Chapter V: Part ONE: Rome (4)

Laura accepted, and they went to the Via Veneto with the Englishman riding beside them.

They went into the hotel and passed through to the “hall” full of people, Marchmont sent word to his wife by a servant, to come down. Laura and Cæsar seated themselves with the Englishman.

“This hotel is unbearable,” exclaimed Marchmont; “there is nothing here but Americans.”

“Your wife, however, must like that,” said Cæsar.

“No. Susanna is more European every day, and she doesn’t care for the shrieking elegance of her compatriots. Besides, her father is here, and that makes her feel less American.”

“It is an odd form of filial enthusiasm,” remarked Cæsar.

“It doesn’t shock me. I almost think it’s the rule,” replied Marchmont; “at home I could see that my brothers and sisters hated one another cordially, and that every member of the family wanted to get away from the others. You two who are so fond of each other are a very rare instance. Is it frequent in Spain that brothers and sisters like one another?”

“Yes, there are instances of it,” answered Cæsar, laughing.

Mrs. Marchmont arrived, accompanied by an old man who evidently was her father, and two other men. Susanna was most smart; she greeted Laura and Cæsar very affably, and presented her father, Mr. Russell; then she presented an English author, tall, skinny, with blue eyes, a white beard, and hair like a halo; and then a young Englishman from the Embassy, a very distinguished person named Kennedy, who was a Catholic.

_TEA_

After the introductions they passed into the dining-room, which was most impressive. It was an exhibition of very smart women, some of them ideally beautiful, and idle men. All about them resounded a nasal English of the American sort.

Susanna Marchmont served the tea and did the honours to her guests. They all talked French, excepting Mr. Russell, who once in a long while uttered some categorical monosyllable in his own language.

Mr. Russell was not of the classic Yankee type; he looked like a vulgar Englishman. He was a serious man, with a short moustache, grey-headed, with three or four gold teeth.

What to Cæsar seemed wonderful in this gentleman was his economy of words. There was not one useless expression in his vocabulary, and not the slightest redundancy; whatever partook of merit, prestige, or nobility was condensed, for him, to the idea of value; whatever partook of arrangement, cleanliness, order, was condensed to the word “comfort”; so that Mr. Russell, with a very few words, had everything specified.

To Susanna, imbued with her preoccupation in supreme _chic_, her father no doubt did not seem a completely decorative father; but he gave Cæsar the impression of a forceful man.

Near them, at a table close by, was a little blond man, with a hooked nose and a scanty imperial, in company with a fat lady. They bowed to Marchmont and his wife.

“That gentleman looks like a Jew,” said Cæsar.

“He is,” replied Marchmont, “that is Señor Pereyra, a rich Jew; of Portuguese origin, I think.”

“How quickly you saw it!” exclaimed Susanna.

“He has that air of a sick goat, so frequent in Jews.”

“His wife has nothing sickly about her, or thin either,” remarked Laura.

“No,” said Cæsar; “his wife represents another Biblical type; one of the fat kine of somebody’s dream, which foretold abundance and a good harvest.”

The Englishman, Kennedy, had also little liking for Jews.

“I do not hate a Jew as anti-Christian,” said Cæsar; “but as super-Christian. Nor do I hate the race, but the tendency they have never to be producers, but always middlemen, and because they incarnate so well for our era the love of money, and of joy and pleasure.”

The English author was a great partisan of Jews, and he asserted that they were more distinguished in science and the arts than any other race. The Jewish question was dropped in an instant, when they saw a smart lady come in accompanied by a pale man with a black shock of hair and an uneasy eye.

“That is the Hungarian violinist Kolozsvar,” said Susanna.

“Kolozsvar, Kolozsvar!” they heard everybody saying.

“Is he a great virtuoso?” Cæsar asked Kennedy.

“No, I think not,” answered Kennedy. “It seems that this Hungarian’s speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country, which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London fight for him. His game is to pass himself off as a fallen man, depraved, worn-out. There you have his phraseology.... They see a man to save, to raise up, and convert into a great artist, and almost all of them yield to this temptation.”

“That is comical,” said Cæsar, looking curiously at the fiddler and his lady.

“To a Spaniard,” replied Kennedy, “it is comical; and probably it would be to an Italian too; but in England there are many women that have a purely imaginative idealism, a romanticism fed on ridiculous novels, and they fall into traps like these, which seem clumsy and grotesque to you here in the South, where people are more clear-sighted and realistic.”

Cæsar watched the brave fiddler, who played the role of a man used up, to great perfection.

After tea, Susanna invited them to go up to her rooms, and Laura and her brother and Kennedy and Mr. Russell went.

The English author had met a colleague, with whom he stayed behind talking, and Marchmont remained in the “hall,” as if it did not seem to him proper for him to go to his wife’s rooms.

Susanna’s rooms were very high, had balconies on the Via Veneto, and were almost opposite Queen Margherita’s palace. One overlooked the garden and could see the Queen Mother taking her walks, which is not without its importance for persons who live in a republic.

Susanna was most amiable to Laura; repeated to all of them her invitation to come and see her again; and after they had all promised to see one another frequently, Cæsar and Laura went down to their carriage, and took a turn on the Corso by twilight.

XIII. ESTHETICS AND DEMAGOGY

_SUSANNA AND THE YOUNGSTERS_

From this meeting on, Cæsar noticed that Marchmont paid court to Laura with much persistence. A light-hearted, coquettish woman, it pleased Laura to be pursued by a person like this Englishman, young, distinguished, and rich; but she was not prepared to yield. Her bringing-up, her class-feelings impelled her to consider adultery a heinous thing. Nor was divorce a solution for her, since accepting it would oblige her to cease being a Catholic and to quarrel irrevocably with the Cardinal. Marchmont showed no discretion in the way he paid court to Laura; he cared nothing about his wife, and talked of her with profound contempt....

