[Illustration: Decoration]
THE CONQUEST OF ROME
_By_
MATILDE SERAO
AUTHOR OF
"THE LAND OF COCKAYNE"
"THE BALLET DANCER" ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
PUBLISHERS . . 1902
[Illustration: Decoration]
Published October, 1902
PART I
CHAPTER I
The train stopped.
'Capua! Capua!' three or four voices cried monotonously into the night.
A clanking of swords dragged on the ground was heard, and some lively
muttering that passed between a Lombard and a Piedmontese. It came from
a group of subaltern officers, who were ending their evening's amusement
in coming to see the night train from Naples to Rome pass through. While
the conductor chatted respectfully with the station-master, who gave him
a commission for Caianello, and while the postman handed up a mail-sack
full of letters to the clerk in the postal van, the officers, talking to
each other and making their spurs ring (from habit), looked to see if
anyone got in or out of the train, peeping through the doors which were
open for the sight of a fair feminine face or that of a friend. But many
of the doors were closed. Blue blinds were stretched over the panes,
through which glimmered a faint lamplight, as if coming from a place
where lay travellers overpowered by sleep. Bodies curled up in a dark
tangle of coats, shawls, and sundry coverings, were dimly discernible.
'They are all asleep,' said one of the officers; 'let us go to bed.'
'This is probably a newly-married couple,' suggested another, reading
over a door the word 'Reserved.' And since the blind was not drawn, the
officer, aflame with youthful curiosity, jumped on the step and
flattened his face against the window. But he came down at once,
disappointed and shrugging his shoulders.
'It is a man, alone,' he said--'a deputy, no doubt; he is asleep, too.'
But the solitary man was not asleep. He was stretched out at full length
on the seat, an arm under his neck, and one hand in his hair; the other
hand was lost in the bosom of his coat. His eyes were closed, but his
face bore not the soft expression of repose, not the deep peace of human
lineaments in sleep. Instead, the effort of thought was to be read in
those contracted features.
When the train had passed the bridge over the Volturno, and ran into the
dark, deserted, open country, the man reopened his eyes, and tried
another position more favourable to repose. But the monotonous,
everlasting _grind, grind_ of the train racked his head. Now and then a
farmhouse, a little villa, a rural cottage, stood out darkly from a dark
background; a thin streak of light would ooze out through a crack; a
lantern would throw a glimmering, dancing circle in the path of the
speeding train. The cold prevented him from sleeping. Accustomed to the
mild Southern nights, and not in the habit of travelling, he had set out
with a simple light overcoat and neither rug nor shawl; he had a small
handbag, and other luggage was following him on the train. Of
importance to him were neither clothes, nor maps, nor books, nor
linen--nothing but that little gold medal, that precious amulet
suspended from his watch-chain. From the day it was his--it had been
obtained for him by special request through the quæstor of the
Chamber--his fingers were perpetually running over it with light touch,
as if in a mechanical caress. At such times as he was alone he crushed
it into the palm of his hand so hard that a red mark would remain on the
skin. In order to have the compartment reserved, he had shown this to
the station-master, lowering his eyes and compressing his lips to fight
down a look of triumph and a smile of complacency. And since the
beginning of the journey he held it in his hand, as though afraid to
lose it, so infusing it with the warmth of the epiderm it was scorching.
And so acute was the sensation of pleasure derived from the contact of
that possession that he faintly felt every protuberance and every hollow
in the face of the metal--_felt_ under his fingers the number and the
words:
'_XIV. Legislature._'
On the reverse were a Christian name and a surname, indicative of the
ownership:
'FRANCESCO SANGIORGIO.'
His hands were hot, yet he shook with the cold. He rose and went to the
door. The train was now running through open country, but its noise was
subdued. It seemed as though the wheels were anointed with oil as they
rolled noiselessly along the rails, accompanying the travellers' sleep
without disturbing it. The luminous windows stamped themselves as they
fled by on a high, black embankment. Not a shadow behind the panes. The
great house of slumbers coursed through the night, driven, as it were,
by an iron, fervent will, whirling away with it those wills inert in
repose.
'Let us try to sleep,' thought the Honourable Sangiorgio.
Stretching out once more, he attempted to do so. But the name of
Sparanise, called out softly two or three times at a stoppage, reminded
him of a small and obscure place in the Basilicata, whence he hailed,
and which, together with twenty other wretched villages, had given all
their votes to make him a deputy. The little spot, three or four hours
distant from an unknown station on the Eboli-Reggio line, seemed very
far oft to the Honourable Sangiorgio--far off in a swampy vale, among
the noxious mists which in autumn emanate from the streams, whose
dried-up beds are stony, arid, and yellow in summertime. On the way to
the railway-station from that little lonely place in the dreary tracts
of the Basilicata he had passed close to the cemetery--a large, square
piece of ground, with black crosses standing up, and two tall, graceful
pines. There lay, under the ground, under a single block of marble, his
erstwhile opponent, the old deputy who had always been re-elected
because of patriotic tradition, and whom he had always fought with the
enthusiasm of an ambitious young man ignoring the existence of
obstacles. Not once had he defeated him, had this presumptuous young
fellow, who was born too late, as the other said, to do anything for his
country. But Death, as a considerate ally, had secured him a sweeping
and easy victory. His triumph was an act of homage to the old, departed
patriot. But as he had passed the burial-ground he had felt in his
heart neither reverence nor envy in respect to the tired old soldier who
had gone down to the great, serene indolence of the tomb. All of this
recurred to his mind, as well as the long, odious ten years of his life
as a provincial advocate, with the mean, daily task common in the
courts, and rare appearance at assizes. Perhaps a land litigation over
an inheritance of three hundred lire, a mere spadeful of ground; a whole
miniature world of sordid, paltry affairs, of peasants' rascalities, of
complicated lies for a low object, in which the client would suspect his
lawyer and try to cheat him, while the lawyer would look upon the client
as an unarmed enemy. Amid such surroundings the young advocate had felt
every instinct of ardour die in his soul; speech, too, had died in his
throat. And since the cause he must defend was barren and trivial, and
the men he must address listened with indifference, he at last took
refuge in hastening through the defence in a few dry words; therefore
his reputation as an advocate was not great. Now he was entirely bereft
of the capacity to regret leaving his home and his old parents, who at
seeing him go had wept like all old persons of advanced years when
someone departs through that great selfishness which is a trait of old
age. Many secret, furious tempests, smothered eruptions that could find
no vent, had exhausted the well-springs of tenderness in his heart. Now,
during this journey, he remembered it all quite clearly, but without
emotion, like an impartial observer. He shut his eyes and attempted to
sleep, but could not.
In the train, however, everyone else appeared to be wrapped in deep
slumber. Through the noise and the increased rocking the Honourable
Sangiorgio seemed to hear a long, even respiration; he seemed almost to
see a gigantic chest slowly rising and falling in the happy, mechanical
process of breathing.
At Cassino, where there was a stop of five minutes at one in the
morning, no one got out. The waiter in the café was asleep under the
petroleum lamp, motionless, his arms on the marble table and his head on
his arms. The station men, huddled up in black capes, with hoods over
their eyes and lantern in hand, went by, testing the journals, which
gave forth the sound of a metal bell, clear, crystalline in tone. The
whistle of the engine, as the train started, was gently shrill; the
loud, strident voice was lowered as if by courtesy. Resuming the
journey, the movement of the train became a soft rocking, without
shocks, without grating, without unevenness, a rapid motion as on
velvet, but with a dull rumble like the snoring of a giant in the heavy
plenitude of his somnolence. Francesco Sangiorgio thought of all those
people who were travelling with him: people in sorrow over their recent
parting, or glad at nearing their new bourn; people loving without hope,
loving tragically, or loving happily; people taken up with work, with
business, with anxieties, with idleness; people oppressed by age, by
illness, by youth, by felicity; people who knew they were journeying
towards a dramatic destiny, and those who were going that way
unconsciously. But they all, within half an hour, had one by one yielded
to sleep, in full forgetfulness of body and soul. The gentle, pacific,
healing balm of rest had come to still the unquiet spirits, had soothed
them, had spread over those perturbed mortals, whether too happy or too
unhappy, and they were all at ease in their sleep. Irritated nerves,
anger, disdain, desires, sickness, cowardice, incurable grief--all the
bestiality and grandeur of human nature travelling in that nocturnal
train was lost in the great, calm embrace of sleep. The train was
hastening to their fate--sad, lucky, or commonplace--those dreaming
spirits and those prostrate shapes of beings who were tasting the
profound delight of painless annihilation, leaving it to a power outside
of themselves to bear them along.
'But why cannot I sleep also?' thought Francesco Sangiorgio.
For a moment, as he stood in his solitary compartment under the wavering
light of the oil-lamp, with the pitch-black earth scudding by past the
windows, with the light vapour that clouded the glass, with the cold of
the night that was growing more intense--for a moment he felt alone,
irremediably lost and abandoned in the feebleness of his situation. He
repented having so proudly asked for a reserved compartment, wished for
the company of a human being, of anyone whomsoever, of anyone of his
kind, even the very humblest. He was dismayed and terrified like a
child, imprisoned in that cage out of which there was no escape, drawn
along by a machine which he was powerless to stop in its course. Seized
with unreasoning horror, with parched throat he dropped helplessly on
the seat, from which, pricked by a latent reflection, he suddenly jumped
up; he began to walk nervously back and forth.
'It is Rome, it is Rome,' he murmured.
Yes, it was Rome. Those four letters, round, clear, and resonant as the
bugles of a marching army, now rang through his imagination with the
persistency of a fixed idea. The name was short and sweet, like one of
those flexible, musical names of women which are one of the secrets of
their seductions, and he twisted it about in his mind in queer patterns,
in contorted curves. He was unable, he did not know how, to shape a
notion of what those four letters, cut as it were in granite, actually
represented. The fact that it was the name of a city, of a large
agglomeration of houses and people, eluded him. He did not know what
Rome was. Through want of the leisure and the money to go there, he, the
obscure little advocate, the utterly insignificant, had never been to
Rome. And never having seen it, he was unable to form any but an
abstract conception of it: as a huge, strange vision, as a great
fluctuating thing, as a fine thought, as an ideal apparition, as a vast
shape with shadowy outlines. Thus all his thoughts about Rome were
grand, but indefinite and vague--wild comparisons, fictions that
developed into ideas, a tumult of fantasies, a crowded jumble of
imaginations and conceits. Beneath the cold mask worn by the pensive son
of the South burned an active imagination habituated to selfish and
solitary meditations. And Rome threw that mind into furious commotion!
Oh, he felt Rome--he felt it! He saw it, like a colossal human shade,
stretching out immense maternal arms to clasp him in a strenuous
embrace, as the earth did Antæus, who was thereby rejuvenated. He seemed
to hear, through the night, a woman's voice uttering his name with
irresistible tenderness, and a voluptuous shudder ran over him. The city
was expecting him like a well-beloved son far from home, and magnetized
him with the mother's desire for her child. How often, from the little
overarched, embowered terrace in front of his house, in his Basilicata,
had he stared out upon the horizon beyond the hill, thinking how, over
there, over there under the bend of the sky, Rome was waiting for him!
Like faithful, reverent lovers who have an adored one afar, and who are
consumed with the desire to be at her side, he sorrowfully thought of
the great distance separating him from Rome; and as in cases of crossed
love, men, things, and events interposed between him and his adored.
With what deep, self-avowed hatred, all asurge in his heart, did he
detest those who put themselves in the way of himself and the city that
was calling him! Like lovers, in their inmost thoughts, nothing was
present to him but the rapturous vision of the being he loved and was
loved by: all those black shadows eclipsing the brightness of his dream
enraged him. Bitterness invaded him; rancour, anger, scorn, and desires
accumulated in his mind--as with lovers.
With Rome ever in his heart, the ten years' strife had changed him. A
secret distrust of all others and a sovereign esteem of himself;
continued and oft harmful introspection; the steady assumption of
outward calm while his heart rioted within; a profound contempt for all
human endeavours foreign to ambition; growing experience of the
discrepancy between wish and fulfilment; the consequent delusions, kept
private, but no less bitter for that; the love of success, success only,
nothing else than success--all this had been born in his innermost soul.
Yet sometimes, in the dark hours of despair, he was prostrated with
unspeakable debility; humiliation drove out pride; he felt himself a
poor, miserable, futile creature. Like lovers, when bad fortune
overtakes them, he felt unworthy of Rome. Ah! he must possess himself in
patience, fortify himself with persistence, temper his strength in
adversity, purify his spirit in the cleansing fire, like a saint of old,
in order to be worthy of Rome. Sacred as a priestess, mother, bride,
Rome must have expiations and sacrifices, must have a heart unalloyed
and a will of iron!
'Ceprano! Ceprano! Fifteen minutes' stop!' was being shouted outside.
The Honourable Sangiorgio looked about him, listened as one dazed. He
had been raving.
* * * * *
First a bar of pallid green; then a cold, livid lightness, creeping
slowly upward until it reached the top of the heavens. In that chillness
of expiring night opened the vast Roman Campagna. It was an ample plain,
whose colour was as yet indistinct, but which here and there undulated
like the dunes of the seashore. This Sangiorgio observed as he stood
erect by the window. The dense shadows as yet unconquered by the
encroaching whiteness gave the Campagna the aspect of a desert. Not a
tree in sight. Only, from time to time, a tall thick hedge, that seemed
to make a circular bow and run away.
The stations now began to look gray, all wet still with the nocturnal
dews, their windows barred and their green shutters closed, these taking
on a reddish tint; the mean little oleanders, with their branches
hanging down and their blossoms dropping on the ground, looked as though
they were weeping; and there was the clock with large, white disc,
splashed with moisture, the dark hands and the fat body likening it to a
two-legged spider. The station-master, huddled up in his cloak, with a
scarf wound about the lower part of his face, marched with lowered cape
up and down among the porters. In the cold morning air an insidious,
acrid smell of damp earth pierced to the brain. A large place high up on
a hill, fortified by a surrounding wall and two towers, stood forth gray
and ancient, with a medieval air: it was Velletri.
The train seemed to be waking up. In the next compartment there was a
scraping on the floor, and two people were talking. Out of a first-class
window protruded the head of a Spanish priest, with hard, shaven cheeks
of a bluish hue, who was lustily puffing at a cigar. And as the white,
frosty dawn irradiated the whole sky, the nakedness of the Campagna
appeared in all its grandeur. On those fields, stretching beyond sight
and dimly lighted, grew a sparse, short grass of a soft, marshy green;
here and there were yellowish stains, blotched with brown, of coarse,
rude earth, stony, muddy, uncultivable. It was an imperial desert
ungraced by any tree, undarkened by any shadow of man, untraversed by
any flight of bird; it was desolation, enormous and solemn.
In the contemplation of this landscape, which resembled nothing else
whatever, Sangiorgio was seized by a growing surprise that absorbed all
his individual dreams. He stood looking out, mute and motionless, from
the corner of the coach trembling with cold, conscious that the beating
of his temples was abating. Then by degrees his eyelids became heavy, a
sensation of lassitude came over his whole body; he felt the full
fatigue of his wakeful night. He would have liked to stretch himself out
in the railway-carriage with a comfortable ray of sunshine streaming in
through an open window, and to get an hour's sleep before reaching Rome;
he was envious of the people who had spent the long hours of the night
in getting renewed strength from sleep.
The journey was now seeming intolerably long to Sangiorgio, and the
spectacle of the Campagna in its majestic poverty was oppressive to him.
Would it never end? Would he never be in Rome? He was worn out: a
sensation of torpor was spreading from his neck through all his limbs,
his mouth was pasty and sour, as if he were convalescing from an
illness, and his impatience became painful, a sort of small torture; he
began to pity himself, as though an injustice had been done him. The
ordinary passenger trains were too slow; he had done wrong to come in
this one, expecting to sleep during the night; this last hour had been
unendurable. The reality of his dreams was upon him, close as close
could be, and the proximity caused him a shock of gladness. He felt he
was hastening towards Rome, like a lover to his lady; he strove to be
calm, inwardly ashamed of himself. But the last twenty minutes were a
veritable spasm. With his head out of the window, receiving the damp
smoke of the engine in his face, without a further look at the Campagna,
without a glance at the fine aqueducts running over the plain, he stared
into the distance, believing and fearing that at every moment Rome would
appear, and was depressed by a vague feeling of terror. The Campagna
vanished behind him as if it were drowning, going down with the moist
fields, the yellow aqueducts, and the little white road-labourers'
houses. The locomotive seemed to be increasing its speed, and from time
to time gave vent to a long, long, piercing whistle twice and thrice
repeated. At nearly all the windows heads were peering out.
Where was Rome, then? It was nowhere to be seen. So strong was his
trepidation that when the train commenced to slacken the Honourable
Sangiorgio sank down on the seat; his heart beat under his throat as
though it filled up his whole chest. As he stepped down upon the
platform from the footboard, the violent throbbing within him was
answered by as many imaginary hammer-like blows upon the head. Yet all
that the railway officials said was 'Rome.' But he was seized with a
slight trembling in the legs; the crowd surrounded him, pushed him,
jostled him, without paying any attention to him. He was between two
currents of passengers, arrived simultaneously by two trains, from
Naples and Florence. The Honourable Sangiorgio was bewildered among so
many people; he leaned against the wall, his handbag at his feet, and
his eyes wandered through the crowd as if in search of someone. The
station was still quite damp and rather dark, smelling horribly, as
usual, of coal, of oil, of wet steel, and was full of black waggons and
high piles of accumulated luggage. All faces were tired, sleepy,
ill-humoured, expanding into a yawn about the mouth; their sole
expression was one of indifference, not hostile, but invincible.
No one noticed the deputy, who had unfastened his overcoat with the
childish motive of displaying his medal. Twice he called to a porter,
who went off without listening to him. Instead, the employés of the
railroad were gathering round a group of gentlemen in tall hats, with
pale, bureaucratic countenances, who had on black tailcoats and white
cravats under buttoned-up overcoats, their collars up, and their faces
sallow from short sleep. They bore the aspect of persons of position
accomplishing a high social formality. When from a coach in the Florence
train a tall, slender, fashionable lady alighted they all uncovered.
Then a thin old gentleman got out. The group closed in; the lean
gentleman bowed, while the lady smilingly bent her head over a proffered
bunch of flowers. From the now open coats shone an array of white
shirtfronts; smiles flitted over the visages, which had quickly
coloured. On some of the watchchains hung four or five medals.
'His Excellency!' was murmured roundabout.
Then the whole group began to move, the fine lady giving her arm to the
thin old man, the deputies and other high functionaries following. The
Honourable Sangiorgio stayed behind mechanically, having remained alone.
On the Piazza Margherita he saw the whole procession get into carriages
between the rows of friends, who were lined up bowing. The lady put her
head out at the door and smiled. He saw them all drive off after her,
and was alone in the great square. On the ground lay moisture, as though
it had been raining. All the windows of the Albergo Continentale were
shut. To the left lay the Corso Margherita still building, heaped up
with stones, beams, and rubbish. The hotel omnibuses turned, about to
start. Three or four hackney-coaches remained behind through the
laziness of the coachmen, who sat smoking and waiting. At the right was
an empty tavern, closed up, and on a high stone wall a screeching
advertisement of the _Popolo Romano_. Over all hung a thick, soggy
atmosphere, an enveloping mist, a somewhat disagreeable odour. The
nauseous sight was there of a city scarce awake in the limp heaviness of
an autumn morning, with that fever-tainted breath which seems to be
emitted by the houses.
The Honourable Francesco Sangiorgio was exceedingly pale, and he was
cold--in his heart.
CHAPTER II
That day he must resist and not go to Montecitorio. The rain had ceased,
as if weary of a week's downpour; a suggestion of dampness still floated
in the atmosphere, the streets were muddy, the sky was all white with
clouds. Pale-faced people encased in overcoats, with trousers turned up
at the ankle and with countenances distrustful of the weather, were
walking the thoroughfares.
From a window of the Albergo Milano the Honourable Sangiorgio was
contemplating the Parliament House, painted light yellow, on which the
autumnal rains had left large marks of a darker colour, and he was
trying to strengthen himself in his resolve not to go in there that day.
All through that rainy week he had stood there--morning, noon, and
night. When he opened his window of a morning, through the steaming veil
would he peer at the large pot-bellied structure, which appeared to like
standing out in the wet. He dressed mechanically, his eyes fixed in its
direction, while he made plans to go about Rome, to see the town, to
look for furnished lodgings, since this life in an inn could not last.
But as he opened his umbrella in the doorway of the hotel a sudden fit
of indolence overcame him; the street which sloped to the Piazza Colonna
looked slippery and dangerous; he gave his shoulders a shrug, and went
straightway before the pursuing rain into the Montecitorio. He left
again only for the purpose of taking breakfast at his inn, in the corner
ground-floor room, with glass doors and mirrors; and while eating a veal
stew, done in Roman style, he every now and then turned to see who
entered the Parliament House. He ate rapidly, like one whose brain has
no consideration for the benefit of his stomach. Everyone who went in
there interested him. Now, he thought, this must be Sella, with his
stout figure, rather square, as though carved with a hatchet, and his
shaggy beard, of an opaque black, which was gradually speckling. Again,
it looked as if this must be Crispi, with his large, white moustache and
red face, more like a growling old general than a fiery debater. The
Honourable Sangiorgio finished his meal hastily, inwardly gnawed with
impatience to get a close view of these statesmen, these party leaders,
and then once more made for Montecitorio. But there new delusions
awaited him.
He went about everywhere, looking for Sella and Crispi. But the hall was
void and chill under the skylight, with the benches still in their
summer linen covers, with the dust-coloured carpets bordered in blue,
resembling a deep, dark well, with a light pouring in from on high, as
if filtered through a net of water. Abstractedly he ascended the five
steps leading to the Speaker's chair, where he stopped for a moment and
looked at the benches, which, narrow below, widened as they rose towards
the galleries. An infantile desire came over him to try the white
buttons of the electric bells; in order not to yield, he walked down
quickly on the other side, and quitted the hall, carrying away some of
the oppression of that great inverted cone, pale and melancholy in its
forsakenness. Neither Sella nor Crispi was anywhere to be found. They
were not in the dark circular corridor of columns, which lend it the
semblance of a porticoed crypt, nor in the other passage, long and
straight, where the deputies have their lockers for bills and reports.
Nor did he discover a politician in the refreshment-room, nor in the
great room called the Lost Footsteps, nor in the office chambers facing
the square. Silence and solitude everywhere; no one but a few ushers
lolling about in uniform, without their badges, and bearing the listless
air of people with nothing to do. Now and then Sangiorgio met the
quæstor of the chamber, who had come to exchange with the other quæstor,
a patrician who, during October, revelled in the luxury of his
seigneurial villa on Lago Maggiore; and this other one, a Baron from the
Abruzzi, with calm, aristocratic air, with a flowing, fair beard, with
the mild, unsevere propriety of a gentleman attentive to his duties,
went about vigilant yet apparently unconcerned. Whenever the baronial
quæstor met the Honourable Sangiorgio, he gave him a little nod and
murmured 'Honourable'; and, passing on, he said nothing more. The
Honourable Sangiorgio felt embarrassed and shy in consequence of this
continued politeness and this continued reserve; he would have preferred
to be unsaluted, like a stranger, or spoken to, like a colleague. This
correctness, polite though cold, disconcerted Sangiorgio to such a
degree that after a week of this repeated bowing and no word passed, he
blushed when he encountered the quæstor, as though caught in a mistake.
Hereupon, doubting whether he would find what he was in search of, he
took refuge in the reading-room, on the large oval table of which lay
scattered the daily newspapers. There, at least, he found a pair of
deputies--one a Socialist from Romagna, of light chestnut whiskers and
mobile eyes behind glasses, writing letter after letter, at a tiny
table--flaming addresses, perhaps; the other, an old Parliamentarian,
with white beard and ruddy countenance, who was peacefully asleep in an
armchair, his feet on another chair, his hands in his lap, and a
newspaper overspreading his body.
Francesco Sangiorgio, succumbing to the stillness of the place, to the
warm air, to the softness of the great dark-blue easy-chair, leant his
head upon one of his hands, though still holding up the number of the
_Diritto_ or the _Opinione_ he was reading. A lethargy stole over all
his being, which seemed to have relaxed in the warm and silent
atmosphere; but in that lethargy, behind the hand covering his eyes, he
was still alert. If the Socialist deputy turned over a page, if the old
man made a spring in his chair creak, Sangiorgio started: the fear of
being discovered asleep haunted him--unlike that aged deputy, who was
not ashamed to exhibit his worn-out, useless senility in the
reading-room, sleeping soundly, with the croaking respiration of a
catarrhal old man. He then got up, and went across the room on tiptoe.
The Socialist deputy raised his head, and scrutinized Sangiorgio with
his cunning eyes, those of an overrascally apostle. Possibly he was
seeking to discern the stuff of a disciple in that young novice of a
deputy; but the cold glance, the low forehead, where the stiff hairs
were planted as on a brush, the whole energetic physiognomy of Francesco
pointed to a character already formed, unsusceptible to the sway of
influences--one on whom social mysticism would have taken no hold. So
that the Socialist, Lamarca, bent his head again to his writing.
The Honourable Sangiorgio climbed to the third floor, to the library. In
the bright corridor, which has its own windows beneath the skylight of
the legislatorial hall, two or three clerks were at the high wooden
desks, entering in large books the general catalogue of the works kept
in the library; their occupation was continuous, unceasing; they wrote
without stirring, without speaking. A short deputy, bald and red-nosed,
was posted in front of a desk and turning over, always turning over, the
leaves of one of those large books, as though hunting for some
undiscoverable volume. Very small, standing on a footstool so as to
reach the level of the desk, with a pair of short-sighted eyes that
compelled him to put his nose down to the paper, he seemed to disappear
behind the volume, and remained in concealment like a bookmark. In the
series of rooms, all full of books, Sangiorgio found no one; the tables,
covered with papers, with pens, with inkstands, with pencils, for the
studious, were deserted.
In a corner of one of the rooms, before a half-filled shelf, standing on
a ladder, the learned librarian-deputy, the persevering Dantophile of
the black eyebrows, looking as though they were put on with two heavy
strokes of charcoal, was rummaging furiously among the books, with that
passion for his library which he had derived from the chaos he had found
it in. Nevertheless, he turned round, the honourable librarian-deputy,
at Sangiorgio's cautious footstep; catching sight of him, he turned and
scrutinized him with a pair of blackest, most vivacious eyes, all
pregnant with the literary researches he had been making.
Francesco Sangiorgio, embarrassed anew, as if he were an intruder
admonished by the silence and the librarian's staring gaze, walked more
softly, and in the last room of the library set to reading the titles of
the new books, one by one, dizzy at all the lore relating to government,
economics, and politics collected on those shelves, and for pretence he
took down a volume of Buckle's 'History of Civilization'--the
second--and began to read.
Like lovers unable to tire of the lady of their heart, enchained by the
sweet fascination, seeking the smallest pretext for remaining by her, so
also did he linger in the corridors, looking at the maps on the walls;
in the hall, studying the allotment of the seats; in the reading-room,
perusing the newspapers; in the library, reading some books he cared
little or nothing about. With the natural rusticity of his mind and his
provincial shyness, he feared, in his heart, lest that quæstor who bowed
to him so properly, but without ever speaking to him; lest those ushers
who so indifferently saw him pass by; lest that librarian, so much in
love with his library, might judge him for what he really was: a
provincial, a novice, stunned with his first political success, who was
afraid to take his comfort in the Parliamentary armchairs, and who could
not tear himself away from the place. It seemed to him, as it does to
lovers, that everyone must read his sole passion in his face.
* * * * *
That day he would not set foot there, at Montecitorio; he would not on
any account think of the Parliamentary world; he must see Rome, must
find a lodging. He looked out of the window, intending to start after
breakfast. He had been awakened early by a hubbub of voices and laughter
in the adjoining room. A sonorous, virile, resounding voice, with a very
pronounced Neapolitan accent, and speaking in pure Neapolitan dialect,
broken by rude laughter, was loudly arguing and declaiming. Two visitors
came, who were then followed by two others; then there was a string of
friends, of petitioners, who implored, boasted their claims, repeated
their requests over and over again in Neapolitan dialect and with an
obstinate rhetorical verbosity, to all of which the Honourable Bulgaro,
Deputy for Chiaia, the second Naples district, replied with vigorous
objections. He could be heard through the dividing doors, and the
Honourable Sangiorgio involuntarily listened.
No, he could not, he really could not, said the Honourable Bulgaro. Was
he, perchance, the Eternal Father, that he could grant everything to
everybody? Let them leave him in peace, once and for all! And he walked
up and down the room with the cumbrous stride of a large man, grown
loutish in civil life after losing the agility of the handsome young
officer, who, in his palmy days, had won many a fair creature's heart.
But those who came with a purpose insisted, begged, explained their
family history, related their troubles, everlastingly repeating it all,
so that the Honourable Bulgaro, with his easy Neapolitan good-nature,
yielded after being worn out, and said:
'Very well! Very well! We'll see if something cannot be done!'
They went away as well pleased as though they already had their desires,
and the Honourable Bulgaro, left alone for a minute, puffed and swore:
'Lord! Lord! what jabbering!'
The Honourable Sangiorgio was ashamed of having overheard so much, and
went down to breakfast in a very pensive mood. He armed himself with
courage to resist the seductions of Montecitorio. He reflected that
perhaps many deputies had arrived, since but three weeks were wanting
before the opening of the forty-fourth legislature. And he was already
giving way to curiosity, as a pretext for his weakness, when a carriage,
which chanced to be slowly passing by on the flooded paving-stones,
obstructed his view of the main porch. With a decided gesture he hailed
the carriage and jumped in.
'Where may it be your pleasure to go?' asked the coachman of his
absent-minded patron, who had given him no directions.
'To--St. Peter's--yes, take me to St. Peter's!' answered Francesco
Sangiorgio.
The drive was long. The three consecutive streets--Fontanella di
Borghese, Monte Brianzo, Tordinona--were choked with vehicles and
foot-passengers; they were narrow and tortuous, with those dingy
stationery and second-hand iron shops, all dirty and dusty, with those
narrow front-doors, with those squalid blind alleys. At Castel Sant'
Angelo there was breathing-space, but along the turbid and almost
stagnant yellow stream was a succession of brown hovels, of gray
tenements, with thousands of tiny windows, with damp stains of green on
them, as though a loathsome disease had discoloured them, with filthy
mildewed foundations disclosed by low-water: that angle of the river,
near Trastevere, was vile. In the Via Borgo the deep ecclesiastical
quiet began, with the silent, grayish palaces, with the shops for sacred
articles, statuettes, images, oleographs, rosaries, crucifixes, where
the pompous legend stood forth: 'OBJECTS OF ART.'
In the great deserted square before the church two fountains which were
playing looked like white plumes, and the obelisk in the middle like a
walking-stick, and round about the ground was lightly bedewed with spray
from the fountains standing there in the silence of an untenanted place.
The carriage turned the obelisk, and stopped at the grand stairway. The
Honourable Sangiorgio surveyed the front of St. Peter's, and it seemed
to him very small and squat.
'Will you go into the church?' asked the coachman.
'Yes,' said the deputy, shaking himself out of his fit of abstraction.
When he arrived at the threshold, he veered round and took a mechanical
glance at the square. He had read that at that distance a man looked
like an ant; but nobody appeared, and the huge, empty space, besprent
with water under the gray sky, to his mind resembled the vast, naked
Campagna. Inside the church he experienced no mysterious emotions: he
was an indifferent as to religion, never speaking of it, discussing the
Pope like an important political question, leaving religious faith and
practice to women. The architecture of St. Peter's did not stir him. As
he advanced he perceived that the church grew in size, but to him that
deceptive harmony seemed purposeless, reprehensible. A few Germans were
circulating, looking about with rather severe mien, as if their rigid
Lutheranism disdained such Christian pomp. Not a chair, not a bench, not
a priest, not a sacristan--the familiar spirit who extinguished the
candles and replenished the holy water at the great pillars. The brown
confessionals, on which might be read in gilt characters,'Pro Hispanica
Lingua,' 'Pro Gallica Lingua,' 'Pro Germanica Lingua,' were empty. There
was nothing to kneel on but the steps of the pulpit or of the main
altar; else there was the cold pavement.
Francesco Sangiorgio had no understanding for the monuments of the
Popes: he examined them without appreciating either their beauty or
their ugliness. His notions of art were vague and narrow. Canova's, with
the sleeping lions, he thought mediocre; Rovere's Pope, all in bronze,
he considered superb and handsome; Bernini's, with the figure of Death
in gold, the drapery of red, veined marble, the Pope of white
marble--this gave him no sensations, but was simply queer. He did not
know whether the paintings over the altars were by great artists or not,
whether they were copies or originals. He wandered about, killing time,
as though performing a duty, abstracted and thinking of something else,
not at all interested in that gigantic pile of stones, freezing and
forsaken, where only a few shadows flitted. Finally, on the way out, the
monument to the two last Stuarts impressed him as a poor thing.
'Drive to the Coliseum,' he said resolutely to the coachman, throwing
himself back into the cushions.
The coachman, in order to prolong the drive, since he was engaged by the
hour, and so as to avoid the streets by which they had come, and which
were ugly enough, went through the old, dark streets of the Borgo Santo
Spirito and the Governo Vecchio, where the real Roman population lives,
loath to abandon the ancient quarters and the small houses crawling with
beetles. The coachman made his horse go at the slow gait of a tired
animal, having cleverly secured a stranger with no ideas. At the Foro
Traiano he still further slackened the horse's pace, and Sangiorgio
pretended to admire that broad expanse below the level of the ground,
where the mutilated pillars serve for tree-trunks, that great
burial-place for dead cats, that great dwelling-place for stray cats,
whom the charitable servants of the Via Magnanapoli and Macel de' Corvi
bring the remains of their dinner. He could not see the Campidoglio, nor
the Arch of Septimius Severus, nor the Grecostasi, nor the Temple of
Peace, nor the whole great Roman Forum; because of the perpetual
demolitions he could not pass by there, nor could he go on the Palatine
Hill. This the coachman explained as he followed the Via Tor de' Conti.
