Chapter VIII: Part 8

She looked at the decoration from every point of view, asked many questions about its destination. She knew of the Boston Public Library, and said many pleasant things of it, and of J.’s ceiling for it. She liked the funny old studio, with its big fireplace, its enormous window, and explored it with the fresh curiosity of a young girl. She asked what this and what that picture was, insisted on being shown canvases that stood with their faces to the wall. J.’s drawing of Dante and the death mask from which it was made interested her deeply; she is evidently a student of the divine poet. The portrait of the Duke of Cambridge which J. made last spring was standing on an easel. She laughed heartily when she saw it, and said, “It is so exactly like the old man that it makes me laugh.”

They stayed half an hour. Part of that time the Queen sat in the old Portuguese leather chair which our own dear mother queen always sat in when she was with us. As they went away, the Duchess Massimo said to me, “I assure you the Queen has been much interested and much pleased.”

We all went down to the carriage; the Borgo was one compact mass of people. We watched the carriage drive away, caught the sweet parting smile of our lovely visitor, and then went back to the studio to talk it all over. In a few minutes two of our best friends turned up. They had come over by chance to have tea at the studio, and had received quite a sensation at seeing the royal carriage with the scarlet liveries standing before the shabby old green door and the Borgo crammed with the Roman populace.

July 16, 1900.

Saturday evening as we sat at dinner another messenger from the Casa Reale was announced. He brought a letter from the Countess Villamarina, the Queen’s maid of honor, to J., in which she begged to send him, in the name of her “august sovereign,” the accompanying jewel for his wife, in memory of her visit to the studio. The jewel is a medallion of dark blue enamel, with M., the Queen’s initial, in diamonds, with a royal crown above it. On the reverse are the arms of Savoy, the red cross on the white field, the whole surrounded by a hoop of diamonds hanging from a bar of diamonds, set as a brooch, and very elegant.

J. says that we cannot afford to stay in the Borgo if we remain in Rome, we must move to a new quarter. Ever since the Queen’s visit, the _gobbo_, our favorite cabby, has called him Signor Marchese, and expects a larger _mancia_ than he can afford to give.

XIV

STRAWBERRIES OF NEMI

LAKE OF NEMI, July 8, 1900.

The _fruttajola_ of the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, and the waiter of the Café di Roma are responsible for our coming to Nemi. I like to linger chaffering in the _fruttajola’s_ shop (at this season it smells of strawberries and apricots) not only because she has the best fruit in Rome but because she has three of the prettiest daughters--the youngest looks as the Fornarina, the baker’s daughter beloved of Raphael, might have looked. When the _fruttajola_ was young she must have been even handsomer than her daughters, though their cheeks seem like duplicates of the peaches and nectarines they handle so daintily; she has an intensity of expression, a look of power that none of her girls have.

“You tell me these strawberries are from Nemi,” I said; “how is that possible? For the past month you have sold me strawberries from Nemi, always from Nemi! All over Rome I see the strawberries of Nemi advertised. Is it likely now that a little town like Nemi can supply such a great city as Rome with strawberries all these many weeks?”

You see I remembered what the Tuscan wine grower said to us about the wine of Chianti. The _fruttajola_ tossed her handsome head. “Signora, you have but to see Nemi to understand!” she said, laying on the counter a little blue paper box she had been making and lining with grape leaves as she talked and which she now filled with purple figs and yellow _nespole_. That night, wishing to give our servants “an evening off,” we dined at the Café di Roma. Of course we had the inevitable dishes of this season, chicken, hunter’s fashion (braised, with green peppers), salad of tomato and endive, finishing off with strawberries from Nemi, and of course the cream was too thin. J. asked Leandro, the waiter who always serves us, if it was not possible to get better cream. He has often asked the same question before.

“Signore,” said Leandro, “this cream comes from the dairy next door. We always order the best for you, and this is what they send us. Why do you not yourself step in and speak to the proprietor? He will take more pains for you than for me.” Pricked by memories of Jersey cream which those ravishing strawberries evoked, J. sought the _padrone_ of the dairy.

“Is it not possible to have thicker cream than that you send to the restaurant?” he asked. The man looked surprised. “The Signore desires thicker cream? Why, of course, it is possible to have the cream as thick as he wishes, only have a moment’s patience.” As he spoke the _padrone_ took up a fine hair sieve, put into it a lump of some soft white stuff which he mashed with a big spoon into a paste; this he passed through the sieve, every now and then letting a few drops fall out of the spoon to show how thick the cream had become.

“Is that thick enough, Signore?” he finally asked.

“Quite thick enough, thank you,” said poor J. grimly. “Will you do me the favor of telling me what you use to thicken the cream?”

“But surely! Various things are used; the best is this that you see, the brains of a young calf nicely boiled.”

When J. came back to the restaurant he said that, on the whole, he preferred his strawberries with wine and sugar, as the Romans eat them. The waiter pushed a flask hung on a swivel towards him; J. drowned his plate in a flood of red Genzano. Isn’t it odd that in Roman restaurants wine is sold by weight? Leandro weighed the flask before putting it on the table, and again when he took it off after dinner.

In order to make conversation I said, “Leandro, do you know where these strawberries really come from?”