Laura found herself besieged by the Englishman; she couldn’t decide to discourage him entirely, and at critical moments she would take the train, go off to Naples, and come back two or three days later, doubtless with more strength for withstanding the siege.

“As a matter of reciprocal justice, since he makes love to my sister, I ought to make love to his wife,” thought Cæsar, and he went several times to the Hotel Excelsior to call on Susanna.

The Yankee wife was full of complaints against her husband. Her father had advised her simply to get a divorce, but she didn’t want to. She found such a solution lacking in distinction, and no doubt she considered the advice of an author in her own country very true, who had given this triple injunction to the students of a woman’s college: “Do not drink, that is, do not drink too much; do not smoke, that is, do not smoke too much; and do not get married, that is, do not get married too much.”

It did not seem quite right to Susanna to get married too much. Besides she had a desire to become a Catholic. One day she questioned Cæsar about it:

“You want to change your religion!” exclaimed Cæsar, “What for? I don’t believe you are going to find your lost faith by becoming a Catholic.”

“And what do you think about it, Kennedy?” Susanna asked the young Englishman, who was there too.

“To me a Catholic woman seems doubly enchanting.”

“You would not marry a woman who wasn’t a Catholic?”

“No, indeed,” the Englishman proclaimed.

Cæsar and Kennedy disagreed about everything.

Susanna discussed her plans, and constantly referred to Paul Bourget’s novel _Cosmopolis_, which had obviously influenced her in her inclination for Catholicism.

“Are there many Jewish ladies who aspire to be baptized and become Catholics, as Bourget says?” asked Susanna.

“Bah!” exclaimed Cæsar.

“You do not believe that either?”

“No, it strikes me as a piece of naïvety in this good soul of a novelist. To become a Catholic, I don’t believe requires more than some few pesetas.”

“You are detestable, as a Cardinal’s nephew.”

“I mean that I don’t perceive that there are any obstacles to prevent anybody from becoming a Catholic, as there are to prevent his becoming rich. What a high ambition, to aspire to be a Catholic! While nobody anywhere does anything but laugh at Catholics; and it has become an axiom: ‘A Catholic country is a country bound for certain ruin.’”

Kennedy burst out laughing.

Susanna said that she had no real faith, but that she did have a great enthusiasm for churches and for choirs, for the smell of incense and religious music.

“Spain is the place for all that,” said Kennedy. “Here in Italy the Church ceremonies are too gay. Not so in Spain; at Toledo, at Burgos, there is an austerity in the cathedrals, an unworldliness....”

“Yes,” said Cæsar; “unhappily we have nothing left there but ceremonies. At the same time, the people are dying of hunger.”

They discussed whether it is better to live in a decorative, esthetic sphere, or in a more humble and practical one; and Susanna and Kennedy stood up for the superiority of an esthetic life.

As they left the hotel Cæsar said to Kennedy:

“Allow me a question. Have you any intentions concerning Mrs. Marchmont?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Simply because I shouldn’t go to see her often, so as not to be in the way.”

“Thank you ever so much. But I have no intentions in relation to her. She is too beautiful and too rich a woman for a modest employee like me to fix his eyes on.”

“Bah! A modest diplomat! That is absurd. It is merely that you don’t take to her.”

“No. It’s because she is a queen. There ought to be some defect in her face to make her human.”

“Yes; that’s true. She is too much of a prize beauty.”

“That is the defect in the Yankee women; they have no character. The weight of tradition might be fatal to industry and modern life, but it is the one thing that creates the spirituality of the old countries. Beyond contradiction American women have intelligence, beauty, energy, attractive flashes, but they lack that particular thing created by centuries: character. At times they have very charming impulses. Have you heard the story about Prince Torlonia’s wife?”

“No.”

“Well, Torlonia’s present wife was an American girl worth millions, who came with letters to the prince. He took her about Rome, and at the end of some days he said to her, supposing that the beautiful American had the intention of marrying: ‘I will introduce some young noblemen to you’; and she answered: ‘Don’t introduce anybody to me; because you please me more than anybody’; and she married him.”

“It was a pretty impulse.”

“Yes, Americans do things like that on the spur of the moment. But if you saw a Spanish woman behave that way, it would seem wrong to you.”

Chattering amicably they came to the Piazza Esedra.

“Would you care to have lunch with me?” said Kennedy.

“Just what I was going to propose to you.”

“I eat alone.”

“I do not. I eat with my sister.”

“The Marchesa di Vaccarone?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must pardon me if I accept your invitation, for I am very anxious to meet her.”

“Then come along.”

_RUSKIN AND THE PHILISTINES_

They reached the hotel and Cæsar introduced his friend to Laura.

“He is an admirer of yours.”

“A respectful admirer... from a distance,” explained Kennedy.

“But are there admirers of that sort?” asked Laura, laughing.

“Here you have one,” said the Englishman. “I have known you by sight ever since I came to Rome, and have never had the pleasure of speaking to you until today.”

“And have you been here a long time?”

“Nearly two years.”

“And do you like Rome; eh?”

“I should say so! At first, I didn’t, I must admit. It was a disappointment to me. I had dreamed so much about Rome!” and Kennedy talked of the books and guides he had read about the Eternal City.

“I must admit that I had never dreamed about Rome,” said Cæsar. “And you boast of that?” asked Laura.