And soon the carriage was under the Coliseum, without the visitor having
seen it from afar on the road which he had to take thither. The
Honourable Sangiorgio felt obliged to alight, and went in under the
arched entrance, sinking into the muddy soil. A large pool of
rain-water, bordered by verdant vegetation, lay near the doorway of the
Flavian Amphitheatre. In the hollows of the white stones scattered here
and there, in the fluting of the stairs, and even in the hand of a
broken statue, there was rain-water. Francesco, marvelling at the
immensity of the walls, looked for points of identification; where,
then, was the imperial box, the gallery for the vestals, and that for
the priests? He stood in the centre, but did not realize the nature of
that subterraneous structure. Yes, the Coliseum was grand, but the dirty
light of a rainy day partially dimmed its majesty, and showed its decay
and all the wear and tear of time. The country outside was green with
the rich growth of moist fields; but there was not the song of a bird,
not the voice of a beast, not the voice of a man.
Under an archway a municipal guard appeared; he was leisurely and
apathetic, taking no notice of the visitor. The Honourable Sangiorgio
conscientiously went the round of the circular corridor, which was
rather dark. He thought perhaps this Coliseum might be finer at night,
under the moonlight, which gives ruins a romantic aspect, making them
look larger and more mysterious. He had done wrong to come in the
daytime to get his first impression. The Coliseum, he thought, was a
great, useless thing, built by vain, foolish people. A gentleman and a
lady--she being young and frail, he tall and robust--were also walking
through the circular corridor, where the air is soft and cool, as in a
cellar; they were walking slowly, without looking at one another,
speaking in undertones, their fingers interlocked. She cast down her
eyes at meeting Sangiorgio's, and the man gave him a surprised,
resentful glance.
'Let us imagine what it looks like at night, with the moon,' said the
Honourable Sangiorgio to himself. 'The old Romans built the Coliseum for
modern lovers to walk in.' And he shrugged his shoulders, in expression
of his secret contempt for love--the scorn of the provincial who has
lacked time, opportunity, and inclination to love; the scorn of a man
profoundly absorbed by another desire, which was not love.
'Shall we go to the Church of San Giovanni?' inquired the coachman,
assuming the initiative.
'Very well, let us go.'
And he conveyed him first to San Giovanni and then to Santa Maria
Maggiore, depositing him conscientiously at the door. But these churches
were smaller than St. Peter's. They failed to astonish him by their
size; they were, perhaps, more inviting to worship, but his soul was
closed to the sweet mysteries of religious belief; he walked to and fro
aimlessly, like a somnambulist. Upon his coming out the coachman,
without asking him anything, with a short trot of his nag, took him by
the way traversed before, passing under the Titus Arch, to the
stupendous Baths of Caracalla. The deputy, Sangiorgio, did not stop to
inspect the photographs at the door; he entered quickly, as if seized
with impatience.
The walls stood up enormously high, covered with tufts of grass and
prickly weeds, and had the solidity that is bestowed by centuries. In
the midst of the huge compartments the flooring had given way, becoming
concave, like a basin, and filling with a puddle of inky water. At the
end of the hall for games and recreation was a sitting statue, headless,
the statue of a woman decently attired--Hygeia, probably. Against the
sad November sky was outlined a lofty reach of ragged wall, a hideous
toothed cliff, that seemed to mount up and up into the region of the
clouds. Down below in the plain stood a round temple, tiny and
graceful--to Venus, perhaps.
The Honourable Sangiorgio was ill at ease in that wide edifice; felt a
chill in his marrow; was conscious of his smallness and insignificance.
And anything that mortified or humiliated him made him suffer.
'No!' he said decisively to the coachman, who offered to show him the
old Appian Way, 'we will go back to town!'
As they returned to Rome he began to shiver. The mild autumn day was
drawing to an end, and he seemed to be actually clothed in all its
penetrating dampness, all the dirty white splotches, all the thin layers
of mud. And he also seemed to bear within him all the gloom, all the
solitude, all the melancholy, of those ruins, large or small, mean or
splendid, all the void, the insensibility of those useless churches, of
those great stone saints, that were hieratic figures without entrails,
of those cold altars of precious marble.
What did all those memories of the past matter to him, all those
tiresome records? Who cared aught for the past? He belonged to the
present, was a modern of moderns, in love with his age, in love with the
life he was to lead and not with the days gone by, fit for the daily
strife, fit for the stiffest endeavours to conquer the future. He was
not a weakling who repined; he did not believe that things had once gone
better; he loved his own day, and saw that it was great--richer in
thought, in activity, in individuality. But in the twilight that
darkened the cloud-covered heavens he felt belittled, tainted by the
dangerous, enervating contemplation of the past; a heavy oppression sank
down upon his breast, upon his soul: he must have taken a fever in the
bogs of the Coliseum and the Baths, in the tepid humidity of the
churches.
The gas-jets on the Piazza Sciarra, however, brought him to. A newsboy
was calling out the _Fanfulla_ and the _Bersagliere_ for sale. People
were standing in groups on the pavement. The bustle of life once more
stimulated his blood. A man talking in front of Ronzi and Singer's
stated loudly that the opening of Parliament was fixed for November 20.
The Fagiano and Colonne eating-houses, under the Veian Portico, were
ablaze with light. Through the window of the Colonne the Honourable
Sangiorgio thought to descry the Honourable Zanardelli, whose portrait
he knew. He went in there instead of going on to the Albergo Milano, and
took a seat at a table alone, near the honourable member from Brescia.
And while he ate Sangiorgio examined that elongated, disjointed frame,
that little nervous head, so full of indomitable will-power, those
convulsive gestures, that essentially Southern pugnacity. The deputy
from Brescia was dining with three other guests. In another corner dined
more deputies, and the waiters busied themselves about those familiar
customers, forgetting the solitary, unknown Sangiorgio. In that
surcharged atmosphere he felt himself revive; he breathed anew; he took
courage for the conflict. And when at an advanced hour he returned to
the Piazza Montecitorio, in the presence of the Parliament House--mighty
in the gloom--he felt shaken to the very foundations of his being. His
heart was over there.
CHAPTER III
In the glove-shop of the Via di Pietra there was a great bustle. The
handsome proprietress, fair and tall, a cheerful Milanese, and two lean
girls with weary eyes, did nothing but perpetually turn round with
outstretched arms to take down glove-boxes from the shelves. They bowed
their heads while they felt for the required pair with long, nimble
fingers. All customers who came in wearing a top-coat, under which it
could be assumed was a dress-coat, whose collars were upturned, and who
had shiny silk hats, asked for light gloves. A fine gentleman in a high
hat, with a red and white ribbon at his throat--a commander, in
fact--asked specifically for the colour he wanted, selecting pigeon
gray. A lady from the provinces, attired in wine-coloured satin and a
white hood, in which she was suffocating, was a long time choosing a
pair of gloves, arguing and trying the patience of three or four
customers waiting in a corner. She desired a tight glove that would not
wrinkle, and then she complained of buttons loosely sewn on with a
single thread, which came off immediately. When told the price, six
lire, she became scandalized, put on an injured air, said that the
material was very poor at such a high price, and went away gloveless,
with pursed-up lips, carrying in her hand her invitation-card to one of
the galleries in the Parliament.
An honourable, a stout, dark young Southerner, with black moustache,
was relating to a credulous constituent how at the last moment he had
discovered he had no gloves, how those landlords threw away everything
with the rubbish. And the poor constituent listened with a faint,
confiding smile, having no gloves, not he, and probably no money to buy
any.
In the meantime another lady had come in who had stepped from a
carriage. She was tall, with a fine face all painted crimson and white,
with ruby lips, eyebrows so black that they looked blue, and exceedingly
yellow hair. She was dressed entirely in white satin, had on a hat
bedecked with white feathers, and carried a parasol bordered with cream
lace. She asked for a pair of eighteen-buttoned black gloves; her
bracelets tinkled as they slid up and down her bare arms; she exhaled a
penetrating odour of white rose.
A small deputy, short and fat, almost round, with a fringe of black
beard and a pair of sparkling, tiny, bead-like eyes, scanned her up and
down. He was pouring out his grievances to a colleague, a tall, handsome
man, with flaxen moustache and the important demeanour of a ceremonious
blockhead. He, a democratic deputy of the Extreme Left, always drew one
of the lots conferring the duty of receiving the King and the Queen at
the door of the Parliament. Yes, he, a democratic deputy, was obliged to
bow and give his arm to a lady of the Court whom he did not know, who
did not speak to one, to whom one had nothing to say.
'I like fashionable women,' murmured the other, with his stupid,
self-satisfied expression.
'May be. But when one considers that their dresses are made with the
money of one's constituents----' retorted the fat republican honourable.
And then they left, eyeing the handsome painted female as she got into
her carriage. Between the indentations of her lace wrap was visible a
pink card; she was to sit in another gallery, was she, in a
distinguished gallery.
'The revenge of the proletariat,' remarked the democratic deputy quite
complacently.
By this time people were treading on one another's heels in the
glove-shop. There were faces of Government clerks, with freshly-shaven
beard, white necktie ironed at home, pepper-and-salt overcoat, or
cannon-smoke-coloured, or coal-dust-coloured, under which the black
broadcloth trousers shone in perfect preservation; there were sallow
faces of high officials, to which the green ribbon of St. Maurice and
St. Lazarus imparted a still more cadaverous hue; there were all sorts
of antiquated beaver hats, rejuvenated for the nonce by a hot iron.
The fair, smiling proprietress never flagged, never lost her head, bowed
amiably to everyone, always answered with the politeness of a well-bred
Northern saleswoman. She had disposed of the whole supply of white
cravats, and when the Honourable Di Santamarta arrived, a fair-haired
Sicilian of Mephistophelian mien, and asked for a necktie, she expressed
profound regrets, the Marquis being an all-the-year-round customer. That
very moment the last of those white neckties had been sold, but Salvi,
in the Piazza di Sciarra yonder, he surely would have some. The blond
Marquis listened apathetically, with his feminine blue eyes turned down
and his sceptical smile.
'Is the Signora Marchesa in Rome? Of course she is going to the opening
of Parliament?'
'Yes, I believe so,' answered the Honourable Marquis. 'I think she will
be going with her sister. I left my house in a hurry to buy this
necktie. What a nuisance these performances are!' He went out wearily as
if he had undergone some great fatigue, another just as onerous
remaining. 'At Salvi's, you say?' he asked from the door in a drooping
voice.
'Salvi, in the Piazza Sciarra.'
For a moment the shop was empty. The two girls took a respite standing
up; their faces were very pale. Before them on the counter lay open
boxes and piles of gloves. Even the proprietress was seized with
momentary lassitude, and also stood still, her hands leaning on the
counter. She was reminded of one of those hot carnival nights, one of
the last, when there are three fashionable balls in Rome, four public
balls, and eight or nine receptions, and when there would be a concourse
of young gallants in her shop, and milliners, servants, ladies' maids,
desperate husbands, fretsome lovers. But now a family from Salerno came
in, father, mother, and daughter--the father employed in the Interior
Department--and wanted a pair of gloves for the girl. They explained at
once that they were bound for the Chamber, that they had their tickets
from several people. One was from Baron Nicotera, their deputy--the
Baron, as the mother simply called him; another had been given them by
Filippo Leale--the Honourable Leale, the gentleman with the black beard,
who had been Secretary-General; the third ticket had been procured by an
usher of Parliament from their own district, a good fellow with five
medals. Oh, it was not so easy to get cards! They were in very great
demand. A lady of their acquaintance, who was the aunt of a deputy, had
been unable to get one. They were rather disturbed on account of the
different colours of their cards, which meant three separate galleries;
but--well, they would not lose their way in the Parliament.
'I think you will have to go in by three different ways,' placidly
observed the proprietress in the midst of this flood of words, while she
was battling to fit a glove on the girl's fat, red hand. The father of
the family looked at his wife in dismay.
The shop was filling with fidgety, nervous people, who could not wait,
who stamped with impatience, who tore the gloves in trying them on too
hurriedly. Before the counter was a double row of customers, treading on
each other's heels; on the counter was a tangle of open boxes, a
confused agglomeration of miscellaneous gloves; and there was an
all-pervading odour of skin--that pungent, essentially feminine odour
which intoxicates.
* * * * *
The gay autumn sun, on that most merry morning, sparkled on the
housetops of the Via della Colonna, on the roofs of the Via degli
Orfanelli, and threw its beams athwart the Piazza Colonna. The Antonine
Column looked black and worn in the surrounding shaft of bright light,
and stood out all wrinkled and hunchbacked against the red surface of
the Piombino Palace. In the limpid air was a scintillation as of gilded
atoms. Not a breath of wind stirred; streets and houses were steeped in
a silent delight, in the joyful atmosphere of sunshine. Tricoloured
banners were hung out; at the corner of the Palazzo Chigi, on the
balcony of the Austrian Embassy, the two flags fraternally entwined. In
the brilliant light, under which everything seemed to vibrate in the
utmost precision and clearness of outline, the three vivid colours gave
out a sharp, glad note. On the terrace of the Circolo Nazionale was a
fluttering of parasols--red, white, blue--glistening in the sun. From
both sides of the Corso, from the Via Cacciabove, from the Via della
Missione, from the Via Bergamaschi, came a continual rush of people, in
crowds and in groups, a flashing of black silk hats, a coruscation of
gold epaulets, an undulating wave of white and pink feathers on the
women's hats.
By half-past nine the military cordon had stopped all issues, and,
ascending towards Montecitorio, rounded the obelisk, and stretched to
the Uffici del Vicario. At every break in the line there was perpetual
haranguing between the officers and the people who tried to pass without
tickets, each one of them looking for a deputy. Ah, there he was, under
the Parliament porch! Now for making signs to him! But, heavens! he
would not turn the right way! Behind the string of troops the multitudes
of spectators formed a deep, dense hedge, iridescent in the morning
sunlight; here and there a red gown, or a white one, made the effect of
a blur. Between this line and the porch intervened a large empty space,
strewn with gravel. Now and then some gentleman with overcoat
unbuttoned, and some lady in fashionable morning attire, made their way
across on foot, walking slowly so as to be seen better, and while
conversing together enjoying the envy of those who had no cards. Near
the four steps in the porch a group of three ladies halted for a moment.
One, habited in black, sparkled all over in the sunlight by reason of
the lustrous cuirass of black beads imprisoning the upper part of her
body; the other, dressed in a delicate gray, had a white veil over her
face; the third was dressed in the iron blue, called _electric_, then in
fashion; and the three had all met in the doorway, and bowed to each
other, showered compliments on one another, laughed, swayed to and fro
on their tinsel-slippered feet, conscious of being stared at by the
crowd, of being admired and envied. After prolonging this delightful
moment, they disappeared, one by one, into Montecitorio. As the hour
drew near, the crowd increased on every side, and, like the waves of the
sea, ebbed from and flowed against the wall of the military cordon. All
the windows of the Albergo Milano were crammed with heads; from the
attics peered out the curly heads of men-servants and the white caps of
maid-servants; the large bay-windows of the Pensione dell' Unione, the
little squat windows of the Fanfulla, the windows of the Wedekind
Palace, all had three or four rows of spectators, closely crowded; and
in all the adjacent thoroughfares, in the Orfanelli square, the Guglia
Lane, the Uffici del Vicario, the two branches of the Via della
Missione, there was a host of people on balconies and doorsteps, and at
windows. At Aragno's, the liquor-seller's, women had climbed upon the
chairs and tables.
Then, as the hour of the ceremonial opening drew near, a file of
people--those invited--crossed the open space. Occasionally a row of
medals gleamed under a buttonhole. The carriages left the Corso at a
trot, without noise from the wheels, turned the obelisk in a graceful
curve, and halted at the porch. They were carriages belonging to Cabinet
Ministers, to senators, to members of the corps diplomatique; old men
got out of them, supported by a servant or a secretary, a white or red
uniform was visible for an instant, and then disappeared beneath the
porch.
On the small platform two journalists in dress-coats and soft hats were
jotting down the names of the notabilities who passed by. One was short,
with a pointed, light beard, mottled with gray; he wore gold eyeglasses
and an impassive look. The other, too, was short, but of sturdy figure
and deadly white complexion, with a schoolboy moustache and a smile
denoting a fondness for satire. They were the managers of the two
largest Roman newspapers, who were contributing in person to the columns
of those important journals, and between themselves were amicably
jesting about the queer specimens who passed.
The sun spread over the corner of the Pensione dell' Unione, thus
beginning the invasion of the Montecitorio square, and to this gradual
encroachment corresponded a movement of the crowd, as if a feeling of
contentment were stealing over them; here and there the smooth, round
head of a parasol was raised. The procession of the ticket-holders
continued across the open space, and they were now beginning to grow
uneasy and impatient, and slightly excited, thinking they were too late
to secure good places. The crowds in the streets, the alleys, the
balconies, the windows, seemed at moments to have been suddenly stricken
lifeless, as if petrified by magic, as if a huge, invisible
photographic machine were photographing them; and one might have
observed blank faces with staring eyes, children whom their nurses held
by the collar, or a dozen people who had scaled a hackney-coach. Then
the spell seemed to loosen; the crowds again showed some of the
restlessness of people moving about and gaining no ground--a motion
resembling the expansion and contraction of the rings of a worm. A
little boy had climbed upon the pedestal of the obelisk, where, clinging
to the great stone pillar, he amused himself with gymnastic feats.
At length the sun reached the line of soldiers, falling obliquely upon
them. First the white gaiters were illumined, then the blue capotes,
then the black leather hats, and finally a bright streak ran along the
barrels of the rifles. And from the distance came a low, brief rumble,
the echo of a cannonade, upon which there passed from one to another of
the whole mass of spectators, from balcony to window, from street to
alley, a flutter and a sigh of immense relief:
'The procession! THE PROCESSION! THE PROCESSION!' exclaimed the crowd in
an undertone, which grew to a clamour.
In the hall, too, the rumble of the cannon was heard; for an instant
absolute silence reigned there. Then a murmuring of voices began and
grew loud, fans were once more set in motion, the insidious, penetrating
female chatter, the footsteps of persons turning about in the aisles in
vain search of seats, the rustle of silk gowns, fused and were confused.
The hall was metamorphosed. Round about it the sections had been raised
to the level of the galleries by means of scaffolding, a large
supplementary gallery being thus created, containing four rows of
spectators close upon the shoulders of the deputies on the last bench.
On the two side-stairways, which the ushers know so well from a hundred
ascents and descents every day of every session, were two tightly-packed
files of people, two thick, solid stripes extending from the top of the
galleries down to the bottom, the ladies sitting on the steps, the men
who had gallantly surrendered their places leaning against the wall.
All around the galleries were all filled to their utmost capacity. The
press gallery, too--the best for hearing the speeches--had been given up
to the public, the reporters being distributed over the best seats
below. The ladies' gallery was quite full, but this seemed a piece of
irony, and everyone laughed at there being a special little gallery for
ladies when they had already invaded everything, were present
everywhere, at the elbows of the deputies and almost on the floor of the
House, all aglow with their imperishable women's curiosity. The
officers' gallery was an effulgence of epaulettes and gold-braid; in the
Speaker's gallery there was much craning of necks and great lamentation
from disappointed and deluded people: both were situated over the royal
canopy, which would conceal the King from view. And the two large
galleries at the corners--the diplomats' and the senators'--were empty,
deeply shaded by the dark-blue velvet draping their wooden walls.
In the hemicycle the committee benches had disappeared; they had run
parallel to the sections on the arc of a circle. Gone, too, was the long
Ministerial bench, called by the most virulent among the Opposition the
prisoners' bench. The small desk in the middle, where the stenographers
wrote, and relieved one another at five-minute intervals, had been taken
away. The whole Speaker's box had been removed. In its place a broad
platform, accessible by four steps and covered with red carpeting, had
been erected, and over it had been stretched an enormous red velvet
canopy, fringed with gold and divided into three compartments. All this
red looked very sombre under the expansive dome, and in the claustral
dimness the gold on the royal armchair shone forth like a holy shrine.
Somewhat lower down, outside the canopy, to the right and left, were two
other armchairs for members of the Royal Family. The members were
scattered about, standing on the steps of the sections and talking with
the women. Some had gone up to the last row and turned their backs to
the House, gossiping glibly with the women in the large wooden gallery,
bowing to an acquaintance, smiling at a friend, familiarly nodding to a
constituent for whom they had procured a ticket. Airy, frivolous
conversations were spun between the women, who were surprised at
everything and laughed at everything, and the deputies who tried to help
them at it.
A dark, well-dressed lady, wearing a hat cross-laced with gold, was
having the deputies pointed out to her by the Honourable Rosolino
Scalia, a grave Sicilian in correctly cut clothes, presenting the
appearance of an officer in civilian garb, his buttonhole containing a
minute daisy, and at the leisurely explanations of Scalia the lady bent
forward, peered through her eyeglasses, and pointed her lips to a
malicious smile. Ah, indeed, was that the Honourable Cavalieri, the
Calabrian, the member who was so ingenuously Calabrian? A patriot, did
he say? Yes, she understood that, and admitted he was famous, but he
wore too many medals! That lean, fair man, with the gray eyes and the
mop of hair brushed back, was that the Honourable Dalma, the literary
deputy who talked about Ophelia in the House and about real estate
assessment to the women? Why did they not make the Honourable Dalma a
Minister? Did many of them want to be Minister? And was this really a
serious thing with them, this passion for politics? So the Honourable
Scalia, a trifle disgusted with her empty rattle, tried to prove to the
lady that, although politics might seem a jest to those not taking them
seriously, they nevertheless were a noble passion. But she shook her
head, unconvinced, laughing again with her pretty, frivolous laugh, and
the Honourable Scalia's face showed his increasing abstraction; he
sought relief from her cackle in looking about the hall, politely
pretending to be amused.
The public was not impatient of the delay. The women were glad to be
seated, to see and to be seen; they would have stayed there till
evening, playing their fans, tossing their heads to make the jewels in
their hats sparkle, levelling their opera-glasses. The men were inwardly
congratulating themselves on the early toilet which had been necessary,
and which lent them an air of gravity and elegance; some pretended it
was all a great bother. But invitations to lunch were being passed
about, and meetings were being arranged at cafés to discuss the
ceremony.
The crowd which peopled the hall and the galleries and the corridors,
and every inch of space where a man might stand, was touched with
nervous excitement, with a dash of intoxication. Many of these
individuals had never visited Parliament, and feigned to take no
interest in their surroundings, though in reality the atmosphere went to
their heads. Meanwhile there was nothing gay about the Chamber itself,
which kept its wonted appearance. The skylight windows had been washed,
to be sure, but the light of that fair morning filtered through sadly,
thinned like the cold, whitish, damp light that passes through an
aquarium, and the wooden-coloured walls, with their streaks of dark
blue, were well adapted to reflect no brightness whatever, to quench any
cheerful gleam. That ugly colour absorbed and annulled all the others,
condemned all the colours to a pale monotone. Such was the effect, from
any gallery, of the optical phenomenon which is the first
disillusionment of whoever visits the Italian Parliament: all faces were
the same colour, melted into one another; no individuals could be
distinguished; it was a monotonous whole, without design, without
variety, from which one turned away disappointed.
But this place, which equalized so many faces, so many sorts and
conditions, so many kinds of clothes, this levelling to which the most
rebellious must submit, this universal imprint which no one who came
into the hall might escape--this produced a tremendous result. The hall
seemed to be a huge sanctuary which swallowed up the individual, a holy
precinct that subdued mind, will, and character, and where to stand up
and be one the possession was needed of a profound, burning, mystic
faith, or of the sacrilegious audacity that will overturn an altar. And
the great royal canopy, all dark red, with the rigid, straight folds in
the velvet, with the heavy gold fringe, and the golden eagle gathering
up the folds under its claws, with the spacious armchair in the
mysterious shadow, had an ecclesiastical aspect like a tabernacle--a
shrine where an almighty power was abiding.
Of a sudden all the deputies were in their places standing up, and a
deep silence fell on the galleries, while outside the ringing bugles of
the infantry sounded a flourish. Then a long round of applause burst
forth--a dull, persistent applause from gloved hands. The ladies, who
had risen, were applauding too, leaning on the shoulders of the deputies
in order to see better. Standing in the diplomatic gallery and
surrounded by her Ladies-in-Waiting, the Queen bowed in every direction,
and the pearly whiteness of her face eclipsed the wooden background. She
looked fresh and young and all serene under the brim of her yellow straw
hat, adorned with a strawberry-coloured plume. And when the acclaim
seemed at an end, and the Queen sat down rather above her ladies, the
whole assembly was carried off by a wave of admiration for that poetic
figure, and new applause, universal and deafening, again greeted the
Queen. Excitement reigned everywhere. On the right aisle there were
ladies distracted because they were under the diplomatic gallery and
could not see the Queen. Those in the Speaker's gallery were happy; they
could not see the King very well, to be sure, but they were within two
paces of Her Majesty. To some of the spectators on the left aisle half
of the performance was lost--the whole corps diplomatique in full
uniform in the senators' gallery, with the wives of the Ambassadors and
of the Italian Cabinet Ministers. From the central, the press, public,
officers', and Government clerks' galleries, though far off, everything
could be seen. There was a perpetual aiming of opera-glasses. The crowd,
seized with nervousness, swayed and bent to right and left. Dialogues
between reporters were overheard: Where was the German Ambassador? Ah,
there he was, with his good-humoured face, his white moustache, and his
soft eyes! That lady dressed in violet, with the large black eyes,
behind Donna Vittoria Colonna, who could she be? Donna Lavinia Taverna,
a Piombino. And all the women were in feverish agitation, names were
whispered, scraps of comment on the gowns flew to and fro, whoever was
most in evidence tried to be recognised by the Ministers' wives, by the
Ambassadresses, by the Ladies-in-Waiting. An increasing murmur of
questions and answers and subdued discussions rose in the air of the
hall like the buzzing of a million flies.
The King entered unexpectedly without the royal anthem being intoned. He
appeared at the right-hand door in the midst of his household, of the
Ministers, and of the ten deputies who had received him, and in three
strides he was under the canopy. Two or three times he turned to the
right and the left with the nervous abruptness of his quick,
self-repressed nature. The members and the public hailed him, and he
answered by motions of his gilded helmet, with its tall, waving white
feather, while in his right hand he held a paper scroll. On the
General's tunic which he wore were only his foreign military medals and
the medal for bravery in the field. And in his close-fitting uniform,
white collar, and tightest of trousers, as he stood under the
overshadowing red dome with his helmet on his wrist in the attitude of a
soldier at attention, he bore an unusually martial aspect, thin, brown,
and strong, ever in readiness to mount on horseback, ever willing to
sleep under a tent. He resembled one of those old pictures of a
Commander-in-Chief, with proud, piercing eye and pale visage, clasping
in one hand a rolled parchment on which the plan of a fortress is drawn.
The old Prince of Savoia-Carignano, the King's uncle, fat and bald,
placed himself at the right of the chair, on the arm of which he leant
his flaccid and fatigued person, but he did not sit down from respect.
The young Duke of Genoa, brother to the Queen and cousin to the King,
took up his position at the Sovereign's left, while on the floor to the
right was the group of Ministers and to the left the royal household.
Out of the general silence rose the rather harsh voice of the King; and
certainly the hearts of many of those politicians must have leapt at the
recollection in that very assembly of another voice, slightly veiled,
somewhat strident, a voice made for giving commands in battle, and that
spoke the loyal words with which he sealed the national compact. And all
the faces of the members had at once grown thoughtful; they remained
motionless, with eyes fastened upon the King's. All of the women took to
silence, as though struck by a sudden sense of reverence. In the deep
quiet, in that stillness of a whole multitude, the respiration of the
King was audible between one sentence and the next of the royal message.
And the voice in which he spoke sounded like that paternal one; it had a
certain explosiveness, certain peculiar accentuations, in its tone. The
Queen listened intently without a smile from the diplomats' gallery, her
handsome face bent downward and absorbed; the ladies were listening
without the quiver of an eyelash; the whole Ambassadors' gallery had the
smile that knows what is coming; the public galleries all round listened
without losing a word; the deputies, standing up, listened, and every
now and then something like a thrill of approval ran through the
assembly. Twice the speech was interrupted by applause. At times a
louder word seemed to wing its way, to soar up to the skylight:
_peace_--_the administration of justice_--_financial retrenchment_. But
suddenly the voice was lowered, as if the King disdained the final
applause crowning his remarks, and he stopped short as if fatigued. The
last words were muttered rather than spoken. He quickly took his helmet
from the armchair where he had deposited it, while the audience shouted,
'Long live the King!' That rapt attention, however, had strained
people's minds and imparted a sense of awe to them. The event of the
day, which at first had seemed but a strange spectacle, now assumed
larger proportions; the royal speech, on that sole occasion on which the
constitutional Sovereign spoke in public declaring his will and
intentions, became a solemn promise. A few of the most sensitive women
had a little cold perspiration at the temples; others slapped their
hands lightly with their fans, and with wandering eyes murmured,
'Beautiful, beautiful!' and the most romantic gazed fixedly at the Queen
to observe her emotion.
Then the swearing-in began. Old Depretis had advanced a few steps, and
had read out the formula for the senators and deputies, scanning the
words as if he wanted to imprint them on the minds of the listeners.
The assembly of members and senators stood out in black and white from
the bottom to the top of the sections, an assembly of energetic heads
and puny heads, of scintillating eyes and eyes of dead fish, of bald,
shining skulls, and of heavy, leonine manes. Narrow on the first bench,
the gathering spread out to a wide semicircle on the last, and it seemed
as though the space was all too small for the eruptive force of those
wills and those brains.
The King measured the nation's representatives with a glance. The first
senator, the Duke of Genoa, took the oath in naval fashion in a vibrant
tone, with a vigorous gesture; he was applauded. Then came eight new
senators; there was a stir at the swearing of allegiance by the great
Piedmontese Latinist, who was a clerical. What interested the audience
most was the swearing-in of the deputies. Depretis said their name and
surname and waited a brief moment, and from a bench a weak voice or a
strong one would respond: 'I swear!' In that moment of expectation
breathing was suspended; the King's eyes sought out him who was to swear
and watched him take the oath.
The patriot veterans swore in military style, laying their bare hand on
their breast: their faith was proved. The lawyers took the oath in the
high voice of persons wishing to attract attention. When he came to his
own name, Depretis drew his right hand from his Ministerial uniform
coat, and extended it as he took the oath; the assembly laughed at the
astute old man who was its leader. The Minister continued to tell off
the names, and agitated as well as tranquil answers were given, now as
if issuing from the bowels of the earth, now as if descending from the
skylight. The old Parliamentarians took the oath simply putting out a
hand and repeating the words in an undertone; the radical deputies, who
had long been preparing for the ordeal, swore in extreme haste, as if to
get rid of a load. And the women listened, all excitement, all seized
with unconquerable emotion, they, the inventors of all sorts of false
vows, overcome with feeling in presence of those solemn promises made by
five hundred men to one man and to the whole nation.
But the most perturbed were the new members: this royal and
Parliamentary pomp, this male and female public, this message of the
King, the swearing-in of the other deputies--all this had shaken their
nerves. And those who had come with the intention of behaving with
spirit, of swearing as if it were nothing at all to them, trembled with
impatience while waiting for their name, and then piped in a thin little
note which made their neighbours smile, and which was inaudible to the
crowd. Some played furiously with their watch-chain, and when they were
called started up as if from a dream, ejaculated a choked and hurried _I
swear!_ and fell back into their seat.
Between the Honourable Salviati--a Florentine Duke--and the deputy
Santini, the oath was taken, in a strangled voice that nobody heard, by
the Honourable Francesco Sangiorgio.
CHAPTER IV
The door marked No. 50 in the Via Angelo Custode was situated two doors
from a large, gray, dismal mansion, which was closed up. Francesco
Sangiorgio hesitated a moment: there was no one to ask for information.
One of the wings of the door was shut, the other ajar. The deputy
entered a dingy passage-way, and advanced six or seven paces before
reaching the stairs. He perceived that they were winding stairs, and in
order not to risk breaking his neck he lit a match. But at the first
floor there was rather more light, and at the second one might almost
see. Upon the landing were three doors, and to that in the middle was
attached by two bent pins a dirty visiting card bearing a forename and a
surname: 'Alessandro Bertocchini.' Sangiorgio consulted the piece of
paper given him by the house-agent. This was the name. He knocked.
For some time no one came; he knocked again, timidly. Then was heard a
great rattling of keys and chains, of bolts pushed and drawn, and at
last the middle door was cautiously opened a few inches. A tall man with
a red nose and two fair curls plastered against his temples appeared.
The Honourable touched his hat, and asked if Signor Alessandro
Bertocchini lived here. It was himself--the man of the ruddy nose and
washed-out complexion. Was there not an apartment to let? Signor
Alessandro examined Sangiorgio, ogled the gold medal all over, and said:
'Certainly, there is a furnished apartment to let; I will go for the
keys.' And plunging his frosty fingers into his pockets, he left the
deputy to wait on the landing. Through the open doorway a small anteroom
was visible, with a table, a chair, and a lamp, and a breath of
staleness, of ancient dust, assailed the lungs.
'Here it is,' twittered Signor Alessandro in his thin, high voice.
