Chapter VI: Part 6

The serious business of the day over, we were free to explore the country. Ercole and the piebald took us for a nineteen-mile drive around the island, which rises sharply from the sea to its highest point, Mt. Epomeo. The vineyards wrap Ischia from seashore to mountain peak in a shimmering screen of green. The vines hang from tree to tree, making a leafy roof overhead and green sun-pierced walls to the long alleys, where innumerable classic bunches are slowly ripening. The grapes are still small and immature, but exquisite in form and color. In October, the season of the vintage, this must be the most beautiful place on earth. Here one understands why the Roman soldiers in Britain, when they first saw the Kentish hop vines, thought they had found the nearest thing to the grape that savage northland produced. In their efforts to make wine from hops they produced the first beer made in England.

On our way home we met a pair of boys driving a donkey laden with the coarse gray pottery which has been made here since the days of the Romans. The _creta_ (gray clay) from which it is made, looks very like the mud used at the _stabilimento_. We stopped to examine the mugs, the jugs, the donkey, and his astonishing garments.

“Behold, Madama, _l’asino del colonello_!” said Ercole.

“Who is the colonel?”

“_Un gran signore, un Inglese._ He comes here every year for the baths.”

“What can a _gran signore_ do with this poor little animal?”

“He protects it. When he first saw this donkey, the poor beast being much afflicted with sores, was sadly tormented by flies. The _colonello_ taking pity upon it provided pantaloons--two pair; a pair for the hind legs, a pair for the fore legs, as you perceive. He also pays the boys two francs a month to treat the creature well; he provides petroleum to bathe its sores, and now and again orders it a sea bath. It is his idea. He may be right. How do I know? With respect, the soul of his grandmother may have entered the body of that ass.”

A little further on Ercole drew up the piebald again.

“Behold other of the _colonello’s_ beneficiaries,” he said. Two tiny dwarfs saluted us, asking with Ischian gentleness for alms. There was no whine to their voices, no consciousness of degradation, nothing of that brazen effrontery of the Neapolitan beggar, which makes one despair of the regeneration of the Neapolitan “submerged tenth”!

“_Sono buoni ed onesti_ (They are good and honest),” said Ercole, adding a soldo from his own pocket to what J. gave them.

“They are called Pasquale and Restituta. It is only a few years that they have been obliged to beg. They worked at their trades--he at brick making, she at straw braiding; they are past working now. They are not very old, but such people have little vigor. I remember their wedding. All the town was there, the _sindaco_ and the schoolmaster as well. We all gave something for their housekeeping, one a goat, one a pair of fowls, one a piece of furniture. If you could have seen their little marriage-bed, _Signora mia_, it was like a doll’s bed.”

We drove along for another mile or two, passed the straw factory, where we were obliged to buy some ugly fans, out of respect to Ercole’s views. On the Marina he stopped again to let us see “_Il Fungo_,” a big mushroom-shaped rock in the sea. The setting sun touched Procida into an unearthly beauty, it shone like the golden city of Jerusalem.

“There is Teodora!” said Ercole, pointing with his whip to a group of sailors sitting on the bottom of an overturned boat. In their midst sat a strange figure mending a net.

“You see that old woman sewing? She is a deaf-mute, and she believes that she is a man. If it were true it would be miraculous, _perché ha fatto una figlia_ (because she has “made” a daughter). She avoids all women, spends all her time with the fishermen. As she cannot talk and mends their nets for them--they do not object.”

Teodora laid down the long black cigar she was smoking and took off her hat to us. Save for a short dark skirt she was dressed like a man.

“It is against the law for a woman to wear pantaloons,” Ercole explained.

“But not for asses or men?”

Ercole laughed immoderately--part of his pleasant flattery.

We made the ascent of Mt. Epomeo; after completing the course of eleven baths, we wished to put to the test what they had done for me. We drove to Fontana, taking our luncheon with us--why do things taste best out of a basket? We left Ercole and the piebald at the inn and climbed to the summit of the extinct volcano where there is a curious hermitage dedicated to St. Nicola cut out of the volcanic tufa rock. The view from here is not so fine as it is half way up the mountain. It is rather too much like looking down upon a dissected map, but it does give one a wonderful geographical sensation, fixes the relations between the Sorrentine peninsula, Vesuvius, the islands of the Sirens, Capri, the promontory of Circeo (where Circe lived), Procida the golden, and the other points of this earthly paradise, between Terracina on the north and the Punta di Campanella on the south. We were helped to orient ourselves by Lucia, a “lady guide,” who joined us half way up the mountain. She is a handsome old woman with wild white hair, bright blue eyes, and a shrewd peasant face. She hailed me at sight as an American.

“How do you know that I am not English?” I asked.

“I can always recognize the _Americani, Signora mia_.”

“By what sign do you know us?” I asked.

“By the expression of the countenance.”

When I first came to Italy I should have scoffed at this; now I have lived away from home so long that I too recognize the American expression,--nervous, sensitive, masterful,--the Look Dominant!

“_Si vede Procida, La Spagna, io veggio a te!_” Lucia crooned a stave of the old Neapolitan song, Funiculi Funicula, in a cracked voice.

“Yes, yes, I know both _Americani ed Inglesi_; my daughter’s husband is an _Inglese_.”

“Where did she meet him?”