“No, I don’t boast of it, I merely state it. I understand how agreeable it is to know things. Cæsar died here! Cicero made speeches here! Saint Peter stumbled over this stone! It is fine! But not knowing things is also very comfortable. I am rather like a barbarian walking indifferently among monuments he knows nothing about.”

“Doesn’t such an idea make you ashamed?”

“No, why? It would be a bother to me to know a lot of things offhand. To pass by a mountain and know how it was thrown up, what it is composed of, what its flora and fauna are; to get to a town and know its history in detail.... What things to be interested in! It’s tiresome! I hate history too much. I far prefer to be ignorant of everything, and especially the past, and from time to time to offer myself a capricious, arbitrary explanation.”

“But I think that knowing things not only is not tiresome,” said Kennedy, “but is a great satisfaction.”

“You think even learning things is a satisfaction?”

“Thousands of years ago one could know things almost without learning them; nowadays in order to know, one has to learn. That is natural and logical.”

“Yes, certainly. And the effort to learn about useful things seems natural and logical to me too, but not to learn about merely agreeable things. To learn medicine and mechanics is logical; but to learn to look at a picture or to hear a symphony is an absurdity.”

“Why?”

“At any rate the neophytes that go to see a Rafael picture or to hear a Bach sonata and have an exclamation all ready, give me the sad impression of a flock of lambs. As for your sublime pedagogues of the Ruskin type, they seem to me to be the fine flower of priggishness, of pedantry, of the most objectionable bourgeoisie.”

“What things your brother is saying!” exclaimed Kennedy.

“You shouldn’t notice him,” said Laura.

“Those artistic pedagogues enrage me; they remind me of Protestant pastors and of the friars that go around dressed like peasants, and who I think are called Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. The pedagogues are Brothers of the Esthetic Doctrine, one of the stupidest inventions that ever occurred to the English. I don’t know which I find more ridiculous, the Salvation Army or Ruskin’s books.”

“Why have you this hatred for Ruskin?”

“I find him an idiot. I only skimmed through a book of his called _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and the first thing I read was a paragraph in which he said that to use an imitation diamond or any other imitation stone was a lie, an imposition, and a sin. I immediately said: ‘This man who thinks a diamond is the truth and paste a lie, is a stupid fool who doesn’t deserve to be read.’”

“Yes, all right: you take one point of view and he takes another. I understand why Ruskin wouldn’t please you. What I do not understand is why you find it absurd that if a person has a desire to penetrate into the beauties of a symphony or a picture, he should do so. What is there strange in that?”

“You are right,” said Cæsar; “whoever wants to learn, should. I have done so about financial questions.”

“Is it true that your brother knows all about questions of money?” Kennedy asked Laura.

“He says so.”

“I haven’t much belief in his financial knowledge.”

“No?”

“No, I have not. You are a sort of dilettante, half nihilist, half financier. You would like to pass for a tranquil, well-balanced man, for what is called a philistine, but you cannot compass it.”

“I will compass it. It is true that I want to be a philistine, but a philistine out in the real world. All those great artists you people admire, Goethe, Ruskin, were really philistines, who were in the business of being interested in poetry and statues and pictures.”

“Moncada, you are a sophist,” said Kennedy. “Possibly I am wrong in this discussion,” retorted Cæsar, “but the feeling I have is right. Artists irritate me; they seem to me like old ladies with a flatulency that prevents their breathing freely.”

Kennedy laughed at the definition.

_CHIC AND THE REVOLUTION_

“I understand hating bad kings and conquerors; but artists! What harm do they do?” said Laura.

“Artists are always doing harm to the whole of humanity. They have invented an esthetic system for the use of the rich, and they have killed the Revolution. The _chic_ put an end to the Revolution. And now everything is coming back; enthusiasm for the aristocracy, for the Church; the cult of kings. People look backward and the Revolutionary movement is paralysed. The people that irritate me most are those esthetes of the Ruskin school, for whom everything is religious: having money, buying jewels, blowing one’s nose... everything is religious. Vulgar creatures, lackeys that they are!”

“My brother is a demagogue,” said Laura ironically.

“Yes,” added Kennedy; “he doesn’t like categories.”

“But each thing has its value whether he likes it or not.”

“I do not deny different values, or even categories. There are things of great value in life; some natural, like youth, beauty, strength; others more artificial, like money, social position; but this idea of distinction, of aristocratic fineness, is a farce. It is a literary legend in the same style as the one current in novels, which tells us that the aristocrats of old families close their doors to rich Americans, or like that other story Mrs. Marchmont was talking to us of, about the Jewish ladies who were crazy to become Catholics.”

“I don’t see what you are trying to prove by all this,” said Laura.

“I am trying to prove that all there is underneath distinguished society is money, for which reason it doesn’t matter if it is destroyed. The cleverest and finest man, if he has no money, will die of hunger in a corner. Smart society, which thinks itself superior, will never receive him, because being really superior and intelligent is of no value on the market. On the other hand, when it is a question of some very rich brute, he will succeed in being accepted and fêted by the aristocrats, because money has a real value, a quotable value, or I’d better say, it is the only thing that has a quotable value.”

“What you are saying isn’t true. A man doesn’t go with the best people merely because he is rich.”

“No, certainly; not immediately. There is a preparatory process. He begins by robbing people in some miserable little shop, and feels himself democratic. Then he robs in a bank, and at that period he feels that he is a Liberal and begins to experience vaguely aristocratic ideas. If business goes splendidly, the aristocratic ideas get crystallized. Then he can come to Rome and go into ecstasies over all the humbugs of Catholicism; and after that, one is authorized to acknowledge that the religion of our fathers is a beautiful religion, and one finishes by giving a tip to the Pope, and another to Cardinal Verry, so that they will make him Prince of the Ecumenical Council or Marquis of the Holy Crusade.”