He opened the door at the left. There was a dingy room with a chair, and
then a long narrow room, looking out upon a balcony. Along one of the
walls stood a sofa of crimson cloth, with the back and arms of painted
and tarnished wood. At each end of the sofa was an easy-chair, upon
which were pieces of lace crochet-work; in front was a threadbare
carpet. Along the opposite wall ran a white marble mantelpiece, upon
which stood two tall petroleum lamps, a clock that had stopped, and
three photographs in their frames. On the wall hung a long, narrow
mirror, somewhat greenish, in whose corners were stuck, for ornament,
little red, yellow, and blue oleographs of the King, Queen, and heir to
the throne. Near the mantle were two wooden chairs cushioned with
crimson cloth. Close to the balcony was a writing-table, also with cloth
cover, of crochet-work, with green, violet, scarlet, orange, and indigo
stars, and in the centre stood a carved matchstand. Before the balcony
hung two shabby lace curtains beneath a piece of red woollen drapery.
Two more chairs of black wood completed the furniture.
'This is the parlour,' said Signor Alessandro, in his weak, drawling
voice, looking into the air, his shivering hands stuck into the pockets
of his jacket.
Francesco Sangiorgio stepped to the balcony; it faced an inside
courtyard, on which fronted many other windows, balconies, doors, and
loggias. Above a housetop, the barren branch of a tree protruded. From
the bottom of the yard rose a strong smell of kitchen, of slops, and
dishwater. The landlord said nothing, and kept his air of indifference,
allowing the deputy to investigate the apartment. The bedchamber
adjoined the parlour, and was likewise long and narrow. The bed stood
lengthwise, and beside it were a chair and the nightstand; before it lay
a carpet like that in the parlour, and at the back was a blue cloth
easy-chair, with a spot that had eaten into the colour. Against the
other wall stood a chest of drawers whose wooden top was somewhat
stained, with circles on it, as if wet glasses had been there; the two
brass candlesticks were without candles. The toilet-table stood in a
recess; here, too, lace curtains appeared beneath a piece of print, with
dark background and large red and yellow roses. The splendours of this
room consisted in a tobacco-coloured feather quilt on the bed, with
many-hued woollen arabesques. Jug and basin were hidden in a corner,
where stood the washstand, without towels and without water.
'The price?' inquired the Honourable Sangiorgio.
'Eighty lire a month--in advance,' whistled Signor Alessandro's
plaintive organ.
'And what about the service?'
'There is a servant who makes the bed, sweeps, brushes the clothes and
polishes the boots. Eighty lire a month--in advance.' And he sighed
deeply, running his hand through his hair, which bore the aspect of
varnished mahogany.
'Rather dear--eighty lire.'
The Signor Alessandro preserved silence, since he perhaps could not
muster enough breath for a discussion, and did not want to waste any. As
they were about to leave the apartment, he added simply, with his nose
in the air, like a donkey taking an anxious sniff:
'You are permitted free entrance.'
The Honourable Sangiorgio went away, shrugging his shoulders. Perhaps he
would come back. In the street, near the offices of the Minister of
Agriculture, he met His Excellency's wife, the lady he had seen at the
station. Tall, slender, habited in black, wearing a velvet cloak, she
was quite fresh and young behind her black veil. She walked with
rhythmical step, her gloved hands hidden in her muff, her eyes downcast,
as though she were immersed in thought. And there was such dignity and
sweetness in that female form that the Honourable Sangiorgio
involuntarily bowed to her. But His Excellency's wife did not
acknowledge his bow, and passed on, proceeding towards the Via Angelo
Custode along the pavement. And in Francesco Sangiorgio arose a profound
feeling of resentment, because of the rejected salute.
He next walked to the Piazza del Pantheon, to the second address given
him by the house-agent, and he passed along the streets with that
everlasting symptom of moral oppression, a weight on his chest, on his
shoulders, on his head, which he had been unable to shake off from the
day of his arrival in Rome, and in the thoroughfares he met people who
also wore the same expression of dejection.
The house was midway between the Pantheon and the Piazza della Minerva,
and next door to a bakery. From below were to be seen two windows, with
white blinds stretched tight. It was on the first floor: three doors,
all three bearing the names of women, one of them written in violet ink,
and in a feminine hand, on a tiny bit of pink pasteboard. The right-hand
door, marked 'Virginia Magnani,' was opened by an untidy maid-servant,
who stared Sangiorgio in the face without speaking. But after a moment
the landlady arrived, in a blue cashmere gown trimmed with white lace,
her front locks in curl-papers.
'Has the gentleman come about the apartment? Run away, Nanna! Step in,
step in--I am quite at your service! Pray excuse me for receiving you
like this, but one never manages to finish dressing in the morning. I go
to the theatre sometimes, with Toto, to hear Marini; it gets late, and
then, of course, one is too tired to get up in the morning.'
Sangiorgio listened, taken aback by the loquacity of this little woman
with the powdered cheeks.
'Did Pochalsky send you here?'
'Yes, madam.'
'I thought so. Pochalsky knows that this house is for deputies. I take
no others. But allow me: this is the waiting-room, and here is a table
with writing materials for the voters who do not find their deputy at
home. I had the Honourable Santinelli here. He was besieged from morning
till night, never a minute's rest, so he always used to tell me when we
chatted together a little--he was so civil, the Honourable Santinelli.
"My dear Signora Virginia," he would say, "I can endure this life no
longer!" This, as you see, is the parlour, neat and elegant. All these
hangings are my own work; I made them when I was younger and had no
troubles on my mind. No matter--we will not speak of that. Here is
everything--carpet, cushions. The Deputy Gagliardi would never have gone
away, he was so comfortable here, if the voters had not played him the
trick of not re-electing him. But political life is full of these
disappointments----'
And the little woman put on a serious look, her lips pinched and her
head down on one shoulder. This parlour was really not very different
from that of the Via Angelo Custode: there was more faded drapery, a
larger number of photographs, and an American rocking-chair. The gilded
frame of the mirror had a green net covering, to preserve it from the
flies.
'This,' continued the Signora Virginia in a strong Roman accent, 'is the
bedroom. There is a little library, for books, as I have always had
studious deputies. The Honourable Gotti was reading novels the whole
time. Do you read novels?'
'No, madam, never.'
'That's a pity, because you might have lent me some. A clothes cupboard
is wanting here, but I am waiting for a sale in the Via Viminale, where
Muccioli, the auctioneer, has promised to keep a good wardrobe for me.
However, you can let me take care of your clothes--your dress-suit, your
overcoat, your pelisse--I will keep them in my own wardrobe, and they
will be quite safe. Here is everything--basin, jug, slop-jar, bed with
two good curtains, etcetera. Look at it--look at it all, and satisfy
yourself. I am not boasting, but night and morning Toto gives thanks to
God for having blessed him with a wife like Virginia. All this,
Honourable----'
'Sangiorgio--Francesco Sangiorgio.'
'Deputy for----'
'Tito, Basilicata.'
'Honourable Sangiorgio, all this is to be had for a hundred and thirty
lire a month, not a centesimo less, for I make nothing by it. If I had
to live by letting rooms, I should be left out in the cold. In the
anteroom there is a door communicating with my apartment; when it is
locked you have your own apartment, with free entrance. You require free
entrance, do you?' And she looked at him searchingly out of her light
cat's eyes.
Sangiorgio did not quite understand.
'I do not know--I do not know,' he said at haphazard.
'Because, if you wanted free entrance, of course you would pay twenty
lire more per month--a hundred and fifty lire. But if you are married,
and want other rooms for your lady, there is my sister, Restituta Coppi,
on the same landing, who has rooms to dispose of. My sister's-in-law, on
the second floor, I cannot recommend; she is not cleanly, poor creature!
She belongs to the lower classes, like all of them in this region. It
was a fatal mistake that poor George--my brother--made. Are you married,
Honourable?'
'No, madam.'
'Very well, then. You had better enjoy your youth, too, because it's a
horrible thing to marry too soon. I, praise God! cannot complain, for
Tito is a flower of a man; but, still, liberty is best. I always said
so to the Deputy Gotti, who was a bachelor, like yourself, Honourable
Sangiorgio, and he would answer amiably--as, indeed, was his habit--"I
should have to find another Signora Virginia before I married, but there
are no more of them." Well, we were saying a hundred and thirty lire a
month, which is really a low price, and ten lire a month for service to
Nanna; and then there is the gas on the stairs until eleven
o'clock--five lire. By-the-by, I can also have your washing attended to.
I have an excellent laundress; she washes with March water and soap and
no potash. In fact, there is everything you want, and if some day the
Honourable should wish to dine at home, being sick of the pastry one
eats at the cook-shops, there is Toto, my husband, who amuses himself
with making and cooking dumplings. They are a joy! I never set foot in
the kitchen myself; my health is too delicate----'
They had gone back to the waiting-room, and Sangiorgio maintained the
cold reserve of the taciturn towards the talkative.
'And--you will excuse me, sir,' suddenly said the Signora Virginia in a
voice become hard because of Sangiorgio's long silence, 'but what do you
propose to do? I have many inquiries, you will understand; an apartment
like this is an opportunity not to be neglected.'
'Do not let me hinder your business, madam,' said the deputy, in whom
the natural diffidence of the provincial asserted itself. 'In case I
want the rooms I will let you know.'
'I may expect a letter, then? Am I to call and ask for it at the
Parliament?' she asked in tones once more mellifluous.
'No, do not trouble; I will send word.'
The Signora Virginia bowed and held out her hand like a great lady. As
soon as he was on the stairs, he felt tired of all the jabber and quite
bewildered, and it seemed to him as if he had already been to ten
houses. He had two more addresses on his piece of paper, and his
inclination to pursue the choice had greatly diminished. It was only by
a revulsion that he was able to give orders to be driven to the Via del
Gambero, No. 37, since he did not yet know the streets. The Via del
Gambero had the atmosphere of mystery of the streets parallel to the
Corso, affected by hurrying men and busy women. From the great Palazzo
Raggi, with its courtyard like a square, with one entrance on the Corso
and the other on the Via Gambero, every now and then someone would issue
forth who was avoiding the crowd or in fear of dangerous encounters, and
who hastened away without looking back. In the porch of No. 37, a
decent-looking place, there was a wooden porter's box with a
window-pane, deriving its light from the house. A little woman came out
to meet the deputy.
'Have you not an apartment to let here on the third floor?'
'Yes, sir. Will you look at it?'
'I should like to see it.'
The little woman went back into her box, picked out a key from a bunch,
and set forth, blinking the red eyelids which belonged to a pair of gray
eyes. She was evidently the porteress. She was dressed in green cloth,
faded and worn out, and rather showily trimmed; she wore a chestnut wig,
with a false plait at the neck and a fluffy fringe on the forehead. As
she went upstairs her dirty, red silk stockings showed. As for the
flaccid, wan cheeks, white and dotted with freckles, and the
pale-violet, youthful mouth, one might guess that once this face had
been round, rosy, and that it had collapsed suddenly like a doll's from
which the sawdust has escaped through a little hole. The staircase was
spacious, and had wide turnings, a rare circumstance in Roman houses; on
every landing were three doors, uniformly situated. On the first floor,
to the right, the Honourable Sangiorgio read: 'Barone di Sangarzia,
Deputy to Parliament'; there was nothing on the middle door, and to the
left was: 'Anna Scartozzi, Tailoress.' On the second floor, to the
right, the door was marked: 'Marchese di Tuttavilla, Deputy to
Parliament'; no name was on the door in the centre, and that on the left
bore the inscription: 'Commission and General Agency.'
'Have these two deputies also furnished rooms?'
'No, sir, they furnish their own, but the apartment is the same,'
replied the woman, inserting the key in the lock of the right-hand door
of the third floor, where no name was on the middle door, and on the
left: 'Paolo Galasso, Dentist.'
The apartment facing the street was very light, and the furniture, which
was almost new, had pretensions to elegance. A majolica flower-vase
stood on a table, and there was a fireplace--a real fireplace--an
extreme luxury in a Roman middle-class house.
'You can light a fire here, and after dinner, in winter, that is a
pleasure,' observed the woman. 'There are fireplaces on each floor. The
deputy on the first floor has his lighted in the morning; he has a
blazing fire all day.'
'But does he not go to the Chamber?' asked Sangiorgio, yielding to
inquisitiveness.
'Not always--not always,' answered the woman, with a malicious smile
that spread all over her face.
'And what does one pay here?' Sangiorgio interrupted dryly.
'One hundred and eighty lire a month.'
'It seems dear.'
'No, sir; if you will inquire about prices, as you are a stranger, you
will see it is not too high, in the middle of Rome, two steps from the
Corso. I am not boasting, but the apartment is arranged in the best
taste; I have always understood how to----'
And the porteress brushed down the fringe of the wig over her forehead.
The deputy shrugged his shoulders.
'It is dear,' he insisted.
'You are not obliged to take it, you know, but if you want a large
apartment with a door on the landing, furnished and comfortable, with a
fireplace, and everybody minding their own business, that is convenience
you will find nowhere else, and if you want all this in the Via del
Gambero for less than a hundred and eighty lire, my dear sir, I assure
you the thing is impossible. The deputy on the first floor came here
four years ago, and was so well suited that he has remained ever since;
the deputy on the second story came on the recommendation of a friend,
and has already stayed two years. No one ever leaves. The dressmaker on
the first floor has ladies of the aristocracy for her customers; there
is always a carriage before our door.'
'Yes, I understand, but these things do not interest me.'
'Quite so, sir! But you will come back, you will come back, for you will
find nothing as good as this, I am sure; the place was positively made
for you!'
And as they went downstairs there ascended a lady wrapped in a fur
cape, with a brown veil that went round her hat, head, neck, and chin,
under which it was tied in a showy knot. She walked up slowly.
'There is one of the dressmaker's customers,' murmured the porteress.
'She is no doubt going to have a gown fitted.'
But the bell of the dressmaking establishment was not heard to ring, and
the Honourable Sangiorgio, casting his eyes upward, perceived that the
disguised woman was quietly mounting to the second floor.
In haste to have done with it, he ordered the coachman--for he was still
driving--to go to the top of the Capo le Case, a bright, lively, sunny
street cutting midway across the Via Due Macelli. An atmosphere of
refinement, of aristocratic self-possession wafted thither from the
neighbouring Piazza di Spagna, Via Sistina, Via Propaganda, and Via
Condotti, the most fashionable part of Rome. No. 128 was situated
opposite a shop where English biscuits were sold, and preserves, and
liquors, and soaps, a _grocery_, as the English call it, whence streamed
a strong and almost warm smell of spices. Next to it was a florist's
shop, full of vases with bulrushes, of reeds, of tree-trunks, with
winter roses in the window, a bunch of lilies of the valley in a jar,
tender, early flowers. The stairs were marble, clean, and lit from above
by a window in the roof. Three doors fronted on each landing; they were
of light wood, of varnished maple, with shining brass knobs for
knockers. A servant in undress livery opened the door immediately, and
ushered the Honourable Sangiorgio into a dim parlour, saying that the
lady of the house would join him in a moment. The Honourable felt a
soft carpet under foot, and sat down, fingering the low, pliant lounge.
In the half-darkness he distinguished a table covered with a gold plush
cloth, on it a Japanese ash-tray and a vase of Venetian glass. But a
light footfall was heard, and the woman of the house entered. She was
tall, not stout, but with a full figure; with a head of chestnut hair
neatly dressed, frizzed by curling-irons, and adorned by tortoiseshell
combs; with a plain, black gown of a soft material, and a high, white
linen collar buttoned by a gold horseshoe stud.
'Will you oblige me?' she said.
They went out together upon the landing, and now he observed the opaque
pallor of the ivory face of a woman in the thirties, and her fathomless,
turbid, coal-black eyes, with something claustral in their depths. Her
fair, plump hand closed caressingly on the key. The apartment was small,
but bright and cheerful, as if it were in the sunlight of the open
country. The parlour furniture was a gray and pink chintz, very
agreeable to the eye; the mirror was oval, with a ledge of carved wood;
a long, low sofa stood near the bay-window, hung with close, embroidered
muslin curtains, which, draped in heavy folds and without cords, dragged
on the floor. A great array of photographs were queerly disposed on the
wall, as if they had been thrown at it at haphazard; on a tiny
writing-desk stood a red plush photograph frame without a picture. The
bedroom had pale-blue, satin-plush furniture, with a similar counterpane
on the bed, which was spread with a wide lace coverlet; the toilet-table
was fitted out in white fancy muslin, embellished with bows of blue
ribbon; the wardrobe had a mirror door, and at the windows, besides the
soft curtains dragging on the floor, were little screens behind the
panes, of light-blue, wavy silk.
'There is a dressing-room, too,' murmured the lady, without smiling.
'No, I will not trouble you,' interposed the other.
'No, no, I want you to see it; it is important; it has a door opening on
the stairs.'
The mistress, with her rather fleshy, rather pasty face, resembling some
of the old Roman heads, opened another door, which fronted on the
landing; this was the third door, so that this apartment of two rooms
and a half had two free entrances.
'It is a very convenient house,' she suggested demurely, inspecting a
hand, and smoothing it to make it whiter. In her black dress, with its
statuesque folds, and with the pale, calm Roman matron's countenance,
she imposed respect. The Honourable Sangiorgio spoke to her as to a lady
of high station.
'The apartment is rather too luxurious for me,' he said. 'I like it very
much, but my requirements are very plain.'
'Indeed!' she remarked, as if she did not quite believe him, in a
lightly courteous tone.
'Yes, I assure you I am something of a savage,' continued Sangiorgio
frankly. 'I want a quiet place for my work, and nothing more. I spend
much time at the Parliament. Here--it is a little feminine, it seems to
me,' he added smilingly.
'Yes, there was a Russian lady here last year; she was called away, and
had to leave.' And she stopped, without vouchsafing further
explanations.
'And--the price?' asked the deputy, after a moment's hesitation.
'Two hundred and fifty lire a month,' replied the lady placidly,
straightening the horseshoe collar-stud.
'Ah! And service and gas included?' the Honourable Sangiorgio inquired,
with genteel curiosity.
'You would have to come to an understanding with Teresa, my maid.'
'To be sure--to be sure,' murmured the other, as if in apology.
The pale-faced woman with the deep black eyes, which were so full of
liquid, nun-like melancholy, accompanied the deputy back to the door,
without even asking him whether he intended to engage the apartment,
took leave of him with a smile--her first--and did not shake hands with
him.
He now felt exhausted, overcome with a deadly lassitude; the November
sun stung him like the burning rays of August, and the air weighed
heavily upon him. Surely there must have been some faint but effective
perfume in that Capo le Case house, of the kind which first excites the
nerves and then brings a state of languor. Perhaps the perfume had been
worn by the lady who was so pallid, so severe, with the imposing
claustral mien of a high-born Abbess, in her black gown and white
collar. While idly walking along the Via Mercede, he drew a picture in
his mind of the pink and gray parlour, so sweet in its simplicity, of
the blue room all veiled with white, of the double curtains floating and
billowy, with their suggestion of privacy, of the retreat ensconced high
up, away from the world. All that furniture--the lounge upon which the
Russian lady must have reposed, to dream the dreams of a whimsical
foreigner; that minute table, on which she had written her letters; that
dressing-table, before which she had bedecked herself--that whole female
domain presented itself to him. But most of all was he interested in
that red frame containing no portrait, as though it had been carried off
in haste by a bustling traveller. He was unable to imagine this Russian
lady's face, and in the empty place which his fancy failed to fill up he
always would find the white oval, like an ivory carnation, of the other
woman, with the gentle waves of chestnut hair surrounding her face.
Unconsciously he had entered the Aragno café, and in the last, small,
solitary room he had bespoken a glass of cognac, to relieve him of his
depression. The Capo le Case lady again appeared to him, but in less
precise shape; all the more clearly, on the other hand, did he picture
the woman in the fur cloak whom he had met on the staircase in the Via
del Gambero. He had observed her arched, alert foot, daintily poised on
a step close to the iron railing, and he wanted to know where she had
intended to go, because, startled at meeting him, she had pretended to
knock at the tailoress's door, and had then proceeded further up, her
head down, and the lower part of her face immersed in the heavy, brown
veil. The porteress, certainly, must know her; yes, she must know her
quite well, that porteress with the flaccid countenance and the hideous
eyes; there was cunning in her insinuating language. Who knows? She must
have been handsome, the porteress with the horrible wig--perhaps also
genteel; she must have a curious history, and he had not given her time
to talk, as she had desired to. Signora Virginia, however, had told him
a considerable portion of her history, but what sort of wife was she who
read novels while her husband cooked dumplings in the kitchen? And from
his depression he gradually revived, harbouring a growing interest for
all those feminine puzzles: the vision of the Russian lady, that
mysterious person of the Via Capo le Case; the visitor of the Via del
Gambero and her secret; the porteress's behaviour; the singular
confusion manifested in Signora Virginia's verbosity. He would have
liked to know, understand, appreciate all this furtive femininity, that
eluded him, that was hid from his curiosity; and from this his detailed
consideration, from this analytical review of women seen and women
fancied, a desire arose which had up till then been latent: a certain
figure displaced all the rest, excluded them, and appeared before him,
tall, lithe, black-gowned, placid and pink behind a black veil, walking
slowly, with measured step and steady gaze--the wife of His Excellency.
Where might she have been going at that hour--where was His Excellency's
wife going?
Just then, outside in the street, the large, full-bodied Duke di Bonito
was passing by, the popular Neapolitan deputy, his face slashed across
with a sabre-cut; rolling upon his legs as he walked, he resembled a
clumsy merchant vessel, one of those black, flat ships that run into the
little ports of Torregreco and Granatello, and into Portici, to unload
coal and take in cargoes of macaroni. Beside him was his faithful
friend, the deputy Pietraroia, with a calm face and a violent
disposition--a man of quiet voice and impassioned language, who for
months and months would sit silent in the Chamber, and then, one day,
would break out with Southern ardour, astonishing everybody. The
Honourable Sangiorgio looked after them for a minute; they were
returning from breakfast, and on the pavement they met the third of the
Neapolitan trinity, the Honourable Piccirillo, with a fair, flowing
beard, with small blue eyes, the lord of the turbulent popular district
of Naples. And then a lively conversation ensued on the pavement. The
Honourable Piccirillo narrated something important and authentic,
gesticulating, making signs with his hand injured in a duel with the
Honourable Dalma, tugging at an overcoat button of the Duke of Bonito,
who giggled and sniggered incredulously, ironically, with the cold
scepticism of a man who has seen life; and meanwhile the Honourable
Pietraroia was listening composedly, as he daintily twisted his
moustache. Opposite Sangiorgio, huddled up behind a small table, with
his shrunken legs and his wizened baby-face, the Honourable Scabzi, the
working-man delegate, the only one in Parliament, whom Milan had
elected, was modestly breakfasting on a cup of coffee and a roll.
Francesco Sangiorgio, once more in his usual sphere, and his thoughts
running in a more serious channel of reflection, felt suddenly
reinvigorate, as if free from the burden of indolence which had been
weighing upon him that morning. All those women whom he had seen, with
whom he had spoken, had infused a sort of debility into his veins, had
debased his spirit to an inclination for triviality, and had upset his
mind with absurd and futile dreams. By a natural reaction he recovered
his balance, and with his normal sense came clear reasoning, discerning
logic, which penetrated and explained what had been obscure before. He
now understood what all these furnished houses were, these furnished
apartments, these furnished rooms, which have their being and flourish
all over Rome, vegetating almost abundantly enough to stifle it; and the
meaning dawned upon him of all this strange mixture of middle-class
females, of tailoresses, porteresses, servants, and shopkeepers, who
find the letting of rooms the easiest and surest profit; and he saw
'twixt the seeker for rooms and all these women the compulsory
association, the communication of doors open or closed, the
half-cohabitation, the meetings in the morning, at night, at dangerous
hours of the daytime--a female control beginning in the house, extending
to the laundry, then to the clothes, then to the books, then to the
letters of the tenants, and at length by devious ways reaching himself.
He felt how much there was of the dramatic, of the comical, of passion,
and of vice, in all this system of 'free entrance,' of apartments with
two doors, of courtyards with two openings, of locks with double
springs, in all this doubling, in this phantasmagoria of closed doors,
of clashing bolts, of bells that did not ring, of female shoes that did
not creak, of close women's veils and hermetically-sealed cloaks. And
the great equivocacy of Roman life, so decorous and impassive in
appearance, so restless, passionate, burning in reality, was now
manifest to him--in one of its aspects.
And in his vague, instinctive dread of this female omnipresence and
omniprevalence, in his fierce thirst for solitude and independence, he
took the lodgings in the Via Angelo Custode, where there were no women.
CHAPTER V
Another walk from the corner of the Piazza Sciarra to the Piazza San
Carlo, all the way by the Corso--the Corso on a festal day, with all the
shops shut and the street empty between the unfrequented hours of two
and three, on a winter's afternoon. In the Piazza Colonna, Ronzi and
Singer, pastrycooks, were open, but not a soul was in the shop. In the
window but a few boxes of sweetmeats were left, and the glass showcases
on the marble counter were depleted of pastry. The newspaper kiosk by
the fountain was closed. From Montecitorio a broad ray of pale sunlight
fell on the front of the Chigi Palace; an occasional hackney coach
turned in from the Via Berghmaschi, grazed the dark Antonine Column, and
slowly wandered into the Via di Cacciabove. Through its closed glass
doors one might look into the Parliament café, low-vaulted and dingy,
like a dark, shadowy crypt; there was no one inside. Opposite Morteo's,
the liquor-seller's, two very young journalists were gossiping, their
hands in their pockets, yawning, and bearing the expression of persons
mortally bored. Four or five other youths were drinking vermouth behind
the spacious windows of the Aragno café, and were reading a sheaf of
pink papers--an obscure literary journal. And then there was the whole
length of the Corso, with a few rare pedestrians and a few gentlemen,
who, after issuing from their houses, immediately entered their closed
carriages, which shot off like arrows. A mild winter sirocco tempered
and enlanguored the air; on that Friday, on that Christmas Day, at that
afternoon hour, the life of Rome seemed suddenly suspended. The whole of
that central district of the city, that stretch of the Corso which is
always feverishly astir, with its four squares, the Sciarra, the
Montecitorio, the Colonna, and the San Carlo, with its overflowing
cafés, its handsome shops, its crowded pavements--it all seemed plunged
into a sudden stupor on that happy, holy day, in that balmy weather. In
his contact with the feverish, workaday world, Sangiorgio felt the
strange excitement of it without participating in its activity. And now
this emptiness, this drowsiness, this peaceful Christmas--which in the
smallest provincial village is celebrated with gleeful shouts and
discharges of gunpowder--had filled him with amazement, as many things
had in this wonderful Rome, always so new, always so surprising. He had
been walking back and forth for an hour after his mid-day meal,
subsequent to perusing the three or four newspapers published in the
morning, which chiefly contained sentimental Christmas rhapsodies; he
had met no one, not even a familiar face--for friends he had none--not
even any of the faces he was wont to meet. Everyone who had been able to
go away to celebrate Christmas in his part of the country, with his own
family, had departed--deputies, senators, students, clerks, and
officials. And all who had remained apathetically shut themselves up at
home in their plebeian or aristocratic way, since the Roman neither
seeks nor expects chances. Francesco Sangiorgio had foreseen that he
would be very lonely, isolated, lost in the midst of a merry-making,
giddy throng; instead, Rome, to his surprise, had the great solemn
silence of a dead city.
Turning about for the fourth time, as he was bitterly regretting that he
had not gone to spend Christmas with his old parents in that poor,
humble, and respectable Basilicata, he saw issuing from the Via
Convertite, into the Corso, a body of forty or fifty men marching in
procession, with a tricoloured banner at their head. In front went four
or five men in overcoats and low-crowned hats; they walked along very
gravely, and looked as though they were measuring their steps. The
standard-bearer wore a leather belt over his outside coat, with a metal
ring near the buckle to steady the flag, while a shining, tall silk hat
was set rakishly over his ear. Then came a number of old men in soft
felt hats and shaggy, worn overcoats quite out of date. Some had three
medals, others four; a few stooped; one was lame, and dragged himself
along laboriously with the aid of a stick. They were veterans who had
survived the battles of 1848 and 1849. A few young men, much under
thirty, had joined them. At the tail of the procession came two mock
guards, of doubtful physiognomy, brown, shining skin, mottled
moustaches, wearing jackets and low hats set on the side of the head,
and walking in military style, with bamboo canes under their armpits.
The waiters in the Aragno café paid no heed whatever to the procession,
being accustomed to such sights; on the pavement a few people were
standing still, in an absent-minded manner. The two journalists talked
for a moment in front of Morteo's, and then one came to a decision,
separated from the other, shrugged his shoulders, and went with the
veterans and the rest, with the disdainful air of an idler.
Francesco Sangiorgio did not fall in behind them, but followed the
procession along the pavement, and kept pace with it. Some people joined
it on the line of march, at the Orfanelli and the Pastini. At the Piazza
Rotonda, opposite the Pantheon, where the great King lay at rest, the
banner was lowered, the veterans baring their heads. The procession then
wended its way through some of the obscure, narrow streets of old Rome,
stringing, winding along those lanes where only four can walk abreast.
And everywhere reigned the deep silence of closed shops, closed windows,
deserted alleys, a great festal peace which left the streets empty,
which kept all the Christmas rejoicings within the walls of the houses.
Now and then the standard would waver, but quickly its bearer would
adjust it in the ring with an energetic jerk.
A brief halt was made at the Sistine Bridge. Here there was some slight
stir; on both the broad pavements a number of people were standing,
looking at the river, which was flaxen fair under the wan, wintry sky;
carriages went by at a trot, drawing up sharply at the abrupt curve of
the bridge. All about, at the beginning of the Via Giulia, towards the
Piazza Farnese, and down below towards the Politeama, extensive building
renovations were in progress--piles of stones, bricks, and masonry,
walls of houses in course of demolition, little white lakes of hardened
lime, masons' barrows handles up, high wooden scaffoldings on which
advertisements were affixed; high and low, right and left, more
demolition; and then there was part of a street already paved, and some
of the work begun upon the embanking of the Tiber. The sirocco was
driving the clouds in the direction of the Via Farnesina, and the yellow
floods shimmered gaily. An immense black raft split the river in two; it
was stationary, for the purpose of the work being done, and it looked
like some engine of war. Here, too, peace prevailed, like a cessation of
life, like a sleep in the mild winter afternoon.
Sangiorgio went on with toilsome step, and, raising himself on his toes,
saw the banner of the company emerge into Trastevere. Again began the
silent threading of the lanes in that remote suburb; a few of the
populace, in holiday clothes, swelled the procession, which now
consisted of about a hundred persons. At the corner of a little street,
suddenly, under an unforeseen burst of light, they found themselves in a
broad avenue. At one hand, beyond a low parapet, lay Rome; on the other
rose a green ridge--the Janiculum; halfway between the Academy of Spain
was visible, about which wound the rising avenue. Three or four times
the company was obliged to divide, to let a carriage pass that was
trotting swiftly up the slope, noiselessly, on the sand; a female face
would appear and vanish behind the panes. At a certain point in the bend
of the road, near the Villa Sciarra, between two aristocratic lines of
flourishing century plants and young poplars, a gentleman who was
standing still called out: 'Honourable Sangiorgio!'
Sangiorgio started, turned round, and perceived the Honourable Giustini,
a Tuscan deputy, with whom he had spoken three or four times, as they
were neighbours on the last bench of their section, in the Right Centre.
He went up to him.
'Are you following the procession, colleague?' asked Giustini in a
voice tinged with irony and weariness.
'Merely as an idler. And you?'
'I am watching it march, as a spectator. It is much the same thing.'
The Tuscan pronounced the letter _c_ very hard, and spoke without
looking his interlocutor in the face. He tossed his head once or twice,
as if in contempt. They walked together by tacit accord.
The Honourable Giustini was neither lame, nor hip-shot, nor deformed,
but his legs draggled, one of his shoulders was higher than the other,
his neck was shrunk, like a turtle's, his arms and hands dangled at his
side as if he did not know what to do with them. He had an earthy face,
a pair of light, pale eyes, and a thin, tawny beard, cleft at the chin.
His make-up was that of a man completely worn out--one afflicted with
physical and moral rickets.
'These processions,' said he, 'these promenades with flags, these
wreaths laid down on stones--they are all the same. I have seen a
thousand of them, and have taken part in some. When one has been young
and has been a law student, how can one help having taken part in
processions?'
'I did, too, at the University,' replied Sangiorgio.
'Who believes in such rubbish?' resumed the Honourable Giustini, with an
energetic shrug of the shoulders. 'One must be twenty or sixty--the ages
at which one is silly.'
'Do not speak against youth,' answered Sangiorgio, exhibiting a faint
smile.
'Yes, yes--youth, love, death--the three things sung by Leopardi. He
really only sang of two, but the other stands behind them. All
Southerners are Leopardists, are they not? Well, and what a famous bore
that Leopardi is! He had a hump, and he made it an excuse to write
verses and tire people. I am half humpbacked, too, but I write no
verses, by God! And neither do I bore my colleagues in the Chamber by
making speeches.'
'True, you have not made a speech since the opening of the session.'
'And my colleagues have not the good grace to pay me back in the same
coin. What a collection of hopeless babblers, what a lot of superfluous
verbiage, what an amount of wasted breath!'
His respiration came slowly; his dull glance filtered through
half-closed lids. Sangiorgio listened and looked at him, allowing him to
talk without arguing, continuing the silent study of men and things he
had been pursuing in Rome for two months, which was to constitute so
much of his strength. Walking leisurely, they had reached another corner
of the avenue. At the square a great panorama was now offered--another
view of Rome from a semicircular terrace. They were up near the Academy
of Spain. Opposite the great gate several carriages were waiting, one of
them a Cardinal's; the beardless groom, without a hair on his face, like
a priest, dressed in black, was walking up and down. The procession went
on upward towards the Acqua Paola--a noisy, singing fountain. The
foot-passengers stopped to watch it pass. A tall, lean gentleman, with a
fair, grizzled beard, standing by the hedge, exchanged greetings with
the veterans as they marched by.
