk with Preciozi.

The Countess Brenda was manifestly coming around; in the evening Cæsar would take a seat beside her and start a serious conversation about religious and philosophical matters. The Countess was a well-educated and religious woman; but beneath all her culture one could see the ardent dark woman, still young, and with intense eyes.

Cæsar made it a spiritual training to talk to the Countess. She often turned the conversation to questions of love, and discussed them with apparent keenness and insight, but it was evident that all her ideas about love came out of novels. Beyond a doubt, her calm, vulgar husband did not fill up the emptiness of her soul, because the Countess was discontented and had a vague hope that somewhere, above or beneath the commonplaces of the day, there was a mysterious region where the ineffable reigned.

Cæsar, who hadn’t much faith in the ineffable, used to listen to her with a certain amazement, as if the plump, strong woman had been a visionary incapable of understanding reality.

In the daytime Cæsar went walking with Preciozi and they talked of their respective plans.

_SOLITARY WALKS_

Often Cæsar went out alone, chewing the end of his thoughts as he strolled in the streets, working out possible schemes of investments or of politics.

When he got away from the main streets, he kept finding some corner at every step that left him astonished at its fantastic, theatrical air. Suddenly he would discover himself before a high wall, on top of which were statues covered with moss, or huge terra-cotta jars. Those decorations would stand out against the dark foliage of the Roman ilex and the tall, black cypresses. At the end of a street would rise a tall palm, drooping its branches over a little square, or a stone pine, like the one in the Aldobrandini garden.

“These people were real artists,” Cæsar would murmur, and mean it as a fact, not taking it for either praise or blame.

His curiosity got excited, despite his determination not to resemble a tourist in any way. The low windows of a palace would let him see lofty ceilings with great stretches of painting, or decorated with medallions and legends; a balcony would display a thick curtain of ivy that hid the railings; here he would read a Latin inscription cut in a marble tablet, there he would come upon a black lane between two old houses, with a battered lantern at its entrance. In the part of town between the Corso and the Tiber, which is full of narrow, crooked old streets, he loved to wander until he was lost.

Some details already familiar, he was delighted to see again; he always halted to look down the Via della Pillotta, with its arches over the street; and the little flower-market in the Piazza di Spagna always gave him a sensation of joy.

At dusk Cæsar would walk in the centre of town; the bars filled up with people who loved to take cakes and sweet wine; on the sidewalks the itinerant merchants cried their trifling wares; along the Corso a procession of carriages full of tourists passed rapidly, and a few well-appointed victorias came driving back from the Pincio and the Villa Borghese.

Once in a while Cæsar went out in the evening after dinner. There was scant animation in the streets, theatres didn’t interest him, and he would soon return to the hotel salon to chat with the Countess Brenda.

Later, in his room, he would write to Alzugaray, giving him his impressions.

IX. NEW ACQUAINTANCES

“I PROTESTANTI DELLA SIMPATÍA”

It began again to rain disastrously; the days were made up of downpours and squalls, to the great despair of the foreigners.

At night the Piazza Esedra was a fine sight from the hotel balcony. The arc lights reflected their glow in the lakes of rain beneath them, and the great jet of the fountain in the centre took on tones of blue and mother-of-pearl, where the rays of the electric light pierced through it.

In the hotel parlour one dance followed another. Everybody complained gaily of the bad weather.

Shortly before the middle of Lent there arrived a Parisian family at the hotel, composed of a mother with two daughters and a companion.

This family might be considered a representation of the _entente cordiale_. The mother was French, the widow first of a Spaniard, Señor Sandoval, by whom she had had one daughter, and then of an Englishman, Mr. Dawson, by whom she had had another.

Mme. Dawson was a fat, imposing lady, with tremendous brilliants in her ears and somewhat theatrical clothes; Mile. Sandoval, the elder daughter, was of Arab type, with black eyes, an aquiline nose, pale rose-coloured lips, and a malicious smile, full of mystery, as if it revealed restless and diabolical intentions.

Her half-sister, Mile. Dawson, was a contrast, being the perfect type of a grotesque Englishwoman, with a skin like a beet, and freckles.

The governess, Mile. Cadet, was not at all pretty, but she was gay and sprightly. These four women seated in the middle of the dining-room, a little stiff, a little out of temper, seemed, particularly the first few days, to defy anybody that might have wished to approach them. They replied coolly to the formal bows of the other guests, and none of them cared to take part in the dances.

The handsome Signor Carminatti shot incendiary glances at Mlle. de Sandoval; but she remained scornful; so one evening, as the Dawson family came out of the dining-room, the Neapolitan waved his hand toward them and said:

“I protestante della simpatia.”

Cæsar made much of this phrase, because it was apt, and he took it that Carminatti considered the ladies protestants against friendliness, because they had paid no attention to the charms that he displayed in their honour.

_CONSEQUENCES OF THE RAIN_

Two or three days later Mme. Dawson bowed to Cæsar on passing him in the hall, and asked him:

“Aren’t you Spanish?”

“Yes, madam.”

“But don’t you speak French?”

“Very little.”

“My daughter is Spanish too.”

“She is a perfect Spanish type.”

“Really?” asked the daughter referred to.

“Thoroughly.”

“Then I am happy.”

In the evening, after dinner, Cæsar again joined Mme. Dawson and began to talk with her. The Frenchwoman had a tendency to philosophize, to criticize, and to find out everything. She had no great capacity for admiration, and nothing she saw succeeded in dragging warm eulogies from her lips. There was none of the “_bello! bellissimo!_” of the Italian ladies in her talk, but a series of exact epithets.