“What very stupid and false ideas,” exclaimed Laura. “Really I appreciate having a brother who talks in such a vulgar way.”

“You are an aristocrat and the truth doesn’t please you. But such are the facts. I can see the chief of the bureau of Papal titles. What fun he must have thinking up the most appropriate title for a magnate of Yankee tinned beef or for an illustrious Andean general! How magnificent it would be to gather all the Bishops _in partibus infidelium_ and all the people with Papal titles in one drawing-room! The Bishop of Nicaea discussing with the Marquis of the Holy Roman Empire; the Marchioness of Easter Sunday flirting with the Bishop of Sion, while the Patriarchs of Thebes, Damascus, and Trebizond played bridge with the sausage manufacturer, Mr. Smiles, the pork king, or with the illustrious General Pérez, the hero of Guachinanguito. What a moving spectacle it would be!”

“You are a clown!” said Laura.

“He is a finished satirist,” added Kennedy.

_CÆSAR’S PLAN_

After lunch, Laura, Kennedy, and Cæsar went into the salon, and Laura introduced the Englishman to the San Martino girls and the Countess Brenda. They stayed there chatting until four o’clock, at which time the San Martinos got ready to go out in a motor car, and Laura, with the Countess and her daughter, in a carriage.

Cæsar and Kennedy went into the street together.

“You are awfully well fixed here,” said Kennedy, “with no Americans, no Germans, or any other barbarians.”

“Yes, this hotel is a hive of petty aristocrats.”

“Your sister was telling me that you might pick out a very rich wife here, among the girls.”

“Yes, my sister would like me to live here, in a foreign country, in cowlike tranquillity, looking at pictures and statues, and travelling pointlessly. That wouldn’t be living for me; I am not a society man. I require excitement, danger.... Though I warn you that I am not in the least courageous.”

“You’re not?”

“Not at all. Not now. At moments I believe I could control myself and take a trench without wavering.”

“But you have some fixed plan, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I expect to go back to Spain, and work there.”

“At what?”

“In politics.”

“Are you patriotic?”

“Yes, up to a certain point. I have no transcendental idea of patriotism at all. Patriotism, as I interpret it, is a matter of curiosity. I believe that there is strength in Spain. If this strength could be led in a given direction, where would it get to? That is my form of patriotism; as I say, it is an experimental form.”

Kennedy looked at Cæsar with curiosity.

“And how can it help you with your plans to stay here in Rome?” he asked.

“It can help me. In Spain nobody knows me. This is the only place where I have a certain position, through being the nephew of a Cardinal. I am trying to build on that. How am I going to arrange it? I don’t know. I am feeling out my future course, taking soundings.”

“But the support you could find here would be all of a clerical nature,” said Kennedy.

“Of course.”

“But you are not Clerical!”

“No; but it is necessary for me to climb. Afterwards there will be time to change.”

“You are not taking it into account, my dear Cæsar, that the Church is still powerful and that it doesn’t pardon people who impose upon it.”

“Bah! I am not afraid of it.”

“And you were just saying you are not courageous! You are courageous, my dear man.... After this, I don’t doubt of your success.”

“I need data.”

“If I can furnish you with any....”

“Wouldn’t it be disagreeable for you to help a man who is your enemy, so far as ideas go?”

“No; because I am beginning to have some curiosity too, as to whether you will succeed in doing something. If I can be of any use, let me know.”

“I will let you know.”

Cæsar and Kennedy took a walk about the streets, and at twilight they took leave of each other affectionately.

XIV. NEW ATTEMPTS, NEW RAMBLES

_CARDINAL SPADA_

“I have arranged two interesting conferences for you,” said Kennedy, a few days later.

“My dear man!”

“Yes; one with Cardinal Spada, the other with the Abbé Tardieu. I have spoken to them both about you.”

“Splendid! What kind of people are they?”

“Cardinal Spada is a very intelligent man and a very amiable one. At heart he is a Liberal and fond of the French. As to the Abbé Tardieu, he is a very influential priest at the church of San Luigi.”

After lunch they went direct to a solitary street in the old part of Rome. At the door of the big, sad palace where Cardinal Spada lived, a porter with a cocked hat, a grey greatcoat, and a staff with a silver knob, was watching the few passers-by.

They went in by the broad entry-way, as far as a dark colonnaded court, paved with big flags which had grass between them.

In the middle of the court a fountain shot up a little way and fell into a stone basin covered with moss.

Kennedy and Cæsar mounted the wide monumental stairway; on the first floor a handsome glassed-in gallery ran around the court. The whole house had an air of solemnity and sadness. They entered the Cardinal’s office, which was a large, sad, severe room.

Monsignor Spada was a vigorous man, despite his age. He looked frank and intelligent, but one guessed that there was a hidden bitterness and desolation in him. He wore a black cassock with red edges and buttons.

Kennedy went close and was about to kneel to the Cardinal, but he prevented him.

Cæsar explained his ideas to the Cardinal with modesty. He felt that this man was worthy of all his respect.

Monsignor Spada listened attentively, and then said that he understood nothing about financial matters, but that on principle he was in favour of having the administration of all the Church’s property kept entirely at home, as in the time of Pius IX. Leo XIII had preferred to replace this paternal method by a trained bureaucracy, but the Church had not gained anything by it, and they had lost credit through unfortunate negotiations, buying land and taking mortgages.

Cæsar realized that it was useless to attempt to convince a man of the intelligence and austerity of the Cardinal, and he listened to him respectfully.

Monsignor Spada conversed amiably, he escorted them as far as the door, and shook hands when they said good-bye.