“Do I know? They are from my own town, it may be from our own land! the proprietor of this restaurant buys oil, fruit, and wine of my uncle, who lives at Nemi. I myself have a little property at Nemi. The oil the Signora had of me came from there. Ah! you should see Nemi, you should eat the strawberries fresh from the vines.”

That settled it; we had been promising ourselves a little Fourth of July outing somewhere in the country, so the next day we took the train for Albano and drove over to Nemi, where we are decently settled at the Trattoria Desanctis.

Nemi is an enchanting little mediæval town perched high above the edge of the Lake of Nemi called by the ancients the Mirror of Diana. Sitting in the terraced garden of the old castle of the Orsini, near our inn, you look down the steep sides of the crater of an extinct volcano, over three hundred feet, to the lake, a big sparkling sapphire, three miles in circumference, lying at the bottom of a green enamelled cup. There is no soil in the world, the landlord says, quite as rich as this volcanic soil. Every inch of the land is highly cultivated, and here, _here_ on the sloping sides of the old volcano grow the wild and the tame strawberries of Nemi. I trust it is not necessary to tell you that the wild ones are by far the best. We clambered down a steep path jewelled with wild flowers to the very edge of Diana’s mirror. I dipped my hand in the clear cold water. It is hard to realize that where this gemlike lake now sparkles in the sunlight there was once a pit of fire, that the sides where the pleasant strawberries grow were once coated with a velvet bloom of sulphur like the crater of Vesuvius. We turned and looked up the slope; a breeze ruffled the green leaves and exposed the vines beneath, laden with myriads of strawberries, red as rubies. As the _fruttajola_ foretold, I now understand how the little town of Nemi supplies the big city of Rome with strawberries.

From a photograph]

The lake is more than one hundred feet deep and is drained by an artificial emissarium--ancient Roman, of course. The peasants say that the lake has no bottom. As there is a sort of whirlpool in the middle from the suction of the water into the emissarium, it is considered unsafe for boating or bathing. There is a story of a mad Englishman who tried to swim across and was never seen again, his body having been sucked down into the bowels of the earth--not a bad way of disposing of it. A few years ago they found the remains of a Roman state barge at the bottom of the lake. The bronze ornaments and even part of the wooden walls were intact. The barge was presumably used as a float in some imperial pageant of old Rome.

At sunset the women and girls who had been busy all day gathering fruit began to pass by our inn, bearing vast loads of fragrant strawberries on their heads. The berries are picked into flat wide baskets with handles, through which a long stick is passed, joining together the ten or twelve baskets that constitute a load. As each sun-browned wench trudged past, our eyes were rejoiced with a superb flare of scarlet, and our noses--ah! nothing in this world has ever tasted so good as the strawberries of Nemi smell.

Just where the white highroad, following the line of the old crater, curves and is hidden by a group of dark ilex trees, the women halted beside the line of gay painted carts waiting to carry the strawberries to Rome. We discovered the _carretta_ of Leandro’s uncle, a fine affair painted blue and yellow, with long shafts and a comfortable seat beneath a red and white striped awning. Oreste, the driver, a shrewd peasant, in spite of his loutish, grumpy manner, has a certain family resemblance to his cousin the waiter, but how contact with the world has sharpened Leandro’s wits, polished his manners! Oreste and Leandro! Don’t you love the classic names? They linger here in the country and help to bring back to you Theocritus and the golden age of Magna Grecia.

“At what hour do you start?” J. asked Oreste.

“At ten o’clock.”

“It must be a very long drive; do you not get dreadfully tired? what time do you reach Rome?”

Oreste answered my remarks in the order they were put.

“The distance is twenty miles; when I am tired I sleep; with luck I shall reach the gates of Rome by four o’clock in the morning.”

“Who minds the cart while you sleep?”

“Lupetto here;” he patted the dearest little dog on the seat beside him. Lupetto looks like a young fox, he has the brightest eyes, the smallest pointed ears, and a soft furry tan coat clipped like a lion’s.

“As long as Lupetto is quiet and I hear this music,” he touched with his long carter’s whip the string of bells round the horse’s neck, “I doze in peace. When the bells stop jingling or Lupetto barks I rouse myself to find out what is the matter.”

“Have you ever been robbed?”

“That sometimes happens with a load of wine, but with fruit, no. Everybody knows that I never carry money and that I have a good knife!” he drew the knife from his boot and ran his thumb along the blade, testing the sharpness of the edge.

The moon, a golden sickle, hung low in the sky, the big soft stars seemed nearer to the earth than usual. Lupetto gave an impatient little bark, the horse stirred uneasily, jingling his bells. The last basket of strawberries had been loaded on the cart; it was clearly time to be off. Oreste gathered up his reins and whistled to his horse.

“_Felice notte_ (A happy night).” He grunted the pretty greeting to us over his shoulder awkwardly. After watching Oreste with his two best friends, his horse and his dog, start on the long night journey to Rome, we went back to the castle garden, where our landlord treated us to anecdotes touching that interesting family, the Orsini.