Mme. Dawson had left all her capacity for admiration in France, and was visiting Italy for the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at the conclusion that there is no town like Paris, no nation like the French, and it didn’t matter much to Cæsar whether he agreed or denied it.

Mlle. de Sandoval had a great curiosity about things in Spain and an absurd idea about everything Spanish.

“It seems impossible,” thought Cæsar, “how stupid French people are about whatsoever is not French.”

Mlle. de Sandoval asked Cæsar a lot of questions, and finally, with an ironic gesture, said to him:

“You mustn’t let us keep you from going to talk with the Countess Brenda. She is looking over at you a great deal.”

Cæsar became a trifle dubious; indeed, the Countess was looking at him in a fixed and disdainful way.

“The Countess is a very intelligent woman,” said Cæsar; “I think you would all like her very much.”

Mme. Dawson said nothing; Cæsar rose, took his leave of the family, and went over to speak to the Countess and her daughter. She received him coldly. Cæsar thought he would stay long enough to be polite and then get away, when Carminatti, speaking to him in a very friendly way and calling him “_mio caro_,” asked him to introduce him to Mme. Dawson.

He did so, and when he had left the handsome Neapolitan leaning back in a chair beside the French ladies, he made the excuse that he had a letter to write, and said good-night.

“I see that you are an ogre,” said Mlle. de Sandoval.

“Do you want me for anything?”

“No, no; you may go when you choose.”

Cæsar repaired to his room.

“I don’t mind those people,” he said; “but if they think I am a man made for entertaining ladies, they are very clever.”

The next day Mme. Dawson talked with Cæsar very affably, and Mlle. de Sandoval made a few ironical remarks about his savage ways.

Of all the family Cæsar conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke, her voice had certain falsetto inflexions that were very comical.

Mlle. Cadet was on to everything the moment it happened. Cæsar asked her jokingly about the people in the hotel, and he was thunderstruck to find that she had discovered in three or four days who all the guests were and where they came from.

Mlle. Cadet also told him that Carminatti had sent an ardent declaration of love to the Sandoval girl the first day he saw her.

“The devil!” exclaimed Cæsar. “What an inflammable Neapolitan it is! And what did she reply?”

“What would she reply? Nothing.”

“As you are already familiar with everything going on here,” said Cæsar, “I am going to ask you a question: what is the noise in the court every night? I am always thinking of asking somebody.”

“Why, it is charging the accumulator of the lift,” replied Mlle. Cadet.

“You have relieved me from a terrible doubt which worried me.”

“I have never heard a noise,” said Mlle. de Sandoval, breaking into the conversation.

“That’s because your room is on the square,” Cæsar answered, “and the noise is in the court; on the poor side of the house.”

“Pshaw! There is no reason to complain,” remarked Mlle. Cadet, “if they give us a serenade.”

“Do you consider yourself poor?” Mlle. de Sandoval asked Cæsar, disdainfully.

“Yes, I consider myself poor, because I am.”

During the following days Mme. Dawson and her daughters were introduced to the rest of the people in the hotel, and became intimate with them. The “Contessina” Brenda and the San Martino girls made friends with the French girls, and the Neapolitan and his gentlemen friends flitted among them all.

The Countess Brenda at first behaved somewhat stiff with Mme. Dawson and her daughters, but later she little by little submitted and permitted them to be her friends.

She introduced the French ladies to the other ladies in the hotel; but doubtless her aristocratic ideas would not allow her to consider Mlle. Cadet a person worthy to be introduced, for whenever she got to her she acted as if she didn’t know her.

The governess, noticing this repeated contempt, would blush at it, and once she murmured, addressing Cæsar with tears ready to escape from her eyes:

“That’s a nice thing to do! Just because I am poor, I don’t think they ought to despise me.”

“Don’t pay any attention,” said Cæsar, quite aloud; “these middle-class people are often very rude.”

Mlle. de Sandoval gave Cæsar a look half startled and half reproving; and he explained, smiling:

“I was telling Mlle. Cadet a funny story.”

Mme. Dawson and her daughters soon became friends with the most distinguished persons in the hotel; only the Marchesa Sciacca, the Maltese, avoided them as if they inspired her with profound contempt.

In a few days the Countess Brenda and Cæsar’s friendship passed beyond the bonds of friendship; but in the course of time it cooled off again.

_INFLUENCE OF THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH’S AXIS ON WHAT IS CALLED LOVE_

One evening, when the Countess Brenda’s daughter had left Rome to go with her father to a villa they owned in the North, the Countess and Cæsar had a long conversation in the salon. They were alone; a great tenor was singing at the Costanzi, and the whole hotel was at the theatre. The Countess chatted with Cæsar, she reclining in a chaise longue, and he seated in a low chair. That evening the Countess was feeling in a provocative humour, and she made fun of Cæsar’s mode of life and his ideas, not with the phrases and the manners of a great lady, but with the boldness and spice of a woman of the people.

The angle that the earth’s axis makes with the trajectory of the ecliptic, and which produces those absurd phenomena that we Spaniards call seasons, determined at that period the arrival of spring, and spring had no doubt shaken the Countess Brenda’s nerves.

Spring gave cooling inflexions to the lady’s voice and made her express herself with warmth and with a shamelessly libertine air.

No doubt the core of her personality was joyful, provoking, and somewhat licentious.

Her eyes flashed, and on her lips there was a sensual expression of challenge and mockery.