THE ABBÉ TARDIEU

Then they went to see the Abbé Tardieu. The abbé lived in the Piazza. Navona. His office, furnished in modern style, produced the effect of a violent contrast with Cardinal Spada’s sumptuous study, and yet brought it to mind. The Abbé Tardieu’s work-room was small, worldly, full of books and photographs.

The abbé, a tall young man, thin, with a rosy face, a long nose, and a mouth almost from ear to ear, had the air of an astute but jolly person, and laughed at everything said to him. He was liveliness personified. When they entered his office he was writing and smoking.

Cæsar explained about his financial knowledge, and how he had gone on acquiring it, until he got to the point where he could discern a law, a system, in things where others saw nothing more than chance. The Abbé Tardieu promised that if he knew a way to utilize Cæsar’s knowledge, he would send him word. In respect to giving him letters of introduction to influential persons in Spain, he had no objection.

They took leave of the abbé.

“All this has to go slowly,” said Kennedy.

“Of course. One cannot insist that it should happen all at once.”

_BERNINI_

“If you have nothing to do, let’s take a walk,” said the Englishman.

“If you like.”

“Have you noticed the fountains in this square?”

“No.”

“They are worth looking at.”

Cæsar contemplated the central obelisk. It is set on top of a rock hollowed out like a cavern, in the mouth of which a lion is seen. Afterwards they looked at the fountains at the ends of the square.

“The sculptures are by Bernini,” explained Kennedy. “Bernini belonged to an epoch that has been very much abused by the critics, but nowadays he is much praised. He enchants me.”

“It is rather a mixed style, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“The artist is not living?”

“For heaven’s sake, man! No.”

“Well, if he were alive today they would employ him to make those gewgaws some people present to leading ladies and to the deputies of their district. He would be the king of the manufacturers of ornate barometers.”

“It is undeniable that Bernini had a baroque taste.”

“He gives the impression of a rather pretentious and affected person.”

“Yes, he does. He was an exuberant, luxuriant Neapolitan; but when he chose he could produce marvels. Haven’t you seen his Saint Teresa?”

“No.”

“Then you must see it. Let’s take a carriage.”

They drove to the Piazza San Bernardo, a little square containing three churches and a fountain, and went into Santa Maria della Vittoria.

Kennedy went straight toward the high altar, and stopped to the left of it.

In an altar of the transept is to be seen a group carved in marble, representing the ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Cæsar gazed at it absorbed. The saint is an attractive young girl, falling backward in a sensual spasm; her eyes are closed, her mouth open, and her jaw a bit dislocated. In front of the swooning saint is a little angel who smilingly threatens her with an arrow.

“Well, what do you think of it?” said Kennedy.

“It is wonderful,” exclaimed Cæsar. “But it is a bedroom scene, only the lover has slipped away.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“It really is pretty; you seem to see the pallor of the saint’s face, the circles under her eyes, the relaxation of all her muscles. Then the angel is a little joker who stands there smiling at the ecstasy of the saint.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Kennedy; “it is all the more admirable for the very reason that it is tender, sensual, and charming, all at once.”

“However, this sort of thing is not healthy,” murmured Cæsar, “this kind of vision depletes your life-force. One wants to find the same things represented in works of art that one ought to look for in life, even if they are not to be found in life.”

“Good! Here enters the moralist. You talk like an Englishman,” exclaimed Kennedy. “Let us go along.”

“Where?”

“I have to stop in at the French Embassy a moment; then we can go where you like.”

_CORNERS OF ROME_

They went back to the carriage, and having crossed through the centre of Rome, got out in front of the Farnese Palace.

“I will be out inside of ten minutes,” said Kennedy.

The Farnese Palace aroused great admiration in Cæsar; he had never passed it before. By one of the fountains in the _piazza,_ he stood gazing at the huge square edifice, which seemed to him like a die cut from an immense block of stone.

“This really gives me an impression of grandeur and force,” he said to himself. “What a splendid palace! It looks like an ancient knight in full armour, looking indifferently at everything, sure of his own worth.”

Cæsar walked from one end of the _piazza_ to the other, absorbed in the majestic pile of stone.

Kennedy surprised him in his contemplation.

“Now will you say that you are a good philistine?”

“Ah, well, this palace is magnificent. Here are grandeur, strength, overwhelming force.”

“Yes, it is magnificent; but very uncomfortable, my French colleagues tell me.”

Kennedy related the history of the Farnese Palace to Cæsar. They went through the Via del Mascherone and came out into the Via Giulia.

“This Via Giulia is a street in a provincial capital,” said Kennedy; “always sad and deserted; a Cardinal or two who like isolation are still living here.”

At the entrance to the Via dei Farnesi, Cæsar stopped to look at two marble tablets set into the wall at the two sides of a chapel door.

Cut on the tablets were skeletons painted black; on one, the words: “Alms for the poor dead bodies found in the fields,” and on the other: “Alms for the perpetual lamp in the cemetery.”

“What does this mean?” said Cæsar.

“That is the Church of the Orison of the Confraternity of Death. The tablets are modern.”

They passed by the “Mascherone” again, and went rambling on until they reached the Synagogue and the Theatre of Marcellus.

They went through narrow streets without sidewalks; they passed across tiny squares; and it seemed like a dead city, or like the outskirts of a village. In certain streets towered high dark palaces of blackish stone. These mysterious palaces looked uninhabited; the gratings were eaten with rust, all sorts of weeds grew on the roofs, and the balconies were covered with climbing plants. At corners, set into the wall, one saw niches with glass fronts. A painted madonna, black now, with silver jewels and a crown, could be guessed at inside, and in front a little lantern swung on a cord.