Everything comes to him who knows how to wait! Ever since we first went to live at the Palazzo Rusticucci I have longed to climb to the top of Monte Cavo, the highest of the Alban hills. From our terrace you can see the front of the old Passionist monastery on its summit glinting white in the sun. Yesterday the long waiting came to an end and I have seen my Carcassonne! We reached the summit after a two hours’ walk up the old Via Triumphalis--the steep paved way along which the Roman generals once passed to celebrate the military triumphs at the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, which stood at the top of Monte Cavo. It is a wonderful road; in some places the old basalt pavement is as good as on the day when it was laid, some time “before the year one”! Truly a glorious walk, with sudden splendid vistas over plain and mountains, and cool odorous groves where we found the wild heartsease, sensitive ethereal flowers, poor relations of our fat, stall-fed purple and gold terrace pansies. A good bath of nature, such as we had climbing the flanks of Monte Cavo, makes man and all his works--even the higher cultivation of flowers--seem a vain thing. We passed the vast crater of another extinct volcano called the Camp of Hannibal, who according to local tradition once bivouacked here. In a few days the garrison will come from Rome for its annual summer camping out, and Beppino, our fascinating young friend with the burning brown eyes, will pitch his tent possibly on the very spot where Hannibal slept.

The temple of Jupiter is gone; its ruins were destroyed by Cardinal York, one of the last of the Stuarts, in 1777, when he built the monastery. Was not that trying of him? and so inappropriate too, for whatever their faults may have been the Stuarts have always been protectors of the arts. Half of the monastery is now a government meteorological station, the other half an inn, which concerned us more. We ordered supper and while waiting for it moused about in the old garden till we found the little that remains of the temple, a few fragments of the foundation and some pieces of marble roughly built into the garden wall. “_Sic transit gloria mundi_,” the temple is gone, the monastery too; meanwhile remain eggs in black butter for hungry travellers, and the imperishable beauty of the view. The wise old monks always chose the most magnificent sites for their monasteries. Good air and a fine outlook were what they held to be essential; they found the ideal site, and somehow screwed up the real to fit it. Do you know a better rule for building one’s house? I do not.

How do you suppose it felt after having been grilled alive on the stones of Rome for a month, to borrow a shawl from the landlady, in order to sit out after sunset and enjoy the wonderful prospect? Below, at the foot of Monte Cavo, lay the lakes of Albano and Nemi, darkly blue where they were not silver, and far, far off, a pale blue bubble on the horizon, gleamed the dome of St. Peter’s. If we could have borrowed a spyglass from the meteorological bureau, I am sure we could have made out the white columns of our terrace in the shadow of the great dome. When it grew too cold to sit out, the landlady showed us to a pair of tiny stone cells. In the watches of the night I knocked on the thick wall that separated us, “for company,” as some lonely Passionist monk may have rapped a greeting to a brother in the dark winter nights of long ago. In spite of the odor of sanctity (stronger here than I have ever known it), hardness of bed, flabbiness of pillow, in spite of the keen chill before dawn, that one cool night in the old Passionist monastery will remain a delicious memory when the hot pavements of a Roman July are forgotten!

Early the next morning we made the descent by a short cut, a steep path that brought us out on the highway not far from Nemi.

Near the town we overtook Oreste on his way back from Rome. He had drawn up his cart in an olive grove and was examining the fruit on the trees. Lupetto, whose turn it was to sleep, lay snugly curled up on the seat. We sat down to rest in the pleasant shade of the gray green leaves. There are twelve aged olive trees in the grove, and another larger and more picturesque than the rest originally belonging to the same group, standing alone, on the other side of the white high road. The trunk of this old tree is almost hollow, a mere shell of shaggy bark. The knotted roots reach out an amazing distance from the stem before they grip the earth. The twisted trunk and limbs look like a tortured human being with uplifted arms, and suggest the men turned to trees of the Inferno.

“This is the finest olive tree I have seen in Italy,” J. said. Oreste gloomily assented.

“It is a noble tree worth any three of the others. See how many olives it has. Leandro will come soon to gather them.”

“Your cousin, Leandro?”

“Yes; this is his tree. My grandfather of blessed memory who owned these thirteen trees had thirteen children. When he died he left one olive tree to each child. The mother of Leandro was his favorite daughter, there is no denying that, and to her he left this tree, though by good rights it should have come to the eldest son, my father. They quarrelled at the time, but my uncle the priest patched things up between them, he said it was a disgrace for kindred to quarrel over an inheritance. All very well for him to preach,--priests are obliged to, that is how they earn their living. I was a mere child, or the matter would not have been so easily settled, I can tell you. It is too late now; this famous tree is Leandro’s, I must content myself with that blighted one yonder, plainly the poorest of the lot.”

“Your tree has not been so well cared for as the others,” J. said. “Look how wisely these branches have been pruned. The sun reaches every part.” The branches in the middle of the big olive had been neatly cut away leaving an open space the shape of a cup in the centre.

“There may be something in what you say,” grumbled Oreste, “indeed I have little time to care for my property. I must always be on the road, now with wine, now with olives, now with strawberries. Besides, I have not Leandro’s opportunities; he sells to the strangers!”

“We will try your oil; bring the first you make to the Palazzo Rusticucci.” On this we parted. We shall see Oreste in Rome before long and ascertain if the oil from his tree is as good as that of the famous old patriarch tree which we have had in other years from Leandro. To know the vines that bear your grapes and the trees that give your olives and oil is the next best thing to owning them, don’t you think?