“Here on Mt. Epomeo, where else? _Una bella ragazza_ (She was a pretty girl)! You may not believe it, Signori, but there is no difference between my daughter and me save a matter of fifteen years. At fifty she is just what I was,--at sixteen she was her mother over again. You would not think it, eh? Well, one can speak about it, now that one is so old. She was called the most beautiful girl in all Ischia. How do I know if it was true? I could not think so, you see, because she was myself over again, and I never saw any difference between myself and the other girls.”

“I hope your daughter has a good husband.”

“_Grazie a Dio_, a good husband, yes, yes, a good husband.”

“Who was that pretty girl at the inn down at Fontana?” J. asked.

“_Bella? quella ragazza? faccia di patate_ (Pretty? that girl? a potato face)! Ai! if you could have seen my Eva! The Madonna herself was not more beautiful. That girl, the innkeeper’s daughter, is as awkward as a cow, and she squints besides, as her mother did before her.”

“_No, no_,” J. protested; “_è un bel pezzo di donna_ (she is a fine piece of a woman).”

Lucia gave him a keen look. “The signore should not laugh at the poor girl. _Il buon Dio_ does not give a handsome face to every woman.”

“Fortunately, for the peace of the world, that is true.”

“But the signore is an artist? one sees that from his manner of looking at things. Well, if the innkeeper’s Anna is a pretty girl, call me a _bruttona_ (big ugly thing). If my daughter had not been out of the common, do you think a rich gentleman would have married her? Yes, yes, I am telling you the truth. She does no work, they live in a palazzo, my daughter has servants to wait on her, do you believe it? she does not even comb her own hair! And she has jewels, such diamonds! For every child she gives him, he gives her a great pearl, each bigger than the last.”

“How many children have they?”

“_Ha fatto quattro maschi e tre femmine_ (She has borne four males and three females), all straight and well formed. The youngest is Lucia, for the poor old _nonna_ (grandmother) at Ischia.”

“Where do they live?”

She pointed across the sea. “What do I know of foreign countries? I am of the island. Here I was born, here I shall die.”

“You must be very proud of your grandchildren.” This is always a safe remark.

“_Ha ragione, eccellenza, guardi_ (You are right, excellency, observe), I am only a poor _ignorante_, but I made the great _matrimonio_ for my daughter. Eva was always here with me, upon the flanks of Epomeo, guiding the foreigners, but for me she would be here still, as my mother and her mother before her were here. In those days before the _terremoto_ many strangers came to Epomeo. From the first moment the young _Inglese_ saw the girl he was _innamorato_. He came every day, he pretended to sketch the mountain. I knew he was no artist; why, any one could see he was _un gran signore_ by the way he spent his money. One day he asked leave to paint my daughter. I said, ’_Scuse, Signore_, you are a rich gentleman, I am only a beggar, _ma io sono padrona della mia figlivola_ (I am the mistress of my little daughter). The day Eva takes a husband he will be _padrone_; till that time, _scusi, Signore, ma sono padrona io_!’ Would you believe it? a week from that day Eva and the _Inglese_ were married by the priest who married her father and mother and who gave her the holy rite of baptism.”

Sing me a song of the wisdom of old women!

I was bent upon exploring the hermitage, in spite of Lucia. The hermit has departed the way of hermits and others. In his stead reigns Orlando, a cross old man, between whom and Lucia there is war to the knife.

“Their excellencies are not going down without seeing the hermitage?” he whined.

“Certainly not,” J. assured him.

“Do not go in; it is a dirty hole, and there is nothing to see,” whispered Lucia, catching me by the sleeve.

“That silly old woman is tiring out the lady,” said Orlando to J.; “drive her away, she is a pest.” As I put my foot on the lowest step of the rough-hewn rock stairway leading to the hermitage, Lucia fell back and said no more. I was evidently out of her domain and in the enemy’s territory. As she had said, there was little to see in the two rooms cut out of the living rock. Orlando’s bed, a pile of straw, occupied the outer room, the inner cell served as his kitchen and larder. He offered bread and wine; we were firm in refusing refreshment; his feelings were soothed by a _mancia_, and by telling him we should come again and take his photograph (our kodak had been forgotten).

“The next time their excellencies come they must not let that old _chiacchierone_ (gossip) hang on to them. She pesters the travellers so with her talk that she frightens them away. Truly you will find it set down in the red book of the strangers (Baedeker) that a guide is unnecessary, though a few _soldi_ are due to the person living in the hermitage, who is ready and able to explain intelligently the view and the locality.”

At the foot of the steps Lucia again took us in charge, after an exchange of malevolent glances with Orlando.

“_Stregona_ (Big old witch),” Orlando muttered.

“_Birbacaione_ (Big rogue),” mumbled Lucia.

She came down with us as far as the cab.

“_Addio, eccellenza, e mille grazie._”

“_Addio_, Lucia, and thanks to you.” At the turn of the road we looked back and saw the strong, bent little woman leaning against the wall, waiting to guide the next _forestieri_ who might turn up.

“Is it true what Lucia tells us about her daughter?” I asked Ercole.

“Who knows? these old women gossip to amuse strangers. There is a new story for every day in the week. We must not believe everything that we hear.”

Was Ercole jealous, too?

The next time I saw Olivetta she began to chatter about Lucia.

“She told you about her daughter? Yes? It is quite true. The girl caught the fancy of a rich milord, and he married her. One thing I am sure Lucia did not tell you. Her son-in-law has bought her a nice cottage, the best house in Fontana, he gives her a handsome income; truly, Lucia is rich, but she is avaricious. I ask you, does she not look like a beggar? That is all a comedy; she has good clothes and shoes. Truly, I should not be surprised if, when she dies, we should find that Lucia is the richest woman in Ischia; it is a shame that she should ask money from the strangers.”