Cæsar, that evening, without knowing why, was dull at expressing himself, and depressed. Some of the Countess’s questions left him in a stupid unreadiness.

“Poor child; I am sorry for you,” she suddenly said.

“Why?”

“Because you are so weak; you have such an air of exhaustion. What do you do to make you like this? I am sure you ought to be given some sort of iron tonic, like the anaemic girls.”

“Do you really think I am so weak?” asked Cæsar.

“Isn’t it written all over you?”

“Well, anyway, I am stronger than you, Countess.”

“In a discussion, perhaps. But otherwise.... You have no strength except in your brains.”

“And in my hands. Give me your hand.”

The Countess gave him her hand and Cæsar pressed it tighter and tighter.

“You are strong after all,” she said.

“That is nothing. You wait,” and Cæsar squeezed the Countess’s hand until he made her give a sharp scream. A servant entered the salon. “It’s nothing,” said the Countess, getting up; “I seemed to have turned my foot.”

“I will take you to your room,” exclaimed Cæsar, offering her his arm.

“No, no. Thanks very much.”

“Yes. It has to be.”

“Then, all right,” she murmured, and added, “Now you frighten me.”

“Bah, you will get over that!” and Cæsar went into her room with her....

The next day Cæsar appeared in the salon looking as if he had been buried and dug up.

“What is the matter?” Mme. Dawson and her daughters asked him.

“Nothing; only I had a headache and I took a big dose of antipyrine.”

The relations of the Brenda lady and Cæsar soon cooled. Their temperaments were incompatible: there was no harmony between their imaginations or between their skins. In reality, the Countess, with all her romanticism, did not care for long and compromising liaisons, but for hotel adventures, which leave neither vivid memories nor deep imprints. Cæsar noted that despite her lyricism and her sentimental talk, there was a great deal of firmness in this plump woman, and a lack of sensitiveness.

Moreover, this woman, so little aristocratic in intimacy, had much vanity about stupid things and a great passion for jewelry; but what contributed most to making Cæsar feel a profound hatred for her was his discovering what good health she enjoyed. This good health seemed offensive to Cæsar, above all when he compared it to his own, to his weak nerves and his restless brain.

From considering her a spiritual and delicate lady he passed to considering her a powerful mare, which deserved no more than a whip and spurs.

The love-affair contributed to upsetting Cæsar and making him more sarcastic and biting. This spiritual ulceration of Cæsar’s profoundly astonished Mlle. Cadet.

One day a Roman aristocrat, nothing less than a prince, came to call on Mme. Dawson. He talked with her, with her daughters, and the Countess Brenda, and held forth about whether the hotels in Rome were full or empty, about the _pensions_, and the food in the restaurants, with a great wealth of details; afterwards he lamented that Mme. Dawson, as a relative of his, even though a very distant one, should have gone to a _ricevimento_ at the French Embassy, and he boasted of belonging to the Black party in Rome.

When he was gone, Mlle. Cadet came over to Cæsar, who was sunk in an arm-chair gazing at the ceiling, and asked him:

“What did you think of the prince?”

“What prince?”

“The gentleman who was here talking a moment ago.”

“Ah, was he a prince?”

“Yes.”

“As he talked about nothing but hotels, I took him to be the proprietor of one.”

Mlle. Cadet told Mme. Dawson what Cæsar had said, and she and her daughters were amused at his error.

X. A BALL

A little later than the real day, they got up a ball at the hotel in celebration of the French holiday Micarême.

When Cæsar was asked if he thought of going to the ball, he said no; but Mlle. de Sandoval warned him that if he didn’t go she would never speak to him again, and Mme. Dawson and the governess threatened him with like excommunication.

“But you know, these balls are very amusing,” said Mme. Dawson.

“Do you think so?”

“I do, and so do you.”

“Besides, an observer like you,” added Mlle. Cadet, “can devote himself to taking notes.”

“And why do you conclude that I am an observer?” asked Cæsar.

“The idea! Because it is evident.”

“And an observer with very evil intentions,” insisted Mlle. de Sandoval.

“You credit me with qualities I haven’t got.”

Cæsar had to accede, and the Dawson ladies and he were the first to enter the salon and take their seats. In one corner was a glass vase hung from the ceiling by a pulley.

“What is that?” Mme. Dawson asked a servant.

“It is a glass vase full of bonbons, which you have to break with a pole with your eyes closed.”

“Ah, yes.”

Since nobody else came in, the Dawson girls and Cæsar wandered about looking into the cupboards and finding the Marchesa Sciacca’s music and the Neapolitan’s. They looked out one of the salon windows. It was a detestable night, raining and hailing; the great drops were bouncing on the sidewalks of the Piazza Esedra. Water and hail fell mixed together, and for moments at a time the ground would stay white, as if covered with a thin coating of pearls.

The fountain in the centre cast up its streams of water, which mingled with the rain, and the central jet shone in the lays of the arc-lights; now and again the livid brilliance of lightning illuminated the stone arches and the rumbling of thunder was heard...

Still nobody else came to the salon. Doubtless the ladies were preparing their toilets very carefully.

The first to appear, dressed for the ball, were the Marchesa Sciacca and her husband, accompanied by the inevitable Carminatti.

The Marchesa, with her habitual brutality toward everybody that lived in the house, bowed with formal coolness to Mme. Dawson, and sat down by the piano, as far away as possible from the French ladies.

She wore a gown of green silk, with lace and gold ornaments. She was very décolletée and had a fretful air. Her husband was small and stooped, with a long moustache and shiny eyes; on his cheek-bones were the red spots frequent in consumptives, and he spoke in a sharp voice.