'That man would like to believe in the modern spirit, and cannot,'
again began Giustini's ill-natured voice. 'He is a fine man, yes, he is,
that man over there in the tall hat, Giorgio Serra. A handsome type,
too--an apostle, a poet--but secretly, no doubt, he is full of
disillusionment. He is a man of good faith, he is--one of the few
democrats I like. Otherwise, in his artistic tastes he is an aristocrat;
he loves the people because he has a good, affectionate heart, and
cannot help loving somebody, although vulgarity he hates. You will see
him go up to the Janiculum for the commemoration, but he will not give
an address; he is as delicate as a woman in some things. We shall pass
him in a moment; he will give me a cool bow, since he hates the Centre
in the Chamber. And he is right: nothing is more hateful than the
Centre, to which we have the honour of belonging, honourable colleague.'
'And why do you belong to it, Honourable Giustini?'
'Oh, I!' exclaimed the other, with a gesture denoting callous
indifference.
The water was falling noisily into the ample basin from three spouts;
two maid-servants were sitting on the edge and talking; a German priest
was looking at Castel Sant' Angelo from a terrace, and at the river, and
at the straight Via Longara, down below in Trastevere, under the Villa
Corsini. The procession was moving into the Via Garibaldi; at the rear
went Giorgio Serra, surveying the Roman Campagna and landscape with
amorous glances. The two deputies had hastened their gait, but were
occasionally obliged to stand still because of the fashionable
carriages.
'Are all these ladies going to the commemoration?' asked Sangiorgio.
'Yes, they are,' sneered Giustini. 'But they are not aware there is to
be a commemoration. They are bound for the Villa Pamphily for a drive;
it is Friday and the weather is fine, and then, one might add, there is
the great Roman sirocco, which takes away the appetite, creates a desire
for sleep, weakens the fibres, and undermines the will. And, by the way,
the women know what to do then, they do.'
'Bah!' said Sangiorgio, with a gesture of contempt for the female sex.
Giustini gave him a long look, as if to appraise him mentally, but asked
him no questions. They passed the Porta San Pancrazio. The Via della
Mura ran down, narrow and crooked, towards the Valle dell' Inferno and
the Vatican on the right, and the Villa Pamphily on the left. Before a
tavern stood erect and impassive two carabineers; then came a road with
a hedge separating it, on the left, from the open country; at the right
was a high, gray, crusty wall. At a salient spot was a little,
worm-eaten, wooden gate, on which was inscribed the name of the farm and
house behind the wall--'Il Vascello.' That glorious name was
enough--superfluous was the monument on the wall, superfluous were the
dry wreaths rotted by the rain--the name was enough.
The procession had formed a group under the memorial-stone, leaving a
free space for the carriages rolling towards the Villa Pamphily; the
carabineers had drawn near. The old veterans were all gathered about the
flag, and stood silent and thoughtful; the deputies held somewhat aloof,
Giustini with a hideous grimace of boredom, Sangiorgio in an observing
mood prompted by curiosity. A workman climbed up a ladder leaning
against the wall, took the old wreaths, threw them away, brushed off the
monument with his elbow, and hung the fresh wreath upon it: he was
applauded from beneath. From the top of the wall a peasant, the guardian
of the place, with one of the sallow, melancholy faces of the Roman
peasantry, looked on indifferently. Then a man got up, for the purpose
of making a speech, on the seat of a single-horsed hackney coach
standing by the wall. The students greeted him with a cheer.
He was a very fair, stout young man, with little, languid blue eyes,
with a little, pointed moustache, with hands white and plump like a
woman's, with long, pink nails and a diamond ring on his fourth finger.
He was dressed in the dandified fashion of a hairdresser, had an open,
fresh face, full of the joy of living, while his eyes rolled about with
sheer happiness. He waited for the cheering to subside before he began
to speak, and made a sign with his hand for it to cease. They all
crowded about him to listen--veterans, students, workmen, carabineers,
and guards.
The young man, in a thin but well-modulated drawing-room tenor voice,
with well-calculated pauses, turning about his head with the
deliberation of a coquettish girl, explained with dignity why and
wherefore, after the commemoration in April, another was taking place in
December. And then he at once launched into a description of the siege
of Rome, as though he had been present; the veterans bowed their heads
before this elegant youth--they, who had been there. He had an easy but
slow delivery; at one time he seemed to warm, and took a fling at the
priesthood, at the Vatican, of which, as he leant against the wall to
his left, he spoke with ambiguity, and in the manner of a young actor,
rolling his _r's_. The few veterans, abstracted and preoccupied, were
paying attention no longer, wrapped as they were in memories of the
sacred hill where they had fought for their country's redemption, where
their companions-in-arms had fallen with contorted faces and breasts
pierced by the bullets of the Vincennes Sharpshooters. Now and then one
of them would mumble a few words, as he called to mind some episode, his
brow bent, his hands pressing on the pommel of his cane.
'During the night they heard the Frenchmen merrily chatting in their
tents----'
'Do you remember Garibaldi's negro, who died after his shoulder was
broken by a splinter from a French bomb?'
'How magnificent Colonel Manara was----'
'Handsome and brave----'
The young man concluded by apostrophizing the Seven Hills of Rome, with
Roman history interlarded. His friends, the students, crowded still more
closely round the hackney carriage, shaking hands with him, applauding
him with acclaim. And he bowed to them, all affability, all smiles,
lavishing handshakes, intermittently applying to his white forehead a
tiny cambric handkerchief, bordered with black, scented with hay. The
working men and the common people remained unconvinced and unmoved, with
that sarcastic Roman smile which few things can dislodge. A voice was
heard:
'Serra! Serra! Where is Serra? Let Giorgio Serra speak!'
But Serra did not answer. Mayhap he was hiding modestly in the crowd.
And the crowd began to look about, as if making a choice.
'Serra! Serra!' was repeated, the name evoking the picture of that fine
head of a poet and an artist.
But Serra was not there. Possibly the gentle dreamer, whom all realities
repelled, had made his way back to that Rome he loved so well, or, more
likely, skirting the big hedge abloom with hawthorn and wild roses, had
betaken himself to the broad, silent avenues of the Villa Pamphily, to
resume his dear illusions amid the rural green, to quaff them again from
the inspiring loveliness of Nature.
'I knew it,' whispered Giustini to Sangiorgio. 'I knew Serra would
disappear. He hates oratory.'
'He is wrong; oratory is power,' replied Sangiorgio.
A second time the Tuscan deputy scrutinized the deputy from the South,
with slight surprise betokened in his face. These two were not mutually
attracted by esteem, sympathy, or any other interest; there was nothing
but the curiosity, the desire to know each other mixed with a sense of
diffidence, of two adepts at fencing who place themselves in guard and
are unwilling to hazard an open assault. All round them the crowd was
slowly dispersing; the standard-bearer had departed, the veterans had
disbanded, and were wending their downward way in groups of two and
three, with stooping backs in rough overcoats, and legs somewhat
uncertain. Occasionally one of them would stop to give a last look at
the Vascello.
The youthful orator had descended from the carriage with a jump, and had
joined his student friends; he had picked a rose from the hedge, and
put it in his buttonhole; starting towards Rome with four or five others
in a row, he held his black whalebone stick under his arm, while he
daintily drew on a glove. A number of the workmen had repaired to the
tavern, and, seated about a rude table on a platform, were drinking that
light, yellow wine which savours of sulphur. Ten minutes had elapsed,
and not a soul remained under the monument to the victims of 1848; in
its solitariness the Vascello preserved its appearance of a house
dismantled with only its walls left standing. On the high wall enclosing
the farm the peasant was left alone: with his head leaning on his closed
fist he was impassively looking down.
The two deputies had come down to the little open space near the great
fountain of Paul III., and were progressing slowly. A suspicion of
crepuscular dampness was filtering through the breeze, or rather the
tepid breeze of daytime was changing into the moist breeze which invades
the city at nightfall. The fashionable carriages were descending from
the Villa Pamphily, and driving towards Rome. Leaning on the parapet of
the terrace which overlooks the town, the two members of Parliament
glanced at the passing carriages. Two or three times Giustini bowed
abruptly and curtly, like a man little given to gallantry, and soon
after said as if soliloquizing:
'The Baldassarri, a Bolognese Countess--handsome woman--wife of an old
senator. She is a lunatic I no longer visit--has a mania for poets. She
always has a varied collection of them, one a barbarian, another a
sentimentalist, another a naturalist. Those who write sonnets for
weddings are received with a certain degree of favour. She is the woman
about whom the most verses and the most insinuations are made. Over
there is the Gagliarda, a Baroness, stupid, commonplace, underhanded,
and bad. She is always secretly planning to upset the Ministry. After it
has fallen, through some other agency, she wears a triumphant look. She
is so cruel that she visits the Ministers' wives the day their husbands
have been defeated. Otherwise she pushes young deputies forward, or
thinks she does. Deluded unfortunates pay court to her; she is an
important woman. In her drawing-room the tea is insipid, but the gossip
is spicy.'
'Do you go there?'
'No, not now. Do I look like a young deputy?--Ah, there is His
Excellency's wife!'
Both men bowed profoundly. The lady responded serenely and gently by an
inclination of the head behind the carriage window. Sangiorgio said
nothing, but with slight inward trepidation awaited and feared a
sarcastic remark from Tullio Giustini.
'Fine woman, His Excellency's wife,' muttered the Tuscan deputy--'too
beautiful and too young for him! Nevertheless, she is faithful to him;
nobody knows why. Her women friends hate her cordially, but it is the
fashion to be her admirer.'
'Do you go there?' asked Sangiorgio.
'No, I am too Ministerial.'
'What does that matter?'
'What should I be doing there? I am a convert, and none but the doubtful
are noticed. And then I should join the Opposition if I frequented that
house. It rouses my ire too much to see a lean, withered husband,
cross-grained and irritable through his political life, appropriate a
young wife; and then--and then--Donna Angelica is too kind: she would
spoil me.'
'Donna Angelica?' repeated Sangiorgio beneath his breath.
But Giustini did not hear him. He had taken his hat off again to a
brougham that passed. This time the carriage stopped; a slender hand
gloved in black let down the window, and beckoned to the Tuscan deputy.
Sangiorgio remained alone in contemplation of his companion, who, with
his body leaning against the door and his head inside the carriage,
seemed to be indulging in a chat. In a little while Giustini came back
to Sangiorgio, and said to him:
'Come, I will present you to the Countess Fiammanti.'
Sangiorgio had no time to demur or even to reply; he at once found
himself beside the carriage.
'Countess, the Honourable Sangiorgio, member for Tito, a Southerner and
a newcomer.'
The Countess's fine gray eyes lit up mischievously; her mobile mouth
stretched to a smile.
'I asked Giustini to present you, after hearing you were from the South.
How unpleasant Rome must seem to you, Honourable! Oh, Naples is so
lovely, I adore it! My husband was a Neapolitan. From him I learned to
love Naples and everything there. How smooth the speech is, and how
agreeable compared to the ugly Tuscan accent, Giustini!'
'Is that the reason, Countess, that you never let me speak when I begin
to----'
'Make love to me? No, my dear Giustini, I like you too well to let you.
Love is an old, played-out farce, which nobody any longer laughs at.
Honourable Sangiorgio, you must think we are very frivolous, do you not?
We know how to be serious, for example, when Giustini tells me about
politics. I am greatly interested in politics; they amuse me. And you?'
'They are the only thing that interest me,' said Sangiorgio rather
rudely.
'Oh, they amuse me so much!' exclaimed the lady, without showing that
she had noticed his discourtesy.
'To get amusement from a thing, one must not be too much in love with
it,' murmured Sangiorgio, but with so much expression that the handsome
Countess, who emitted a strong odour of violets, rested her eyes upon
him for a moment.
'Well then, Giustini, in a few hours--is it agreed? Honourable
Sangiorgio, I am at home every odd evening, the third, the fifth, the
seventh, and so on. I will not force you to drink tea. I allow smoking.
I sing passably. No other women come. _Au revoir_, gentlemen!' and
hardly had they moved on when the carriage was speeding in the direction
of Rome.
'Who is that lady?' Sangiorgio inquired.
'Why does that concern you? Do you not like her?'
'Yes, I like her.'
'Well--go there this evening; you will enjoy yourself. She is
fascinating, not beautiful. Some evenings she is irresistible. She sings
excellently. At times, though not often, she is witty. She talks too
much. But she is a good girl.'
'What sort of woman is she?' persisted Sangiorgio.
'How can I tell?' And Giustini shrugged his shoulders. 'I have not
succeeded in becoming her lover. Perhaps that might depend on one's
accent.'
'And her name is----'
'Donna Elena Fiammanti.'
They had arrived at the square in front of the Academy of Spain,
deserted in the rapidly darkening winter's evening.
'Look at Rome!' said Giustini, now at the parapet of the terrace. 'Have
you ever seen it all at once, like this?'
'No, never.'
'Rome is great, very great,' whispered the Tuscan deputy, with a strain
of melancholy in his voice.
'It looks asleep,' rejoined Sangiorgio, also in a whisper, as though he
were talking in a church.
'Asleep? Do not believe that. She is not asleep; she is only keeping
silent, and watching, and thinking. Look down there, far in the
distance, at that large, light dome against the sky. It is St. Peter's.
Have you ever seen it? Very well--it is a huge, empty, useless church,
is it not? About St. Peter's is a large cluster of buildings standing
out from the green of the gardens. They seem small from here do those
buildings, and wrapped in deep slumber. All that is the Vatican, and
inside is the Pope. He is seventy years old, frail, an invalid. Death is
at his pillow, but what does that matter? He is strong. How many believe
in him, stretch out their hands to him, bow down before him, pray in his
name, die in his name! We triumphantly count our array of atheists and
sceptics. Who can count the believers? Are you a believer, Honourable?'
'No.'
'Nor I. But the Pope is strong. He has on his side the unfortunate, the
weak, the humble, the young people, the women--the women who from mother
to daughter transmit, not religion, but its forms. You think all is
asleep down there by the river-bank, in the great palace painted by
Michel Angelo? That is the Vatican; it is a vast idea, in whose service
and under whose authority is a population of Cardinals, Bishops,
parish-priests, curates, monks, friars, seminarists, and clericals who
do not confine themselves to praying, holding services, and singing:
they may be found in the houses, they reach the families, they teach in
the schools--yes, and they love, hate, enjoy, live, for themselves and
their own interests, for the Church and for the Pope. Who can measure
their strength, their influence, their potency?'
'Rome does not believe,' interposed Sangiorgio.
'I am not talking of faith. Am I a glorifier of religion? The old fables
are exploded, but the human interest survives and multiplies. We live
near all this great ferment, and do not see it. We have our being in the
presence of a gigantic mystery working in darkness, yet we do not
suspect its existence.'
Giustini ceased, again casting his eyes over the vast panorama of the
city, which seemed drowned in the nebulous atmosphere of the sirocco.
Sangiorgio listened in excitement, with a thrill of anxiety at his
heart, as one might at the approach of danger, while Giustini continued:
'There is the Quirinal--the King, the Queen, the Court. Yes, down there,
under that rosy light. Four balls, eight official receptions, forty gala
dinners, twenty evenings at the theatre, four concerts, thirty
inaugurations, four hundred presentations, diamonds at the throat,
medals on the chest, plumes in the hat, naked shoulders, _pâté de foie
gras_, quadrilles of honour--whoever thought it was anything else? But
this beautiful Queen, who receives friend and foe, monarchist and
republican, with the same cordiality, is also a woman who thinks, who
feels, who knows, who listens. And this King, harassed by such a heavy
burden, dutifully bound to perpetual obedience, is he not a man, has not
he, too, a conscience, a mind, a will? And all these Court people,
officers and secretaries, ladies-in-waiting and diplomats, major-domos
and servants, do you think they do not worry, and struggle, and live? Do
you suppose they do nothing but make bows? That they only know how to
walk in front of the King in a room? Who can assert that? Do they not
love and hate, and have furious passions and ambitions? Has not every
one of those women a desire, some envy, bitter regrets?'
The ruthless man was running his fingers nervously along the top of the
parapet, where he found a large piece of dried lime. He broke off little
pieces, and flipped them over the green bank. Francesco Sangiorgio
followed with utmost attention the action of those thin, brown hands,
with their heavy, swelled veins.
'You cannot see that cauldron of Montecitorio,' resumed the Tuscan in a
harder tone of voice; 'it is lost among the houses; we are lost in it--a
furnace of waste-paper, in which one is gradually burnt up by a
desiccating heat--the temperature of an incubator, which lulls to sleep
all audacities and quickens all timidities, which ends in scorching
terribly all the waverers, and which awakens a few pseudo-ideas in the
cranium of idiots. All the inmates of that cardboard drum excite
themselves to shrieking, or remain utterly dumb, because of a law, or a
regulation, or a railway, or a bridge; they clamour for more laws,
weighty and trivial, more railways of all kinds, more bridges
everywhere; they want to become Ministers, wear uniforms, be deafened by
the national anthem wherever they arrive in the country, have as natural
enemies their early friends, be branded thieves in the newspapers, know
their private letters are opened by a too officious secretary--and other
delights of the same kind. Some poor wretches want to be
Secretary-General! I was one of them. Oh, the frightful furnace, that
shrivels men like dry beans, men inflamed by furious desires and
consumed in the emptiness of those desires!'
The heavens, all white at their zenith, now assumed a delicate tint of
gray on the circular hem of the horizon; like an ethereal veil the
spirit of evening rose in the air above the city. Francesco Sangiorgio
experienced a strange uneasiness; Tullio Giustini at that moment seemed
to him more hideous than ever; as he laughed he displayed two rows of
ugly yellow teeth.
'How quiet the city is!' he went on. 'It seems to be asleep, enjoying
the Christmas festival. It seems to be, but is not. Up there, in the
verdure of the Pincio and the Villa Medici, which extends down to the
Via Babuino, the painters sing, laugh, discuss heresies as if they were
theories of art, and produce pictures that seem great absurdities. But
what do they care? To console themselves for their failure they have
invented the word _Philistine_, which expresses their contempt for the
public. In the whiteness over there, on the other side, are the _new
quarters_. Have you ever been there? Seventy thousand people, in all
sorts of employment, with their families, servants, dogs, and cats: a
concourse of savages--unarmed, hungry savages--squatting up there,
looking at Rome and hating it because they cannot understand it, and
they find it exacting while their women make children and cook, women
with pale faces, with flat breasts, and red hands. They have been
celebrating Christmas in their prisons, venting their spleen against the
Government, their servants, Rome, and the butcher, like real, miserable,
stupid savages. And the Romans--the true Romans--of the Regola and the
Popolo, of the Monti district and the Trevi district, who add the
adjective _Roman_ to their name like a title of nobility, who eat
dumplings on Thursdays, tripe on Sundays, and lamb at all times, who
like white wine and the fireworks at Sant' Angelo, who are proud of
their March water, and calmly allow the beetles to swarm in their old
houses, the sceptical, clever, impassive, and industrious Romans, who
are good husbands and kind lovers, they certainly are not asleep. And
the women, Roman or Neapolitan, Italian or foreign, who go for walks,
stand at the window, argue, laugh, kiss when they love, and are kissed
when loved, they are not asleep--no, the women never sleep, not even at
night. Oh, Rome is so alert, though it seems stagnant; it is so great,
so complicated, so delicate in its mechanism, so powerful on its steel
springs, that when I bend over to look at it, from up here, it frightens
me, like an infernal machine.'
In the spreading twilight Francesco Sangiorgio, deadly pale, bent down
to look also, as though to discover the mysterious machinery of Rome.
'And what is the dream of those who come here?' continued Tullio
Giustini, with a short, sardonic laugh. 'You believe that you are
awaited with the amorous serenity of a great city, because you are
young, and you have talents, and you wish to work, and not be unworthy
of the noble city. I, too, came thus, and I thought the first Roman
citizen must needs embrace me. Instead, after three or four years of
fretting, of internal torments, and of huge delusions, I learned a few
things: that I was too frank to succeed in politics, that I was too
rough to please the women, that I was too sickly to do scientific work,
that I was too brittle to succeed in diplomacy. This I learned, and from
this, a fact as glaring as the sun, as terrible as truth itself--Rome
gives herself up to no one!'
'And what must one do?' asked Francesco Sangiorgio, half trembling.
'Conquer her!'
Tullio Giustini made a sweeping gesture towards the city with his skinny
hand.
'Conquer her! Woe to the commonplace, woe to the cowards, woe to the
weak, like myself! This city does not expect you, and does not fear you;
it gives you no welcome, does not reject you; it does not oppose you,
and disdains to accept a challenge. Its strength, its power, its
loftiness, is lodged in an almost divine attribute--indifference. You
may make a stir--howl, rave, set fire to your house and your books, and
dance on the ruins--Rome will take no note of it. It is the city to
which all have come, and where all have fallen: why should it be
concerned with you, an infinitesimal atom, passing across the scene so
quickly? It is indifferent; it is the great cosmopolitan city which has
this universal character, which knows everything because it has seen
everything. Indifference is the equivalent of the unchangeably serene,
the deaf soul, _the woman who knows not how to love_. Indifference is
the moral mid-winter sirocco, the tepid, uniform temperature which
debilitates the nervous system, and saps the will-power, and causes
tremendous internal revolutions and tremendous dejections. Yet someone
must come to disturb that serenity, to vanquish that indifference.
Someone must conquer Rome, whether for ten years, for one year, for one
month; but he must conquer it, must capture it, must avenge all the
dead, all the fallen, all the feeble who have touched its walls without
being able to overcome it. But, ah! such a one must have a heart of
brass, an inflexible, rigid will; he must be young, healthy, robust, and
bold, without ties and without weaknesses; he must apply himself
profoundly, intensely to that one idea of victory. But who is to conquer
her, this proud Rome?'
'I will!' said Francesco Sangiorgio.
PART II
CHAPTER I
The Minister had been speaking for an hour. He was no orator: he lacked
fire and polish. Rather was he a modest speaker, one who did not strive
after effects in political eloquence, and who said things concisely, in
the logical, mathematical order in which they presented themselves to a
square, solid brain. The discourse, as was natural, bristled with
figures, was an interminable procession of numbers. He uttered them with
a certain deliberation, as if he wanted them weighed by friends and
foes. His voice was too gentle, too familiar, perhaps, but was plainly
audible in the silence. He might have been taking part in a Cabinet
Council; the Parliamentary pitch of voice was altogether absent. The
Minister stopped occasionally to wipe his nose on a large silk
handkerchief, checked in red and black. As a matter of fact, in that
short, stout little person plainly dressed in black, in that placid
face, shaved on the lips and chin, but flanked with whiskers at the side
in English fashion, in those plump, white hands, in the whole atmosphere
of repose and thoughtfulness which he exhaled, one might divine the
indefatigable workman of the study, the man who spent twelve hours a day
at the Ministerial offices, behind a desk covered with
documents--writing, reading, verifying registers, advising with heads of
departments, with general directors. Thus, the Minister, the man of
meditation, seemed out of place in debate with the members; and in
announcing the most important facts, in rendering matters exact and
profound, he spoke with the easy simplicity of a scientist setting forth
his vast learning in popular language.
The Chamber sat still out of respect, but as a fact the members were
inattentive. They were so sure of him and his adherents! He was strong,
he was such an iron, massive, luminous tower of strength that the anger
of political slander or debate left him unmoved. His very adversaries
admitted his power, and thus contributed to render his triumphs all the
more sweeping. By listening to him intently one might succeed in
understanding how he stood outside the political passion, and was all
absorbed in his love of finance.
The atmosphere of the hall conduced to a certain vague, inactive
contemplativeness. While out of doors--it being the middle of January--a
dry, whistling, cutting north wind was blowing, as was wont to happen on
one of the three cold days of a Roman winter, inside the hall the stoves
sent out a perpetual stream of heat. Tightly closed, without windows,
with gallery doors rarely opening--doors that shut quickly, noiselessly,
as though hinged on velvet--with the matting that deadened every
footstep, the hall suggested physical comfort. Nevertheless, the
Speaker, a fine man of fifty, with swarthy face and hair still black as
jet, had his legs covered with a blue velvet wrap lined with fur; and as
he listened to the Minister, he would cast an occasional glance at the
galleries, possibly seeking out someone. The secretaries sat motionless
to his right and left. Falucci, the Abruzzan, tall and muscular, with a
curly, slightly grizzled mane, was whispering frequent sentences to
handsome Sangarzia, who nodded without answering, accustomed as he was
to protracted, patient silence; Varrini, the agreeable and intelligent
Calabrian, with the muzzle of a sagacious mouse, with the refinement of
a young lady covering the power of a champion, was writing letters; and
Bulgaro, the Neapolitan, was making the seat creak which bore his
enormous frame, his embrowned visage showing traces of an almost
childish fretfulness. There was not, as on other days of minor debates,
a string of deputies coming to chat with the Speaker on his bench,
exchanging jokes with the secretaries, and going down on the other side,
after which there might be a stroll outside, a moment's prattle at
intervals in the room of the Lost Footsteps, in which fashion the
sitting went by. For to-day the Minister was expounding a very serious
question; both Ministerialists and Opposition must listen.
The Right, nearly all of them old members of eight Parliaments, heard
without paying attention, knowing their opponent to be invincible, and
thus they bore the air of veterans, faithful at their posts, neither
suffering nor enjoying. The Extreme Left paid no heed whatever, but did
not disturb the speech; that party disdained questions of the
economic-administrative order, having made no study of finance, and now
awaited some political argument, which would be an opportunity to stir
up a little excitement. One of the small phalanx of Hubertists was
asleep, his face politely covered by his hands; another deputy,
Gagliardi, was sleeping without attempt at concealment. Only on one of
the Centrist benches was any sincere attention paid, like that of eager
scholars to their master's explanations. Of these deputies there were
four--young, clever, and aspiring. Seymour, of English descent, dark,
myopic, and well-mannered, was taking notes on paper; beside him was
Marchetti, with the Nazarene beard; Gerini, a taciturn Florentine, with
long, fair, flowing beard, was passing memoranda to Joanna, the
Southerner of the handsome, thoughtful, studious head. But the whole
Chamber, Speaker, secretaries, committee-men, members, were under the
soft influence of that warm air, that closed place, that silence broken
only by the tranquil voice of the Minister.
The galleries were crowded--a strange circumstance on a day given up to
financial discussion. But no doubt the cold had driven in from the
streets those ladies sitting upstairs with their capes open, their hands
stuffed into their muffs, their faces pink from the warmth of the hall.
They were quite happy to remain there, though they understood not a
word; the voice of the speaker fell on their ears like a hum, while they
shivered at the thought of returning out of doors, where the north wind
was blowing, making one's eyes water and one's nose turn red. The public
gallery, too, was full of people: pale, jaded faces of do-nothings,
wretched figures of petitioners who had spent the day in looking for a
cousin of a deputy's friend, and who at last, demoralized and trembling
with cold, had come to finish in the Chamber, in the public gallery,
where they listened without a wink. The long press gallery was also more
crowded than usual, and the occupants of the first row were pretending
to write a summary of the proceedings. But one was inditing a letter,
another a theatrical article, another was sketching a fantastic profile
of Depretis, and another still was practising the art of calligraphy,
writing his own name with large flourishes. The Opposition journalists
had already prepared a mild, platonic attack, the Government writers
having extolled the Minister's financial report for the last ten days;
all of them were quite unruffled. Only Gennaro Casale, in the
Government's employ, a violent Neapolitan journalist, and an enemy of
all Governments whatsoever, grew excited, and exclaimed from the rear of
the gallery:
'Gentlemen, this balancing is a Ministerial shuffle!'
Up in the diplomatic gallery, leaning against the blue velvet
balustrade, was to be seen the slender figure of the Countess Beatrice
di Santaninfa, with the large, deep, soft eyes, who was not listening,
but was absorbed in thought.
When, at half-past four, the Minister had ended his speech, members old
and young nodded their heads in a general rustle of approval and
admiration. He restored his papers to his big portfolio without a tremor
in his fingers, without a shade of colour changing in his countenance.
Then a group of friends, ardent and lukewarm, gathered about him to
shake hands with him and congratulate him. Even an ex-Minister of
Finance came down from the benches of the Right to compliment the fat
little Minister with the hard head. Some disorder occurred, and a little
noise. Then the voice of the Speaker was heard, sonorous and distinct:
'Honourable colleagues, I beg for silence. The Honourable Sangiorgio has
the floor.'
'Who? Who?' was the universal inquiry.
And again the Speaker was heard:
'I beg for silence. The Honourable Sangiorgio has the privilege of
speaking.'
Hereupon the curious eyes of the members sought out that colleague of
theirs, whom scarcely anyone knew. He was up there, on the last bench of
a section, with the Right Centre. He was standing erect and calm,
waiting for his turn to speak. And he stepped out halfway upon the stair
so as to be seen better. He was not tall, but up there he looked tall,
since his carriage was upright and he had a robust figure. Nor was he
handsome, but his head bore all the characteristics of strength; his
hair was planted rudely on a low brow, his nose was aquiline, his
moustache was dark and dense, his chin was set hard and full of power.
No one thought him insignificant. And then divers speculations grew rife
in the Chamber. Would this new deputy speak for or against the Minister?
Was he one of those flatterers who, scarcely arrived, hastened to make a
show of loyalty to the Government? Or was he some little impudent nobody
who would stammer through a feeble attack before the House, and be
suppressed by the ironical murmurs of the assembly? He was a Southerner
and a lawyer--only that was known about him. Therefore he would deliver
an oration, the usual rhetoric which the Piedmontese detested, the
Milanese derided, and the Tuscans despised.
Instead, the Honourable Sangiorgio began to talk deliberately, but with
such a resonant, commanding voice that it filled the hall and made the
audience give a sigh of relief. The ladies, whom the warmth had half
lulled to sleep, revived, and the press gallery, empty since the
conclusion of the Minister's discourse, began to refill with reporters,
returning to their places.
The Honourable Sangiorgio opened with an exordium proclaiming respect
for the illustrious person at the head of Italy's finances, and his
eulogy nowise partook of vulgar adulation, but was tendered in a sober
and restrained manner. The speaker alluded in passing to his own youth,
to the obscurity of one who, tied down to provincial life, ever had his
eyes turned towards Rome, where the noble war of politics was constantly
being waged. He extolled politics, declaring them greater than the arts,
greater than science: they embraced the whole history of human activity,
and to him the statesman was the highest type of man, apostle and
labourer, arm and head.
A loud _Good!_ burst forth from the Right.
The Honourable Sangiorgio paused for a short minute, but only for a
short minute. His appeal to the sublimity of politics as a kind of high
ideal, which was vulgarized in the hands of men, had evoked general
approval, and had given several nonentities a sense of elation. The
Minister, who from the beginning had raised his head, fixing his pale
blue eyes firmly on the speaker, had now dropped it again upon
overhearing remarks behind him from men who embarrassed and annoyed him.
Sangiorgio went on to say that those youthful years in the provinces
were, however, not without value to anyone who sought to know modern
life in all its sufferings and in all its needs. The great cities were
all-invading, all-devouring; they fed upon the existence of others; they
exhausted vigour, and stifled complaint, and threw the man who lived
there into such a fever that he forgot all other human interests. Who
knew of the distress of the provinces? Who ever heard the echo of those
dolorous, humble sighs, which never could reach Rome? True, that a few
stout and good and brave men on occasion informed the Chamber of the
grievances of all those fellow-Italians; but such voices were isolated,
grew faint, and then were silent. Yet there must not be silence; the
truth must be known.
The House was now listening attentively in a less ironical, a kinder
attitude of mind. It was a natural reaction from the strain, from the
difficulty of comprehension which the preceding speech by the Minister
had offered. After a painful tension of two hours and a half in
following a fantastic whirl of figures, this easy eloquence relieved the
oppressed spirits. And now, in that hour of dusk, so cold and dark
outside, so gratefully warm and bright in the hall, the members yielded
to a sentimental mood, to a feeling of sympathy and benevolence--what
were these wrongs of the provinces, then?
Sangiorgio continued, saying that all the sad experience of his youth
among the peasants had rebelled at a seemingly innocent proposal of the
Minister's. The Minister had stated that, being obliged to give his
colleague of the War Department several millions, there was necessity
for further economizing. Very good; economy was the strength of young
nations. But instead the Minister had asked for a slight increase of the
salt tax. Sangiorgio fully appreciated, he declared, the reasons of
State which compelled the Minister to ask for that rise in taxation, but
those few centesimi represented a promise of woe made worse, an
aggravation of conditions of life already unendurable. And then he drew
a vivid picture of peasant poverty, which was so much more distressingly
and variously terrible than poverty in the towns, relating, with
veridical details, with short, pathetic anecdotes, where the peasants
lived, what they ate--that is to say, how hungry they always were--and
how the tax-collector appeared in their eyes as the fearful spectre of
starvation and death. He described the nakedness of that great
Basilicata country, the landslides which rolled down bare mountains to
bury meagre pastures, and he spoke of the distance of those wretched
villages from the railway, whence the impossibility of paying
industries, and he mentioned the unhealthy plains, where engineers,
road-makers, and stationmasters contracted malarial fevers.
While talking of his own country, so desolate and so unhappy, his voice
had lowered, as though veiled with emotion. But he quickly recovered
himself and came to the point. The duty on salt fell heavily on the
lower classes--more so in the rural districts than in the urban. They
already ate their broth with very little salt; now they would eat it
entirely without salt. And the latest hygienic researches, unsparing but
reliable, had established that to the insufficiency of salt were to be
traced the dreadful diseases prevailing among the peasantry of Lombardy
and Piedmont.
A murmur of approval ran along some of the benches. The closest
attention of all was paid where the four vigorous young Centrists were
sitting, Seymour, Gerini, Joanna, and Marchetti, who nevertheless made
no demonstrations, with that British impassiveness of the young
economist deputies.