“Perhaps it is not the money so much as the occupation Lucia likes,” I suggested.

“_Ma ché_, she is robbing others who would gladly take her place. There is the excellent Orlando, he is my relation. Poor man, he is lame and cannot work. As long as Lucia remains there is no chance for another guide; _è fina quella donna_ (she is a sharp one, that woman). Ask the _colonello_,--he can tell you all about Lucia and her daughter.”

The _colonello_, protector of the poor and purveyor of pantaloons to suffering donkeys, is at this hotel. He is a delightful, warm-blooded creature, who cannot be quite comfortable unless everybody else in sight--even an ass--is comfortable too. Like the others, he had a great deal to say about Lucia; of all the personages we have met--the place is full of personages--she seems to have the most marked character.

“Gad, sir, the old woman is right,” said the colonel. “The day she goes out of the guide business she will go to pieces. Why should she give up her job because her daughter has married into another sphere? I’m d--d if I don’t like her spirit!”

“What is the daughter like?” I asked.

“She is a good sort,” said the colonel. “When her husband took her to his mother’s house, what do you suppose they did with her? sent her to school, had her taught like a child. She learned many things, how to talk small talk, how to behave at table, how to dress and all the rest of it. When they thought she had learned enough she came home to her husband. He gave a great dinner to introduce her to his family--oh, they all acted sensibly. The bride behaved very nicely and quietly, they all liked her for her pretty manners (you know the people hereabouts have excellent manners, better than half the aristocracy at home, I tell them) as well as for her remarkable beauty; she must have been worth seeing in those days. After the dinner was over and the guests had left the dining-room, the husband coming back for something found his wife going round the table collecting the ends of the cigars the men had left on their plates.

“‘What on earth do you want with those nasty things?’ he asked.

“‘I shall send them to my poor old father at Ischia!’

“She had been in the habit of picking up the ends of the travellers’ cigars for the old man. Do you wonder that she has made a good wife and mother? I tell you she has a good heart; if a woman has that, what else matters?”

When we made our second trip to Epomeo to keep faith with Orlando, Lucia was nowhere visible; we made the ascent without her. Orlando held undisputed possession of Epomeo.

“Where is your friend Lucia?” we asked.

He fairly spluttered, “_Una vecchiarella stupida senza educazione_ (A stupid old woman without education)! Do you know what I believe? I believe that her daughter and son-in-law are in Ischia. When they are on the island, Lucia sits all day at her window dressed in her Sunday clothes. To see her you would never fancy that she was the guide to Mt. Epomeo--not that there is any need of a guide, as you yourselves perceive.”

On our way through Fontana we passed a neat cottage, caught a whiff of fragrance of oleanders in the garden, a glimpse of an old woman sitting bolt upright in an armchair, a flash from her sharp blue eyes. It was Lucia, our little old guide, her wild hair neatly coifed by a peasant cap; she sat up as if she were sitting for her photograph, stiff, uncomfortable, wretched in her finery.

That night at the hotel an interesting couple who had arrived since the morning sat opposite to us at dinner; a tall, silent man who looked as if he might have been in the army, and a grave, handsome woman of fifty. She has a certain noble amplitude of brow, a width between the eyes, a calm quality of face and figure, very restful in contrast to certain giddy young ladies of her age who enliven the table d’hote. She speaks English with a slight accent. We made acquaintance over the mustard, which we both prefer _à l’Anglaise_. The gentleman spoke of Ischia and the neighboring parts of the country with such familiarity that I asked him about my enchanted island, Procida.

“It is such an ideal looking place that it ought only to be inhabited by beautiful rose-colored maidens,” I said.

He looked at his wife as he answered me.

“Ischia is the island for handsome women,” he said. “Procida is best seen as you have seen it, from a distance. It is the place where the Italian convicts are sent.”

Was not that a sad pricking of a rainbow bubble? His next words atoned for that shattered illusion; they were addressed to his wife.

“Eva, my dear,” he said, “let me give you a little of this _vino di paese_ (wine of the country). It comes from the _vigna_ on Mt. Epomeo, it is the kind you used to like when you were a girl.”

At the name Eva I looked at the _colonello_, who was devouring green figs at the end of the table. He answered my questioning look by one of acquiesence.

Orlando was right! Lucia’s daughter and the husband of Lucia’s daughter had come to Ischia to see Lucia!

“May I trouble you to hand me that other plate of figs?” said the _colonello_. “The figs of Ischia are the finest in the world. I sometimes wonder how many figs a man may eat and live.”

Suddenly light dawned! The _colonello_ is undoubtedly the “Old Person of Ischia.” On the flanks of Epomeo we had looked for him, in the sun-pierced alleys of Ischian vineyards, among the sailors on the Marina, even in the halls of the _stabilimento_--our quest, the magnet that drew us out of the path of duty (_that_ led back to Rome and the studio), the hero of Lear’s verse. He was here, sleeping under the same roof with us, sitting at the same table! Have not we ourselves seen him eat scores, possibly hundreds of figs? If we could postpone our return to Rome we should doubtless get up into the thousands, for,--

“There was an old person of Ischia,
Whose conduct grew friskier and friskier.
He danced hornpipes and jigs,
And ate thousands of figs,
This lively old person of Ischia.”

XI

OLD AND NEW ROME--PALESTRINA

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, 1899.