Suddenly a cart would come down one of these narrow streets without sidewalks, driving very quickly and scattering the women and children seated by the gutter.

In all these poor quarters there were lanes crossed by ropes loaded with torn washing; there were wretched black shops from which an odour of grease exhaled; there were narrow streets with mounds of garbage in the middle. In the very palaces, now shorn of their grandeur, appeared the same decoration of rags waving in the breeze. In the Theatre of Marcellus one’s gaze got lost in the depths of black caves, where smiths stood out against flames.

This mixture of sumptuousness and squalor, of beauty and ugliness, was reflected in the people; young and most beautiful women were side by side with fat, filthy old ones covered with rags, their eyes gloomy, and of a type that recalled old African Jewesses.

_WHAT CAN BE READ ON WALLS_

Cæsar and Kennedy went on toward the Temple of Vesta and followed the river bank until the Tiber Embankment ended.

Here the banks were green and the river clearer and more poetic. To the left rose the Aventine with its villas; in the harbour two or three tugs were tied up; and here and there along the pier stood a crane. Evening was falling and the sky was filling with pink clouds.

They sat down awhile on the side of the road, and Cæsar entertained himself deciphering the inscriptions written in charcoal on a mud-wall.

“Do you go in for modern epigraphy?” asked Kennedy.

“Yes. It is one of the things I take pleasure in reading, in the towns I go to; the advertisements in the newspapers and the writings on the wall.”

“It’s a good kind of curiosity.”

“Yes, I believe one learns more about the real life in a town from such inscriptions than from the guide- and text-books.”

“That’s possible. And what conclusions have you drawn from your observations?”

“They are not of much value. I haven’t constructed a science of wall-inscriptions, as that fake Lambroso would have done.”

“But you will construct it surely, when you have lighted on the underlying system.”

“You think my epigraphical science is on the same level as my financial science. What a mistake!”

“All right. But tell me what you have discovered about different towns.”

“London, for instance, I have found, is childish in its inscriptions and somewhat clownish. When some sentimental foolishness doesn’t occur to a Londoner of the people, some brutality or rough joke occurs to him.”

“You are very kind,” said Kennedy, laughing.

“Paris has a vulgar, cruel taste; in the Frenchman of the people you find the tiger alternating with the monkey. There the dominant note on the walls is the patriotic note, insults to politicians, calling them assassins and thieves, and also sentiments of revenge expressed by an _‘A mort Dupin!’_ or _‘A mort Duval!’_ Moreover, there is a great enthusiasm for the guillotine.”

“And Madrid?”

“Madrid is at heart a rude, moral town with little imagination, and the epigraphs on the walls and benches are primitive.”

“And in Rome what do you find?”

“Here one finds a mixture of pornography, romanticism, and politics. A heart pierced by an arrow and poetic phrases, alternate with some enormous piece of filthiness and with hurrahs for Anarchy or for the _‘Papa-re.’_”

“Well done!” said Kennedy; “I can see that the branch of epigraphy you practise amounts to something. It should be systematized and given a name.”

“What do you think we should name it? Wallography?”

“Very good.”

“And one of these fine days we can systematize it. Now we might go and get dinner.”

They took a tram which was coming back from St. Paul’s beyond the Walls, and returned to the heart of the city.

_THE MONK WITH THE RED NOSE_

The next day Cæsar was finishing dressing when the servant told him that a gentleman was waiting for him.

“Who is it?” asked Cæsar.

“It’s a monk.”

Cæsar went to the salon and there found a tall monk with an evil face, a red nose, and a worn habit.

Cæsar recalled having seen him, but didn’t know where.

“What can I do for you?” asked Cæsar.

“I come from His Eminence, Cardinal Fort. I must speak with you.”

“Let’s go into the dining-room. We shall be alone there.”

“It would be better to talk in your room.”

“No, there is no one here. Besides, I have to eat breakfast. Will you join me?”

“No, thanks,” said the monk.

Cæsar remembered having seen that face in the Altemps palace. He was doubtless one of the domestic monks who had been with the Abbé Preciozi.

The waiter came bringing Cæsar’s breakfast. “Will you tell me what it is?” said Cæsar to the ecclesiastic, while he filled his cup.

The monk waited until the waiter was gone, and then said in a hard voice:

“His Eminence the Cardinal sent me to bid you not to present yourself anywhere again, giving his name.”

“What? What does this mean?” asked Cæsar, calmly.

“It means that His Eminence has found out about your intrigues and machinations.”

“Intrigues? What intrigues were those?”

“You know perfectly well. And His Eminence forbids you to continue in that direction.”

“His Eminence forbids me to pay calls? And for what reason?”

“Because you have used his name to introduce yourself into certain places.”

“It is not true.”

“You have told people you went to that you are Cardinal Fort’s nephew.”

“And I am not?” asked Cæsar, after taking a swallow of coffee.

“You are trying to make use of the relationship, we don’t know with what end in view.”

“I am trying to make use of my relationship to Cardinal Fort? Why shouldn’t I?”

“You admit it?”

“Yes, I admit it. People are such imbeciles that they think it is an honour to have a Cardinal in the family; I take advantage of this stupid idea, although I do not share it, because for me a Cardinal is merely an object of curiosity, an object for an archeological museum....”

Cæsar paused, because the monk’s countenance was growing dark. In the twilight of his pallid face, his nose looked like a comet portending some public calamity.

“Poor wretch!” murmured the monk. “You do not know what you are saying. You are blaspheming. You are offending God.” “Do you really believe that God has any relation to my uncle?” asked Cæsar, paying more attention to his toast than to his visitor.