'In the small towns and boroughs and villages of the South of Italy,'
Sangiorgio went on, 'the bakers always make two kinds of
bread--tasteless and cheap for the poor people, and salted for the
well-to-do. And to this second kind the bakers often give its flavour,
not with salt, because it is too dear, but by passing a cloth steeped in
sea-water over the fresh dough. In the houses of the poor a coarse,
dark, heavy-grained salt is used, which ought only to be sold for
cattle, but which human beings are obliged to buy for themselves. By
increasing the duty the Government would condemn a whole class of
taxpayers to intolerable privations, whose consequence would be ravage
by sickness and yet deeper destitution. The millions spent on national
defence, on the fortifications of the country, on the army, are wisely
allotted, but is it necessary to be powerful when one is so poor? When
the Minister of War calls the young men of the Basilicata to arms, and
hopes to find a body of stalwart and valiant mountaineers, he will be
disappointed at seeing a herd of creatures pale and emaciated from
illness, weakness, and dejection. Or, rather, not even that, for the
barren and unfruitful provinces are becoming more and more depopulated;
the peasant, desperate over the sterility of the soil, harried by the
fisc, abandoned by Nature, persecuted by man, prefers to turn his back
upon the land of his birth and leave it for the remote shores of
America. The peasant prefers a foreign people, a foreign clime, whence
there is no return. When the war-trumpet shall call the Italian sons of
the Basilicata there will be no answer. Driven by hunger and despair,
they will have gone away to die in regions far from home!'
The Honourable Francesco Sangiorgio stepped back to his bench and
resumed his seat. Cheers and applause sounded upon his ears, but only
vaguely. He was conscious of the buzz of discussion which follows upon
every important speech. Immediately in front of him had collected a
group of deputies who were arguing somewhat loudly, referring now and
then to their honourable colleague, Sangiorgio, and half turning towards
him, as if seeking endorsement from him. Remaining stolidly in his
place, with eyes downcast, and without anyone coming to shake hands with
him because he was unknown, Sangiorgio nevertheless felt the approbation
of the whole House rise to him where he sat on the topmost bench. He had
given satisfaction to the old party of the Right, whose political pride
was flattered; to the Extreme Left, who thought to have discovered a
Socialist in a deputy belonging to the Centre; to all the egoistic and
sentimental members, ready to cry misfortune at all times without
seeking for remedies; to all deputies with economist leanings and
shadowy notions of agrarian Socialism. This speech, which on another
occasion would have passed for some literary effusion, to-day bore a
character of great importance.
* * * * *
Once a minute the glass door of the room on the ground-floor at No. 9,
Via della Missione, opened to admit a newcomer. Those already in the
room, seated on the little divans or standing about, would turn and eye
such a one angrily; a cold blast of wind would come in with him. Whoever
entered, shaking and shivering, made straight for the long desk dividing
the room, took a small blank, and wrote on it his own name, as well as
the deputy's he wished to see; and, like him, there were always five or
six others writing on small blanks. On the other side of the desk the
ushers, in uniform, with medals on their chest, with a tricoloured band
on their arm, gray or bald-headed, were moving to and fro, taking away
those blanks, half a dozen at a time, disappearing through a door
opening upon corridors giving access to the hall. Satisfied with having
despatched his request, its sender would begin to walk up and down, or,
if he happened to have been standing, would take a seat, without
impatience, even with a somewhat presumptuous air of certainty.
The sacred door opened, and an usher reappeared with several blanks in
hand; everybody looked up and lent ear.
'Who asked for the Honourable Parodi?' shouted the usher.
'I,' answered a voice from among the number of people waiting.
'He is not there.'
'Did you look carefully?' urgently asked the voice, belonging to an old
man with a florid, red nose, with heavy, purple lips.
'The Honourable Parodi is not there,' repeated the usher civilly.
'Well, he ought to be,' muttered the other.
'Who wanted the Honourable Sambucetto?'
'I!' exclaimed a young fellow with a pale face and a threadbare
overcoat, whose collar was turned up.
'He is there, but he is unable to come.'
'Why can he not come?' demanded the youngster in an insolent tone, his
face now livid.
'He said nothing more. He cannot come.'
The young man mingled with the people who filled the room, but he did
not depart; he remained, angry, sullen, his cap pulled down over his
eyes, in an altogether unpromising frame of mind. Moreover, all the
faces of the people who hurried in and out of that room, or sat against
the wall on the divans, all those faces wore an imprint of sadness, of
weariness, of repressed suffering. It might have been the anteroom of a
celebrated physician, where invalids came, one after another, waiting
their turn, looking about with the indifferent gaze of people who have
lost all interest in everything else, their thoughts for ever occupied
with their malady. And as in such a lugubrious anteroom, which he who
has once been there on his own behalf or for one dear to him can never
forget, as in such a room are assembled people with all the infirmities
that torment our poor, mortal body--the consumptive, with narrow,
stooping shoulders, with lean neck, his eyes swimming with a noxious
fluid; the victim of heart disease, with pallid face, large veins,
yellowish, swollen hands; the anæmic, with violet lips and white gums;
the neurotically affected, with protuberant jaws, bulging cheekbones,
emaciated frame; and the sufferers from all other diseases, hideous or
pitiful, which draw the lines of the face tight, which make the mouth
twitch, and impart an unwelcome glow to the hand, that glow that
terrifies the healthy--thus, in such a room, did the possessors of all
the moral ills unite, oblivious of all complaints but their own.
There was the youth who had taught in a school without a license, who
has come to Rome to take any sort of employment, however mean, and who,
after a month's half-hearted, vain search, has at last begged for a
servant's place, which is denied him because he is not servile; the
ex-clerk of the Bank of Naples or the Bank of Sicily, who was turned out
for dishonesty twelve years ago, when the Left was in power, and wants
to be reinstated by the Progressists, whom he has always served
faithfully; the uncertain industrial speculator, who must pay a heavy
fine into the Treasury Department because he has neglected to register a
contract, and who hopes the Minister will graciously remit the penalty;
the widow of a pensioner, accompanied by a child crying with the cold,
who for ten months has been applying for a lottery office, and is
willing to surrender the pension; the loafer, who knows how to do
everything and is of no use for anything, who positively must have a
place, of whatever description, on the ground that, since there are so
many fools in the Chamber and the Government offices, he, too, is
entitled to share in their paradise.
The variety of their wishes and needs is infinite. Every one of those
people has a grievance in his soul, an unfulfilled desire, an active,
torturing delusion, a secret sorrow, a fierce ambition, a discontent.
And in their faces may be seen a corresponding spasmodic twitching, a
contraction of angry lips, a dilation of nostrils trembling with
nervousness, a knitting of the brows which clouds the whole countenance,
hands convulsively doubled in overcoat pockets, a melancholy furrow in
the women's smile, which deepens with every new disillusion. But all of
them are completely self-centred, entirely oblivious of foreign
interests, indulging in a single thought, a fixed idea, because of which
they watch, meet, and conflict with one another, although seeming
neither to hear nor to see each other. The floor of the room is filthy,
muddied by feet that have splashed through the puddles in the lanes, and
spotted all over with the thick expectorations of people afflicted with
a cold.
'Who asked for the Honourable Moraldi?' shouts the usher.
'I,' answers, with loud, imposing voice, a large, stout, red-throated
man.
'Be kind enough to wait a little; the Minister is speaking.'
The large man puffs himself out in his warm topcoat, which protuberates
sensibly at the paunch. Someone looks at him enviously, because _his_
deputy has at least asked him to wait, while others allege absence or
simply send word that they cannot come. Perhaps he is also envied his
warm overcoat, since there are so many thin suits under a wretched
threadbare overcoat, worn through autumn and winter with pretended
resignation, so many pepper-and-salt trousers under a green overcoat, so
many trousers of a dirty yellow under a cinnamon-coloured, ancient,
worn-out overcoat.
The coming and going continued. Those who had received a definite
refusal remained rather undecided, a sullen look on their faces,
glancing at the door as if they lacked courage to go out into the cold,
and then they made up their minds to go, which they did with bowed
shoulders, at a slow pace, without looking back. For one who went away,
two or three came in: the room was as full as ever; the ushers came and
went through the door, which suggested that of a sanctuary. It rained
refusals.
'Who was wishing to see the Honourable Nicotera?'
'I,' answered a very tall, very thin man, with scrawny neck and the
face of a skeleton, on which sprouted a few colourless hairs.
'He is there, but begs to be excused; he is not able to come.'
The fantastically lean individual bent double, like a caterpillar, on a
bench, filled out another blank, and consigned it to another usher, who
returned exclaiming:
'Who asked for the Honourable Zanardelli?'
'I,' whispered a sibilant voice.
'He is there, but the Minister is speaking; he cannot come.'
The spectre persistently went on writing.
One deputy, however, more obliging, had come out upon the request of the
person who wanted him, accosting him with a certain degree of nimble
zeal, leading him into the next room, where the deputies interviewed
their constituents. In this room were three or four ladies, sitting
down, waiting, with their hands in their muffs. The deputy and his
constituent walked up and down; the constituent spoke vivaciously, with
gesticulations; the deputy listened attentively, with eyes downcast, now
and then nodding his head in approval.
In the waiting-room all the people were grown weary; a physical and
moral lassitude weighed upon them: the new disillusion, that evenfall,
sapped their strength; one of them was leaning against the wall; the
child had gone to sleep on the widow's knee; total silence reigned. Real
or fictitious misfortunes, desires of idle brains or worthy, fervent
desires of persevering souls, necessities brought about by indulgence in
vice or unmerited mishaps, extravagant ambitions, modest little
ambitions, crazes due to overwrought nerves, the thirst for justice of
obstinate monomaniacs--all this human suffering, endured in silence, was
mixed with a sense of oppression, of sadness, of having been abandoned,
a feeling of woeful disconsolateness at having once more come to knock
at that door which would not open. The gas-jets were burning brightly,
but their light fell on the mortified faces of people paralyzed and
listless, as though they were dead.
Three ushers came in through the door, one after the other.
'Who asked for the Honourable Sella?'
'Who asked for the Honourable Bomba?'
'Who asked for the Honourable Crispi?'
'I--I--I,' answered the thin little voice of the man-skeleton.
'The Honourable Sella cannot leave the hall.'
'The Honourable Bomba is busy in the hall.'
'The Honourable Crispi is with the Budget Committee.'
Quietly the skeleton wrote on another blank, and handed it to an usher.
'Excuse me,' observed the usher, 'we are not allowed to call the
Ministers, and especially the President of the Council.'
'And why?' asked the spectre in surprise.
'It is the rule.'
But with unabated patience he wrote another name, and then began to walk
to and fro, overtowering all the rest. One concluded to leave; his
footstep dragged as he took away with him the humiliation of that long,
useless wait; others, making a desperate resolve, went away to post
themselves, in the chill of the evening, at the door of Montecitorio, to
wait for the deputies coming out. Others, less venturesome, still
lingered behind: the gas afforded a little warmth, and at the end of the
sitting some deputy might appear. A brougham stopped before the door,
remained closed, a footman jumped from the box, came in, gave a note to
an usher, and stood waiting, with the impassive air of people used to
receive orders. An usher shouted:
'Who wanted the Honourable Barbarulo?
'I,' said the ghost.
'He is not there.'
'Is he away for a holiday?'
'He has been dead four months.'
This remark settled the living corpse. He reflected for an instant, but
probably could think of no other names, and slowly took his departure. A
moment after Francesco Sangiorgio crossed the room, spoke to the
footman--only two words--and accompanied by him went out of doors and
got into the carriage, all excitement still with his success.
'My sincere congratulations,' said Donna Elena Fiammanti, pressing his
hand.
The brougham drove off. In the waiting-room the going and coming had
ceased; the child was crying, after being awakened by its mother; the
tired ushers sat down for a minute; two deputies, one with three
acquaintances and the other with two, were gossiping in the other room.
* * * * *
The flames were flickering in the fireplace; three logs forming a
triangle were burning at their ends. Donna Elena gently stirred the hot
ashes and the glowing embers; they gave forth a few sparks, and the
three logs blazed up. Then she sat back in her chair and mechanically
smoothed down her clinging, black silk skirt at the hips.
'Do you like a fire, Sangiorgio? It must be cold down there in the
Basilicata.'
'Very cold,' said he, taking a seat in an easy-chair. 'We have no
handsome fireplaces; there are large high stoves under whose arch a
wooden bench is placed. The head of the family sits there in winter,
with his children and relatives about him.'
'I am very fond of an open fire,' she said, with eyes half closed, as if
they were heavy from fatigue, 'but only when someone is with me. I get
melancholy alone.'
She spoke with her two arms lying upon the arms of the chair, her head
leaning against the back. The lamplight made the gold necklace sparkle
on the high collar of her silk dress, and drew a flash from the gilt
buckle on her black slipper. Her foot was forward; it was rather plump,
although arched.
'You are never alone, I suppose?'
'No, never,' she replied frankly. 'I hate being alone.'
'No doubt,' he vaguely assented.
'No, no, do not agree with me from politeness! I know that you men,
especially when you have a great ambition or are deeply in love, wish
for solitude. But we women never do. We must have company. If a woman
tells you she prefers solitude, do not believe her, Sangiorgio. She is
deceiving you deliberately, or else wishes to avoid a discussion. They
are all like myself, or, rather, I am a woman like the rest. Visitors
amuse me. Fools interest me, too. To-day, in the Chamber, for
instance----'
'For instance?' he asked with a faint smile.
'There was one behind me in the Speaker's gallery; he was talking
nonsense to me for an hour.'
'And did he not bore you?'
'No, he prevented me from hearing the Minister's speech. Do you smoke?'
'Thank you.'
She handed him the tobacco-box. Her hands were plump, with pink,
polished nails.
'You made a remarkably fine speech to-day,' she resumed, lighting a
yellow cigarette.
Sangiorgio raised his eyes without answering.
'If you care to, buy the newspapers to-morrow; they will be full of
you.'
'I think not; the Minister is a great favourite.'
'Nonsense! He is like Aristides: his fellow-citizens have become tired
of hearing him called "The Just." Do not let the quotation alarm you,
Sangiorgio; I know neither Greek nor Latin. It was merely a reminiscence
of my youth, when I used to read.'
'You do not read now?'
'No; I am tired of books.'
'They are no use.'
The man-servant came in with a small bamboo tray and the coffee; the
cups, too, were Japanese, of a most delicate, blue porcelain.
'How many lumps?' she asked, holding up the silver sugar-tongs.
'Two.'
While they were drinking the coffee Sangiorgio looked about the room.
He had been there for a moment, before dinner, while the Countess had
gone to change her dress. It was a little parlour, without brackets,
without tables, without upholstered furniture, full of large and small
easy-chairs, small divans, and stools; it was a little room without
corners. The piano was also draped with a quantity of Turkish and
Persian stuffs. On the wall hung a piece of an ecclesiastical vestment,
red and embroidered with gold.
'You will see that to-morrow a number of deputies will ask to be
presented to you. You will enjoy all the sweets of success.'
'Am I to believe in the admiration of my colleagues?'
'No, my dear friend, but you may take pleasure in it. Many beautiful and
good things in life are false in their essence. It is wisdom to profit
by them, to take them as they are, without asking any more.'
And she cast at him a fugitive, rapid glance. He understood at once. In
that little room the same perspicacity came to his aid which during the
day had assisted him in his boldness before the Chamber.
'Love is like that, too,' he murmured.
'Particularly love,' remarked the Countess Elena Fiammanti, opening wide
her large gray eyes, which that evening were tinted with blue. 'Have you
ever been very much in love, Sangiorgio?'
'Never much, and besides----'
'Very well. When you do fall in love, remember what I say. Love is a
great thing, but not the best. One must not ask more of it than it can
give. But a man is exacting, a man is selfish, a man insists on being
the object of a passion, and then--the woman lies. The sentiment of love
is really an ordinary one; there are some stronger; love is an ephemeral
thing, and often accomplishes nothing.'
And while she uttered her romantic paradoxes with a slight touch of
pedantry, her crimson lips gleamed in their humidity, her hand ruffled
the natural curls over her forehead, she swung her plump little foot
backward and forward, whose skin was visible through the black silk,
perforated stocking. Sangiorgio, feeling very much at home, looked at
her with a rather fatuous smile, which, being absorbed in her paradoxes,
she probably did not notice.
Throwing her cigarette into the fire, Elena continued:
'Women also want to be deluded. "Those traitors of men do not know how
to love!" you hear them cry; and then they weep and wail. They must have
faithfulness--a pretty story, good enough to be palmed off on children!
As if they could be faithful! As if they had no fibres, blood,
imagination--destructive, all of these, to constancy! A hundred thousand
lire reward to anyone who will bring me a man and a woman who are truly
faithful, absolutely faithful!'
Francesco Sangiorgio had taken her uplifted hand in his. He toyed
lightly with her fingers, with her diamond rings. He more than once
playfully bent his head over the hand, and finally kissed it on the vein
in the wrist. Donna Elena was no longer in the least formidable to him;
he seemed to be quite intimate with her already; vulgar ideas began
surging into his mind. What intoxication remained from the events of
the day, aided by this feminine atmosphere all redolent with
corylopsis, by this alluring woman, by her language become common by
force of paradox, turned his head. To assert his new intimacy with Donna
Elena, he would have liked to stretch himself out on a sofa, or fling
himself on the carpet, or throw matches into the fire--in fact, to
conduct himself as impertinently as an ill-bred boy. He resisted these
temptations through an exertion of will; nevertheless, he was incited by
the ironical smile which gave Donna Elena's nether lip a disdainful
curve, the light tremor of the nostrils of that prominent aquiline nose,
the combined refinement and coarseness of that face. Quite gently he
took the rings off her left hand and dandled them in his own; and in the
state of inebriation which had seized upon him his strongest wish was to
slip off one of her shoes, to see her little foot bend bashfully in her
stocking.
'To be sure, there are virtuous women,' she went on; 'who denies that?
But with them the case is totally different. There are cold women; there
are women who do not love. I know a few--not many, only a few. Under
those circumstances it needs little strength to remain true. Donna
Angelica, His Excellency's wife--there you have a virtuous woman! Do you
know Donna Angelica, Sangiorgio?'
'H'm--yes--by sight,' he stammered.
And then he became utterly embarrassed, with the rings in his hands,
having not a notion what to do with them. At last he put them on a
stool, not venturing to place them back upon the hand whence he had
stripped them. Suddenly the cloud which had shadowed his mind was
dissipated, and he felt ashamed of the childish tricks he had
contemplated. He was very near to begging Donna Elena's pardon, but she,
most likely, was unconcerned. All nervousness, with his hand he stroked
and stroked the folds of his black cloth waistcoat, as though he wanted
to make it immutably rigid.
'What do you think of my sermon?'
'I am an enthusiastic disciple. I do not grasp all your teachings, but I
bow to them,' answered the deputy, having recovered enough presence of
mind to be jocose.
'I will give you some music; you will understand that,' she said,
getting up. 'You may smoke, read, or go to sleep. If you do not listen I
shall not mind. I shall be playing as much for myself as for you.'
In a moment a soft and sympathetic voice was singing the first notes of
Tosti's 'Ave Maria.' Francesco started at those unexpected,
unaccountable tones. Indeed, Donna Elena's voice was unlike herself, or,
rather, it was hers in one respect, and by its other qualities it
completed her. In singing she met with her own character. She sounded
the key of the deep contralto which lacks in smoothness, and yet is rich
and warm, and stirs the soul; which is full-toned and amorous; which
conveys impassioned avowals and storms of jealousy. That side of Elena's
voice resembled her. But there was also infinite sweetness; there was
the purity of notes sung without a quaver; there was the liquid
tenderness and innocence of an almost childish voice. And there
was--which is a rare feature in singing--a sort of ideal sensuality, a
harmonious transfiguration of it, a supremely poetical interpretation of
it. In this way did her voice complete her.
She had forgotten her hearer, and was singing with her head thrown
back, and with such languorous eyes that the lashes cast a shadow on her
cheeks. Her lips were lightly parted, and they scarcely moved. Her white
throat was swelling under the black collar and the necklace on her
dress, while her hands ran nimbly over the keys, fingering them as
delicately as a caress. A serener, sweeter atmosphere seemed to be
diffused in the little room, which until then had suggested hardness and
effrontery. A suave light settled on the surroundings, on the furniture,
and on all things inanimate, tempering their sharp, brazen expression.
Donna Elena was singing a melancholy romance by Schumann, whose refrain
seemed rather to add affliction than to console, so extremely mournful
was the music: 'Va, prends courage, coeur souffrant.' And Sangiorgio, at
the end of his day of triumph, listened pensively, invaded by an
unfamiliar sensation of sadness.
CHAPTER II
It was the last public ball on the last Tuesday of the carnival, at the
Costanzi Theatre. The small people whose only amusement during the whole
carnival was one public ball; students who still had ten lire in their
pocket; Government clerks who had a taste for mild debauches; shop
assistants whose establishments would be closed the following day;
fledgelings in law and beginners in medicine--all these and many more
from ten o'clock forward filed in through the four red doors, which
remained open all night. On the ground-floor the attendants in the
cloakrooms lost their heads a little with the numbering of overcoats and
capes, gathering up of sashes and veils, and putting together of
walking-sticks and wraps. Crowds of people streamed continuously into
the huge parterre, which never seemed to fill, in spite of the
tremendous concourse of people, clad in bright colours that stood out
against the sober background. They were indulging in the everlasting
circular promenade which is a characteristic feature at a Roman public
ball. Four-and-twenty pulcinellos--a merry company of young fellows
holding on to one another's white blouses, one behind the
other--careered across the floor laughing and shrieking, like a rushing
avalanche. In the middle of the place a number of feminine masks had
collected in a large circle. They wore short white jackets, very much
like babies' shirts, tied under the chin with large red and blue bows,
and had infants' curls on their heads and tinkling rattles in their
hands--the inexpensive, pretty, and saucy costume of Donna Juanita in
the act laid in Jamaica. Having come in good company, these fair
masqueraders scarcely quitted their escorts. Hardly did the orchestra,
in the stand erected on the proscenium near the great purling fountain,
strike up a polka, when the couples began to turn in a curiously sedate
manner, with steps carefully regular, avoiding collisions, dancing
conscientiously. When the music ceased they halted abruptly, as if in
surprise, the men offered their partners an arm, and without exchanging
a word they began the circular promenade. At a fresh summons they once
more went into the middle and danced again, with almost laborious
persistency, while all round them stood admiring spectators three deep.
Three girls dressed in black, with white aprons and enormous white
muslin caps, were going about arm-in-arm, speaking in a high, piping
voice, and making gestures with their hands gloved in black, puzzling
half the assembly. In a box of the second tier a red satin, female
domino, with a hood like a cock's comb, sat quite alone, her arm, which
was red to the very gloves, lying on the edge of the box. Here and there
other stylish and mysterious dominos were to be seen--one tall and
slender, all in blue, with a big hat shaped like a closed conch; another
in black satin, with face concealed behind black Venetian lace; an
opulent mask exhibiting under an open domino of red and gold brocade a
suit of cream-coloured brocade; and many more besides, all followed by
young men trying to guess at their faces. But in the main the gathering
was composed of plain, middle-class families--father and mother, sons
and daughters, who had come to this ball as to an evening outdoor
performance, in dark cloth dress, white neckerchief, and hat with black
feathers; and as they met they stopped to exchange compliments and
tittle-tattle, taking jokes from each other with the equanimity of the
Roman middle class that is never upset. The throng was densest about the
two barges (the small stage boxes), in one of which the members of the
Hunt Club, in evening dress, with black necktie and gardenia at
buttonhole, and in the other the cavalry officers, were leaning over to
talk and laugh with their friends in the parterre.
When Francesco Sangiorgio entered the vestibule and bought a ticket of
admission, it was half-past eleven. A feminine shape, dressed in an
embroidered Turkish costume, her head covered over, and her face
concealed behind a white veil, came up to him, and said in a flutelike
voice:
'Good-evening, dear Sangiorgio! Why so melancholy?'
'Because I have not yet found out who you are, sweetheart!'
'You do not know me, you must not know me, you never will know me! I can
tell why you are melancholy, Sangiorgio. I will whisper it in your ear:
you are in love!'
'Yes, with you, my dear!'
'How amusing you are! You are much too gallant. That's not the custom
here. Be rude, I beg of you--your reputation is at stake! But
listen--Ferrante is no longer a candidate for membership on the Budget
Committee. You are being talked of; I warn you, be careful.'
He stood dumfounded. The mask edged away into the crowd, and vanished.
The news had greatly astonished him: he had not expected it. What had
been the outcome of his great speech? A flattering interview with the
leader of the Right, Don Mario Tasca, the cool speaker, moderate and
accomplished, the mild Socialist, the politician who had lost his own
party through the nebulosity of his views. And then there had been bows
and introductions and handshakings. The Minister, in response, had
rendered honour to his adversary, but had insisted on his motion, and
the Chamber had voted the Budget by a large majority. Who was thinking
of his speech any more? The Honourable Dalma had once said to him, with
his poetical Parliamentary cynicism: 'In politics everything is
forgotten.'
In the vestibule, the couples were walking and talking, arm-in-arm; here
groups of young bloods were discussing the financial situation, with a
view to supper; here solitary dominos were wandering back and forth in
expectation of someone who came not. Here Sangiorgio met the Honourable
Gulli-Pausania. The Sicilian deputy was leaning against the wall,
waiting like some of the others, stylish and handsome in evening
costume, gallant Southerner that he was, with his pointed, chestnut
beard, his greenish eyes travelling over the crowd, and his silk hat
covering a premature baldness, because of which several women were in
love with him.
'Oh, my dear Sangiorgio!' said Gulli, with a strong Sicilian accent,
'alone, all alone, at the ball?'
'Yes, alone. I expect nobody; nobody expects me, and I am sure my
honourable colleague, Gulli-Pausania, is not following my example.'
'Well, what is to be done?' replied Gulli, smiling. 'We spend our lives
waiting----'
'Not always for the same person, fortunately.'
'Oh no! that would be too desperate. Any political news?'
'None, my dear colleague. Hope you will enjoy yourself!'
'Thanks!' replied Gulli-Pausania, with his distinguished, sensual smile.
Sangiorgio went into the auditorium. His lashes quivered over his
down-looking eyes. The theatre, with its three rows of boxes, its
galleries, and its stage, was brilliantly lighted, and the white
background of the decorations enhanced the brightness. On the stage the
stream of the tall fountain was tinted red by a ray of electric light.
The place was full; people were still arriving from other
entertainments, from cafés, from receptions, from balls; neither
standing still nor fast walking was now any longer permitted. At first
Sangiorgio saw nothing but the shoulders of a stalwart gentleman in
front of him, at his right the red ear of a _cocotte_, whose mask was
certainly fastened on too tight, to his left the sharp profile of a
thin, elongated damsel, with melancholy eyes. The tall gentleman looked
here, there, and everywhere among the boxes, jerking a head with a light
mane, precisely parted in the middle. Once, when he stopped to look at a
box in the first tier, full of black dominos, making neither sound nor
motion, Sangiorgio found himself beside him. It was the Honourable
Prince di Sirmio, who bore the title of Most Serene Highness, and was
the richest nobleman in Rome.
'Good-evening, honourable colleague,' said the Prince in his slow,
liquid tone, with the note of cold fatigue which was one of his personal
peculiarities. 'I believe this is your first visit to one of these
places of corruption, where everyone assumes strict virtue. Strict
virtue, do you not think? You have no doubt been told that we people in
the capital lead a wild life; instead of that, as you see, we walk very
slowly round and round, _pour le bon motif_, looking for our wife, who
must be in one of the boxes with her sister. Meanwhile, we mingle with
the crowd, as you perceive, to listen and learn. They all tell me I am
democratic--and I behave accordingly. Are you doing anything in
politics, honourable colleague? _Ce n'est pas le bonheur_--however, I
have had nothing to do with politics for an everlasting age. The head of
my party is Don Emilio Castelar: I am a Spanish Republican. Are you
surprised?'
Francesco Sangiorgio smiled, but made no answer, which pleased the
Prince, since he liked neither to be talked to nor interrupted. He had a
smooth, flowing tongue, and interruption annoyed him.
'Ah, there is my wife,' continued Sirmio. 'Who is that in the box next
to hers? I see--it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs with his two
daughters, Grace and the other, whose name ought to be Justice, but who
is called Eleonora. The quip is not mine; it is from a newspaper.
Good-night, honourable colleague.'
'Good-night, Prince.'
Sangiorgio, in lieu of walking the smaller circle on the floor, took
the larger, and went up towards the stage, where along the wings were
disposed tables and chairs, about which sat whole families of the middle
classes, drinking aerated waters, or inseparable couples, tired of one
another, but not daring to split, quaffing mugs of beer. He passed close
to the fountain now tinged violet by the electric light--a most delicate
shade--and he went by the basin and the great mirror at the back over to
the musicians' stand. Over his head, they suddenly burst into the
opening notes of the postilion mazurka from the ballet 'Excelsior,'
which was highly popular that winter. A momentary movement took place
from the stage to the parterre, a general undulation of heads in time
with the lively measure, as it were; people crowded towards the parterre
to see the dancing. At a table near the left wing, the Honourable
Schuffer sat alone, drinking beer, reviewing the assembly through a pair
of bright eyes behind spectacles, occasionally raising his pointed nose
and sharp chin.
'Come, my dear colleague, and take a mug of beer with me,' said
Schuffer, in his soft, Venetian accent. 'But being a Neapolitan, perhaps
you do not like beer.'
'No, thank you, Honourable--no, thank you, I will not take any; I have
just come in.'
'I came an hour ago, and in that hour goodness knows how many elbows
have been dug into me, how many times I have been shoved, and how many
feet have trodden on mine. I took refuge here to avoid it; you know I am
unlucky in some things.'
Sangiorgio smiled. The Honourable Schuffer, looking tousled and
mischievous like a boy, with his curly head of hair, had already had
four suits for defamation. The deputy, unfortunately, had seen fit to
get at odds with a guard, a porter, a station-master, and a waiter in a
café, and while the same thing happened to a hundred other deputies
without serious consequences, as if on purpose the guard, the porter,
the station-master, and the waiter, had severally brought action against
him, so that every now and then the Chamber was called upon to authorize
legal proceedings.
'I learnt to drink beer on my travels to Japan,' went on Schuffer.
'Great country that, honourable colleague! I never had a lawsuit there
with anyone, I assure you. Honourable, you are Ministerial--shall you
vote those millions for the Minister of War?' he added, as if struck by
a sudden idea.
'What about yourself, Honourable Schuffer?' quickly threw in Sangiorgio.
'I? I?' said the other, nonplussed; 'I must think about it. We might
discuss it, do you not think--and come to some understanding? It is a
serious question; war swallows up every farthing in the country.'
'I ask for nothing better; certainly we will talk about it again.
Good-night, Honourable Schuffer.'
The postilion mazurka was now greatly enlivening the ball. There were
three circles of dancers: near the entrance to the parterre, in the
centre of the floor, and on the stage. A woman masquerader dressed as a
Bersagliere officer, with plumed hat over one ear, bare arms coming out
from beneath the gold fringes of her epaulets, and breeches fitting
closely at the knee, was dancing with a girl disguised as a Satanic
imp. Both were as serious as could be, repulsing everyone who wanted to
separate them. The boxes, too, were now filled with ladies and gentlemen
come from receptions and balls. The first and second tiers were entirely
taken up. In the box next to the 'barge,' in the first tier, were to be
seen the delicate and graceful Florentine beauty of Elsa Bellini,
married to Novelli, and the blond opulence of Lalla Terziani. Both
ladies had come from the Valle. With them were Rosolino Scalia, the
Sicilian deputy of military carriage; the little Prince of Nerola, the
new deputy from the Abruzzi; a young man of distinguished mien, with a
small black moustache; Novelli and Terziani, the two husbands.
'Honourable Sangiorgio,' said the little Prince, leaning over the side
of the box.
'Well, honourable colleague?' said the other, raising his head.
'If you see Sangarzia, will you be good enough to tell him I am here? Do
you know who will be elected, the day after to-morrow, for the Budget
Committee?'
'The Honourable Ferrante, of course.'
'I think not--I think not,' replied the Prince, smiling maliciously.
As Sangiorgio went away he heard remarks from the box like 'Clever
fellow!' and 'Gifted Southerner!'
He looked at various boxes in search of Sangarzia. In one, of the first
tier, were the two Neapolitan sisters Acquaviva, one of them married to
the deputy Marquis di Santa Marta, the other to the deputy Count
Lapucci. The Countess, dark and vivacious, with a thick-lipped,
deep-hued mouth, with two flashing eyes, was the very opposite of her
husband, a dark, slender, very taciturn, very pensive young man, said to
be haughty, although he was a Socialist deputy. The Santa Marta pair was
different. The wife, fair and curly-haired, had a childish face and a
frank expression, and was very simply gowned; the husband was fair, with
languid eyes and an indolent manner. The Countess Lapucci was laughing
loudly; the Marchioness di Santa Marta was smiling. Count Lapucci was
watching the crowd silently, his thumbs stuck in his waistcoat pockets;
the Marquis di Santa Marta was chatting affably with the Honourable
Melillo, the strong financial man from the Basilicata, with a heart too
open to women, a confirmed celibate, which made him interesting in the
eyes of unmarried girls, whom he did not care about. The Honourable
Melillo answered Francesco Sangiorgio's bow with an elaborate salute and
a patronizing wave of the hand, and Sangiorgio drew near the box while
his name was being mentioned. The Honourable Melillo was no doubt
speaking of the bright promise his fellow-countryman gave.