The most interesting person we have met in Nemi is an old soldier of Garibaldi’s. We were watching the sunset from the terrace of the inn one evening, when we fell into talk with him. He is a grave, thoughtful man; stern of expression, slow of speech, not quite like any other Italian I have ever known. He walks with a cane, and stoops badly; I am sure if he could stand upright he would measure six feet two inches in height. His face is a network of wrinkles, he has an ugly red scar across one cheek.

The conversation beginning with the weather soon changed to politics. At first he spoke in English, of which he has a small stock of words. Something was said about the Pope and the temporal power. He bristled all over, growing red as a turkey cock as he said,--

“The Popay as a Popay, very welley; the Popay as a Kingay, not at alley!”

After this he relapsed into Italian and would not be induced to speak more English. Cruel, was it not? He is gloomy enough about the present political situation; pessimistic about the future.

He spoke with slow cold anger of a recent act of the Italian parliament, which he cannot forgive.

“They to pass a vote of censure on Francesco Crispi! The whole lot of them are not worth one finger of his hand!” he said.

“Everybody knows that it was the result of a political cabal against Crispi.”

“No, not everybody; some are wholly ignorant and others forget! We who were with him in Sicily, where he was as the right hand of Garibaldi, know the man for what he is. He has been insulted, and his friends will be slow to forget the insult.”

“You also were in Sicily with Garibaldi?”

“I am one of the Thousand.”

It was as if he had said “I am one of the Three Hundred of Thermopylæ,” or the “Six Hundred of Balaclava!” It was electrifying to find oneself in the company of one of those “few and good men” who sailed with Garibaldi from Quarto, on the 5th of May, 1860, landed six days later at Marsala under the protection of the British gunboats Intrepid and Argus, made the glorious march to Palermo, and freed Sicily and Naples from the hateful yoke of the Bourbons.

“I have heard that you of the Thousand loved your chief as if he had been your father; is this true?”

“Our acts, not merely our words, proved it to be true. We would have died for him to the last man. Even the women and priests wanted to take up arms and follow Garibaldi. You know the story of the nuns? A whole convent of nuns, from the old mother abbess to the youngest novice, gave him the kiss of peace, they would not be denied!” He grew visibly younger as he talked, there was fire in the man; it took but the breath of our sympathy to blow the embers to a flame.

“Was that scar on your cheek made by an Austrian or a French bayonet?” He rubbed the old wound with a stiff hand smiling grimly to himself. “By neither--worse yet! At Calatafini, when the royal troops--they were Neapolitans--had exhausted their cartridges, they threw stones at us. Have you not heard what Garibaldi said of that action? ‘The old misfortune, a fight between Italians, but it proves to me what can be done with this family united.’ One day while the chief was watering his horse at a spring a Franciscan friar suddenly appeared among us. Some of the men tried to arrest him, but he forced his way to the chiefs side, threw himself on his knees, and begged to be taken along with us. There were some who believed him an enemy in disguise, but the man, his name was Fra Pantaleo, did good service and proved true as steel!”

As long as the talk is of the old time our ancient soldier is a hero; when it touches to-day he degenerates into a grumbler. He seems less dissatisfied with the army than with most things modern. “My grandson is serving his four years. Where do you suppose his regiment is quartered? In Milan; that is as it should be, the North and the South must know each other. It is well to send the men of Sicily to Piedmont and the Piedmontese to Sicily. In this manner they may learn that they are before all things Italians.”

The veterans who fought for the Unification of Italy are treated very much as we treat the veterans who fought for the preservation of our Union; they are scolded, laughed at, loved, and forgiven many things that would be unpardonable in others. On national holidays the old Garibaldians turn out in their red shirts, white kerchiefs, and peaked caps. They are fewer now, their blouses have faded to a softer red than when I first saw them in the year 1878, mustered to meet Garibaldi, already mortally ill, when he came up from rocky Caprera to Rome for the funeral of Victor Emanuel, the man he had made King of Italy. I remember it as if it had all happened yesterday. We were in the square outside the railroad station when he arrived. The Piazza di Termini was packed with silent people waiting patiently hour after hour. At last we heard the whistle of an engine; the crowd was shaken by a murmur, “Garibaldi has come!”

A landeau was driven across the piazza at a footpace, Garibaldi lay across the carriage, his head raised on a pillow. He wore the classic gray felt hat and the red blouse. At first his eyes were closed as if he were in pain. His face reminded one that God made man in His own image. The features were fine and firm, the hair and beard were a rich silver, the complexion white and rose, like a child’s. He was always described as “bronzed”; the delicacy came from his long illness. Once he opened his eyes, those who stood near caught an eagle’s glance. A tall woman lifted her child high over her head, whispering to it, “Never, never, never forget that thou hast seen the face of Garibaldi.” There was no applause; many women, some men were weeping. As the carriage passed, the guard of honor, his old companions in arms, closed around it. F., who was near us in the crowd, was singing under his breath the words of the old Carbonari song,

“_Zitto! silenzio, chi passa la ronda? evviva la republica, evviva liberta_ (Hush, silence! Who passes the patrol? Long live the republic, and long live liberty)!”

I wonder if F. remembers! He is a Pope’s man now and denies the virtue of republics.

I described this scene to our old soldier; his bloodshot eyes grew redder yet as he said gruffly,--

“I too was there!”