And then he added:

“The truth is that it would be extravagant behaviour on the part of God.”

The monk looked at Cæsar with terrible eyes. Those grey eyes of his, under their long, black, thick brows, shot lightning.

“Poor wretch!” repeated the monk. “You ought to have more respect for things above you.”

Cæsar arose.

“You are bothering me and preventing me from drinking my coffee,” he said, with exquisite politeness, and touched the bell.

“Be careful!” exclaimed the monk, seizing Cæsar’s arm with violence.

“Don’t you touch me again,” said Cæsar, pulling away violently, his face pale and his eyes flashing. “If you do, I have a revolver here with five chambers, and I shall take pleasure in emptying them one by one, taking that lighthouse you carry about for a nose, as my target.”

“Fire it if you dare.”

Fortunately the waiter had come in on hearing the bell.

“Do you wish anything, sir?” he asked.

“Yes, please escort this clerical gentleman to the door, and tell him on the way not to come back here.”

Days later Cæsar found out that there had been a great disturbance at the Altemps palace in consequence of the calls he had made. Preciozi had been punished and sent away from Rome, and the various Spanish monasteries and colleges warned not to receive Cæsar.

XV. GIOVANNI BATTISTA, PAGAN

“My dear Cæsar,” said Kennedy, “I believe it will be very difficult for you to find what you want by looking for it. You ought to leave it a little to chance.”

“Abandon myself to events as they arrive? All right, it seems a good idea.”

“Then if you find something practicable, utilize it.”

Kennedy took his friend to a statue-shop where he used to pass some of his hours. The shop was in a lane near the Forum, and its stock was in antiques, majolicas, and plaster casts of pagan gods.

The shop was dark and rather gloomy, with a small court at the back covered with vines. The proprietor was an old man, with a moustache, an imperial, and a shock of white hair. His name was Giovanni Battista Lanza. He professed revolutionary ideas and had great enthusiasm about Mazzini. He expressed himself in an ironical and malicious manner.

Signora Vittoria, his wife, was a grumbling old woman, rather devoted to wine. She spoke like a Roman of the lowest class, was olive-coloured and wrinkled, and of her former beauty there remained only her very black eyes and hair that was still black.

The daughter, Simonetta, a girl who resembled her father, blond, with the build of a goddess, was the one that waited on customers and kept the accounts.

Simonetta, being the manager, divided up the profits; the elder son was head of the workshop and he made the most money; then came two workmen from outside; and then the father who still got his day’s wages, out of consideration for his age; and finally the younger son, twelve or fourteen years old, who was an apprentice.

Simonetta gave her mother what was indispensable for household expenses and managed the rest herself.

Kennedy retailed this information the first day they went to Giovanni Battista Lanza’s house. Cæsar could see Simonetta keeping the books, while the small brother, in a white blouse that came to his heels, was chasing a dog, holding a pipe in his hand by the thick part, as if it were a pistol, the dog barking and hanging on to the blouse, the small boy shrieking and laughing, when Signora Vittoria came bawling out.

Kennedy presented Simonetta to his friend Cæsar, and she smiled and gave her hand.

“Is Signore Giovanni Battista here?” Kennedy asked Signora Vittoria.

“Yes, he is in the court.” she answered in her gloomy way.

“Is something wrong with your mamma?” said Kennedy to Simonetta.

“Nothing.”

They went into the court and Giovanni Battista arose, very dignified, and bowed to Cæsar. The elder son and the two workmen in white blouses and paper caps were busy with water and wires, cleaning a plaster mould they had just emptied.

The mould was a big has-relief of the Way of the Cross. Giovanni Battista permitted himself various jocose remarks about the Way of the Cross, which his son and the other two workmen heard with great indifference; but while he was still emptying his store of anti-Christian irony, the voice of Signora Vittoria was heard, crying domineeringly:

“Giovanni Battista!”

“What is it?”

“That’s enough, that’s enough! I can hear you from here.”

“That’s my wife,” said Giovanni Battista, “she doesn’t like me to be lacking in respect for plaster saints.” “You are a pagan!” screamed the old woman. “You shall see, you shall see what will happen to you.”

“What do you expect to have happen to me, darling?”

“Leave her alone,” exclaimed the elder son, ill at ease; “you always have to be making mother fly into a rage.”

“No, my boy, no; she is the one who makes me fly into a rage.”

“Giovanni Battista is used to living among gods,” said Kennedy, “and he despises saints.”

“No, no,” replied the cast-maker; “some saints are all right. If all the churches had figures by Donatello or Robbia, I would go to church oftener; but to go and look at those statues in the Jesuit churches, those figures with their arms spread and their eyes rolling.... Oh, no! I cannot look at such things.”

Cæsar could see that Giovanni Battista expressed himself very well; but that he was not precisely a star when it came to working. After the mould for the bas-relief was cleaned and fixed, the cast-maker invited Cæsar and Kennedy to have a glass of wine in a wine-shop near by.

“How’s this, are you leaving already, father?” said Simonetta, as he went through the shop to get to the street.

“I’m coming back, I’m coming back right away.”

_SUPERSTITIONS_

The three of them went to a rather dirty tavern in the same lane, and settled themselves by the window. This post was a good point of observation for that narrow street, so crowded and so picturesque.

Workmen went by, and itinerant vendors, women with kerchiefs, half head-dress and half muffler, and with black eyes and expressive faces. Opposite was a booth of coloured candies, dried figs strung on a reed, and various kinds of sweets.

A wine-cart passed, and Kennedy made Cæsar observe how decorative it was with its big arm-seat in the middle and its hood above, like a prompter’s box.