“Are you acquainted with the Marquis?” Mme. Dawson asked Cæsar.

“Yes, he is a tiresome busybody,” said Cæsar, “the most boresome fellow you could find. He stops you in the street to tell you things. The other day he made me wait a quarter of an hour at the door of a tourist agency, while he inquired the quickest way of getting to Moscow. ‘Are you thinking of going there?’ I asked him. ‘No; I just wanted to find out....’ He is an idiot.”

“God preserve us from your comments. What will you be saying about us?” exclaimed Mlle. de Sandoval.

The Countess Brenda entered, with her husband, her daughter, and a friend. She was dressed in black, low in the neck, and wore a collar of brilliants as big as filberts, which surrounded her bosom with rays of light and blinding reflections.

Her friend was a young lady of consummate beauty; a brunette with colour in her skin and features of flawless perfection; with neither the serious air nor the statuesqueness of a great beauty, and with none of the negroid tone of most brunettes. When she smiled she showed her teeth, which were a burst of whiteness. She was rather loaded with jewels, which gave her the aspect of an ancient goddess.

“You, who find everything wrong,” said Mlle. Cadet to Cæsar, “what have you to say of that woman? I have been looking at her ever since she came in, and I don’t find the slightest defect.”

“Nor I. It is a face which gives no indication that the least shadow of sorrow has ever crossed it. It is beauty as serene as a landscape or as the sea when calm. Moreover, that very perfection robs it of character. It seems to be less a human face than a symbol of an apathetic being and an apathetic beauty.”

“We have found her defect,” said Mlle. Cadet.

After introducing her friend to the ladies and to the young men, who were all dazzled, the Countess Brenda sat down near Mme. Dawson, in an antique arm-chair.

She was imposing.

“You look like a queen holding audience,” Mlle. de Sandoval said to her.

“Your beloved is like an actual monument,” Mlle. Cadet murmured jokingly, aside to Cæsar.

“Yes, I think we ought to station a veteran at the door,” retorted Cæsar.

“A veteran! No, for mercy’s sake! Poor lady! A warrior in active service, one on whom all the antipyrine in the world would make no impression,” Mlle. Cadet replied maliciously.

Cæsar smiled at the allusion.

_SILENO MACARRONI_

Among the people there was one gentlerman that attracted Mlle. Cadet’s special attention. He was apart from any group, but he knew everybody that arrived. This gentleman was fat, smiling, smooth-shaven, with a round, chubby, rosy face and the body of a Silenus. When he spoke he arched and lowered his eyebrows alternately, rolled his eyes, gesticulated with his fat, soft hands, and smiled and showed his teeth.

His way of greeting people was splendid.

“Come sta, marchesa?” he would say. “Cavaliere!” “Commendatore!” “La contessina va bene?” “Oh! Egregio!”

And the good gentleman would spread his arms, and close them, and look as if he wanted to embrace the whole of humanity to his abdomen, covered with a white waistcoat.

“Who can that gentleman be?” Mlle. Cadet asked various times.

“That? That is Signor Sileno Macarroni,” said Cæsar, “Commander of the Order of the Mighty Belly, Knight of the Round Buttocks, and of other distinguished Orders.”

“He is a singer,” said the Countess Brenda to Mlle. de Sandoval in a low tone.

“He is a singer,” repeated Mlle. de Sandoval to her governess in a similar tone.

“Sileno Macarroni is a singer,” said Mlle. Cadet, with equal mysteriousness, addressing Cæsar.

“But is our friend Macarroni going to sung?” asked Cæsar.

The question was passed from one person to another, and it was discovered that Macarroni was going to sing. As a matter of fact, the fat Silenus did sing, and everybody was startled to hear a high tenor voice issue from within that voluminous human being. The fat Silenus had the misfortune to sing false in the midst of his bravest trills, and the poor soul was overcome, despite the applause.

“Poor Macarroni!” said Cæsar, “his high tenor heart must be broken to bits.” “He is going,” put in Mlle. Cadet. “What a shame!” Sileno vanished and the pianist began to play waltzes.

_THE WORLD AS A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN_

Carminatti was the first on the floor with his partner, who was the Marchesa Sciacca.

The Maltese lady danced with an abandon and a feline languor that imposed respect. One of the San Martino girls, dressed in white, like a vaporous fairy, danced with an officer in a blue uniform, a slim, distinguished person with languid eyes and rosy cheeks, who caused a veritable sensation among the ladies.

The other San Martino, in pale pink, was on a sofa chatting with a man of the cut-throat type, of jaundiced complexion, with bright eyes and a moustache so long as almost to touch his eyebrows.

“He is a Sicilian,” Mlle. Cadet told Cæsar; “behind us here they are saying rather curious things about the two of them.”

The Countess Brenda’s daughter was magnificent, with her milk-white skin, and her arms visible through gauze. Despite her beauty she didn’t count many admirers; she was too insipid, and the majority of the young men turned with greater enthusiasm to the married women and to those of a very provocative type.

Mlle. de Sandoval, the most sought after of all, didn’t wish to dance.

“My daughter is really very stiff,” Mme. Dawson remarked. “Spanish women are like that.”

“Yes, they often are,” said Cæsar.

Among all these Italians, who were rather theatrical and ridiculous, insincere and exaggerated, but who had great pliancy and great agility in their movements and their expression, there was one German family, consisting of several persons: a married couple with sons and daughters who seemed to be all made from one piece, cut from the same block. While the rest were busy with the little incidents of the ball, they were talking about the Baths of Caracalla, the aqueducts, the Colosseum. The father, the mother, and the children repeated their lesson in Roman archeology, which they had learned splendidly.