* * * * *

To-morrow we go back to Rome. We have ordered a basket of strawberries to take with us. I have written to the _gobbo_ to meet us at the station; as we pass the _fruttajola’s_ shop I shall stop and tell her that I now understand all about the strawberries of Nemi.

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, July 14, 1900.

This summer I am again trying the Roman method of supineness; I eat very little, sleep a great deal, and keep mostly indoors. Last year I exhausted myself with bicycling and other violent exercise. The English and German residents recommend this energetic course, but I find that the Romans are right. The terrace is too lovely, ablaze with marigolds, cannas, cockscombs, balsams, oleanders, and portulacas. Our only failure has been the dahlias, which all died. The vines are all doing famously; the red honeysuckle which J. dug up (in the very face of the white bull) at the Villa Madama, has grown to an astonishing size. Our large passion-flower vine covered half the terrace pergola; it had out-grown the largest flower-pot that is made, so to save its life J. gave it to Signor Boni for the Roman forum. Four men carried it downstairs. It was tragic to see the beautiful branches broken and trailing as they put it in a cart and drove it away.

This is the beginning of the end! Beppino was right, the Palazzo Rusticucci is sold to a brotherhood of French monks, and we must deliver up the apartment and the terrace to them on the first day of September. Many of our beloved plants will be bought by friends, others we shall give away. The honeysuckles and some of the roses follow the passion-flower to the forum; others go to the garden of the American School of Archæology, where the dear Nortons will care for them, and some to the Spanish Academy, where the Signora Villegas will have an eye to them.

Camphoring goes on to-day; the general wretchedness of “things in the saddle” is in the air. How stupidly we complicate life by acquiring fleeces of Miletus and other perishable objects. How to dispose of the accumulations of all these years? Diogenes had the right of it. In future a tub and the sunlight will suffice me.

This afternoon as we were sitting comfortably together in the big old studio (the coolest place in Rome) enjoying our tea, Signor Boni threw a bombshell into our camp.

“I notice,” he said, “that those cracks in the wall have widened perceptibly since I was last here.”

The studio is forty feet high, sixty feet long. Among the jocose charcoal sketches scrawled on the walls certain evil-looking cracks zigzag from the high-pitched wooden roof to the red brick pavement. When we first came they were no more than mere cracks in the whitewash; now they gape wide enough to hold my finger. As we were examining the cracks we all started at a sound like the snapping of a pistol over our heads.

“What was that noise?” I cried.

“Only the creaking of the ceiling beams, it happens every now and again,” said J.

“Before we restored the Ducal Palace in Venice, and saved it from tumbling down, the same thing went on,” said Signor Boni; “but, _amici miei_, do you not see what all this means?”

“It means that this old barrack is going to pieces,” said J.; “some day they will either have to shore it up or tear it down.”

“Listen,” said the Venetian, impressively. “Last Sunday morning the Palazzo Piombino, in the Via della Scrofa, not half a mile from here, fell in a heap of ruins, all in a second, with no more warning than you have had. If it had not been _festa_, and a fine day, there would have been a great loss of life. As it was the people were all out gadding about the town.”

Pietro, who had been listening, now chimed in. “_Scuse Signore_, there was the cook, a friend of mine, who was obliged to remain at home in order to freeze the ice cream,--thirsty work on a hot day. _Magari_, that cook’s thirst saved his life. He had just climbed through the grating into the wine cellar to get a _fiaschetta_ of the wine of Orvieto, when piff, paff, pifferty! down came the house crashing about his ears. The wine cellar had a vaulted stone roof so strong that it resisted all the bricks, mortar, and rubbish that fell upon it. They heard that cook shrieking like a small devil, and dug him out; the flask of Orvieto was still in his hand, though he had not drunk a drop; he believed that the catastrophe was a judgment upon him for taking the wine.”

“The Palazzo Rusticucci to be sold over our heads, the studio threatening to fall down upon them--our Roman world is crumbling about us!” I cried.

To which Pietro’s “What are you going to do about it?” was cold comfort.

XV

THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING!

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, July 29, 1900.

I was awakened at six o’clock this morning by a loud knocking and the shrill voices of my maids calling to me. Hurrying out to the hall I found the three pale, shivering women huddled together near our door.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

Old Nena could only lift her withered hands to heaven and cry aloud to the Madonna. Filomena stood staring dully, saying over and over again,----

“Murdered, murdered, murdered!”

Pompilia the Tuscan seemed less distraught than the others.

“Tell me quickly what has happened?” I said to her.

“They have killed our King!” wailed Pompilia.

“It is true,” Filomena sobbed; “I heard it when I went to mass.”

We dressed immediately and went out into the street, to find that it was only too true. Giuseppe the baker standing at his shop door, white as his linen clothes, read aloud the dreadful news from his morning paper. In the dark shop behind, his boy fed the crackling fire with brushwood as if nothing out of the common had happened. The loaves were ready for the oven; it was his business to keep up the fire.

“Last night, at half-past ten o’clock, as the King was getting into his carriage at Monza, he was shot and almost instantly killed. As he fell, those nearest caught him in their arms imploring him to say if he were seriously hurt. His Majesty answered, _Non è niente_ (It is nothing).’ These were his last words, he died almost immediately after.”