Sunday afternoon we went over to hear vespers at St. Peter’s (the music was Palestrina’s). The service was celebrated in the gorgeous Cappella del Coro. It must have been some especial _festa_, for the chapel was even more magnificent than usual, the priests wore extra fine flowered brocade robes, the air was bluer and heavier with incense, there were more candles. The slumbrous canons, in purple gowns and gray squirrel-skin capes, dozed in their fretted stalls. Over their heads, in the carved and gilded gallery, stood the choristers, two by two, each pair holding between them a quaint, black-lettered music book; behind the choir was the organ, in front, the leader, baton in hand. They all wore white lace-trimmed cottas over black gowns. Their voices, dominated by the piercing sweetness of the Pope’s angel, a male soprano, filled the chapel with an almost overpowering melody, that flowed through the gilded gates and floated out into the distant aisles and transepts of the great church.

Wandering about after service, we came upon the tomb of Palestrina, in the transept near the chapel where his _magnificat_ had rung out so gloriously.

“The Church has a long memory for its saints, sinners, and master-workmen. If I thought it would remember me, now, I would take the vows to-morrow,” somebody said in my ear. It was Patsy.

“Jolly to think,” he went on, “of the old boy who led that choir and composed that music for ’em--he died, you know, in 1594,--lying here within the smell of the incense, within the sound of his own harmonics.” Patsy’s only instrument is the guitar.

“I like incense,” he went on; “the Roman populace smells no sweeter than in the days Shakespeare wrote about them; but the real value of incense, of course, lies in its being a germ destroyer, a safeguard to the priest. In the old days, when people did not know so much about health as they do now, they used to come to church to give thanks for recovery from smallpox while still in a state to give it to others.”

Here Helen came up. We had scarcely finished asking her news when Mr. Z---- joined us.

“Looking at the tomb of Palestrina?” he said. “That reminds me, would you ladies like to go and see the town from which he took his name? It is an opportunity, the greatest living authority on polygonal walls is going with us.”

“I never heard of a polygonal wall,” Helen began. (“You’d not give a hoot to see one,” murmured Patsy.) “But I would go anywhere for a day in the country this divine weather, provided the company was good.”

“And the luncheon,” Patsy put in.

Mr. Z---- smiled: “I think the ladies may trust me for that,” he said. Then he gave Helen and me directions for meeting at the station and left us.

“Z---- is a silly old gloat, but there is no malice in him,” Patsy said. “His Antonio is the best cook in Rome. It is part of the law of compensation that the biggest bores always have the best _chefs_.”

We had perfect weather for the trip to Palestrina. All the women, like Helen, had come for the day’s outing in the country, the men were grimly intent upon polygonal walls--all but one--Patsy, the uninvited, who turned up at the station and said he “would go along to have a try at the _vino di paese_ and to see if the girls of Palestrina were as pretty as the girls of Præneste.” As we did not feel responsible for him (he is a relation of the Z----’s) we were thankful to see his handsome face. Express trains do not stop at Palestrina, so we had to take a local, which crawled. One does not mind crawling across the Campagna, in sight of the trees and tombs of the Via Appia, beside the long lines of brown aqueducts, broken here and there into picturesque groups of arches. As we approached the Alban hills we found a hazy scarf of pink gauze spread about their feet and half way up to their knees; on nearer view this proved to be fruit trees in blossom.

At the dull little station of Monte Compatri Colonna there was a delay. Patsy, in search of diversion, tried to get out of the carriage. The door was locked. He put a long leg out of the window and made as if he would climb out. Excitement among the peasants on the platform. Everybody talked at once. Four women and three men rushed to the window.

“_Eccellenza_, for charity’s sake, have patience! The door is capable of being opened!” urged the vendor of _passa tempi_ (salted melon seeds).

An old woman, with a basket of assorted fruits, threw herself passionately in the breach.

“For the love of the Madonna, _illustrissimo_, have a care, you will do yourself an injury. The door opens, I assure you it is true. That _ignorante_ of a guard. Where has he gone? The _capo stazione_ himself should interest himself in your _signoria_.”

Patsy put out his head and one arm. The vendor of the straw-covered flasks of red and white wine joined the group.

“This is a serious affair, _amici miei_,” he said. “Signori, restrain the gentleman! Between ourselves now, is he mad? If so, my brother, who is of the _carabinieri_, can easily be summoned.”

Patsy by this time had got one shoulder out and was frantically waving an arm and a leg. That was too much for the immemorial beggar with the head and beard of Jove, who for forty years has sat upon that platform and begged. He laid down his tray of matches and hurried off on one leg and a crutch to the office of the _capo stazione_. Meanwhile, the guard came out of the restaurant furtively wiping his moustache. He rushed at the carriage with his key. Only one person on the platform had maintained his equilibrium,--the waiter from the restaurant, a man of the world, continued to walk calmly up and down the platform, offering his atrocious chiccory brew--he called it coffee--to the other passengers. He rather superciliously let us alone.

The guard hurried to the window. “I asked the signori before I allowed myself to attend to my duties at Colonna if any of the illustrious ones desired to descend. You yourself, excellency, assured me you desired nothing!” He fitted the key to the door as he spoke.

“Behold, did I not speak the truth?” said the fruit seller; “am I not right? the door opens.”

Patsy leaned comfortably back in the corner and lighted a cigarette. The _capo stazione_ arrived, hastily buttoning his gold-laced coat. He looked daggers at the guard.