“What very absurd people they are,” murmured Cæsar, watching them.

“Why?” said Mlle. de Sandoval.

“It appeals to these Germans as their duty to make one parcel of everything artistic there is in a country and swallow it whole; which seems to an ignoramus like me, a stupid piece of pretentiousness. The French, on the contrary, are on more solid ground; they don’t understand anything that is not French, and they travel to have the pleasure of saying that Paris is the finest thing on earth.”

“It’s great luck to be so perfect as you are,” retorted Mlle. de Sandoval, violently, “you can see other people’s faults so clearly.”

“You mistake,” replied Cæsar, coldly, “I do not rely on my own good qualities to enable me to speak badly of others.”

“Then what do you rely on?”

“On my defects.”

“Ah, have you defects? Do you admit it?”

“I not only admit it, but I take pride in having them.”

Mlle. de Sandoval turned her head away contemptuously; the twist Cæsar gave to her questions appeared to irritate her.

“Mlle. de Sandoval doesn’t like me much,” said Cæsar to Mlle. Cadet.

“No? She generally says nice things about you.”

“Perhaps my clothes appeal to her, or the way I tie my cravat; but my ideas displease her.”

“Because you say such severe things.”

“Why do you say that at this moment? Because I spoke disparagingly of those Germans? Are they attractive to you?”

“Oh, no! Not at all.”

“They look like hunting dogs.” “But whom do you approve of? The English?”

“Not the English, either. They are a herd of cattle; sentimental, ridiculous people who are in ecstatics over their aristocracy and over their king. Latin peoples are something like cats, they are of the feline race; a Frenchman is like a fat, well-fed cat; an Italian is like an old Angora which has kept its beautiful fur; and the Spaniard is like the cats on a roof, skinny, bare of fur, almost too weak to howl with despair and hunger.... Then there are the ophidians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Armenians....”

“Then for you the world is a zoological garden?”

“Well, isn’t it?”

At midnight they tried to break the glass jar of bonbons. They blindfolded various men, and one by one they made them turn around a couple of times and then try to break the jar with a stick.

It was the Marquis Sciacca that did break the glass vase, and the pieces fell on his head.

“Have you hurt yourself?” people asked him.

“No,” said Cæsar, reassuringly, but aside; “his head is protected.”

_CHIROMANTIC INTERLUDE_

After this cornucopia number, there was a series of other games and amusements, which required a hand-glass, a candle, and a bottle. The conversation in Mlle. de Sandoval’s group jumped from one thing to another and finally arrived at palmistry.

Mlle. de Sandoval asked Cæsar if he, as a Spaniard, knew how to tell fortunes by the hand, and he jokingly replied that he did. Three or four hands were stretched out toward Cæsar, and he said whatsoever his imagination suggested, foolishness, absurdities, impertinences; a little of everything.

When anybody was a bit puzzled at Cæsar’s words, he said:

“Don’t pay any attention to it; these are absurdities.”

Afterwards Mlle. Cadet told Cæsar that she was going to cast his horoscope. “Good! Out with it.”

The governess, who was clever, studied Cæsar’s hand and expressed herself in sibylline terms:

“You have something of everything, a little of some things and a great deal of others; you are not a harmonious individual.”

“No?”

“No. You are very intelligent.”

“Thank you.”

“Let the sibyl talk,” said the Sandoval girl.

“You have a strong sense of logic,” the governess went on.

“That’s possible.”

“You are good and bad! You have much imagination and very little; you are at the same time very brave and very timid. You have a loving nature, but it is asleep, and little will-power.”

“Little and... a great deal,” said Cæsar.

“No, little.”

“Do you believe that I have little will-power?”

“I am telling you what your hand says.”

“Look here. My hand’s opinion doesn’t interest me so much as yours, because you are an intelligent woman. Do you believe I have no will-power?”

“A sibyl doesn’t discuss her affirmations.”

“Now you are worried about your lack of will-power,” said Mlle. de Sandoval, mockingly.

“Yes, I am, a bit.”

“Well, I think you have will-power enough,” she retorted; “what you do lack is a little more amiability.”

“Fortunately for you and for me, you are not so perspicacious in psychology as this young lady.”

“I don’t expect to earn my living telling fortunes.”

“I don’t believe this young lady expects to, either. You have told me what I am,” Cæsar pursued; “now tell me what is going to happen to me.”

“Let me look,” said Mlle. Cadet; “close your hand. You will make a journey.” “Very good! I like that.”

“You will get into a desperate struggle....”

“I like that, too.”

“And you will win, and you will be defeated....”

“I don’t like that so much.”

Mile. Cadet could not give other details. Her sibylline science extended no further. During this chiromantic interlude, the dancing kept up, until finally, about three in the morning, the party ended.

XI. A SOUNDING-LINE IN THE DARK WORLD

_THE ADVICE OF TWO ABBÉS_

The Abbé Preciozi several times advised Cæsar to make a new attempt at a reconciliation with the Cardinal; but Cæsar always refused.

“He is a man incapable of understanding me,” he would insist with naïve arrogance.

Preciozi felt a great liking for his new friend, who invited him to meals at good hotels and treated him very frequently. Almost every morning he went to call on Cæsar on one pretext or another, and they would go for a walk and chat about various things.