The wife of the Secretary-General of Finance had arrived in the box near
the door, after an evening party at the Quirinal. This graceful, slight
Piedmontese, with the pale, interesting face of an invalid, wore a
low-cut dress, was loaded with jewels, frequently coughed, continually
carried her pocket-handkerchief to her rather bright lips, nervously
pulled her chamois gloves up to her elbows. The Honourable Pasta, the
Subalpine lawyer, with shaven chin and fair, grizzled whiskers, was
saying something very witty to her, that made her laugh. The Honourable
Cimbro, the Piedmontese journalist-deputy, staring through his glasses,
his necktie having slipped up under his ears, was a man apparently
embarrassed by his own presence, whereas the Secretary-General, rather
bald, with a thick, stout moustache, sat in solemn silence, looking at
the stage as if he did not notice it. When Sangiorgio passed, he made
him a low bow, full of meaning, almost sentimental, the appreciative bow
of a Secretary-General showing his gratitude to the man who has afforded
him the pleasure of attacking his Minister.
'Where may Sangarzia be?' thought Francesco to himself, threading his
way with difficulty through the ever-increasing crowd.
The Baroness Noir was in her box, her serpentine form clad in a strange,
close-fitting garment of shot silk, on which tulips and peacocks'
feathers were embroidered, and she had gathered about her a little
sub-Ministerial staff of foreign affairs. Her husband had, in fact, been
Secretary-General. He was holding aloof, at the back of the box, like a
diplomat awaiting appointment, but the Honourable di San Demetrio, a
self-possessed Abruzzan, with an already whitening black beard, who had
strong aspirations towards the Cabinet, was well in front, under the
full light. Besides, there was the Honourable di Campofranco, a frigid
Sicilian, the son of Italy's most prominent female politician, the
Princess di Campofranco. The Honourable di San Demetrio was talking,
explaining, mayhap, some section of the Budget Report, and the little
Baroness was listening attentively, slapping her fingers with her fan.
Hustled by the crowd, Sangiorgio stopped for a moment under her box; he
felt fatigued from head to foot, the lights dazzled him, and the
atmosphere, pregnant with acrid odours, stifled him.
'Sangiorgio!' exclaimed San Demetrio.
He started, as if from a dream.
'Do you know if the Honourable Mascari has registered to speak on the
other side in the debate on the Foreign Budget?'
'No, he has not registered.'
'Positively?'
'Positively.'
'Thank you; excuse the question.'
And he went back to his place, happy in the knowledge that there was to
be one opponent less. Sangiorgio stood straight and motionless against
the wall, feeling at ease in that position and shutting his eyes against
the light. Seymour and Marchetti came up to him, arm-in-arm. They
presented a marked contrast, these two apostles of social science:
Seymour, dark and severe, with the upward curving chin of a man of
energy and a brush of black hair beginning to streak with white;
Marchetti, with a frank, fresh face, a long chestnut beard, and the
sparkling blue eyes of an enthusiast. They were both strolling about in
morning coats, and therefore did not venture to speak to any of the
ladies.
'Are you bored, Sangiorgio?' asked Seymour.
'A little. I am tired, too.'
'Were you at the office this evening?' inquired Marchetti.
'No. What was being done there?'
'Nothing very substantial yet--not much work,' remarked Seymour,
adjusting his glasses on his nose. 'Why do you not have your speech
printed, Sangiorgio?'
'What is the use?' he answered in a tone of sincere doubt. 'I shall
return to the charge in a different way when the Agricultural Budget
comes up,' he then went on, as if reanimated.
The orchestra just then struck up Strauss' lively, inspiriting waltz,
'Freuet euch des Lebens,' a general movement took place, the circle
spread outward, people were crowded back under the boxes, the deputies
were separated, and Sangiorgio was left alone. The ladies in the boxes
were gazing down enviously at the dancers enjoying themselves below;
they were obliged to sit still, up there, while the music and the sight
of the rest on the floor made them itch to join in the dancing. Three or
four, who had come low-necked from a ball at the Huffer House, were
exhibiting themselves in all the splendours of their dress. Little
Prince Nerola was now in his cousin's box, the Countess di Genzano, the
fascinating, Titianesque blonde. In the background was to be seen the
sallow but still handsome face, almost noble in outline, of the Minister
of Grace and Justice, the inflexible and gallant official, as unswerving
in his inflexibility as he was in his gallantry. Sangiorgio roused
himself from the state of torpor he had fallen into: he must find
Sangarzia.
Looking carefully, box for box, he at last succeeded in discovering him
in the second tier, near the royal box. A domino in black silk, highly
fashionable, with a tight, black veil covering her head and face, and
wearing a large bunch of pinks, was sitting in a front chair; beside her
was the Honourable Valitutti, a rich, olive-hued Calabrian, with a black
beard and the face of a taciturn Arab; in the background sat the
Honourable Fraccareta, one of the largest corn merchants in the Puglia
country; in the middle was the Honourable Sangarzia, the sympathetic
Sicilian, the formidable swordsman, the perfect gentleman, whom
everybody loved.
'Who might the lady be?' wondered Sangiorgio, on his way up to the
second floor.
Some lady, put out at not being able to dance, was going home in
ill-humour, letting her train drag, her mouth twisted as a woman's is
who has been forbidden something. And behind her came husband and lover,
with the thankful expression of men who have been bored, and who at last
hope to get to bed. The five black dominos, who had been sitting the
whole evening in a box without either moving or speaking, like so many
conspirators, now came down on the arms of five youths; silent,
lugubrious couples they were; they might have been bound for a funeral
banquet. Just behind them the Honourable Carusio descended the stairs, a
deputy with a head as bald as a billiard-ball, with an extravagantly
long, pointed, Napoleonic beard, reaching to his stomach, and with the
air of a timorous, anxious person, full of apprehensions and full of
worries.
'My dear colleague,' began Carusio, suddenly stopping Sangiorgio on the
first landing, 'excuse me if I stop you like this; you must pardon me--I
am in great trouble. A relative of mine, from the provinces, who is
visiting here, made me come to this affair, which he had never seen.
Imagine what a dreadful nuisance! I can scarcely endure it. And so the
Prime Minister is very ill?'
'No, not very--not very,' answered Sangiorgio, smiling. 'It is only the
gout he is suffering from.'
'Are you quite sure, my dear colleague? Is your news at least
accurate?'
'I went to find out in person.'
'Oh, thank you ever so much, my dear colleague! I am so glad I met you.
You have relieved me from a great anxiety. If the Prime Minister were to
become seriously ill, just think what confusion! If he were to die, what
complications!'
'God forbid!' said Sangiorgio, still smiling.
'Yours to command, my dear colleague: I am delighted; I am infinitely
obliged to you. You may count upon me at any time, I assure you; do not
spare me. You could not have come to the rescue more opportunely.
Good-night, good-night, honourable colleague!'
'Good-night! I hope you will sleep well. The Prime Minister will be
better to-morrow.'
'Thank you again, thank you.'
Sangiorgio knocked very gently at No. 15. Fraccareta's voice said 'Come
in!' Sangiorgio half opened the door, and said:
'Excuse me, honourable colleagues: I am looking for the Honourable
Sangarzia.'
'Here I am--here I am!'
And they went outside together, the black domino with the pinks having
scarcely turned her head.
'Nerola, the Prince, wants you, Honourable Sangarzia.'
'Oh, my dear Sangiorgio, Nerola and yourself could not have done me a
greater service! I was at a loss how to get away from here. And where is
the Prince?'
'He is in the first tier now, with the Countess Genzano.'
'Let us get there quickly.'
He went back into the box, put on his long cape over his evening coat,
bowed to the woman and his two colleagues, and descended the stairs with
Sangiorgio.
'What a good service you have rendered me! The lady was getting tired of
it--probably wanted to dance. Have you come from the Countess's?'
'I do not know her.'
At this there issued forth from a box in the first tier a feminine
figure strangely attired in a Turkish costume, with head and face hidden
by a close white veil.
'Come with me,' she murmured with her soft voice to Sangiorgio.
'No need to wish you good luck, colleague,' whispered Sangarzia, taking
leave of him.
'Come with me,' the woman repeated, bearing on his arm to draw him away.
It was half-past two. People were hastening to the cloakrooms to go
home, getting into their overcoats listlessly, wrapping up their heads
in scarfs, like so many acrobats, who after performing in the street put
on old, worn wraps over their tawdry, spangled finery.
'Come, come!' urged the woman, seized with impatience, while Sangiorgio
was donning his great-coat.
Outside she at once singled out her carriage, and got in eagerly,
dragging Sangiorgio in after her.
'Home!' she said to the coachman.
But once in the carriage, behind the drawn blinds, she quickly unwound
the veil from her head and threw it on the opposite seat. She
disencumbered herself of the Oriental garb, jerking out the pins and
tearing at the embroidery. A cloak with a hood lay at the bottom of the
carriage; this she put on. Sangiorgio silently assisted her. She looked
out into the street for a moment.
'Ah, there is the moon!' she murmured with great tenderness.
And she tapped on the pane to tell the coachman something. Immediately
the carriage stopped, in the Piazza Barberini. She got out quickly, and
pulled the hood on her cloak over her head.
'Drive home!' she ordered the coachman. 'Tell Carolina she may go to
bed. I have the key.'
They were left alone in the Piazza Barberini. The stream of the
fountain, tall and translucent, shone brightly in the moonlight.
'Shall we walk a little?' she said. 'It was suffocating in the
ballroom.'
He offered her an arm, determined to show surprise at nothing. They went
along the Via Sistina, the great thoroughfare which looks so
aristocratic by day and so ghostly at night. She nestled up to him as
though she was cold and fearsome, as if she pretended to be small and
wanted his protection. Nevertheless, she was strong and tall in her
black cloak, and under the hood where her eyes were sparkling. And that
person and those eyes had the peculiar quality of magnetism--the violent
fascination that stirs the senses. Again Francesco Sangiorgio felt as he
had in her drawing-room, when she had so ruthlessly cast love into
contempt. The sensation was profound and sharp, without any sweetness
whatever--a revulsion, a storm, a sort of inebriation.
'How quiet it is!' she observed, in a voice slightly a-tremble, which
shook every nerve in Sangiorgio's body.
'Say something else,' he whispered.
'What?' she asked, leaning against his shoulder.
'Anything, anything--I like your voice so much!'
But the Countess Fiammanti made no answer. They had arrived at the
little square of the Trinità dei Monti. The obelisk stood erect in the
bright moonlight, and its tall, slender shadow was imprinted on the wall
of the church. The rising road, leading to the Villa Medici and the
Pincio, was quite lustrous. They bent over the high parapet of the
square, whence so many melancholy visitors have gazed upon Rome in the
hours of twilight. But Rome was very dimly visible, shrouded in a white,
moon-washed vapour, which almost seemed a continuation of the sky, a
slant of the horizon covering houses, bell-towers, and cupolas.
'One can see nothing. What a pity!' exclaimed Donna Elena. And, taking
hold of Sangiorgio's arm rather forcibly, she led him to a narrow stair
in front of the Trinità--not the stair with two balusters to the church,
but the steps going up to the convent, where the monks and the children
they are educating live together. This stairway has a little landing
before the door, and a railing. Donna Elena made Sangiorgio go up there.
'Shall we knock at the convent?' she asked him, as if trying the iron
chain. 'We are two frozen pilgrims begging for shelter!'
She laughed, showing those resplendent white teeth that made her smile
so irresistible. Only she never smiled, she always laughed.
But neither was there any view from their elevated position, except that
the diaphanous, whitish, milky ocean of mist looked larger yet. Straight
in front were discernible the few lights, which still remained
unextinguished at three o'clock in the morning, in the Via Condotti.
Below, the Piazza di Spagna lay spread out, in its reposeful and
magnificent architectural beauty, from the Via Propaganda Fide to the
Via Babuino.
'Let us go away from here,' she said.
He allowed himself to be taken in leading-strings; this, his first
romantic adventure, gave him intense pleasure. This lady, for she was a
lady in spite of the lightness and audacity of her conduct, aroused all
the desires of a virile man, provincial, imaginative, and by nature
sentimental. This was a real romance, and this fine lady, wrapped in her
fur cloak, scented, wearing magnificent diamonds that glistened in the
moonlight, who had sent her carriage away so as to walk with him here,
at night, through the streets of Rome--this splendid creature seduced
him by everything she was and everything she represented. He succumbed
to her personal fascination, the stronger through the peculiarity of the
circumstances. His wonted, ordinary scruples were overcome, and he
yielded to this new triumph for his vanity, flattered, exultant, and
delighted over his conquest.
They went down the steps in the moonbeams that seemed to bathe the
stones of old Rome. On the last step but two, Donna Elena withdrew her
arm from Sangiorgio's and sat down. She now looked quite small and
black, cowering down on the stair, with her head in her hands and her
elbows on her knees, as she gazed at the lovely Bernini fountain, with
its bowl overbrimming. Sangiorgio had not seated himself; he was
standing upright by her side, eyeing her with a sense of masculine
fatuity, which filtered through his submissiveness. The pretty woman
seemed downcast, squatting on the ground like a beggar, a bundle of dark
clothes, under which perhaps an anxious soul was alive in a throbbing
heart. And it almost seemed to him as though he were her lord.
'Do you like the fountain?' she asked in her melodious voice, raising
her head.
'It is rather handsome.'
'Yes, it is,' she agreed with a nod. 'Why do you not sit down?'
And she appeared not to be addressing him, but speaking to the purling
waters, which for ever fell back into the drowned bowl. He sat down on
the step beside her.
'Have you no cigars? Will you not smoke a little?'
'I am sorry I have no cigarettes for you.'
'Never mind. But you smoke!' He lighted a cigar, and she inhaled its
aroma.
'What brand is it?'
'A Minghetti.'
'Your Minghetti has a nice odour.' And she watched him smoke, following
the thin, blue streak as it vanished into the air. A closed carriage
emerged from the Via Due Macelli, passed them with extreme rapidity, and
disappeared in the direction of the Via Babuino.
'They are coming from the ball,' he said.
'What a hideous affair that ball was!' whispered Donna Elena softly.
'Yes,' replied Sangiorgio to the harmonious voice by whose caress he
felt his nerves excited to the point of painfulness.
Suddenly she jumped to her feet, as if propelled by a spring.
'I am cold, I am cold; let us be off!' she exclaimed roughly.
She folded her cloak more tightly about her than ever, pulled her hood
further forward over her forehead, clung to his arm, and dragged him
away, towards the Via Propaganda. He had thrown his cigar down, and all
at once was conscious that this woman's mind was changing, and that he
could not count on her at all. But he proudly kept his peace. Probably
his vanity had been an empty fiction. Who could reckon on the caprice of
a woman? He shrugged his shoulders, laughing at himself, who for a
moment had believed he might master one of these frivolous creatures.
She uttered not a word, hastening her pace along the Via Due Macelli, as
though greatly affected by the cold and intending to overcome it by
walking; she stared at the ground, without turning to her companion.
Sangiorgio did not ask her whither they were bound in this fashion; he
was resolved to stay with her till the end, despite the blow she was
giving his pride. When they reached the corner of the Via Due Macelli,
she turned abruptly into the Via Angelo Custode.
'I live here,' he observed, for the sake of saying something.
'Here?' she cried, stopping still for a moment. 'Where?'
'At No. 50--over there.'
'Do you live alone?'
'I do.'
'Let us go up,' she said, making a motion to cross the street. 'I will
warm myself at your fire!'
'There is no fire.'
'No matter; I will warm myself playing the piano!'
'There is no piano,' he replied, determined to hear her out.
'I don't care!' was all she said.
* * * * *
Two days later Francesco Sangiorgio was elected a member of the Budget
Committee.
CHAPTER III
Mild, genteel applause, coming from small, female, well-gloved, though
rather listless hands, greeted the noisy conclusion of the pianist, an
insignificant, meagre, dark little dot of a creature, who was invisible
behind the piano.
'What feeling!' exclaimed the wife of a Puglian deputy, a stout woman
with a torrent of black curls on her red, shining forehead.
'Splendid, splendid, delightful!' said Signora di Bertrand, the wife of
a high functionary, a frail Piedmontese, with a Madonna face, wearing a
brocaded cloak threaded with gold.
And from one lady to another, from group to group, along sofas, from
easy-chairs to small stools, under the palm branches in the pots, under
the brackets bearing statuettes, from the pianoforte to the door,
swiftly ran the current of feminine approval. Those standing on the
threshold of the Ministerial drawing-room nodded two or three times, as
if secretly wearied. Only His Highness, the Oriental Prince in exile,
ponderously ensconced in an armchair, made no sign. With his bloated,
sallow visage, grown here and there with patches of nondescript,
speckling beard, with the contemplative apathy of a bulky Oriental, he
remained quiet, thinking perhaps of the dramatic incantations of the
Aidas who had been one of the boasts of his throne, as he sat with his
big, round eyes half shut under the soft, red rim of his fez.
But the female chatter reopened, and Donna Luisa Catalani, the
Minister's wife, the mistress of the house, who had rested during the
music, renewed her round of bows and compliments and smiles; and her
white cashmere gown, her diamond rosettes, her small head, her
provokingly pretty face, her somewhat peculiar headdress, were to be
seen everywhere, as though there was not one Donna Luisa, but ten of
her.
'How fatiguing these receptions are!' languidly said the Countess
Schwarz, an extremely thin woman, with livid countenance, with fluffy
fringe, in imitation, probably, of Sarah Bernhardt. Sunk in a
comfortable easy-chair, and huddled in her furs like a sick, shivering
bird, she merely moved her lips to sip her cup of tea.
'Donna Luisa is not tired; she is made of iron,' murmured Signora
Gallenga, wife of the Secretary-General of Finance, coughing slightly
and smoothing her pointed, Chinese eyebrows. 'It would be too much for
me. I am glad my receptions are small. Were you at the Parliament
to-day, Countess?'
'I never go.'
The graceful Piedmontese saw the error of her question. Count Schwarz
had succeeded in becoming a provincial councillor, but never a deputy.
'I was there,' interposed Signora Mattei, the wife of another
Secretary-General, a Tuscan woman as brown as a peppercorn, with fiery
eyes, a rapid tongue, and a black hat buried under poppies. 'It was an
interesting meeting.'
'And not to have been there!' exclaimed Signora Gallenga. 'How
unfortunate! And did Sangiorgio speak?'
'Yes, yes----'
But a 'hush' now circulated through the room. A robust lady, with a
mighty bosom tightly cuirassed in red satin, with a broad, good-natured
face, sang a moving romance by Tosti. She had undone her pelisse,
throwing it back on her shoulders, and with her hands in her muff, her
veil down on her eyes, quite serenely, without a single quiver in a line
of her face, she poured out her lamentations in the music of the
Abruzzan master. Donna Luisa, standing in the middle of the drawing-room
among fifty ladies seated, listened with the polite attention of a
hostess; but she was assailed by an uneasy feeling, since she observed
that in the two adjoining parlours there were people--ladies waiting to
come in. It was the most important reception of the season; in the
drawing-room reigned the quiet of a hothouse and the sweet, sugary smell
of a place where there are many women. Standing along the wall, encased
in severe frock-coats, was a row of commanders, bald and silent, who had
left the Court of Accounts at half-past four, of officials from the
Treasury, of men from other Government offices. But they preserved the
statuesque immobility of the bureaucratic make-up, the unwearying
patience, the endless, incalculably long expectation by dint of which
they passed from one grade to another, until they had forty years of
service behind them; to them this reception was an infinitesimal
fraction of the forty years of service.
A sigh of relief was audible; the romance was finished, and Luisa
Catalani complimented the singer, who was smiling like the full moon.
Then the hostess immediately left the room; there were seven or eight
ladies in the next room.
'What was the Chamber like to-day?' asked a fair, pale-faced Minister's
daughter, who had newly arrived.
'Very warm. I do not understand how our men keep from getting ill,'
replied another, spreading out her fan by way of original illustration.
'Sangiorgio spoke very well,' murmured Signora Giroux, a little lady
with white hair and a sweet smile--her ladyship of the Agricultural
Department.
'He is from the South,' remarked Donna Luisa Catalani. 'Was there anyone
in the diplomatic gallery?'
'Countess di Santaninfa and Countess di Malgra.'
'Fine hats?'
'Might pass,' answered the pallid blonde abstractedly.
Over in a corner a group of girls was prattling in lively fashion, with
their jackets unbuttoned because of the heat, and showing the fine
texture of their dark cloth dresses. Enrichetta Serafini, daughter of
the Minister of Public Works, a brunette in mourning, was talking for
half a dozen, and gathered about her were the Camilly girl, an Italian
born in Egypt; the Borla girl, a predestined old maid, condemned by the
everlasting youth of her mother; the Fasulo girl, a lymphatic person,
with large, meditative eyes, an accountant's niece; the Allievo girl, a
nice, quiet thing; and the single aristocratic bud, all fair under the
white plume in her hat--Donna Sofia di Maccarese.
'I prefer Tosti to all the rest,' maintained Enrichetta Serafini. 'He
can make one weep.'
'Denza, too, makes one weep at times,' observed the Borla girl, who did
not know how to sing, and was obliged to listen to her fifty-year-old
mother.
'And you, Donna Sofia, which do you like best?'
'Schumann,' she murmured, without another word.
The others stopped. They did not know his music. But the Serafini girl,
nervous and vivacious, answered:
'But all that music must be sung well. Pardon me'--lowering her
voice--'perhaps you like the lady who has just sung?' And the whole
group giggled surreptitiously.
'The best singer in Rome is the Fiammanti,' added the young Camilly
girl, with her round, white face, with her languid gaze--this Oriental
transplanted to Italy.
The other girls remained silent. The Borla pursed her lips in token of
reproof; the Fasulo cast down her eyes; the Allievo blushed; only Donna
Sofia di Maccarese did not change countenance, either not knowing or not
caring about Countess Fiammanti.
'Is it true that she is to marry the deputy Sangiorgio?' asked the
Serafini.
'No, no,' replied the Camilly, with a peculiar smile.
This time the girls exchanged the mute, expressive looks into which
society compels girls to condense their meaning. In the drawing-room a
great concourse of ladies had gathered; the warm atmosphere of heavy
clothes was spreading, and an odour of tea and opopanax, of beaver and
marten. Nearly all of them were talking now, in couples, or in groups of
three or four, with certain nods and certain subtle modulations of the
voice, gossiping about the Chamber of Deputies, gravely discussing the
Honourable Bomba's delivery, saying which gallery they liked best,
commenting on the colour of the carpets, describing the flesh-coloured
waistcoats of the Honourable Count Lapucci and the romantic face--like a
pensive Christ's--of the Honourable Joanna. And Signora Gallenga, an
authority on literature, announced the following:
'This year the Abruzzo is fashionable in literature and the Basilicata
in politics.'
So they thought they were doing politics in right earnest, elated by
their own chatter, they, with their light little heads. But no other
performer moved to the piano, and as the placid, middle-aged lady who
had languished with Tosti was taking her third cup of tea, a hardly
perceptible stir took place in the drawing-room, and Donna Angelica
Vargas, tall and lovely, walked across the room with her rhythmic step,
seeking out Donna Luisa Catalani. She was dressed in black, as usual,
with an iridescence of some sort about her person and her hat. Donna
Luisa ran towards her with her prettiest smile. They made low bows to
each other, and a subdued colloquy began between them.
The people in the room pretended not to hear, from politeness, but an
embarrassing silence prevailed, as sometimes happens among a number of
persons none of whom wants to speak first. His Highness Mehemet Pasha
had opened his eyes wide, and ogled the beautiful Italian, so chaste in
appearance, but whose large eyes reminded him of his Eastern women, for
whom he perhaps was longing. Then those large, fine eyes, shining like
the black pearls on her dress, cast an intelligent glance all round the
room, and as Donna Luisa Catalani turned away, singly, by twos, by
threes did the women come and surround Donna Angelica Vargas, to
exchange amenities with her; and although her husband was not Prime
Minister, although she was the wife of a Minister of Commerce holding a
non-political portfolio, although in that drawing-room were three or
four wives of political Ministers, important men, pillars of the
Cabinet, yet she was the centre of all this adulation, and in the
simplicity of her manner there lay something queenly.
* * * * *
To feel the cold less, while writing in that long, narrow parlour,
without a fire, in the Via Angelo Custode, Sangiorgio had thrown an old
coat over his legs. At eight the servant had brought him a cup of
coffee, in bed, and while she was cleaning the chilly room he put on his
clothes, so as to begin work. The girl did the other room quickly, and
went away without a word, looking sullen and resentful, like all poor
wretches who cannot reconcile themselves to penury and hard work. But
the sweeping being done in haste, dirt remained in the corners of the
floor. The window-curtains were yellow with dust, and a horrible smell
of stale rubbish hung in both rooms. Barely had the servant vanished,
trailing her feet in a pair of men's shoes, when Sangiorgio, without a
look at that melancholy inner courtyard, with balconies full of old
boxes and broken glass, and worm-eaten, filthy loggias, set to writing
at a small student's table. He had settled down to work, among a lot of
Parliamentary papers and a heap of letters from the Basilicata, on
large, white sheets of commercial foolscap, dipping his pen into a
wretched clay inkpot. Towards ten o'clock an intolerable sensation of
cold had crept over his feet and legs; he still had three hours' work
before him, and therefore went to his bedroom for an old overcoat, which
he spread over his legs. He did this automatically, without taking his
mind off the Parliamentary report which had absorbed him for a week. The
fire that burned within him was manifest in the large, clear handwriting
with which he covered the big sheets of paper; his preoccupation showed
plainly in his face, in his--as it were--introspective glance, ignoring
all things external.
Sheets of paper were now heaping up at his left; he did not stop writing
except to refer to Parliamentary Blue-books, or to consult a fat volume
of agricultural reports, or a dirty, little, torn notebook. At eleven,
as he was engrossed in his task, the slight grating of a key was heard,
and a woman entered, closing the door noiselessly behind her.
'It is I,' she said softly, clasping a bunch of roses to her breast. He
lifted his head, and stared at her with the bewildered eyes of one not
yet sufficiently aroused from his employment to recognise a new-comer.
'Do I disturb you?' asked Elena, with her flutelike voice. 'Yes, yes, I
am disturbing you! Go on with your writing--do your work. I will read a
book.'
'There are no books here you would like,' he replied, not remembering to
thank her for having come.
She rummaged among the papers with her slender hands, gloved in black
and hampered by the bunch of roses. Sangiorgio smiled at her
complacently. She was always so fascinating, with those heavy lips of
hers, red and moist, with those strange eyes of indefinable colour, with
that graceful opulence of figure, that even to look at her, to have her
present, here, in his own room, was always a new delight to him.
'There is nothing there!' she laughed. 'I could never read about the
quantity of polenta the peasants of Lombardy eat, and how many potatoes
the Southerners. That would make me too melancholy. Do your writing--do
your writing, Franz; do not mind me.'
And he got up, and went over to kiss her on the eyes, through her thin
veil, as she liked it; she made a face like a greedy child receiving a
sweetmeat. He returned to his writing. Elena walked up and down in the
parlour, as if trying to get warm: in this room, on this bleak March
day, it was freezing.
'Are you not cold, Franz?' asked Elena from the sofa, whence she was
curiously eyeing the pictures on the hooks.
'A little,' he answered, without ceasing from his writing.
She again reviewed the room in all its squalor, realized in what a state
of decent poverty he existed, and watched him, writing so swiftly at
that little table, where he was obliged to draw in his elbows so as not
to brush the papers over the edge. And into the eyes of the woman
watching the tireless worker came a new light of tenderness which he did
not see.
Now leaning against the mantelpiece, she reviewed her surroundings,
first examining the three photographs of a corporal, a stout gentleman,
and a boy belonging to the Nazzareno school, and then the three
libellous oleographs representing the Royal Family.
'Franz, have you ever had your photograph taken?' she inquired, looking
at herself in the mirror, and adjusting the bow on her hat.
'Yes, at Naples once, when I was a student,' he answered, turning over
some Parliamentary records.
'And have you it now?'
'No, of course not.'
'If you had it, I should want it,' she insinuated in a voice like a
child's.
'Is the original not enough for you?'
'No,' was Elena's reflective response. He got up again, came over and
took her hands, and asked her:
'Then, you like me?'
'Yes--yes--yes,' she sang on three musical notes.
Francesco returned to the table, where he resumed his work. She hazarded
a step to the threshold of his bedroom, and cast a glance inside.
'Franz,' said she, 'you did not come to the Valle last night.'
'There was the Budget Committee up till eleven. Afterwards I was too
tired.'
'A number of people came to see me in my box--Giustini, for instance.
How do you come to be so intimate with him?'
'He is useful to me,' he answered simply, without looking up.
'He speaks ill of you.'
'I hope so.'
'To be sure, he never praises anyone but mediocrities. You will become a
great statesman, Franz!'
'Oh, that will take a long time,' he replied tranquilly, noting down
some figures on a small piece of paper.
'Gallenga and Oldofredi came, too. Oldofredi makes love to me.'
'Quite right of Oldofredi,' he murmured gallantly.
She laughed, and vanished into the adjoining room. It was so cold and
ugly that for a moment she shrank back in repulsion. She scanned the
woollen arabesques on the bedquilt, which the servant had given a
furious shaking. But it was the large grease-spot on the blue-cloth
easy-chair which caused her to turn her head; her feminine instincts
made her wince at that grease-spot. She walked about the room in search
of an unavailable article: on the chest of drawers were only two
candlesticks without candles and a clothes-brush, and nothing that would
serve her purpose; on the toilet-table were only two combs and a broken
bottle of Felsina water. The place was as bare as a hermit's cell. At
last she descried, on the stand near the bed, a water-bottle and glass,
and, beaming with pleasure, untied her bundle of roses, thrust three or
four into the neck of the decanter, a few into the cup, dropped a
handful on the coverlet at the foot of the bed, and then, being at a
loss where to put any more, stuffed two under the pillow. Moving
cautiously, she went back to the chest of drawers, and opened the top
drawer, which contained neckties and gloves; here, too, she left some of
her roses. A portrait lay thrown in there, still in its envelope. It was
her own. A light shadow of displeasure flitted across her face, and
quickly disappeared. In that miserable room, in that murky light that
came from the courtyard, in that stench of kitchen slops, the roses gave
out a vernal freshness, the essence of a garden, a remembrance of
sunlight, an atom of fragrance.
'I have finished,' said Sangiorgio, appearing in the doorway.
'Let us go home to lunch.'
'Do you think we shall have done by half-past one?'
'Why?'
'I have an appointment with a constituent.'
'Well, I hope so, as I also have an appointment--at two.'
'With a constituent?'
'With Oldofredi.'
'Indeed,' he answered, putting on his overcoat.
'He is to tell me how he came to be unwilling to marry Angelica Vargas.'
'Was he intending to marry her?'
'Yes, and he did not want to. Perhaps, though, it was she who refused.
Nearly everyone dislikes Oldofredi, especially in Parliament. Do you
know him?'
'No; I am not interested in him.'
'You are quite pale; what is the matter?'
'I don't know; probably it is the cold.'
'Come, come away to my house; there is a fire there, and you can warm
yourself!'
He accompanied her, without saying a word about the roses.
* * * * *
The Honourable Oldofredi was not a particularly assiduous frequenter of
the Parliamentary library. He occasionally went there to look for a
friend, but did not read; he never asked for books or papers. Malicious
tongues among the deputies, forsooth, had it that he did not know how to
read. Now, as he entered the library that day, and found Sangiorgio
seated in front of a veritable mountain of books, flying through
statistical works, skimming over the pages of volumes of political
economy, history, and social science with that impetuosity in research
and preparation which characterizes the provincial Southerner, at the
sight of this the fatuous Oldofredi smiled disdainfully. He had first
put his head in at the door, to see if it was the colleague he was in
search of; then, prompted by some new idea, he went in, although he had
not seen his friend. He began to saunter idly up and down, blowing the
remains of a cigarette out of a small amber mouthpiece. The Honourable
Oldofredi, despite his reputation as a Don Juan and a swashbuckler, was
neither a handsome nor a powerful man; he was a machine of bones and
sinews badly put together, the whole of his elongated person had an
unpleasant, battered appearance, his face was of a repulsively
cadaverous hue; in his eyes lay vacant stupidity, and all his limbs were
so disjointed as to make him look like a perambulating automaton.
Sangiorgio, from the moment he rested his eyes on him, could not take
them away again. A sort of irritating fascination drew the Basilicatan's
attention from the statistics and the works on political economy, and
attracted him to the deputy from the Marches, whom he detested and hated
through some vague instinct of sectionalism, lover's jealousy, and
ambition. While Oldofredi walked to and fro, he stared at him fixedly,
holding his pen over the paper. This Don Quixote, disliked by the whole
Chamber, hateful to all the women, ignorant, stupid, and devoid of
ability, who with all these forbidden qualities had nevertheless always
been successful in his re-election, in having himself talked about, and
in holding a position of prominence in political and social life--this
man weighed on Sangiorgio's stomach like some indigestible food to which
repugnance is instinctive. Oldofredi was a political sword-swallower.
His duels were no longer a topic of conversation, unless in a vague way,
as if about something doubtful and distant, because it was so many years
since anyone had ventured to challenge him. But no personal dispute
could happen in which he was not concerned as second, or arbiter, or
adviser, and neither inside the Chamber nor out of it was there a surer
or readier authority on fighting. This endowed this coarse, commonplace
individual with a halo of romance, and in the annals of gossip it was
stated that women were prompt to lay their wavering virtue at the feet
of this Orlando of the Marches, who in their eyes could be counted on as
a formidable champion to cover their transgressions.
'Have you seen friend Bomba by chance, Honourable Sangiorgio?' queried
Oldofredi, stopping opposite the writer.
'I? No,' replied the other curtly, raising his head.
'Where can he be hiding? He is not in the hall; that ass of a Borgonero
was making a speech there about some foolery or other. I have been
looking for Bomba everywhere. He can only be here, in the company of
that idiot of a Giordano Bruno. Do you, Sangiorgio, believe Giordano
Bruno existed?'
'I? yes,' he answered dryly.