“What is wrong? If there has been any inattention it shall be reported. How is this? One of the travellers obliged to get out of the window, and now that the door is open nobody alights?”

“That gentleman,” said Patsy, nodding towards Mr. Z----, “wished to see if he could climb out of the window. Do not trouble yourselves, he is not mad, merely an original. So sorry you should have been disturbed.” The _capo_ bowed politely to Patsy, fixed poor Z---- with a freezing stare, and returned with olympian dignity to that stuffy seat of authority, his office. The Jove-like beggar, leaning on his crutch, in his curiosity to see us forgot to beg.

“_Un fiasco di vino!_” said the wine seller, thrusting a flask into the carriage.

“_Portugalli!_” shrilled the old fruit woman.

“_Caffè due soldi la tazza_ (Coffee two cents a cup)!” cried the waiter.

“_Pronti_ (Ready)!” roared the guard.

“_Taratara!_” screamed the station master’s horn.

“_Partenza!_” and that was the last we saw of Monte Compatri Colonna.

Between Colonna and Palestrina Patsy allowed us to enjoy the view, really well worth seeing. We had enchanting glimpses of the Alban, Sabine, and Volscian mountains; the valleys between blazed with wild-flowers. At the station the party divided, Mr. Z----, the expert on polygonal walls, and the rest going in the stage, Patsy, Helen, and ourselves crowding into a _botte_.

“The trouble with those fellows is,” said Patsy, “that they know too much of one thing and too little of anything else. You’d be talked to death and sick of the subject if I had not come along to save your lives.”

“I _should_ like to know what we have come to see,” I feebly protested.

“Nonsense,” said Helen, “they have crammed it all out of books, you can cram a great deal better afterwards. It takes the edge off to read too much about a thing before you see it. Don’t read the guide-book till you have seen the thing and got your own impression neat.”

The road from the station leads up a sharp incline, winding through the steep and dirty streets of Palestrina, a hillside town, which stands upon the ruins of the Colonna’s mediæval stronghold, which again stands upon the ancient town of Præneste, extolled by the Latin poets. That Præneste, with its magnificent Temple of Fortune, the resort of the fashionable Romans of the days of Mæcenas, seems modern compared to the ancient Præneste, whose ruins are found beneath it, and whose _arx_ was the spot chosen for the picnic luncheon. It was a stiff climb. We left the carriage at Castel San Pietro and scrambled to the summit where that magnificent and indomitable race--Castellane calls them the _Italiotti_--built their citadel. Here we saw the ruins of the polygonal (we used to call them cyclopean) walls. Astonishing structures, making the walls of the three later periods--the latest, exquisite brick-work of the Empire--seem by comparison like the work of children! The huge rocks are fitted together without cement of any sort, and in some places the walls look as solid as the day they were built, long before Rome was! To make room for our table-cloth, an old shepherd obligingly drove his sheep a little lower down the mountain. He was knitting stockings for one of his grandchildren; he has four to bring up. Their mother is dead, their father--he went years ago to Buenos Ayres--has ceased to write or to send them money.

A pretty girl spinning with a distaff asked shyly if she could help us. Patsy sent her for water while he set the table.

“We could not have her handling the food, you know,” he said; “but she is so decorative that we want to look at her while we eat and drink. Antonio has outdone himself (he knew I was coming), this ham really has been boiled in _vino di Montefiascone_, as I suggested. The girls of Palestrina _are_ as handsome as the girls of Præneste.” Armida, our girl, had come back, a dripping _conca_ poised on her head.

“How do you know so much about the girls of Præneste?” I asked.

“Go to the Kircheriano Museum and look at the Ficoronian Cista and you will know as much as I do,” Patsy confessed. “It was found near here in the necropolis. It is a green bronze toilet casket, with the most corking pictures from the story of the Argonauts engraved upon it you ever saw! Pollux has just licked Amycus, you know, for interfering with the Greeks preempting the spring of water, and tied him up to a tree, as he deserved. Then you have the Greeks drinking out of the spring. In the harbor lies the good ship Argo; on shore you see Jason and Hercules, one of the Argonauts in the attitude of boxing, a fat old Silenus mimicking him. Female beauty is represented by Athena and Niké, who seem to be offering a victor’s crown to the lucky Pollux. It’s up to date, I can tell you. The girls are no prettier than Armida there; but find me the man who can ‘do’ her like the fellow who engraved that Cista, and I will pay him to make her portrait!”

“How long ago was the casket made?” Helen asked.

“If you must have a date, 700 B.C. is as good as another. Heigh ho! The world’s grown lazy! All this talk about modern energy makes me tired! Where’s the energy in any race on earth to-day to build an _arx_ like this? to live on the top of a steep hill like this? to trundle itself and its chattels up and down? Our civilization compared to Præneste’s is barbarism by every standard I know.”

“You don’t know much,” said Helen. “_I_ know you have waited too long for your luncheon. Your views will improve directly.”

As we ate our luncheon, Armida awkwardly weaving a garland of oak leaves after a pattern Patsy made her, watched us with shy, hungry eyes. She and I exchanged glances (not a word was spoken) which said,--

“Signora, I have rarely tasted white bread--never such a _pasticcio_ as the _signorino_ is giving to the shepherd’s dog!”

“_Figlia mia_, all that remains of the feast shall be for you and the shepherd; you will divide with him?”

“_Stia sicura_ (Rest assured)!” said Armida’s honest eyes.

There was wine in an amphora--how had Patsy managed it?--he poured the first glass on the ground in libation.