Preciozi was beginning to believe that his friend was a man with a future. Some explanations that Cæsar gave him about the mechanism of the stock-exchange convinced the abbé that he was in the presence of a great financier.

Preciozi talked to all his friends and acquaintances about Cardinal Fort’s nephew, picturing him as an extraordinary man; some took these praises as a joke; others thought that it was really very possible that the Spaniard had great talent; only one abbé, who was a teacher in a college, felt a desire to meet the Cardinal’s nephew, and Preciozi introduced him to Cæsar.

This abbé was named Cittadella, and he was fat, rosy, and blond; he looked more like a singer than a priest.

Cæsar invited the two abbés to dine at a restaurant and requested Preciozi to do the ordering.

“So you are a nephew of Cardinal Fort’s?” asked Cittadella. “Yes.”

“His own nephew?”

“His own nephew; son of his sister.”

“And he hasn’t done anything for you?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s a pity. He is a man of great influence, of great talent.”

“Influence, I believe; talent, I doubt,” said Cæsar.

“Oh, no, no! He is an intelligent man.”

“But I have heard that his _Theological Commentaries_ is absolutely absurd.”

“No, no.”

“A crude, banal book, full of stupidities....”

“_Macché_!” exclaimed the indignant Preciozi, neglecting the culinary conflict he was engaged in.

“All right. It makes no difference,” replied Cæsar, smiling. “Whether he is a famous man, as you two say, or a blockhead, as I think, the fact remains that my uncle doesn’t wish to have anything to do with me.”

“You must have done something to him,” said Cittadella.

“No; the only thing is that when I was small they told me the Cardinal wished me to be a priest, and I answered that I didn’t care to be.”

“And why so?”

“It seems to me a poor job. It’s evident that one doesn’t make much at it.”

Cittadella sighed.

“Yes, and what’s more,” Preciozi put in, “this gentleman says to anybody who cares to listen, that religion is a farce, that Catholicism is like a dish of Jewish meat with Roman sauce. Is it possible that a Cardinal should bother about a nephew that talks like that?”

The Abbé Cittadella looked very serious and remarked that it is necessary to believe, or at least to seem to believe, in the truths of religion.

“Is the Cardinal supposed to have money?” asked Cæsar.

“Yes, I should say he is,” replied Preciozi. “Your sister and you will be the only heirs,” said Cittadella.

“Of course,” agreed Preciozi.

“Has he made a will?” asked Cæsar.

“All the better if he hasn’t,” said one of the abbés.

“If we could only poison him,” sighed Cæsar, with melancholy.

“Don’t talk of such things just as we are going to eat,” said Preciozi.

The dinner was brought, and the two abbés did it the honour it deserved.

Preciozi deserved congratulations for his excellent selection. They ordered good wines and drank merry toasts.

“What an admirable secretary Preciozi would be, if I got to be a personage!” exclaimed Cæsar. “Twenty thousand francs or so salary, his board, and the duty of choosing the dinner for the next day. That’s my proposal.”

The abbé blushed with pleasure, emptied his glass of wine, and murmured:

“If it depended on me!”

“The fact is that the way things are arranged today is no good,” said Cæsar. “A hundred years ago, by the mere fact of being a Cardinal’s nephew, I should have been somebody.”

“That’s true,” exclaimed Preciozi.

“And as I should have no scruples, and neither would you two, we would have plunged into life strenuously, and sacked Rome, and the whole world would be ours.”

“You talk like a Cæsar Borgia,” said Preciozi, aroused. “You are a true Spaniard.”

“Today one must have something to stand on,” said Cittadella, coldly.

“Friend Cittadella,” retorted Cæsar, “I, as you see me here, am the man who knows the most about financial matters in all Spain, and I believe I shall soon get to where I can say, in all Europe. I put my knowledge at the service of whoever pays me. I am like one of your old _condottieri_, a mercenary general. I am ready to win battles for the Jewish bank, or against the Jewish bank, for the Church or against the Church.”

“For the Church is better. Against the Church we cannot assist you,” said Preciozi.

“I will try first, for the Church. To whom can you recommend me first?”

The two abbés said nothing, and drank in silence.

“Perhaps Verry would see him,” said Cittadella.

“Hm!...” replied Preciozi. “I rather doubt it.”

“What sort of a party is he?” asked Cæsar.

“He is one of those _prelati_ that come out of the College of Nobles,” said Cittadella, “and who get on, even if they are no good. Here they consider him a haughty Spaniard; they blame him for wearing his robes, and for always taking an automobile when he goes to Castel Gandolfo. The priests hate him because he is a Jesuit and a Spaniard.”

“And wherein does his strength lie?”

“In the Society, and in his knowing several languages. He was educated in England.”

“From what you two tell me of him, he gives me the impression of a fatuous person.”

A bottle of champagne was brought in and the three of them drank, toasting and touching glasses.

“If I were in your place,” said Cittadella, after thinking a long while, “I shouldn’t try to get at people in high places, but people who are inconspicuous and yet have influence in your country.”

“For instance....”

“For instance, Father Herreros, at the convent in Trastevere.”

“And Father Miró too,” added Preciozi, “and if you could talk to Father Ferrer, of the Gregorian University, it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“That will be more difficult,” said Cittadella.

“You could tell them,” Preciozi suggested, “that your uncle the Cardinal sent you, and hint that he doesn’t want anybody to know that he is backing you.” “And if somebody should write to my uncle?”

“You mustn’t say anything definite. You must speak ambiguously. Besides, in case they did write, we would fix it up in the office.”