Sangiorgio gave Oldofredi a frigid stare, which would have baffled a
less conceited talker. But he continued to walk up and down, with his
nose in the air. He lighted another cigarette, making a noisy rustle
with his long, ugly, ungainly person, which disturbed the quiet of that
studious place. In the little adjoining room at the right the Honourable
Gasperini, the white-bearded Tuscan with a subtle smile and a pair of
sharp eyes behind his spectacles, had already looked up twice in the
midst of his perusal of some financial thesis; he had shrugged his
shoulders, annoyed at Oldofredi's obtrusiveness. Arrived at the other
door, which opened into the room on the left, he stood still on the
threshold, and leaned against the jamb, with his hands in his pockets.
In this room the Honourable Giroux, a slow, grave old gentleman with
half-closed lids and sleepy look, was reading in a large tome bound in
parchment. Oldofredi smiled; then, returning to Sangiorgio's table,
accosted him with another sneer:
'He is in there, you know, with Copernic.'
'Who?' asked the other, with the same studied coldness.
'Giroux. Not satisfied with bothering people about his own philosophical
absurdities, he has invented some for Copernic. Who may this Copernic
be? Pah! Giroux will swear he knew him in Turin, and that he was a
_carbonaro_!'
And Oldofredi burst out laughing. But he did not see the strong and set
expression of displeasure in Sangiorgio's face; he did not observe the
slight nervous tremble which made the pen dance between the Southern
deputy's fingers.
'And over on the other side is Gasperini, the ex-secretary, who
certainly is reading the proceedings of the British Parliament, so as to
be able to argue against Giroux to-morrow. What do you think of it?'
'Nothing.'
'Well, I shall pick up Gasperini with two fingers, and put him into
Giroux's arms; then their reconciliation will be accomplished, Copernic
and Bentham will bless them, and Italian finance--and agriculture,
too--will go on in the same way as before--that is to say, as badly as
possible.'
This he announced in a loud voice, not caring whether the others
overheard him. Sangiorgio glanced at both doors, as though signifying
his apprehension.
'No, they are not listening. When Giroux is with Copernic he hears
nothing, and Gasperini is befogged in English finance. And what if they
did hear!'
He made his favourite motion of defiance with his shoulders, one of the
gestures which had won him the reputation of being a brave man.
'They might answer you,' replied Sangiorgio in an equivocal tone.
'Oh no! they would not answer at all! More likely they would make a note
of it, and remind me of it at a future time, in the hall, in a lobby, or
in a newspaper. That's the way in politics. Or probably they would try
to forget to do even that, as so many others have forgotten. You seem to
be new here; you have a great deal left to learn. One thing, my dear
sir, I can inform you of myself: in politics one must never reply
immediately, to a man's face, directly. Either one forgets or one
waits.'
'And supposing you should get an immediate answer?' rejoined Sangiorgio
more glacially than ever.
'What! Imagine, my dear new deputy, that for five years in these
precincts I have gone about saying the whole truth to everybody
concerning facts, men, and events, at the top of my voice, merely to
relieve my liver. Has anyone had the courage to defend himself, to
answer me to my face? No one has--no one, my dear new deputy!'
'And how is that?' said Sangiorgio, his eyes rooted to the paper he had
been writing upon, as if in reflection.
'Come, now! It is because the old ones have exhausted their whole
supply of courage--if they ever had any--and the young ones have not yet
begun to draw on theirs--if they ever do have any.'
'Do you think so, Oldofredi?'
'Great heavens! Do I think so! The Chamber is full of cowards!'
'It is not, Honourable Oldofredi.'
'Cowardice and Company, that is the name of the firm!'
'I assure you it is not, Oldofredi.'
'You are giving me the lie, it seems to me?'
'Certainly.'
'Do you give me the lie?'
'Yes--I do.'
'You want to prove to me that the Chamber is not cowardly?'
'Yes.'
'I live in the Via Frattina, No. 46, I dine at the Colonne, and I shall
be at the Apollo this evening.'
'Very well.'
'Good-day.'
'Good-day.'
Oldofredi shrugged his shoulders, flicked the ashes off his cigarette,
and went out, shaking his loose limbs. Sangiorgio dipped his pen into
the inkpot, and resumed his writing. The occupants of the next room had
heard nothing, especially as the conversation had been carried on in an
ordinary tone of voice. Gasperini was turning over the English financial
reports, Giroux was immersed in Copernic, and Sangiorgio made notes from
Tullio Martello's 'Storia dell' Internazionale.'
CHAPTER IV
When the Honourable Sangiorgio entered the Parliament café at seven to
dine, when he went into that dark, oppressive vault, which was, as it
were, in a state of fumigation, sundry heads were turned, and his name
was whispered in well-bred undertones by the diners. Only two or three
tables were vacant. After a moment of indecision, Sangiorgio sat down at
one with three chairs unoccupied. At once, from the next table, the
Honourable Correr, the young deputy of the Right, nodded to him
amicably, and the Honourable Scalatelli, a Colonel of carabineers, with
a peaked, grizzly beard and merry eyes, scrutinized him with interest.
The other two, ex-deputies, the great Paulo, the big Paulo, the strong
Paulo, continued to dispute with the little Paduan Mephistopheles,
Berna, a queer spirit.
'Is it true, then, Sangiorgio, about the duel?' asked Correr in a
subdued voice.
'It is true,' answered the other, looking over the bill of fare.
'Your first duel?'
'My first.'
'Have you ever taken fencing lessons?'
'A few.'
'You are rash. Oldofredi is a remarkable fencer.'
'A duel--a duel? Who is fighting?' exclaimed the bulky Paulo, having
just administered 'donkey' to his friend Berna, who had treated him to
'idiot.'
'Here, the Honourable Sangiorgio with Oldofredi,' explained Correr.
'A fine opponent, by God! He is left-handed, is Oldofredi; you had
better take that into consideration, Honourable Sangiorgio.'
'I was not aware of it, but I will consider it.'
'And the seconds--who are the seconds?' inquired the gigantic Paulo, the
colossus, the molossus, whom every duel intoxicated.
'Count Castelforte and Rosolino Scalia; I am waiting for them to dine
with me,' courteously replied Sangiorgio.
'Excellent! A good choice--seconds not given to mediation, will attempt
no friendly settlement on the ground.'
'Was the duel unavoidable, Sangiorgio?' inquired Scalatelli.
'Unavoidable.'
'Oldofredi has good luck, Sangiorgio. I fought with him some years ago,
and he cut my wrist,' calmly elucidated Scalatelli.
At this, the Count di Castelforte and Rosolino Scalia came upon the
scene, and singled out Sangiorgio. The Count preserved the aristocratic
chill that emanated from his whole self, from his tall, lean person,
from his long, black, whitening beard, from the half-inborn,
half-literary composure of a nobleman and a writer. Rosolino Scalia
comported himself like an officer in plain clothes, with flower at
buttonhole and moustache scented; but he, too, was cool and serious.
Castelforte engaged in conversation with Correr and Scalatelli, while
Scalia removed his topcoat.
'Well,' asked Sangiorgio, 'what has happened?'
'Nothing as yet,' replied Scalia with reserve--'or very little.'
Sangiorgio asked no further questions. The beginning of the dinner of
the three men was marked by complete silence. Castelforte was, as usual,
supercilious, Scalia grave, and Sangiorgio impassive.
'The seconds are Lapucci and Bomba,' said Scalia, helping himself to
wine. 'We are to meet them at half-past nine. Have you provided for
sabres, Sangiorgio?'
'Yes.'
'Very well,' said Castelforte. 'I hope you have had them sharpened;
nothing is worse, in a duel, than blunt swords. The duel becomes too
long, and the gashes are always ridiculously broad, indecently so.'
'I have had them ground by Spadini himself.'
'Well done,' commented Scalia. 'A protracted duel has all sorts of
disadvantages; it smacks of the burlesque, for one. One thing I advise
you, Sangiorgio: think of nothing, and worry about nothing, but at the
first onset rush in; do not wait for your enemy, and make no
calculations, simply go at him; for beginners this is the only chance of
success.'
'On the other hand,' interjected Castelforte, 'as I was led to
understand by Lapucci, the conditions will be of a most serious kind.
But you are not in jest, Sangiorgio; it is natural that between two
serious men these things should be taken seriously.'
'I have no intention of joking,' observed Sangiorgio, taking some salad.
'All the better. Have you a doctor?'
'No.'
'Let us take the usual doctor--Alberti,' said Scalia. 'I will attend to
it this evening.'
A small boy in livery, whose cap wore the inscription 'Caffè di Roma,'
came into the place, looking about for someone. He had a note for the
Honourable Sangiorgio.
'The Speaker of the Chamber has sent for me at the Roma café, where he
will be until half-past nine.'
'And you will go,' said Castelforte. 'But stand your ground; do not
allow your purpose to be changed.'
'Scalia! Scalia!' cried the mastiff Paulo from the other table, no
longer capable of reticence, 'take care what place you choose for the
duel! Let it be near a house, an inn, a farm--any sort of shelter. Since
I once had to bring back poor Goffredi, wounded in the lungs, and
gasping and spitting blood at every jolt of the carriage, over three
miles of highroad all stones and ruts, I made a vow never to act as
second again unless there was a bed ready within fifty yards.'
'Then it would be better to have it in a house,' suggested Correr.
'A house! Not at all!' exclaimed Scalia. 'It is unlucky in a house. All
duels in houses end badly.'
The seconds rose, and for five minutes more conversed with their
principal, all standing up together. They were watched with curiosity
from the other tables, but the three faces betrayed nothing. Then
followed a great profusion of vigorous handshakes and of bows.
Sangiorgio, left alone, settled the bill. The guests at the other tables
also left, bidding Sangiorgio farewell.
'Good luck, colleague! Ram it down the wolf's jaws!' said Correr.
'I wish you a steady hand, Honourable Sangiorgio,' added Scalatelli.
'Do not look at him if you believe in the evil-eye,' advised Berna.
But from the middle of the room the enormous Paula, with sudden
familiarity, shouted out while he laughed:
'Good-bye, Sangiorgio, and I tell you what: aim at his face!'
He understood that they all went away doubtful about the issue. He left
two minutes later. At the door he met a reporter of a morning paper, who
asked him for news.
'Nothing yet,' was his answer.
'In case--well, in case of--may I come to your house to-morrow for
information?' persisted the beardless youth with the boyish manner.
'Angelo Custode, 50,' said the other, moving off.
At the Caffè di Roma the Speaker was finishing dinner with his friend,
Colonel Freitag, a large man of childish mien, of high-pitched, reedy
voice. The Speaker had the worn-out appearance of an individual resting
from some unprofitable labour. As soon as Sangiorgio accosted him he
went straight to the point:
'Cannot this ugly business be mended, honourable colleague?'
The Speaker repressed a nervous little gesture and bit his lips.
'I think not, sir.'
'Now, come, honourable colleague--has there not been some
misunderstanding? A duel between two deputies is a grave matter; it
ought not to occur without cause.'
'There was no misunderstanding, I assure you, Speaker.'
'I have experience in such things: Oldofredi is rather excitable, you
are young, and some joke was taken the wrong way. One ought to be
careful on these occasions, colleague; to-morrow the newspapers will
talk, and then a scandal will arise.'
'I hope not. In any case, there is no remedy.'
'No one will make Oldofredi say that you, Sangiorgio, brought about this
duel for notoriety's sake.'
And the Speaker cast a narrowly scrutinizing glance at the Southern
deputy's face, but read in it only indifference, impassivity, and he
seemed to abandon his attempt at mediation.
'Have the seconds fixed upon the conditions?' he inquired.
'Not yet; I am to meet them at eleven.' And he rose to go.
'Take my advice--give no information to reporters; a Parliamentary duel
is a godsend to them. Good luck, honourable colleague!'
Sangiorgio departed, feeling that the Speaker's frigid speech and the
Honourable Freitag's obdurate silence both meant the same thing.
Out in the street, in the Corso, he stopped and hesitated. He had
arranged to meet his seconds at the Aragno café, although he was now
possessed of an invincible repugnance against his nocturnal vagabondage,
this wandering from one café to another, against those artificial
camping-grounds of deputies, journalists, and idlers without a home of
their own, who, having no family, spent their evenings in those hot,
smoke-laden places. An intense disgust was growing up in him for the
people who came and asked questions, and wanted to know, and offered
comments, and were for ever indifferent. He knew that Castelforte and
Scalia must have come together with Lapucci and Bomba at the Uffici; he
therefore preferred to walk slowly up towards Montecitorio, purchasing
some newspapers at the kiosk in the Piazza Colonna, and reading them by
lamplight under the Veian portico.
Two or three evening papers announced the duel with some ceremony; one
gave initials only, but alleged that attempts at conciliation had proved
fruitless. He put them into his pocket, and, seized somewhat with
impatience, began to pace up and down opposite the Parliament. The great
windows of the offices were all alight; the clerks were still at work.
But the square, the large square without shops, was deserted. He walked
back and forth, round the obelisk from the Uffici del Vicario to the Via
degli Orfanelli, and from the Via degli Orfanelli to the Via della
Missione, his hands in his pockets, his head down, stepping out at a
lively gait to combat the dampness that penetrated to the bone.
The porch door of the Albergo Milano, which fronts upon the square, was
closing after the arrival of the last omnibus from the station, and
Sangiorgio's seconds had not yet appeared. He became irritated at being
observed by the deputies who had passed the evening in the Chamber, and
when anyone showed himself in the doorway Sangiorgio stopped, or else
turned away fretting with vexation. At length Scalia and Castelforte
came out upon the steps; the tall figure of the Lombard Count was
outlined against the shorter but sturdier frame of the Sicilian deputy.
They were talking eagerly at one another; then they ceased, and made
their way down. Sangiorgio joined them at a run.
'I did not wish to wait for you at the café. It is full of people, and
they all want to know about it, and I have no desire to look as if I
were posing,' he explained to his seconds.
'You did well,' said Scalia. 'When one is to fight, it is best not to be
seen, from motives of delicacy. That poser of an Oldofredi was
declaiming the whole evening at the Colonne; he is at the theatre now,
at the Apollo, for the purpose of being admired. Enough of
that--everything seems to be in readiness.'
'The Acqua Acetosa, outside the Popolo gate, is a good place,' suggested
Castelforte, 'because one can get there so quickly. We have fixed on the
hour of ten, and shall call for you at half-past eight.'
All three of them walked in the direction of Sangiorgio's house. He
smoked in silence.
'Are you nervous, eh?' asked Scalia.
'Not in the least!'
'Well, then, try to get some sleep. Have you any brandy at home?'
'No.'
'Brandy is a good thing in case of a duel. I shall bring some on the
ground to-morrow morning. But do you try to sleep.'
'Confound it! I shall sleep!'
'We have ruled out no strokes,' resumed Castelforte. 'That was what you
wanted, I think.'
'Exactly so.'
'I have notified Dr. Alberti,' added Scalia; 'he is coming; his
experience will be of great value. Do not trouble about a carriage; we
shall bring a landau ourselves. Only be ready punctually, for we must
arrive in good time.'
'How is it, Sangiorgio, that you have never fought a duel?'
'Oh, we in the Basilicata are very slow to wrath.'
'It would not seem so,' laughed Castelforte.
Hereupon, as they went up through the Via Angelo Custode, they remained
silent. Their three shadows were cast conspicuously on the empty street:
Castelforte's, lean and almost ghostly; Scalia's, rigidly martial;
Sangiorgio's, small but solid.
* * * * *
Alone at last. The tallow candle shed a dim light in the cold and barren
parlour, whose stale air was mingled with the bad kitchen smells which
came up from the inner courtyard. Alone at last--he was glad of it, with
that savage desire for solitude which frequently invaded his being.
On that afternoon and evening the strong sentiment in him of contempt
for man, always latent in his breast, had grown apace; for seven hours
he was passing through one of the great human trials which leave the
soul embittered, disappointed, sickened. In the solitude of his little
apartment, in the nocturnal lucidity of his brain, which no man, nor
thing, nor circumstance had, up till then, been able to obscure, all the
pettiness, the love of compromise, the coldness, the indifference, the
stinted zeal of the people he had met with, now stood before him,
arrayed, classified, definite. First, the difficulty of finding seconds
against Oldofredi, who had a reputation for swordsmanship; then, the
very limited enthusiasm of Scalia and Castelforte; all the advice, all
the suggestions, all the inconsiderate sayings, all the melancholy
forecasts, pitying inquiries, unmeaning, superficial compliments--all
this multitude of words, of phrases, of unpleasant accents, disgusted
him as they once more filed before his mind, reminding him again of
men's meanness and smooth hypocrisy.
He felt how everyone, acquaintances and strangers, friends and foes,
admirers and detractors, far or near, entertained an adverse judgment of
him because of his duel with Oldofredi. He was conscious of the
offensive commiseration of some, of the ironical sneers of others, of
the wrathful envy of others still, of the profound contempt of very
many. He was aware that his audacious exploit of venturing to measure
swords--he, the young, inexperienced novice--with a fire-eater whom no
one any longer dared insult, and who was an old deputy, was bringing
down upon him ridicule, pity, and disdain. In that hour he had the whole
of public opinion against him, and felt overwhelmed by the injustice of
humanity. It was bliss to him to be alone, to be able to shut himself up
with his bitterness and his broken illusions. But he was not quite
alone, no--something there was that lay shining on the sofa. And as he
took the candle in hand in order to see better, a glistening streak
glowed forth. In the watches of the night the sharp-edged swords watched
too.
They, at all events, did not lie. Stubborn was their strength in attack
and defence; it was enough to smooth their sides for five minutes, and
the power of good and evil was in them. They never dissembled, but were
ready--loyally ready--to parry mortal strokes, to pierce, to cut, to
kill; one in his hand, the other in his enemy's; blade against blade;
edge against edge--those faithful swords! The word of man by its
unkindness congeals the blood, or through its bitterness poisons the
heart; a good blade does its work honestly, cuts straight and deep. The
human tongue inflicts rending wounds; the sword scarcely gives pain,
because of the rapid precision of the blow.
Sangiorgio, irresistibly attracted by the sheen of the steel, went to
sit on the sofa, and ran his finger along the keen edge of one of the
sabres. What did seconds, deputies, friends, enemies, reporters, matter
now? The whole affair depended on those two weapons; the end would be
decided by a well-tempered, well-sharpened piece of steel. End? He
looked about, as if looking for the person who had said the word. But he
was alone; the swords lay by his side; his gaze was raptly fixed upon
them. For others the night preceding a duel is a night of agitation, of
nervousness, of walking the floor; others all have a woman to be
reassured by airiness, a relative to whom a letter must be written, a
friend entitled to a note, a servant to be charged with an important
errand; others are not afraid, perhaps, but they all feel a little
troubled, a trifle thoughtful, a particle of remorse; all others are
either elated or try to forget, at the idea of the end; some great
interest of the heart must suffer; the soul is exalted or cast down,
thrilled or plunged in lethargy. Of all this there was no question with
Sangiorgio; no woman, no parents, no friends, no servants; not a line to
be written, not a word to be said, not an order to be given. In vain did
Sangiorgio seek in his heart for the great interest to be hurt at the
notion of the end.
Whom would it grieve if to-morrow Oldofredi sent him home seriously
wounded or dead? To what man or woman would this matter? No one would
care--no one; he was alone, in face of the swords, in face of the end.
And in that cool process of elimination, in that misanthropical method
of selection of men and sentiments, he arrived at himself, at his
grand, absorbing, selfish passion: political ambition. If he were
wounded next day--badly or slightly would be equally significant of
defeat--then the absolute end would come to his profound, intense,
burning desire for fame and power. Wounded or dead, no tears of woman,
no love of friend, no affectionate regrets, would be his portion; but
he, Sangiorgio, would be the sole mourner of his own lost hopes of
renown, his own dreams of ambition wrecked in the physical and moral
shame of the disaster. The swordthrust which to-morrow pierced his
flesh, cut through his muscles, sundered his veins, would find its way
to his heart, that hard, fast-closed heart, where only one passion
lived, and would give that passion a mortal wound. The slow, substantial
task, at which he had been labouring so long with the diligence of an
ant, with inflexible persistency, might crumble to nothing the next day.
Then, of what account all the strength put forth, all those endeavours,
privations, abstinences, all those pangs endured in silence? One stroke
of a sword, and all this was vain. Thus, in the smoky light of the
tallow candle, in the night, in the solitude, those naked sabres for one
brief instant frightened him.
At half-past eight precisely the seconds arrived. Sangiorgio, completely
dressed, his overcoat buttoned and his lustrous, tall silk hat on a
table, was rather pale, but quite composed; only by a scarcely
perceptible tremble of one corner of his mouth did he show the least
sign of agitation.
'Where are the sabres?' inquired Castelforte.
'Here.'
Castelforte took them from their sheaths separately, touched their
points, ran his finger along their edges, bent them backwards and
forwards with the points stuck into the floor, and tried them again and
again, making flourishes in the air.
'Have you a scarf or a silk handkerchief, to tie them together?'
Sangiorgio had a scarf ready. Scalia put the sabres into a bag, about
which he wound the neckcloth, took up the gauntlet lying on the lounge,
and looked at Castelforte, saying:
'Shall we go?'
'Yes, let us go.'
They descended the dark staircase. The coachman opened the door of the
landau, Scalia threw the swords and the glove on one of the seats; then
they all three jumped quickly into the carriage. They drove through the
Via Due Macelli, where the florist was displaying a large show of roses,
and thence into the Piazza di Spagna. From the woolly clouds gathering
in the sky a few drops of wet fell upon the carriage windows.
'It is raining,' said Sangiorgio.
'That does not matter,' said Castelforte. 'A duel in the rain is more
dramatic.'
In the Via del Babuino demolitions were in progress. Heaps of ruins
blocked the mouths of the side-streets; the beginning of the Via
Vittoria was all topsy-turvy, since the drain-pipes were being mended.
By the time they had reached the Piazza del Popolo, the rain was
heavier, and was falling with as lively a patter as though it were hail.
'It will leave off,' said Scalia. 'The wind is changing.'
Outside the gate the carriage stopped, to take up the doctor, who was
waiting at the Caffè dei Tre Re. Under his arm he had a case of
instruments and some lint. He took a seat opposite Sangiorgio, beside
Castelforte. He was in cheerful humour, and told tales of other duels he
had witnessed.
And as the landau went at a gallop over the muddy stones of the
Flaminian Way, the first Ponte Molle tram left the station, and rattled
off half empty, bouncing and swaying on the rails.
The carriage then passed the gasometer, and rapidly bent into the street
leading to the Villa Glori. Under the Arco Oscuro the country loomed in
sight; the first trees were visible beyond the walls.
Then Sangiorgio, who up to that time had been sunk in a sort of mental
and moral stupor, in a sort of weariness of brain and heart, roused
himself in a state of reaction. Castelforte had lowered a window, and
the fresh air came whistling in. As the road happened to be sloping
upwards, the carriage was moving at a walk. Sangiorgio began to revive
and to think. By degrees, during the approach to the appointed place,
all his nervous force concentrated in his teeth, which he bit closer and
closer together, minute by minute. He also seized one of the
window-tassels in his hand, and closed his fingers upon it with more and
more vigour. Under his eyes a streak of warm red appeared, which began
to spread irregularly downward. But, as his fervour grew, all desire to
show it outwardly diminished; he was slowly shutting himself up with
himself, in a sort of romantic, idolatrous self-communion, and to the
remarks of the doctor and his seconds he vouchsafed no other reply than
a series of more than usually violent nods. The horses puffed hard on
the inclining road; at last, at the Villa Glori, the descent began.
Then the carriage started off again at a fast trot. There were no more
walls; henceforth, to right and left, blooming hedges sped by the
carriage windows. For a while it seemed to Sangiorgio as though girls
were running along offering him bunches of hawthorn. Then the hedges
ceased, and the carriage drove in between two rows of elms, whose tops
quivered gently in the wind. A wild shudder ran through Sangiorgio's
body, and the flush under his eyes was gone. They had arrived. He wanted
to jump out at once; Castelforte held him back.
'Remain in the carriage with the doctor,' said he. 'The exact spot is
not agreed upon yet. Wait a little.'
The seconds got out. Sangiorgio stayed inside at the window.
They were first on the ground. The cabin at the Acqua Acetosa was
deserted. Doors and shutters were closed. There was not a vestige of
life. The great plain stretched along the river, green, treeless, and
without a human creature. Far away, in the direction of the Villa Ada, a
long file of white sheep was distinguishable against the uniform green
and ash-gray, and a hooded shepherd was standing there erect and
motionless.
Castelforte and Scalia walked out upon the plain, gesticulating. The
weather was clearing a little, though there were still rumblings and
threatening signs. The immense area, grown with useless herbage, was
such a mournful and desolate wilderness that the shapes of the two
well-dressed men moving among the blooming chicory created a curious
dissonance in the scene. The Tiber, swollen and livid, was tossing in
angry turbulence. Castelforte and Scalia turned back slowly, arguing
the while. Sangiorgio was beginning to tremble with impatience. The
carriage seemed suffocating to him, and he could barely breathe.
The two seconds drew near again. Castelforte leaned in at the window.
'We have found a good place; it is a little soft, but not slippery. We
must wait to see if the others are satisfied with it.'
'Here they come!' said Sangiorgio, whose senses had become excessively
acute through the excitement.
Indeed, the noise of a carriage was audible, and it rapidly grew more
defined; the vehicle turned into the plain at a fast gallop, and drew up
at a short distance from the hut, in the middle of the field. The door
opened, and Oldofredi, Lapucci, and Bomba leaped down.
These last advanced towards Castelforte and Scalia, who came to meet
them; Sangiorgio's doctor and Oldofredi's kept aside, kneeling in the
grass and opening out their cases, so as to have everything ready.
Oldofredi remained near his carriage, with his topcoat on, smoking and
playfully tapping the croup of one of the horses with his thin bamboo
cane. Sangiorgio, his body half out of the door, was casting hesitating
glances about. What enraged him was his inexperience, the newness of the
thing, and his ignorance of the formalities. Was he to stay in the
coach, or alight as his adversary had done? He looked at the seconds.
Castelforte and Lapucci, bent low, were clearing the ground with their
feet and drawing lines with their walking-sticks. Scalia came to the
window.
'Be quick! Leave your topcoat and hat in the carriage.'
He took the swords and gauntlet, and turned to the spot chosen for the
encounter. Bomba also turned, with a pair of swords and another
gauntlet. Sangiorgio, whose breast and temples were throbbing, shivered
with expectancy and eagerness, threw aside his hat, tore off topcoat,
coat, waistcoat, and necktie, and rushed impetuously towards the
seconds. The sharp, hard ring of the swords cast on the grass by Scalia
checked him. Castelforte shouted to him from the distance:
'Keep on your coat! It is cold!'
Sangiorgio returned, fetched his great-coat, drew it over his shoulders,
and joined the seconds. In the centre of the duelling-ground Castelforte
and Lapucci were drawing lots for the choice of swords and the privilege
of giving the words of command. Scalia and the doctor took Sangiorgio
between them, and spoke to him quietly:
'Have you taken a mouthful of brandy?'
'No.'
'That's bad. One ought always to fortify one's self.'
'I shall not need it,' was Sangiorgio's mental retort.
'I am to give the words of command in the fight. You are to choose the
swords,' said Castelforte. 'Do you wish to examine ours?'
'I choose our own,' answered Lapucci; 'here they are.'
Oldofredi, who was in another part of the ground, considering the
landscape with an anemone between his lips, veered to the right-about.
Castelforte stepped up to Sangiorgio, put a sword into his grasp, tied
its handle to his wrist, and accompanied him to his post. The doctors
moved off twenty paces. Scalia stayed at Sangiorgio's left, and Bomba at
Oldofredi's left. Lapucci and Castelforte took up their position in the
middle, opposite one another, each with sword in hand.
Oldofredi bore a more stupid and vacant expression than usual; certainly
his mind was as yet unoccupied with what ought to have concerned him
most.
Castelforte, with his cavalry Captain's manner, looked imperiously at
Sangiorgio and then at Oldofredi.
'Gentlemen----' he began in a singing tone.
Sangiorgio, whose blood had run violently to his face, stared at him;
Oldofredi spat out the anemone, and with an aristocratic gesture dropped
his overcoat from his shoulders.
'Gentlemen, it would be an insult to admonish two men of your breeding
to comport yourselves in perfectly chivalrous fashion. I will only
remind you that you must immediately stop as soon as you hear the word
"Halt!" and that you must not attack excepting at the command "Go!" Now
let us begin.'
He gave Lapucci a nod, who replied with another, and called out:
'Guard!'
With a hardly noticeable movement Oldofredi advanced his right foot,
bent his arm and sword to the proper angle, and planted himself firmly
on his legs. Sangiorgio sprang to the attitude of guard with a bound,
stretching out his right arm and sword in such a rigid straight line
that he might have been of iron.
'Go!' commanded Castelforte.
And they made a dash at one another. Oldofredi's sword struck
Sangiorgio's, which was aimed at him in a thrust, warded it off, and
slid down upon the padded glove. But Sangiorgio, raising arm and weapon
with savage strength, beat back his enemy's blade, and all but broke his
sword guard in the onslaught.
'Halt!' shouted Castelforte, interposing his own weapon.
The two combatants obeyed, and resumed their places. Oldofredi, a little
pale, was smiling; he had gauged his foe. Sangiorgio, however, in whose
breast raged the fury of a bull that has seen red, kept his mouth shut,
and breathed vehemently through his nose.
'Guard!' said Castelforte again.
Sangiorgio, with his arm extended, and his steel's point directed at his
adversary's face, glowered at him with such fierce, menacing eyes that
Oldofredi took note of it.
'Go!' exclaimed Castelforte.
This time Oldofredi attacked, making for his opponent's body;
Sangiorgio, standing steady, his arm outstretched and his point at the
enemy's eyes, did not parry. But as he saw the blade, with which a feint
had been made at his stomach, flash by his eyes and about to reach his
face, he met it with a grinding stroke, so sweeping and so determined
that Oldofredi's sword fell from his hand, and remained suspended from
the lash.
'Halt!' shouted Castelforte.
Lapucci and Bomba hastened to refasten Oldofredi's weapon to his wrist.
'Good! Another score!' whispered Castelforte into his principal's ear.
Sangiorgio was in a serener state of mind. An internal exultation of
pride gratified expressed itself in his face. His teeth closed
together. Oldofredi was back at his post, his sword in hand, but this
time he was white with the pallor of rage. His teeth, too, were
interlocked, and his brow was as dark as if ready to hurl thunderbolts.
At the word of command he flew at his enemy at a bound, without a feint
or any sort of artifice in fencing, intending to split his head open.
But before his sword could reach its mark, the point of Sangiorgio's cut
into his nether lip, and rent his whole cheek as far as the temple. The
four seconds precipitated themselves on the duellists, and the doctors
ran up. Oldofredi was dragged aside, and made to sit on a stretcher
surrounded by the six men. Sangiorgio stood alone, sword in hand, half
undressed, and dazed, under the leaden sky which once more sent down a
muddy shower.
* * * * *
While the carriage was passing under the Porta del Popolo indistinctly
he heard Castelforte ask the doctor:
'How many stitches will be required?'
'Ten.'
'How many days will he be laid up?'
'Twenty--unless a violent fever sets in.'
'By God, what a fine stroke!' interjected Scalia, gleefully pulling at
his cigar.
'And then there is the scar,' added Castelforte, laughing. 'Oldofredi
will not forget that stroke!'
The doctor got out at the San Giacomo hospital, after making an
appointment to sign the record of the duel. At the mention of this,
Sangiorgio broke his silence.
'Are you hungry?' Scalia asked him.
'He ought to be; he certainly deserves an appetite,' said Castelforte.
And they both smiled complacently.
The seconds had not embraced their principal on the ground, so as not to
be seen, but during the return, in the carriage, they gradually gave
themselves up to affectionate demonstrations. Their coolness and
stiffness were gone; they looked at Sangiorgio lovingly, with shining
eyes, spoke of him proudly, tenderly, as of a good son who has passed an
examination and carried off the highest number of marks. Castelforte
actually tapped him two or three times on the shoulder--a very unusual
piece of familiarity as coming from this grand gentleman. They caressed
him with their eyes, with the tone of their voices, with flattering
words, showing how they valued him and how well they were disposed
towards him after the duel. He received this flood of new friendship
very quietly; the tension of his nerves was relaxing more and more,
giving room to a strong desire for physical life, in which he would not
think, but would only eat, digesting the meal in a warm room, and then
sleep soundly for several hours. He smiled at his seconds like a boy who
has distinguished himself at his examinations, like a little girl after
her first communion. The whole scene of the Acqua Acetosa, with that
great, bleeding, streaming gash on his adversary's face, had now
vanished; he felt nothing but the blissful happiness of triumphant rest.
His features had expanded, his eyes had lost their feverish glitter, his
jaws were loosely set: Francesco Sangiorgio looked like a dolt.
* * * * *
The luncheon at the Roma café was loud and lively. Once a minute
Castelforte and Scalia filled Sangiorgio's glass. He ate and drank
plentifully, happy in the doing of it, acknowledging by nods the amiable
remarks of his two seconds, laughing when they spoke of Oldofredi's
mortification, which hurt him far more than his wound.
At dessert the genial humour increased.
'Because,' Scalia was continuing, 'because I have a great experience of
duels, and I was anxious on your account, my dear Sangiorgio. Your
opponent was strong and brave, and had fought twenty times. You were new
at it, inexperienced--and so, of course--I was anxious----'
'Oldofredi was not!' interjected Castelforte.
'He seemed to be in a jocular mood on the ground,' remarked Sangiorgio.
'Oldofredi never makes a joke,' said Scalia sententiously. 'One need not
believe in his posings. At the third attack, let me assure you, my dear
colleagues, he was raving; he went at you, Sangiorgio, as if he wanted
to cleave your skull. What a stroke, ye holy fiends!'