Looking at Armida and raising his glass, “_Alle belle ragaze di Palestrina!_” he said. The shepherd’s dog sniffed the spilt wine scornfully.

“_Tutti gli Inglesi sono matti!_ (The English are all mad)!” muttered the shepherd.

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, 1899.

June in Italy is heaven. The weather is delicious. Life is pleasant and calm. J. has found a small American ice-chest, the only one in Rome; we are as proud as peacocks about it; Pompilia shows it off as if it were the great kohinoor. It is an economy in ice, which has only lately been introduced, and is fabulously dear. Nena fetches a tiny slab of artificial ice every afternoon, it is wrapped in thick felt, put into the American ice-chest, where it keeps the milk and wine cool. Green nuts are part of the

From a red chalk drawing in the Collection of Mr. Thomas W. Lawson]

summer bill of fare, fresh filberts in their jackets, green almonds and English walnuts as much nicer fresh than dried as fresh figs are better than dry, or grapes than raisins.

Ignazio, our gardener, handsome, sympathetic, with a timid laugh, a hesitating manner, a real passion for his calling, was recommended to us as knowing more about roses than any man in Rome. The burthen of caring for our beloved flowers had become too great. The improvement since the expert took hold and properly grafted our roses is astonishing. Ignazio has to be restrained from quite ruining us. To him the natural order would be to spend the greater part of one’s income upon one’s flowers--I am not so sure he is not right! For weeks he has been talking about a new rare flower--just the thing for the terrace--whose name he could not remember. When I asked him he took off his old cap, rubbed his head in a puzzled way, and complained that the English names were “too difficult.” I caught his enthusiasm, ordered some of these rare exotics, though the price was high. To-day arrived six fine specimens of the wild American purple aster, which overruns the fields and roadsides at home!

Signor Giacomo Boni, the architect in charge of the public buildings of ancient Rome, has a rival terrace on the roof of his house: we went to see his Japanese lilies the other day. Fancy, he has a cherry tree with ripe cherries on it, a peach tree with peaches, a tame starling in a cage, and quite the most wonderful collection of plants and flowers I ever saw in so small a space. Signor Boni has planted on the Palatine, in the Forum, and in the Baths of Caracalla, the flowers and shrubs mentioned in the classics as growing in those places. The good work is beginning to tell already; now there are roses and fleur-de-lis growing in the Forum. The vandalism which stripped the Colosseum of its glorious robe of flowered green and exposed its gaunt skeleton to view, is at an end, but the havoc it wrought is irreparable--at least in my lifetime. Fancy, there were five hundred different varieties of wild-flowers growing on that splendid old ruin. Many of these are unknown in other parts of Europe and are supposed to have sprung from seeds that were mixed in the various kinds of fodder imported from Africa to feed the wild beasts which fought in the old blood-soaked arena.

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, August 3, 1899.

It was too hot for sleep last night, a rare thing in Rome. At half-past four this morning, when I went out on the terrace to water the plants, the smooth red tiles were still warm to bare feet. The Piazza of St. Peter’s was a sea of fog, out of which loomed the lantern of Angelo’s dome; no other part of the great church was visible. A white mist from the Tiber rose like a wall between us and Mt. Soracte; the river and the mountain Horace loved are still the dearest things in the wide view of the Roman landscape. When the plants had been watered it was half-past five, just the right time for bicycling, so we set out. At this hour few people are about, save the drivers of the heavy wains of hay--drawn by big, soft-eyed gray oxen with magnificent branching horns. These wagons of fragrant hay are not allowed in the streets after eight o’clock in the morning. Though the Forum was reached before six, Signor Boni and his aids were already hard at work. Swarms of men, like so many busy ants, were passing to and from the excavations, wheeling barrows full of earth, returning a little later with empty barrows.

“Where do you put the rubbish that you take out?” I asked. The _capo_ smiled indulgently. “Every particle of the earth of the Forum is sacred,” he said. “We skim it off carefully in layers, keeping each layer quite separate from the others. Then we sift it layer by layer, sort whatever it contains, examine each bit of broken glass, metal, pottery, and, where it is possible, piece the fragments together.”

In a sacrificial layer, composed chiefly of the ashes and bones of victims offered at the altars of the gods, the _capo_ lately found the jaw bones of several large dogs. These did not properly belong here, among the bones of beeves, sheep, and goats, the regulation sacrificial animals. The layer in which they were found proved to be of the time of Marcellus. Now, what were the bones of these big dogs doing there?

One dark night--it was in the days of Marcellus--the Goths descended for the first time upon Rome, the citadel came within an ace of being taken--would have been, but for the cackling of the silly geese which roused the sleeping guards. The silly geese became sacred geese, and the faithless watch-dogs, who had failed to bark and give the alarm, were slaughtered at the altar,--and that is how the big canine jaw bones turn up to-day in the sacrificial layer of Marcellus! The _capo’s_ dreamy blue eyes, the eyes of an enthusiast, glowed with an inner light as he unfolded this theory. Imagination, you see, is as important to the successful archæologist as it is to any other discoverer. He must have other things as well--a thorough knowledge of the classics, for instance. Did not Mme. Schlieman learn the whole of Homer by heart, to aid her husband in his search for the tomb of Agamemnon?

If in reading Tacitus or Livy the _capo_ finds mention of a missing building or statue, he goes and looks for it in the place where according to the historians it ought to be--and where, nine times out of ten, he finds it! While he talked to us his eyes never left the skilful hands of a workman patiently matching together pieces of brown terra-cotta from a large pile of shards.