Cæsar began to laugh naïvely. Afterwards, the two abbés, a little excited by the food and the good wine, started in to have a violent discussion, speaking Italian. Cæsar paid the bill, and pretending that he had an urgent engagement, took leave of them and went out.

_A SPANISH MONK_

The next day Cæsar went to look up Father Herreros. He had not yet succeeded in forming a plan. His only idea was to see if he could take advantage of some chance: to follow a scent and be on the alert, in case something new should start up on one side or the other.

Father Herreros lived in a convent in Trastevere. Cæsar took the tram in the Piazza Venezia, and got out after crossing the Tiber, near the Via delle Fratte.

He soon found the convent; it had a yellow portal with a Latin inscription which sang the gymnastic glories of Saint Pascual Bailón. Above the inscription there was a picture, in which a monk, no doubt Bailón, was dancing among the clouds.

On the lintel of the gate were the arms of Spain, and at the sides, two medallions bearing hands wounded in the palm.

The convent door was old and quartered. Cæsar knocked.

A lay-brother, with a suspicious glance, came out to admit him, told him to wait, and left him alone. After some while, he came back and asked him to follow him.

They went down a small passage and up a staircase, which was at the end, and then along a corridor on the main floor. On one side of this corridor, in his cell, they found Father Herreros.

Cæsar, after bowing and introducing himself, sat down, as the monk asked him to do, in a chair with its back to the light. Cæsar began to explain why he had come, and as he had prepared what he was going to say, he employed his attention, while speaking, on the cage and the kind of big bird which were before his eyes.

Father Herreros had a big rough head, black heavy eyebrows, a short nose, an enormous mouth, yellow teeth, and grey hair. He wore a chocolate-coloured robe, open enough to show his whole neck down to his chest. The movement of the good monk’s lips was that of a man who wished to pass for keen and insinuating. His robe was dirty and he doubtless had the habit of leaving cigarette stubs on the table.

The cell had one window, and in front of it a bookcase. Cæsar made an effort to read the titles. They were almost all Latin books, the kind that nobody reads.

Father Herreros began to ask Cæsar questions. In his brain, he was doubtless wondering why Cardinal Fort’s nephew should come to him.

After many useless words they got to the concrete point that Cæsar wanted to take up, Father Herreros’s acquaintance in Spain, and the monk said that he knew a very rich widow who had property in Toledo. When Cæsar went to Madrid, he would give him a letter of recommendation to her.

“I cannot keep you any longer now, because a Mexican lady is waiting for me,” said Father Herreros.

Cæsar arose, and after shaking the monk’s fat hand, he left the convent. He returned to Rome on foot, crossing the river again, and looking at the Tiberine island; and arrived without hurrying at the hotel. He wrote to his friend Azugaray, requesting him to discover, by the indications he gave him, who the rich widow that had property in Toledo could be.

_THE LICENTIATE MIRÓ_

The next day Cæsar decided to pursue his investigations, and went to see Father Miró.

Father Miró lived in a college in the Via Monserrato. Cæsar inspected the map of Rome, looking for that street, and found that it is located in the vicinity of the Campo de’ Fiori, and took his way thither.

The spring day was magnificent; the sky was blue, without a cloud; the tiled roofs of some of the palaces were decorated with borders of plants and flowers; in the street, dry and flooded with sunshine, a water-carrier in a cart full of fat, green bottles, passed by, singing and cracking his whip.

Cæsar crossed the Campo de’ Fiori, a very lively, plebeian square, full of canvas awnings with open stalls of fruit under them. In the middle stood the statue of Giordano Bruno, with a crown of flowers around its neck.

Then he took the Via de’ Cappellari, a narrow lane and dirty enough. From one side to the other clothes were hung out to dry.

He came to the college and entered the church contiguous to it. He asked for Father Miró; a sacristan with a long moustache and a worn blue overcoat, took him to another entrance, made him mount an old wooden staircase, and conducted him to the office of the man he was looking for.

Father Miró was a tiny little man, dark and filthy, with a worn-out cassock, covered with dandruff, and a large dirty square cap with a big rosette.

“Will you tell me what you want?” said the little priest in a sullen tone.

Cæsar introduced himself, and explained in a few words who he was and what he proposed.

Father Miró, without asking him to sit down, answered rapidly, saying that he had no acquaintance with matters of finance or speculation.

Cæsar felt a shudder of anger at the rudeness with which he was treated by this draggled little priest, and felt a vehement desire to take him by the neck and twist it, like a chicken’s.

Despite his anger, he did not change expression, and he asked the priest smilingly if he knew who could give him advice about those questions.

“You can see Father Ferrer at the Gregorian University, or Father Mendia. He is an encyclopedist. It was he who wrote the theological portion of the encyclical _Pascendi_, the one about Modernism. He is a man of very great learning.”

“He will do. Many thanks,” and Cæsar turned toward the door.

“Excuse me for not having asked you to sit down, but...”

“No matter,” Cæsar replied, rapidly, and he went out to the stairs.

In view of the poor result of his efforts, he decided to go to the Gregorian University. He was told it was in the Via del Seminario, and supposed it must be the large edifice with little windowed bridges over two streets.

That edifice was the Collegio Romano; the Gregorian University was in the same street, but further on, opposite the Post Office Department. Father Ferrer could not receive him, because he was holding a class; and after they had gone up and come down and taken Cæsar’s card for Father Mendia, they told him he was out.

Cæsar concluded that it was not so easy to find a crack through which one could get information of what was going on in the clerical world.