Ignazio our gardener who had just come up, a damp newspaper crumpled in his hand, echoed the words:

“It is nothing! It is nothing! Was not that like him? Ah! he was a brave man.”

“The assassin was with difficulty saved from the mob;” Giuseppe continued to read.

“Why _did_ they save him?” interrupted Ignazio. “They should have let the people tear the wretch to pieces, and that would have been too good for him!”

“It is nothing!” Giuseppe repeated. “Ah! you may well say he was a brave man. Do you remember the last time they tried to murder our good King? He was on his way to the races. The officer in the carriage with him was wounded; Re Umberto sent the injured man back to Rome while he himself drove on to Tor di Quinto as if nothing had happened. In the royal box he said to one of his suite that being shot at was one of ‘_gl’incerti del mestiere_ (the risks of the profession).’ Ah! he _was_ a brave man; he deserved a better trade.”

“Well they have killed him at last,” said Ignazio. “What do you suppose will be done to the murderer? Will they hang him? No, indeed; nothing so sensible! We tax-payers must support that vile assassin for the rest of his life. I ask you, is there any sense in that? They should let the people have him; we will give him justice. Ah! if I had only been there!”

Ignazio, perhaps the gentlest man I have ever known, was quite transported with rage. Cursing and crying he dashed the tears from his eyes with his clenched fist.

Old Nena took Ignazio by the sleeve: “Come away, man,” she said gruffly; “will it help matters for you to have a fit of apoplexy?”

Filomena, the soft hearted, took his other arm; between them they led him into the house. Pompilia, made of sterner stuff, remained to listen to the baker.

“We have no capital punishment in Italy,” Giuseppe explained to me. “The King’s assassin will be sentenced to solitary confinement for life.”

“Was the man an anarchist?” I asked.

“An anarchist, yes; and an Italian--more shame to him. But, _Signora mia_, he comes from your country; read for yourself.” The regicide has lived in Paterson, New Jersey. It is said that two Italian anarchist newspapers published in that town have advocated the murder of sovereigns in general, of King Umberto in particular. The paper Giuseppe handed me attacks our Government sharply for allowing the publication of these incendiary sheets.

Rome is very quiet; the grief seems to be genuine and universal. The Prince and Princess of Naples are cruising in the Mediterranean. It is believed that a message from a semaphore was understood upon the royal yacht, and hoped that the young King will soon land and make his proclamation. The evening papers speak of him already as King Victor Emanuel III. and of our dear Queen Margaret as the Queen Mother! As soon as Pope Leo heard of the murder he celebrated mass for the repose of the King’s soul.

The twenty-two years of King Umberto’s reign seem to me like a dream. I am haunted by a song of my mother’s; I hear the tragic pathos of her voice singing the words which when I was a little child and could not understand their meaning always sent me shamefaced into the corner to hide my tears:

“Kingdoms have passed away since last we met:
See from their thrones of pride monarchs like spectres glide,
Love’s law doth still abide, Love reigneth yet!”

I was in Rome when this dead King’s father, Victor Emanuel, died; I strewed roses before his sumptuous funeral car with its eight black horses; I saw King Umberto receive the oath of allegiance from his troops, take the vow to support the constitution. Again I am in Rome; if I live so long I shall see his funeral pageant, and yet I feel as young as ever I did in my life, and my feelings are hurt when people treat me as if I were not so. Read me this riddle if you can: mystery of mysteries!

This morning Patsy, sent back to Rome as a special correspondent of the “Daily----” surprised us at breakfast. You may imagine if we were glad to see him. People here are so tense, so overstrained and excited, that his presence is like a fresh north wind after days of sirocco. He brought us the latest bulletins from the Press Club.

“Yesterday,” he said, “the young King and Queen landed from their yacht somewhere on the coast of Calabria and went directly to Monza by way of Naples, where Crispi, old, broken, and nearly blind, met them at the station. The son of the murdered King hurrying to his father’s body stops to embrace the old Minister. Can’t you imagine it? Though Crispi is out of office and out of public favor, the young man remembers the time when he was a child and Crispi was his father’s right hand. That was a meeting worth seeing. I wish I had been there.”

History will judge both King and Minister more fairly than contemporaries have done; it will find the King worthy of the great name he bore. I gather from Patsy’s talk that the reaction is beginning already.

“The Italians are finding out,” he said, “that the King inherited more than his name from Humbert of the White Hand; he had the same colossal loyalty, courage, and honesty. It sounds brutal to say it, but I believe his tragic death has done more to secure the throne to the dynasty than any act of his life could have done. Sympathy is already wiping out the memory of his mistakes. There could not be a more propitious opening for the new reign.”

August 8.

Rome is crowded. It is strange to see the hotels open, the Corso alive with people, the Pincio and Villa Borghese filled with carriages at this usually dead season. The Court, the people of the embassies, special envoys from all the countries of Europe, and I should think nearly every distinguished personage in Italy, are here for the King’s funeral to-morrow. All these people augment rather than lessen the universal gloom; after six months of jubilation Rome is a mourning city. This afternoon we drove to the Quirinal Palace to inscribe our names in the Queen’s book. A dozen large folios lie on as many tables in the entrance hall; here all who wish to express their sympathy may write their names. I recognized among those waiting to sign, the French Ambassador, Beppino (Prince Nero’s grandson), and our Ignazio. One table was surrounded by poorly dressed lads,--they looked like newsboys, messengers, and the like. They are the best witnesses of the progress made in the last twenty years; when King Umberto came to the throne, the street boys of Rome did not write their names. To-night the walls are covered with manifestoes from the various trades, guilds, and associations, expressing horror at the crime, sympathy for the royal family, grief for the murdered King, loyalty to his house.