Giovanni Battista ordered a flask of wine for the three of them. While he chatted and drank, friends of his came to greet them. They were men with beards, long hair, and soft hats, of the Garbaldi and Verdi type so abundant in Italy.

Among them were two serious old men; one was a model, a native of Frascati, with the face of a venerable apostle; the other, for contrast, looked like a buffoon and was the possessor of a grotesque nose, long, thin at the end and adorned with a red wart.

“My wife has a deadly hatred for all of them,” said Giovanni Battista, laughing.

“And why so?” asked Cæsar.

“Because we talk politics and sometimes they ask me for a few pennies....”

“Your wife must have a lively temper,...” said Cæsar.

“Yes, an unhappy disposition; good, awfully good; but very superstitious. Christianity has produced nothing but superstitions.”

“Giovanni Battista is a pagan, as his wife well says,” asserted Kennedy.

“What superstitions has your wife?” asked Cæsar.

“All of them. Romans are very superstitious and my wife is a Roman. If you see a hunchback, it is good luck; if you see three, then your luck is magnificent and you have to swallow your saliva three times; on the other hand, if you see a humpbacked woman it is a bad omen and you must spit on the ground to keep away the _jettatura_. Three priests together is a very good sign. We ought all to get along very well in Rome, because we see three and up to thirty priests together.”

“A spider is also very significant,” said Kennedy; “in the morning it is of bad augury, and in the evening good.”

“And at noon?” asked Cæsar.

“At noon,” answered Lanza, laughing, “it means nothing to speak of. But if you wish to make sure whether it is a good auspice or a bad, you kill the spider and count its legs. If they are an even number, it is a good omen; if uneven, bad.”

“But I believe spiders always have an even number of legs,” said Cæsar.

“Certainly,” responded the old man; “but my wife swears they do not; that she has seen many with seven and nine legs. It is religious unreasonableness.”

“Are there many people like that, so credulous?” asked Cæsar.

“Oh, lots,” replied Lanza; “in the shops you will find amulets, horns, hands made of coral or horseshoes, all to keep away bad luck. My wife and the neighbour women play the lottery, by combining the numbers of their birthdays, and the ages of their fathers, their mothers, and their children. When some relative dies, they make a magic combination of the dates of birth and death, the day and the month, and buy a lottery ticket. They never win; and instead of realizing that their systems are of no avail, they say that they omitted to count in the number of letters in the name or something of that sort. It is comical, so much religion and so much superstition.”

“But you confuse religion and superstition, my friend,” said Kennedy.

“It’s all the same,” answered the old man, smiling his suavely ironical smile. “There is nothing except Nature.”

“You do not believe in miracles, Giovanni Battista?” asked the Englishman.

“Yes, I believe in the earth’s miracles, making trees and flowers grow, and the miracle of children’s being born from their mothers. The other miracles I do not believe in. What for? They are so insignificant beside the works of Nature!”

“He is a pagan,” Kennedy again stated.

_YOUNG PAINTERS_

They were chatting, when three young lads came into the tavern, all three having the air of artists, black clothes, soft hats, flowing cravats, long hair, and pipes. “Two of them are fellow-countrymen of yours,” Kennedy told Cæsar.

“They are Spanish painters,” the old man added. “The other is a sculptor who has been in the Argentine, and he talks Spanish too.”

The three entered and sat down at the same table and were introduced to Cæsar. Everybody chattered. Buonacossi, the Italian, was a real type. Of very low stature, he had a giant’s torso and strong little legs. His head was like a woe-begone eagle, his nose hooked, thin, and reddish, eyes round, and hair black.

Buonacossi proved to be gay, exuberant, changeable, and full of vehemence.

He explained his artistic ideas with picturesque warmth, mingling them with blasphemies and curses. Things struck him as the best or the worst in the world. For him there doubtless were no middle terms.

One of the two Spaniards was serious, grave, jaundiced, sour-visaged, and named Cortés; the other, large, ordinary, fleshy, and coarse, seemed rather a bully.

Giovanni Battista was not able to be long outside the workshop, no doubt because his conscience troubled him, and though with difficulty, he got up and left. Kennedy, Cæsar, and the two Spaniards went toward the Piazza, del Campidoglio, and Buonacossi marched off in the opposite direction.

On reaching the Via Nazionale, Kennedy took his leave and Cæsar remained with the two Spaniards. The red, fleshy one, who had the air of a bully, started in to make fun of the Italians, and to mimic their bows and salutes; then he said that he had an engagement with a woman and made haste to take his leave.

When he had gone, the grave Spaniard with the sour face, said to Cæsar:

“That chap is like the dandies here; that’s why he imitates them so well.”

Afterwards Cortés talked about his studies in painting; he didn’t get on well, he had no money, and anyway Rome didn’t please him at all. Everything seemed wrong to him, absurd, ridiculous.

Cæsar, after he had said good-bye to him, murmured: “The truth is that we Spaniards are impossible people.”

XVI. THE PORTRAIT OF A POPE

Two or three days later Cæsar met the Spaniard Cortés in the Piazza Colonna. They bowed. The thin, sour-looking painter was walking with a beardless young German, red and snub-nosed. This young man was a painter too, Cortés said; he wore a green hat with a cock’s feather, a blue cape, thick eyeglasses, big boots, and had a certain air of being a blond Chinaman.

“Would you like to come to the Doria gallery with us?” asked Cortés.

“What is there to see there?”

“A stupendous portrait by Velázquez.”

“I warn you that I know nothing about pictures.”

“Nobody does,” Cortés declared roundly. “Everybody says what he thinks.”

“Is the gallery near here?”

“Yes, just a step.”