“I see that the Church gives them all a defensive instinct which they make good use of. They are really only poor devils, but they have a great organization, and it cannot be easy to get one’s fingers through the meshes of their net.”

XII. A MEETING ON THE PINCIO

_A WALK IN THE VILLA BORGHESE_

At the beginning of Holy Week Laura returned to the hotel, at lunch-time.

“And your husband?” Cæsar asked her.

“He didn’t want to come. Rome bores him. He is giving all his attention to taking care of the heart-disease he says he has.”

“Is it serious?”

“I think not. Every time I see him I find him with a new disease and a new diet; one time it is vegetarian, another nothing but meat, another time he says one should eat only grapes, or nothing but bread.”

“Then I see that he belongs to the illustrious brotherhood of the insane.”

“You are not far from joining that brotherhood yourself.”

“Dear sister, I am one of the few sane men that go stumbling around this insane asylum let loose we call the earth.”

“What you say about men is the truth, even though you are not an exception. Really, the more I have to do with men, the more convinced I am that any one of them who is not crazy, is stupid or vain or proud.... How much more intelligent, discreet, logical we women are!”

“Don’t tell me. You are marvels; modest, kindly toward your rivals, so little given to humiliating your neighbours, male or female....”

“Yes, yes; but we are not so conceited or such play-actors as you are. A woman may think herself pretty and amiable and sweet, and not be so. That is true; but on the other hand, every man thinks himself braver than the Cid, even if he is afraid of a fly, and more talented than Seneca, even if he is a dolt.”

“To sum up, men are a calamity.”

“Just so.”

“And women spend their lives fishing for these calamities.”

“They need them; there are inferior things which still are necessary.”

“And there are superior things which are good for nothing.”

“Will you come and take a drive with me, philosopher brother?”

“Where?”

“Let’s go to the Villa Borghese. The carriage will be here in a moment.”

“All right. Let us go there.”

A two-horse victoria with rubber tires was waiting at the door, and Laura and Cæsar got in. The carriage went past the Treasury, and out the Porta Salaria, and entered the gardens of the Villa Borghese.

The morning had been rainy; the ground was damp; the wind waved the tree-tops gently and caused a murmur like the tide. The carriage rolled slowly along the avenues. Laura was very gay and chatty. Cæsar listened to her as one listens to a bird warbling.

Many times while listening he thought: “What is there inside this head? What is the master idea of her life? Has she really any idea about life, or has she none?”

After several rounds they crossed the viaduct that unites the Villa Borghese with the Pincio gardens.

_FROM THE PINCIO TERRACE_

They approached the great terrace of the gardens by an avenue that has busts of celebrated men along both sides.

“Poor great men!” exclaimed Cæsar. “Their statues serve only to decorate a public garden.” “They had their lives,” replied Laura, gaily; “now we have ours.”

Laura ordered the coachman to stop a moment. The air was still murmuring in the foliage, the birds singing, and the clouds flying slowly across the sky.

A man with a black box approached the carriage to offer them postcards.

“Buy two or three,” said Laura.

Cæsar bought a few and put them into his pocket. The vendor withdrew and Laura continued to look at Rome with enthusiasm.

“Oh, how beautiful, how lovely it is! I never get tired of looking at it. It is my favourite city. ‘_O fior d’ogni cittá, donna del mondo_.’”

“She is no longer mistress of the world, little sister.”

“For me she is. Look at St. Peter’s. It looks like a shred of cloud.”

“Yes, that’s so. It’s of a blue shade that seems transparent.”

Bells were ringing and great majestic white clouds kept moving along the horizon; on the Janiculum the statue of Garibaldi rose up gallantly into the air, like a bird ready to take wing.

“When I look at Rome this way,” murmured Laura, “I feel a pang, a pang of grief.”

“Why?”

“Because I remember that I must die, and then I shall not come back to see Rome. She will be here still, century after century, full of sunlight, and I shall be dead.... It is horrible, horrible!”

“And your religion?”

“Yes, I know. I believe I shall see other things; but not these things that are so beautiful.”

“You are an Epicurean.”

“It is so beautiful to be alive!”

They stayed there looking at the panorama. Below, in the Piazza del Popólo, they saw a red tram slipping along, which looked, at that distance, like a toy.

A tilbury, driven by a woman, stopped near their carriage. The woman was blond with green eyes, prominent cheek-bones, and a little fur cap. At her feet lay an enormous dog with long flame-coloured hair.

“She must be a Russian,” said Cæsar.

“Yes. Do you like that type?”

“She has a lot of character. She looks like one of the women that would order servants to be whipped.”

The Russian was smiling vaguely. Laura told the coachman to drive on. They made a few rounds in the avenues of the Pincio. The music was beginning; a few carriages, and groups of soldiers and seminarians, crowded around the bandstand; Laura didn’t care for brass bands, they were too noisy for her, and she gave the coachman orders to drive to the Corso.

_MEETING MARCHMONT_

They passed in front of the Villa Medici, and when they got near the Piazza, della Trinitá de’ Monti they met a man on horseback, who, on seeing them, immediately approached the carriage. It was Archibald Marchmont, who had just arrived in Rome.

“I thought you had forgotten us,” said Laura.

“I forget you, Marchesa! Never.”

“You say you came to Rome....”

“From Nice I had to return to London, because my father was seriously ill with an attack of gout.”

“He is well again?”

“Yes, thank you. You are coming back from a drive?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you want to come and have tea with my wife and me?”

“Where?”

“At the Hotel Excelsior. We are staying there. Will you come?” “All right.”