August 9.

The King’s funeral was to-day. The weather was fair and very cool for the season. We left home at half-past five in the morning and drove to the Corso, where we were obliged to leave our carriage. We had a pass which took us through the lines of cavalry stretched across the Piazza Venezia. We reached the balcony we had secured (thanks to kind Mr. Iddings, of our embassy) in the Via Nazionale, half an hour before the funeral procession started. We kept a place for Patsy, who soon joined us, looking, for him, rather jaded. He had been up all night, having come down from Monza on the special train which brought the King’s body.

“It was a wonderful journey,” Patsy said. “The bells were tolled in every town we passed through; all the stations were hung with crape; everywhere, even at the poorest villages, we were met by citizens bringing flowers. When we arrived, the train was half buried in laurel and roses.”

“Were you late in reaching Rome?”

“That was the best of it: there was no confusion, no delay, we were exactly on time. It was half-past six when the Duke of Aosta stepped from the train,--he was in command of the guard which escorted the body from Monza--and saluted King Victor, who was waiting on the platform. The cousins--they are about of an age, I fancy--looked hard at each other, shook hands, then embraced.”

Patsy had evidently been a good deal moved by the scene, which is not surprising. You know Aosta is the heir presumptive and has a son, while the young King is still childless.

“How did King Victor look?”

“Soldierly; as the coffin touched the soil of Rome, his lip trembled; it seemed for a moment as if he would give way; but he controlled himself,--that was the only sign of weakness.”

The procession opened with a troop of lancers, dashing fellows, well mounted and well set up. Then followed artillery, infantry, engineers, sailors, marines, and in the place of honor nearest to the cortege, the trim, smart _bersaglieri_, a crack regiment of riflemen. Their dress is very picturesque: dark blue uniforms, crimson facings, and large round hats with cocks’ feathers worn on one side. The crowd in the streets was extraordinarily quiet; the only sounds were the tramp, tramp of the soldiers’ feet, the muffled drums of the dead march. Many of the people had waited all night to secure their places. The civic officers of Rome marched in fine mediæval costumes, the dresses of the _gonfalonieri_, red and yellow cloth, were among the best.

“Have you ever seen such a well-drilled procession, or such a well-behaved crowd?” said Patsy.

I confessed that I had never seen better. Just as we were commenting on the fine gravity and self-control of those who marched, and of those who waited and watched, the silence--which till then really had been remarkable--was broken by a sound like the buzzing of thousands of insects.

“Who can these be?” I asked.

“The lawyers are coming,” said Patsy.

The members of the court of cassation, and other legal lights, dressed in crimson and black velvet robes, with large square velvet hats to match, and thick gold chains about their necks, went chattering by; they could not be silent! Siena sent a dozen pretty pages in fifteenth-century dress: puffed satin doublets and jerkins, long silk hose, and golden lovelocks on their shoulders. The gondoliers of Venice (famous loyalists) were a fine group; two of the tallest carried between them an enormous wreath of laurel, the gift of their guild.

There was a sudden stir in the crowd; then a deep sigh, as a gun carriage drawn by two lean artillery horses came in sight, driven by a grizzled gunner, the coffin strapped behind in the place of the gun. An officer carrying King Umberto’s sword walked before, another followed, bearing on a cushion the iron crown of Savoy; an orderly led his favorite horse, the saddle draped in crape, the empty boots turned backwards in the stirrups. King Victor followed close behind the coffin on foot, with the Princes of Savoy, the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, the Duke of Argyle, and other special envoys and guests of honor; among them were Lord Currie, Mr. Iddings, and Colonel Needham, looking like a pale-brown ghost.

Just as the gun carriage had passed, at a sudden unexplained noise--I believe it was merely the knocking over of a chair--the panic-stricken crowd surged into the street, broke up the procession, and nearly swept King Victor off his feet.

There was a moment of sickening suspense; the gun carriage halted; the King drew his sword, his kinsmen pressed close about him as if to protect him. Then in the opposite balcony a tall handsome woman dressed in mourning rose to her feet, and leaning well over the balcony waved her handkerchief with a majestic gesture that quelled the panic. The crowd understood the signal to mean “No danger!” The women in the neighboring windows began to clap their hands. Meanwhile the gun carriage waited, the young King stood at bay, startled, but ready for whatever might happen. At the clapping of hands, the groans, the cries of “Anarchists!” “A bomb!” “Traitors!” ceased, the insensate pushing and jostling stopped, and before one could believe it possible order was restored, and the procession took up its line of march. I never saw a finer example of one individual of nerve and presence of mind controlling the blind panic of a crowd.

Late, late in the procession marched a small band of old Garibaldians. We recognized our friend from Nemi hobbling among them.

“They should not have been put off at the end of the procession, along with the tailors and shoemakers of Rome. If it had not been for them there would be no United Kingdom of Italy to-day,” J. said.