“If we could only make up one complete tile!” he sighed.

We were in the temporary museum where the latest “finds” of the Forum are kept. The man at the next table was putting together a really beautiful vessel of dark-blue glass. It might have been the Myrrhene goblet of Petronius!

“The tiles are so ugly, so monotonous--why should you care? I could understand, now, if a piece of that enchanting blue glass were missing!” I said.

“The cup is only a cup,--beautiful if you will,--but what does it teach us? nothing new. If we could find a whole tile, now, it would fix the date of a building we are in doubt about.”

Scientific methods, you see; even in Rome we cannot escape them! Then we went and looked at the spot where the Jewish citizens of Rome piously burned the body of Julius Cæsar, and at what remains of the house where Cæsar lived, a corner of the dining-room, with the white mosaic pavement, and a piece of wall painted with a decoration of fruit, flowers, green trees, and a pointed bamboo trellis, in the same style as the Villa Livia, built by the widow of Augustus, who, perhaps, had admired Aunt Calpurnia’s dining-room, and when her time came to build imitated it!

In the house of the Vestal Virgins we saw some fine pavements lately uncovered. Vesta is by far the most interesting of the Roman divinities. Is there a shrine to her at Radcliffe? There should be; we owe Rome the “higher education,” as we owe her the law we live by, the army we conquer by. Close to the Temple of Vesta we saw the place where earthquakes were foretold by the simplest contrivance. On a white marble platform finely adjusted weights were placed so as to oscillate with the first, otherwise imperceptible, tremors of the earth; in this way the knowing ones were enabled to foretell the earthquakes to the populace. Not far from here is the point where lightning once struck, making a hole ever after held sacred. It was turned into a sacred well, wherein jewels, cups, and other precious offerings were thrown by the devout or the superstitious. Both these shrines are very near the Temple of Vesta. Was it by chance that the fanes of the three things primitive man fears most, fire, earthquake, and lightning, should be so near together? The _capo_ thinks not.

“Now come and see the Republican well I have just found,” he said, leading the way to a deep pit in the form of an _amphora_, with smooth rounded sides lined with cement.

“Notice the work they did in the days of the Republic; it is far better than the work of the Empire. See this cement, as perfect as the day it was laid.”

“What did you find in this well?” we asked.

“Come and see. Here are a great number of styluses--the Roman pens used for writing on wax tablets” (do you suppose some poor devil of a literary man threw them in in a moment of despair?) “and the entire contents of a Republican butcher’s shop. See, there is the great cleaver, these are the knives--even the wooden handles are intact. These round stones are the weights, here is the thigh bone of the last ox slaughtered before the shop came to grief, and here--take it carefully, it is of terra-cotta--is the butcher’s lamp. Do you make out the design? It is in the shape of an inflated oxhide.”

I never saw the like of that lamp! Of all the precious things the _capo_ has unearthed, I most covet the Republican butcher’s squat little earthenware lamp with the neck of the skin pursed together to hold the wick.

“Now come and look at the true Via Sacra; you see it lies several feet below the road we used to call the Sacred Way. Do you observe how much finer this early pavement is than the later paving? But wait, I shall show you better yet,--the earlier the work, the better the workmanship.”

As we stood on the large squares of smooth gray stone, a cloud veiled the hot August sun, a shadow crossed the pavement. Might it not have been just here that Horace tacked to avoid meeting that bore Crispinus? When midsummer comes and everybody goes away, and there remains only Rome, ourselves, and the mighty ghosts,--these grow so real that I wonder if I dreamed the tea-party-picnicking Rome of winter and spring.

“Here is the Basilica Emilia. We should not have been able to excavate this if it had not been for Mr. St. Clair Baddeley, who raised the money in England to buy the land and indemnify the owners of the houses we were obliged to pull down. Look at these two delightful bas-reliefs; have you ever seen such a treatment of the acanthus?”

The reliefs are the most florid--one might almost say “baroque”--acanthus designs I have ever seen. In one the flower in the centre of the “curly cue” ends in a prancing horse; the other terminates in some apochryphal beast, like a dragon.

“Wait, wait till I make a copy of this adorable white and green pavement,” I cried. It was a geometrical design in Emilia’s Basilica. A design that I have never seen either in Egypt or Greece.

“For that you will not need me,” said the _capo_; “it is growing late and hot; now for the Lapis Niger!” Like a child he had kept the best of the feast for the last. As we went, I picked up a small piece of iridescent glass, opal, rose, and pearl, a bit of heaven’s rainbow dug from the “sacred earth.”

“What might this have been?” I asked.

“That we shall see, perhaps part of a tear bottle, perhaps a fragment of the vessel in which the vestals daily brought lustral water for the altars from the Fountain of Egeria!” Was he laughing at me?

I shall not forget the sensation produced by the first sight of the Lapis Niger, the black stone of the so-called tomb of Romulus. Whether the smooth slab of black marble actually covered the ashes of Romulus, or was a later monument put up to his memory, has not yet, I believe, been established. They do know that the inscription on the cippus beneath the stone is written in the most ancient Latin which has yet come to light--the epigraphists are still cracking their brains trying to read it. Is it not pleasant to have the sceptical German historians routed? To have our Romulus and Remus given back to us, our Tarquins, our Numa Pompilius, and Egeria? To tell the truth, I never gave them up, I always kept a sneaking belief in demigods and heroes, took Hawthorne’s word against the Teutons. Now I am being justified right and left. Boni finds the Tomb of Romulus in the Roman Forum, Dr. Evans finds the palace of Minos, and the labyrinth of the Minotaur in Crete.