“Policy, my friend, policy!” said Patsy, his eyes a little dim at the sight of the faded red shirts and the broken men who wore them.

“Nobody,” Patsy confessed, “feels the charm of gold lace more than I, but did you notice how well the plain black coat of the American Chargé d’Affaires looked among all those glittering liveries of kings? The sight of it made me feel rather proud of being an American citizen!”

We waited in our balcony to see the return to the palace. Patsy, who went to the Pantheon, where the funeral services were held, reported them as admirably short and impressive.

“Throughout the ceremony,” he said, “Queen Margaret was given the place of honor. At the end, just as they were about to leave the church, she made a deep courtesy to her son, and stood back while the young King and his wife went out before her. Think what that means! Queen Margaret, from her fifteenth year the first lady in the land, entered the church Queen of Italy and left it Queen Dowager. With that courtesy she stepped from the first to the second place in the kingdom.”

“As long as she lives she will be first in every true Italian heart!”

“There’s the rub! She should not be.”

“That may be true; she will be all the same!”

There was a sudden sound of bugles, the clatter of horses’ feet. The King’s guard, picked men, every one of them over six feet tall, came dashing up the street to the crisp music of the royal march. In their midst we caught a glimpse of King Victor, in a closed carriage, on his way to take possession of the Quirinal Palace.

The King is dead. Long live the King!

August 14.

It is written that our last days in Rome shall not hang heavy on our hands; emotion follows emotion! Last evening J. went to the station to see Patsy off on the special train provided for Queen Elena’s sister (married to the Russian Grand Duke) and the other royal and distinguished personages who came to the funeral. They had all stayed on to hear King Victor’s maiden speech to his Parliament--which, by the way, was capital; he spoke of his mother in a manner that went to the hearts of all good sons and daughters. Patsy told us, with the young newspaper man’s air of supreme knowledge, that he had it on the best authority that the King wrote his own speech. I believe this, more from internal than external evidence; it rings true, not like an address prepared by a minister for a monarch to deliver.

Patsy being gone, we thought to set about closing up our affairs in earnest, when this morning arrives a note written on the back of an old envelope in his hand.

“Send me some soup! I can’t stand this hospital diet. I am a bit shaken up by the collision at Castel Giubileo last night. Nothing serious in my condition, except the appetite.”

The scrawl was dated from the hospital of San Giacomo, where Filomena’s brother has been a patient for a month past. I packed a basket with provisions and drove directly to the hospital, taking Filomena with me. We stopped on our way to see Dr. Massimo, who gave us a letter of introduction to the house surgeon. The porter of the hospital took in my card and note of introduction while we waited in the lodge. As we got out of the cab Filomena behaved rather strangely; she asked the _gobbo_, our cabman, to bring in the basket, and when he set it down on the not too clean pavement, she let it remain where he put it.

“Please to take the basket off the pavement,” I said.

“Excuse me, Signora, it will be better to wait till the porter returns and ask him either to carry the basket himself or to send another with it. These people are very suspicious; they might think that _I_ was trying to smuggle something into the hospital. The idea is, of course, ridiculous, but these hospital employés are strangely suspicious people.”

At that moment an enormous red-haired woman wearing a checked apron came towards us; she spoke pleasantly to Filomena. “Well, my girl, I hear that your brother is getting better fast. Ah! he has a good sister.” As she spoke the giantess enveloped Filomena in a capacious embrace. Beginning at the girl’s slender throat she passed her great arms and hands down her body to the very feet, feeling her all over, pressing the light cotton skirts so close about her that she looked like a Tanagra figurine. Though Filomena endured the searching embrace with composure, I saw her glance at me, and there is no denying that she turned scarlet.

“Nothing contraband this morning, eh?” said the good-natured giantess.

“This is my mistress,” Filomena interposed, anxious to shield herself under my ægis. “She has brought some refreshments to a gentleman who was hurt in the railroad accident last night. She has a letter from Dr. Massimo.”

The giantess bowed to me politely. “There will be no difficulty, that will arrange itself,” she said. “Won’t you be seated, Madam, till the doctor comes? It is against the rule to allow any provisions to pass without a special permission from the house physician. This pretty one does not see the use of that rule, do you, my dear?”

If looks could kill, the giantess would have died, slain by the rage in Filomena’s beautiful eyes.

I found Patsy, smelling horribly of carbolic acid, in a small iron bed, a chart of his injuries--slight but numerous--fixed at the head of the cot. His powers of speech had not been impaired.

“I knew you would come. Have you brought the soup, and some decent wine? There’s the jolliest sister who takes care of me--that tall one with the red cheeks--isn’t she a corker? She will heat the broth and cool the wine.”

I asked the sister how long she would be obliged to keep her troublesome patient. She said, “Only a few days; he might possibly be moved to-morrow.” That was a hint for us to take him home, which I offered to do. Patsy would not hear of this.

“Think of the copy I am getting,” he said. “I know more about the Italian medical profession, nurses, and hospitals than I could have learned in a year’s study outside. I have notes for three articles already.”

“What are your views?”

“The doctors are clever fellows, the nurses angels, the hospital one hundred years behind the times.”

When he had finished his soup Patsy told me about the accident.