To comfort-loving persons Rome is the most satisfactory place in the world for the study of man--from the savage of thirty centuries ago in his tree coffin, fished up from the bottom of Lake Trasimeno (now at the Museum Papa Giulio), to Victor Emmanuel in his tomb at the Pantheon. Think of it, the first king of Young Italy sleeping in a temple of Ancient Rome which has been in use ever since it was built in the year 27 B.C. Athens is a thousand times more beautiful than Rome, but to the ultra modern Greece seems on the outskirts of “to-day.” Here, here in Rome, we fancy we are in the midst of things, and creature comforts are still to be had, as in the days of Lucullus (I recommend you an _omelette soufflée aux surprises à la Grand Hotel_! Outside an ordinary hot soufflée--the surprise is the heart, cold sublimated chocolate ice-cream)!

Not long since, while lunching at that luxurious restaurant, we became aware of a personage at the next table. Everybody looked at him; it was impossible not to look at him. He was a large, masterful man with a high color, young gray hair, and a look of power I have not often met. We began to guess his nationality. I immediately claimed him. “He is an American, a Western senator, from Montana or Washington State.”

There was something large and dauntless about him, the free look of one coming from a young country.

“Please find out who that gentleman at the next table is?” our host said to the waiter.

The man seemed surprised at the question.

“That is Cecil Rhodes, sir,” he answered.

After that we could not help catching some of his talk--perhaps we did not try very hard--it was brilliant, exhilarating, and cordial. His guests were hardly more _en rapport_ with him than the rest of us in the room. He was not unconscious that the people who sat near, the waiters, even the sphinx-like manager, hovering in the offing with impassive face, were thrilled by being in his company: nor could his attitude be called conscious. He merely seemed aware of us, could no more help dominating the chance crowd in a fashionable restaurant than his fellows in the Transvaal.

It happened that after lunch we took our friends “sightseeing” to the Kircheriano Museum, where we found one of the earliest Roman citizens and his wife, still lying side by side in the very earth the mourners threw over them, his rude stone weapons, her primitive household utensils close to their hands. There, you see, are the two ends of your chain of interest (there is not a missing link between),--the prehistoric man at the Kircheriano Museum and the man who is making history, Cecil Rhodes, on his way to South Africa, lunching at the Grand Hotel!

XII

THE ANNO SANTO

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, February 7, 1900.

“If I am ever a rich man,--” Patsy began.

“Which heaven forfend--you have not the gift!” said the monsignore.

“Wait and see!--I shall build a great church.”

“Like St. Peter’s there?”

We were on the terrace. The sun was setting behind the chapel of the Vatican. There was still light enough for the yellow of the sun-soaked façade, the pale blue of the dome, to tell against the gray and rosy sky.

“Oh, make it the Parthenon! They both give a fellow the same sort of feeling as being in love does, or seeing Niagara.”

“It is not a bad use to put a fortune to,” the monsignore agreed.

“It is about time the artists had their innings!” Patsy declared. “I should like to be referee. Gladiators, prize-fighters wouldn’t be in it. What fun _can_ there be in backing such creatures, or even a horse? I would rather stake my fortune on an architect like Bramante--trust my future reputation to a painter like Pinturricchio than to a Flying Childers or a Goldsmith Maid.”

“First catch your hare,” said the monsignore.

“The woods are full of ’em. Give the artists a chance, and you’ll see the trouble is not with them! The opportunity must come first. A country has the art it deserves. When we Americans want beauty as much as we want rapid transit we shall get it.”

“There are _some_ signs,” said the monsignore. “We have art patrons who pay enormous sums for old masters.”

“Our art patrons lack imagination,” said Patsy. “It is so easy, so obvious, to buy ‘old masters,’ to patronize Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli! I should pick my men, give ’em the track, and let ’em show their paces. Wait till I build my cathedral: you will see an architect, a painter, and a sculptor or two.”

“‘The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, wrought with a sad sincerity,’” quoted the monsignore. He had come to tell us about the Pope’s opening the _Porta Santa_ on Christmas eve,--the first of the many functions of this _Anno Santo_.

Finally we “muzzled” Patsy, and the monsignore seized his chance to speak.

“As the ceremony was in the portico of St. Peter’s,” he said, “a comparatively small place, very few invitations were issued. The papal throne was erected near the _Porta Santa_,--the Jubilee door,--it is the one on the extreme right of the portico, you will remember it by the cross upon it. The Pope knocked three times upon the _Porta Santa_ with a mallet, saying as he did so, “_Aperite mihi portas justitiae_ (Open to me the door of justice).” At the words the door (which was last opened by Leo the Twelfth, in 1825) fell away as if by magic, and His Holiness walked alone into the vast empty church, where there was no other living being but himself. He tottered down the aisle, past the splendid tombs of his predecessors, beneath that unmarked sepulchre over the door, where Pius the Ninth lies waiting the day when he must make room for him in his tomb as he made room for him on his throne. At the shrine of St. Peter the Pope knelt and said a prayer. For me that was the great moment in the whole gorgeous ceremony.”

“It all comes back to the simple human situation of an old man passing the tomb where he soon must lie!” was Patsy’s comment.

“It is just the simple human situation that the Church always comes back to,” said the monsignore.