'What a stroke, by God!' chimed in Castelforte.
And the same complimentary speeches began over again; they were rather
monotonous, rather exaggerated, as though proffered by persons still
under a recent vivid impression, who repeat the same story a hundred
times, rocking themselves to the same tune and unable to think of
anything else. Thus the tale was retold three or four times. The
Honourable Melillo, who had been at lunch with the Honourable
Cermigniani at the Colonne, and who was somewhat concerned about his
Basilicatan colleague, had come down by way of the Corso to see if he
might meet his carriage, and while he was jabbering politics, shouting,
excitedly gesticulating, vociferating, quoting figures and demolishing
calculations, he espied the group of three at table in the eating-house.
So the Honourable Melillo, the blonde member with the red face and the
white waistcoat, had joined them, in order to embrace Sangiorgio, and
meantime Cermigniani, the deputy from the Abruzzi, stood by, listening
to the account given by the seconds, tugging mechanically at his black
beard, throwing in exclamations, and, seized with warlike ardour,
planting himself in a sort of offensive attitude.
Bencini, the old deputy of the Right, the clever old lukewarm Catholic,
suspected of deriding God and the devil alike, was chatting and laughing
in spirited fashion, at the other end of the room, with Gambara, the
dean of the old Conservative party. Bencini, inquisitive and talkative
as a woman, came to offer his congratulations, although he scarcely knew
Sangiorgio. But the witty, paradox-loving Tuscan entertained a deep
dislike for Oldofredi's vainglorious, swaggering stupidity. He chuckled
as he thought of the fury of the deputy from the Marches. Quoth he:
'Oldofredi cannot consign this affair to oblivion; they have sewed it on
his face! Fortunately, we are not in the dog-days at present, or he
might try to bite.'
And all of them, gathered about Sangiorgio, burst out laughing.
Castelforte told Gambara, who had come up to him, the story over again,
and Gambara smiled placidly as he looked at Sangiorgio with the eye of
an old Parliamentarian fond of studious and brave young deputies.
Cermigniani and Melillo were listening to the brilliant tittle-tattle of
Bencini, with his cackling speech and his dry laugh.
It was almost a procession that escorted Sangiorgio to the landau. The
sun had come out, the top of the carriage had been lowered, and Melillo
insisted on getting in with him. And all the way down the Corso there
was shaking of hands, bows, nods, congratulations, gestures, and smiles,
in lavish profusion. The street was full of deputies, journalists,
business men, and reporters, standing about after lunch to enjoy a
little sunshine before going to Montecitorio. The Honourable
Chialamberto, the short Ligurian deputy, was having a discussion with
Colonel Dicenzo, a lean Abruzzan of ascetic appearance; both bowed low
to the four deputies as they passed, at the same time nudging one
another. As for the deputy Carusio, in the Piazza Colonna he rushed to
the carriage door, made the coachman stop, hugged and kissed Sangiorgio,
shouting excitedly that he was on his way to the Prime Minister's, to
inform him of the happy result of the duel.
In the Chamber an ever-growing demonstration occurred, of which
Sangiorgio was the centre. The Speaker maintained, as was his wont, his
proper dignity, but in the smile with which he greeted Sangiorgio there
was something cordial, something affable, a sort of kindly light. The
Honourable Freitag, big and stout, with his head sunk between his
shoulders, and in the habit of swinging his bulk up and down the dark
corridors like an elephant, asked the Southern deputy, in his small,
piping voice:
'In the face, was it not?'
'In the face.'
The rest did nothing but stop and congratulate one another with hearty
handshakes; they all wanted particulars of the duel. Scalia,
Castelforte, and even Melillo, were all besieged; the tale went round of
the three sundry attacks and the final stroke; the bellicose deputies
listened with sparkling eyes and with occasional exclamations of praise;
the pacific deputies listened silently and smiling, thinking of a
tournament. A few--the cruellest--wanted to be told more, had the length
and depth of Oldofredi's wound described to them, asked if he had bled
much, if the wound would heal soon, if the scar would be very plain. But
all over the House, by every one, even by the most cautious, even by
those who ventured only a word and a bow, the profound antipathy was
evinced which was entertained for Oldofredi by most of his
fellow-members. In many of them lingered secret rancour because of a
sentence, a glance, some trifling insult received and merely endured
from forbearance, so as to avoid talk and scandal.
A few rare friends of Oldofredi held aloof, satisfying themselves with
offering Sangiorgio no felicitations. When Lapucci and Bomba entered the
Chamber as if nothing had happened, at about four o'clock, inquiries
were scarce, and were dictated by cold curiosity. The two seconds felt,
in their turn, the isolation of their principal, who lay in bed, with
face and head bandaged, in a state of violent fever. Few asked about
him; they thought, one and all, that the wound was a well-merited
punishment for his sovereign insolence, but that one ought to be
charitable towards the vanquished.
The enthusiasm for Sangiorgio continued until evening, waxing higher
still at the dinner-hour. Overwhelmed and confused, but always
preserving his external calm, which was now and then varied by a stolid
smile, he let them say and do what they pleased, listening to everybody
and everything, yielding to the enjoyment of this new popularity.
He repaired to the Costanzi Theatre, where the 'Huguenots' was being
performed, took an orchestra stall, and listened to the music, with
which he was unfamiliar, in a half-imbecile state. Behind him, two young
men were discussing the duel, pointing at him as the individual who had
inflicted the sword-cut on Oldofredi; they spoke in a whisper, but he
heard them very well, as he was giving but one ear to the music. After
the first act he felt the glow of an ardent gaze upon his face: Donna
Elena Fiammanti was looking at him from a box. He betook himself up
there automatically. Opening the door, he stepped into the minute room
separated from the box and the public by a red curtain. Two arms
surrounded his neck, and an agitated voice spoke:
'Oh, Franz! oh, Franz! Why did you fight on my account? It was not worth
while!'
On their way downstairs, after the opera--in the course of which at
least ten visits had been paid at the box--as Donna Elena leant upon his
arm, her eyes moist with pleasure and pride, he saw, in the lobby, the
monster Paulo putting on a huge overcoat. Of a sudden, the whole fog of
vanity was dispelled, and Sangiorgio felt an impulse to throw himself on
that gallant gentleman's broad breast. It was he, the mastiff, who had
advised him to aim at the face. On the ground he had remembered nothing
but that counsel.
CHAPTER V
The case had come up expectedly two days after a public holiday. In one
of the Italian provinces, on that festal day of patriotic celebration,
some of the municipal board and the communal council had made most overt
manifestations of advanced republican sentiments. The royalist
councillors had immediately resigned their seats; telegrams had been
despatched to deputies, newspapers, men of influence; the question had
all in a moment assumed a serious aspect.
The summer season had arrived, and the sittings were dragging along in
weary fashion; foreign politics had already sunk into their summer
sleep; no important laws were being passed; the diversion came up
unexpectedly, as a surprise, and was therefore welcome, and received
general attention. The love-making between the Chamber and the Ministry
had grown languid, like all passions meeting response and gratification;
intimacy had brought disgust to those who had loved too warmly, and the
commencement of the dispute, which grew more and more complicated, was
the lash that stung the surfeited, apathetic lovers to activity. They
had neither the inclination left, nor the strength, for fervent love.
They now met to fight, to exchange insults, to wage a war of suspicion,
political calumny, and private slander. The chief accused was the
Minister of Home Affairs, who, obedient to his ideal worship of liberty,
had not found it in his heart to cast off the aforesaid municipality.
A man of profound thought, large ideas, fine character, accustomed to
take a broader view of political questions than was tolerable to the
petty spirit of other politicians, ever rising to a lofty conception of
things, he stated that the liberty of political conscience must be
respected. In private amused at the unwonted importance attached to the
affair, he said there was 'no likelihood that these little aldermen
would burn down the temple of our institutions.' He declared publicly
that the matter was trifling; and to the anxious, deeply-concerned
people who came to appeal to him he showed the calm front of the
superior individual, which seemed a pretence, but actually was the
security of a quiet mind.
But all round him, surreptitiously and visibly, raged the desire for a
crisis. All the malcontents, the ambitious, the mediocre, the envious
incapables, the conceited fools, agitated, combined, held meetings,
talked, harnessing mediocrity with envy, ambition with conceit,
discontent with folly. They shouted in the cafés, made speeches at the
eating-houses, arranged little sub-conspiracies in the parlours of the
furnished houses where deputies had lodgings, behaved like arch-plotters
at the tables set out in summer by Ronzi and Singer, the liquor-sellers,
in the Piazza Colonna.
All day, at all the railway-stations, from all parts of Italy, deputies
were arriving with small hand-bags--the emergency-week bag, into which a
careful wife packs four shirts, six pocket-handkerchiefs, a pair of
slippers, a clothes-brush, and so on, against the possibility of sudden
departure. There were already three hundred and fifty deputies in Rome,
an unusual number, never mustered in the most active winter sessions.
And probably every one of the three hundred and fifty was expecting,
believing, wishing, hoping to become, was certain of becoming, a
Minister after the crisis.
The Minister--a strong, good, and wise man--either did not hear, or, if
he did, ascribed no importance to the increasing clamour about the
crisis.
'There will be no crisis,' he smilingly replied to those who asked him
about it in friendly conversation. 'There will be no crisis,' he stated
to those whom he assured of the fact with a preoccupied air of
condescension.
At bottom he knew the political world and the men composing it. He was
fully aware that the Prime Minister was on his side, that the seven
other Ministers were with him, that this powerful body of nine would not
allow itself to be ousted for no earthly reason but the refusal of a
Mayor to sign an address to the King and his raising the cross of the
tricoloured banner. He knew the furious lust for power of his eight
colleagues, the tenacity of those oysters sticking to the rock; to
attain it they had gone through all kinds of political sufferings and
agony, and now they would sooner die than let go their hold. He smiled
as he thought of what strength proceeds from weakness; he smiled, and
felt safe.
But he passed on to a more moral flight of thought: his fine beliefs
were still intact from scepticism, his faith in human conscience was yet
unshaken. He felt that this supreme worship of liberty was rooted in
every Italian heart and brain; he knew that mean interests might for a
moment possess those hearts and brains; but that all would vanish in the
presence of a great idea.
Malicious whispers, misrepresentations, false or fabricated news which
reached him, were without effect; in vain would some true friend caution
him and counsel a pessimistic view. The Home Minister maintained his
ideality, which was touched ever so little with bitterness: he was not
subject to defeat; he felt morally and materially secure, united with
his brother Ministers in a generous cause that itself was strength. He
ignored the approach of a political crisis, this Minister; besides, in
the political caldron all kinds of characters were cooking, and the
traits of every section of Italy were represented. The Sicilians were
conspicuous for their warm feeling, mixed with irony and common-sense;
the Neapolitans shouted and waved their arms; the Romans waited
patiently and temporized, but knew the moment for action; the Tuscans
laughed behind their spectacles, smiled mockingly under their
moustaches, Mephistophelian and ambitious as they were, and laughed at
each other and all the rest; the Lombards, with their aristocratic
tendencies, flocked together in a solitary group; the Piedmontese and
the Ligurians came and went, and made a bustle without speaking, their
communications with each other being through the eye. But the most
fiery, the most rebellious and wild, were the members from the smaller
provinces--the Abruzzi, the Marches, the Romagnas, the Campania, the
Calabrias, the countrymen, the representatives of the provinces that
give life and wealth to the great cities, the deputies who had a genuine
love for politics, who believed in them, who thought politics were the
greatest force in human life, who became drunk with them as with strong
wine.
But in the midst of all these latent elements of discord the men of the
Basilicata never spoke, but coalesced, formed groups; frigid and
impeccable, they asked no questions and gave no answers. The Minister,
the stanch man and true, felt safe; he had never known fear at any
juncture--and now he smiled.
When the Minister of Home Affairs entered the hall, on the day when the
question was to be brought up, a prolonged murmur ran along the benches.
He did not fail to observe it, but, a strong man in great things and
small, he had the good sense not to look about, nor to look up at the
galleries. It at once occurred to him, however, that the matter was more
serious than he at first had considered it. Indeed, on the first day he
had said to the Prime Minister, in a tone of unconcern:
'There is a lot of talk about this municipal affair.'
'Heat-blossoms,' the Prime Minister had replied, with a smile.
'Do you agree with me?'
'Of course I agree with you,' answered the other, without, however,
specifying upon what points.
'Do you think Don Mario Tasca's speech will be important?'
'One of the usual speeches.'
And they talked of other things.
His other colleagues in the Cabinet had shielded themselves behind a
strict reserve. Vargas only, the Minister of Fine Arts, a lean, dried-up
old man, consumed by devouring ambitions, had offered some uncertain
resistance, which the Minister of Home Affairs had combated in an
uncertain tone. In the Chamber, however, there was undeniable evidence
of a prospectively hot debate. Turning over some of his papers with eyes
lowered, the Home Minister became conscious, from the loud,
Parliamentary buzz, that at least 400 members must be present. He
glanced up at the diplomatic gallery, where the Countess di Santaninfa,
lovely and pensive, and dressed in black, was scanning the hall with
melancholy eyes, and where the Countess di Malgra, a pale, seductive
blonde, who was that day wearing a yellow straw hat, never for an
instant ceased from intently considering the assembly. The civil service
gallery was full; in the press gallery a triple row of heads anxiously
bent forward.
'They smell powder,' thought the Minister. And he looked at his two or
three brother Ministers, as if he had something to tell them, but they
wore such an indifferent air that he said nothing. He therefore merely
glanced at the House. It had quieted down, but had a hard, solid
appearance; it was a substantial body of 400 silent, expectant men. And
in a quarter of an hour, at three o'clock, the orator of the Right, Don
Mario Tasca, began his address from the top bench of the last section
but one, in a stillness like that of an empty church. The Prime Minister
had come softly into the hall, and had sat down at the end of the
Cabinet bench. Don Mario Tasca was a white-haired old man, with pink
skin, and a white beard for a collar. His style was elegant; it had
rounded periods accompanied and completed by circular manual gestures,
resembling the rotation of a small wheel. The speech flowed on and on,
softly and gently, with never a failure of the voice, never a check,
just like the song of a bird. The orator did not look at the Minister;
he looked into the air, like an inspired genius. He never bent his head
to refer to his notes, but was as one who knows his part by memory. But,
under all this external suavity, his discourse yet sounded of rebuke;
the speaker mentioned neither individuals nor facts, but, confining
himself to terms somewhat vague, stated that certain institutions and
certain ideas were being assailed which hitherto no one had ever thought
of impugning. It was a speech that did not rail, and was rather
nebulous, perhaps; still, it accused. It withheld names, but it scorched
consciences.
The Minister paid close attention, and from time to time glanced
sideways at the Premier, who never once turned in his direction; the
other Ministers also listened attentively to Don Mario Tasca, who
continued in his beautiful, fluent prose. All the deputies were turned
to the right and were lending ear; up above the whole public was leaning
forward; the two Countesses--the dark and the fair--seemed to be
drinking in Don Mario Tasca's words.
He spoke for one hour, with never a halt, and scarcely a blunder, and
without the least change in the colour of his vocal tone. He challenged
the Minister, in his last sentences, which became briefer and ever more
contracted, to answer whether he intended to persist in this criminal
do-as-you-like, go-as-you-please system. A very, very long murmur of
applause rewarded Don Mario Tasca.
The Minister, before replying, tried to question his chief with his
eyes, but the Prime Minister was writing, and this was therefore
impossible. He then rose, and answered very placably, very judicially,
reducing the question to its lowest terms, declaring it unimportant,
planing and smoothing all the facts, having recourse to a number of
highly-sensible arguments, foregoing expansion into fine language, which
he believed inept. And as he spoke so calmly, he looked about, casting
questioning glances at the deputies' faces, as if seeking their
approval. But their faces did not light up, for they were displeased.
The deputies were not mollified--no, not they; they had come here
wrought up by a week of debate and anticipation, the matter was very
serious, and the Minister had tried to deal them another hand by
belittling the whole affair.
Fruitlessly did he lavish the best of his cleverness and ingenuity, as
well as striking sallies both lucid and logical; he continued in the
wrong key, not having caught the spirit of the occasion, blind to the
circumstance that good oratory was the thing on a day when a crisis
threatened. He took note of the general dissatisfaction but without
understanding its cause--he still thought he could win this battle with
the plain weapons of reason. But glacial silence prevailed in the hall
at the close of his defence.
Niccolo Ferro, the Radical deputy, hereupon requested the floor. The
Minister frowned; that moment foreboded peril. Niccolo Ferro, the best
speaker of the Extreme Left, calm, lucid, imperturbable, strong in logic
as in rhetoric, threw so clear a light on the situation that it was no
longer subject to doubt. The action of that Mayor was held up in its
real and great importance; it was a sign of the times; no one would
venture to violate liberty of conscience so far as to prohibit or punish
such manifestations. He treated of the historical traditions of the
communes, of the long strife in Italy for the attainment of that state
of freedom, which was yet in the bud, but which would soon blossom out.
A Councillor is a man, he is a citizen, said the orator; he thinks
according to his convictions, and acts as he thinks. Institutions are
not destroyed by the hands of men, but fall because of their inherent
corruption; not men strangle them, but new ideas are their ruin. They
fatally rot through the germs of disease they contain; nothing can ever
save them when decay has progressed so far.
Fundamentally Niccolo Ferro was both pleased and displeased with the
Minister, and he declared it openly.
He was displeased because he, the champion of liberty, was attempting to
throw ridicule on the courageous and bold conduct of this clear-sighted
municipality; he was pleased because he knew that the old faith never
changed in the hearts of upright men, despite the allurements of
despotism to those in power; and he was convinced that never would a
tyrannous act be done under instruction from that illustrious man.
The illustrious man had absorbed the whole speech, while nervously
twisting his gray moustache. He looked at Niccolo Ferro, his friend,
very gently, quite unreprovingly. He felt crushed; he felt the amazement
of the Chamber at this fresh piece of audacity from the Radical party;
he felt that they all, friend and foe, wanted to force him into an
equivocal position, from which there was no escape. He could neither
declare himself out and out of Niccolo Ferro's opinion, nor oppose him.
In that hour he was conscious of having indulged in a too loyal policy,
founded on truth alone, inspired solely by lofty principles, independent
of men and events, poetical almost and unreal--a policy so unpractical
that it lent itself to ready defeat by both the Right and the Left at
the same time. The illustrious man recognised all this, but could say
nothing. Possibly, in this peril the old Prime Minister, by addressing
the house in his kindly, easy way, might save the situation; he might
put Don Mario Tasca's mystical, lyrical apprehensions, and Niccolo
Ferro's uncalled-for petulance, in their proper places. But the old
Premier was reading a letter, as though he were in the peace of his
study instead of in the tumult of the hall.
The floor was then given to the Honourable Sangiorgio, and immediately
the assembly was hushed. The Prime Minister raised his hoary head, and
looked at the Basilicatan deputy as piercingly as if he were trying to
read his soul; the Home Minister breathed a sigh of relief, supposing
that what himself and the Premier had omitted Sangiorgio would say.
Sangiorgio was clever, and was friendly to the Ministry, so that he
could not fail to set things right.
Instead, in one first cruel sentence, the Honourable Sangiorgio fell
fiercely and with concentrated wrath upon the Government's home policy.
Don Mario Tasca and Niccolo Ferro had said too little, whether for or
against. Things really bore a far graver aspect. For a year back the
worst disorder had reigned in the management of internal affairs; there
was no longer a guiding hand, no longer a bridle; the public officials
performed their duties at haphazard, or did nothing at all, having no
orders. The policy of the Home Department was founded on equivocation
and culpable carelessness; these elastic theories of liberty were
causing havoc. And this bitter, almost tragical vein of attack was
readily guessed to correspond to the sentiment of the House, which
murmured approval of each sentence. Sangiorgio cited facts. He
enumerated the Republican associations, which in the course of a year
had increased beyond measure; he declared that Republican committees
were multiplying everywhere, and likewise rebellious acts, which were
done not by that single Mayor, nor in that single place, but by other
public officials elsewhere. He spoke of a Prefect who had consented to
take part in a banquet where toasts to the King were prohibited, and
said that the Minister of Home Affairs, although he knew of it, and in
spite of the articles in the Royalist newspapers, had not reprimanded
such Prefects, Commissioners, and delegates, all of whom were allowed
the free scope of their own opinions and own will, committing deeds
inexcusably arbitrary or weak. But the dominant note was their
indolence, their shameful neglect. No energetic circular of instructions
was ever sent from Rome. The reports of the most zealous functionaries
always remained unanswered, or were replied to ambiguously; at Rome, a
number of philosophical and sociological deductions were indulged in,
but never was an energetic step taken.
The Chamber applauded Sangiorgio so vociferously that the Speaker was
obliged to call for order twice. Sangiorgio spoke with a peculiar
hardness of voice, with such sharp accent and brevity of phrase, and
with such bare simplicity, that the smallest points told. His facts
were like so many blows from an unerring weapon, each striking the mark
remorselessly. It was a document of impeachment, a summary compiled with
the cold cruelty of a judge in vindication of law and ethics.
Sangiorgio's face was set and severe, his features were rigid; he did
not smile, did not gesticulate, nor had recourse to any of the common
artifices of oratory; he seemed to be so sure of his cause, and so wrapt
up in it, that he considered a cold, precise exposition sufficient. He
supplied no comments, or very few, but enumerated facts, proceeding from
one to another, with the occasional remark: 'But that is not all; there
is more.' This sentence, repeated at intervals of three or four minutes
with the regularity of a tragic refrain, made a deep impression; nervous
tremors seem to run down the spinal column of that great body in the
Chamber.
The atmosphere of Parliament was laden with electricity. No one was
writing, no one was reading--all were turned towards the speaker; groups
of listeners had gathered near his section; some had even climbed the
stairs, as if to drink in Sangiorgio's words, in their exaggerated
attentiveness. Up above, in the diplomatic gallery, had appeared the
ever-beautiful Countess Lalla d' Ariccia, who was the surest barometer
of a crisis, for she never came excepting in electrical weather. Donna
Luisa Catalani was leaning over, her little head tied about with a white
veil, and beside her Donna Angelica Vargas looked down, her lovely face
unveiled, quite pink at the temples, under the excitement of curiosity.
The speaker recapitulated all he had said, using his synthesis upon the
audience with the force of a hammer. And without adding any deductions,
without challenging reply, without so much as expecting one, and in
disdain of whatever argument from whatever opponent, he read out the
following motion:
'That the Chamber, disapproving of the Ministry's home policy, now
proceed with the business of the day. Francesco Sangiorgio.'
Then there arose such a huge, irrepressible clamour that for five
minutes the Speaker rang his bell in vain. Discussion rang all over the
hall, on the steps, in the hemicycle, on the benches, in the
galleries--everywhere. The ladies in the diplomatic gallery stared and
stared, themselves, perhaps, also seized with nervous agitation.
And the strong, honest man who was Minister of Home Affairs had, without
budging, received the strokes of the Honourable Sangiorgio in his
breast, half admiring his adversary's might.
Only, towards the end, when the ultimate solution was becoming plain, a
growing doubt assailed him. After that extremely vigorous attack, coming
from the Centre, from a Ministerialist, from a man who had shown
democratic leanings, the situation was so perilous that only the Prime
Minister could relieve it. Defence now devolved upon the senior, the
chief, the old Parliamentarian. A new and bitter suspicion sprang from
the Minister's heart to his head, and in those five minutes of
Parliamentary uproar, like certain poisonous plants indigenous to the
tropics so this suspicion spread apace in his soul. He looked at the old
Prime Minister as penetratingly as if he wanted to tear the truth from
out of him, yet, fearing lest some emotion might cloak his voice, he
said not a word to him, nor asked him a single question, but merely
looked at him, expecting him to come out of his silence, to come to
life, for that morning he might as well have been dead. The Prime
Minister, however, remained speechless, and went on writing, stroking
his beard with his other hand. And the Minister of Home Affairs suddenly
composed himself inwardly, showing nothing outwardly but a slight
pallor.
Certainty was at hand, and it was irrefragable. He felt himself
abandoned, felt himself betrayed. His colleagues and the Prime Minister
had left him to fall alone. They had already separated from him, as
though shunning a corpse because of its nauseous odour. Assuredly the
betrayal was complete; they wanted to be rid of him, as of a diseased
arm or a cancerous leg. The Chamber would have none of him
henceforth--that he felt. When the Speaker gave him permission to answer
in his own justification, in frank, calm tones the illustrious man was
heard to say:
'I have no remarks to make; I accept the Sangiorgio motion.'
At the division, a majority of thirty votes went against him. The
Minister of Home Affairs had fallen.
A week after the official Ministerial organ, all the other newspapers
following suit, published this:
'It is now ascertained that, in the reconstruction of the Cabinet, Don
Silvio Vargas will exchange from the Fine Arts to the Home Department.
The Honourable Sangiorgio, in vain requested to join in the new
combination, has persistently refused, and has left for the Basilicata.'
PART III
CHAPTER I
A soft breath of lamentation; a dim light, which the blue flamelets cast
against the massive granite walls in tedious pagan obsequies had never
dispelled; a veiled light, which the yellow taper of Christian burial
rites could not strengthen; a chill, sepulchral atmosphere; a frequent
sob of music; a great, black mass of people, lost, as it were, in the
funeral shadows; in the air, in the light, in the flames, in the music,
tears shed and the desire to shed more, betokening irremediable woe.
As for him, sitting in his place, and yielding to the state of
melancholy contemplation which by infinite, perpetual gradations merged
into grief, a secret tremor shook his fibres, and made his pulse throb
fast; and by a natural impulse, conscious that he was trembling and
pale, he turned round, searching for something in the faint light
falling from the velarium.
Beside him he saw that sweetest of women, Donna Angelica, of truly
angelic mien. She was habited in black, in deep mourning, as was seemly
in the Pantheon, sacred through the glory and the death of the Hero, and
her sad eyes were fixed upon a candle that was consuming away. She saw
nothing, and appeared to hear nothing, plunged in thoughts assuredly
sorrowful, lost in her mournful dreams. Sitting next to a pillar, she
had tried to read in her prayer-book the prayers beseeching peace,
invoking rest for the departed; but soon the book had fallen into her
lap half open, and her listless hands had not taken it up again.
And to him that dearest of mourners, pale as a pearl under her black
veil, her sweet lips still apart for the passage of her prayer, her gaze
dissolved in sad religious meditation--to him she appeared as a divine
shape. And everything, the fitful, blue glare of the lamps, the thin,
streaming flames of the candles, the atmosphere of woe, the sorrowful
music, the dire gloom that had overcast even the ancient, stolid walls
of the Pantheon, the incurable malady of the spirit--to him it was all
embodied in that female form sitting near him: she personified the whole
of that tepid, damp winter's day, on which the sun was dead; she was the
moral seat of the tears that welled from all things; she was the
magnetic abyss of sorrow, which the sorrow of all things could never
fill, and in the profound shock of his system, in the thrill of his
entire being, of flesh, blood, nerves, muscle, in all the strong
composition of a strong man, there was aroused, there started into life,
grew, abounded, a sentiment of amorous compassion.
She, all unwitting, gave herself up to her woman's fancies, which
wandered among the tapers, the dark sacerdotal vestments glittering with
gold, the tall, almost colossal, human cuirassier caryatides, among all
the pale, dejected, sad, sorrowful, or indifferent faces. In spite of
the immense throng of people surrounding the catafalque, in spite of
the vague murmur detaching itself from them, in that hour of spiritual
freedom she lost herself completely--in that brief restful hour, that
hour of freedom in which private grief was renascent, and melted and
flowed into the universal grief. Now and then, at a more lugubrious
strain of music, at the voice of a singer bathed, as it were, in tears,
at a sentence monotonously chanted in minor by the officiating priest,
she would start, and her desolate dream would begin again, moving
through other phases and other degrees, in other circles of melancholy;
and in a new, intenser mood did she set out upon the path of pain that
gentle souls all must travel. She did not weep, for the occasion was too
big, too solemn; but he perceived how her delicate eyelids, as finely
made as the petals of a flower, were shaded about with violet; there had
tears been, there more would flow.
And while he thus ardently gazed upon that sweetest of faces, to which
the shadows of pain imparted a nobly ideal expression, and was thinking
of naught but that white face, half impregnate, half saturate with
tears, and had forgotten all else in his amorous contemplation of the
lady, he felt a wonderful change within himself. The infinite grief by
which she seemed oppressed he naturally and gradually absorbed into his
own spirit; it was like penetration into her heart, slow, but infallibly
sure. He asked not the meaning of it, but felt his whole self disappear,
drown, perish in that woman; he was mastered, not by her, perhaps, but
by what she felt. The whole vagueness, mysteriousness, and
unfathomableness of a feminine grief, without lament and without tears,
without foundation and without limit, which had appealed to his heart
now seized upon his brain, invaded it and took possession, driving out
all other ideas whatever. No, it was no longer compassion, the great,
natural compassion of a man towards a suffering woman; compassion is,
after all, a personal feeling; compassion is something egoistic;
compassion is a cry from one's self. It was he, he who was suffering
now, as if the torture of that female heart were his own torture and
anguish; it was he who felt the sharp pricking of the unshed tears
scorching his lids; it was he who was in the throes of altruistic
sympathy, and seemed to be lost in anguish, in a great waste of anguish,
as that woman seemed to be struggling in a void of suffering.
And as the obsequial hour advanced, in the pagan temple where the Hero
lay in state, a subtle odour of Christian incense went up; from altar to
roof the smoke curled upward in graceful spiral shapes, which became
more and more attenuated and ethereal until they vanished above, even
like prayers ascending to the Most High. The incense, too, partook of
the aromatic savour of tears, and the perfume of it, going through the
nostrils to the brain, profoundly affected the nerves, caressing them
into a state of voluptuous woe. In the half-light everything seemed to
sway under that tragic, aromatic kiss; the women had all bent their
brows to conceal the trembling of their lips, and the head of the woman
he was watching was bowed down, as though her strength was gone. He
sustained a shock, and made a motion as if to support her; but a sort of
paralysis fell upon his limbs. The incense burned and burned in the
silver censers, without flame, overcoming his last efforts of
resistance.
A bell rang faintly, but in the midst of such silence it sounded
sonorous; Donna Angelica slid from her seat down upon the cold marble
floor, covered her face with her hands, and was no more than a heap of
black clothes on the ground, unseen, unseeing, forlorn. And he, without
kneeling, without inclining his head, without praying, felt annihilated
in the woman's annihilation; everything seemed at an end for him, as
everything was for her. And at each sound of the bell, as she gave a
start as though called by a distant voice, the same action was reflected
in him; nothing that spiritually took rise in her but was expressed in
him by reflection.
A line of priests, with lighted tapers, drew up round the catafalque; a
silver cross, on which hung the dying Saviour, stood fronting the bier.
And through the music a strident, rending voice was heard--a voice that
did not sing, but cried; a voice that did not ask, but implored:
'Libera, libera, libera me, Domine.' The Christian prayer, the painful
cry begging salvation, made the sweet lady raise her eyes. And in her
features, consuming away in their pallor like a fading flower, in her
transfigured features, a true, intense aspiration was declared.
Now, while the piercing, distressful voice of the singer sued to heaven
for deliverance with religious fervour, Donna Angelica, after passing
through all the stages of undefined grief, felt a distinct need form in
her heart. She now spoke to God, her lips moving as she prayed for
deliverance. What had been indefinite till then now was defined: it was
deliverance--deliverance from all that had been, good or evil, happiness
or wretchedness--'From all, even this, O Lord! From all, even what has
been, merciful Lord! From all, even the dreadful past, O God of pity!'
As for him who lay in the sepulchre, and whose funeral obsequies were
being celebrated, deliverance had come to him at the glorious height to
which he had risen; he had found deliverance, and perhaps special grace.
The weight of a royal crown, the burden of a reign, the heavy
responsibility of the law and of the majestic will, a load of thought
and care--deliverance had come to lift all from his soul, now at rest in
the ineffable peace. 'As the King sleeps, so let me sleep, O Lord!' she
prayed. 'As Thou hast delivered the strong soul of the King, O Lord, so
do Thou deliver my weak soul! Even if Death be the deliverer, let me die
and be delivered, O Lord!'
In this supreme moment the lovely, despairing creature stretched out her
arms to heaven, and as she prayed the hot, rebellious tears, so long
restrained, coursed down her cheeks.
He had heard, in a mysterious way, what she besought of God. And that
mourning petition, that last appeal of sorrow, gathered into a word,
that agonized, Christian supplication, had also flowed from his own
heart, amid the music, in the sensuous sadness of the incense, in the
sepulchral glimmer of the candles, in the uncertain rocking of the
light, under that blue-tinted circle of the velarium, which seemed to be
alive. There sprang up in his virile heart, and flowed from it, the
prayer of desolation she offered up; what she desired, he desired. An
exalted satisfaction of the soul resulted from this feeling of a common
desire; so sharp was the strain, so intensely was his will concentrated
upon a single object, that his being seemed multiplied. And as he
turned, and saw her feebly weeping, he yielded to the successive,
softening emotions of great satisfaction and great sorrow, and bowed his
proud head. In truth, he also was weeping--for very love.
* * * * *
Her face almost buried in a bunch of white roses, with which she was
toying, and whose fresh, strong perfume coloured her cheeks, Donna
Angelica Vargas was listening to a conversation between her husband and
Francesco Sangiorgio.
They had been talking politics for an hour, or, rather, Don Silvio
Vargas had been talking, as he reclined in his easy-chair, smoking a
pestilent Tuscan cigar, and gazing at the dainty flowers painted on the
light gray ceiling of the room. He spoke in a dry, hissing voice, by
fits and starts, and in abrupt phrases, between the puffs of smoke;
every now and then he tugged at his spare moustache, which, despite his
years, had remained as brown as his hair. Age did not show in that lean
old man, excepting in the thin lines at the corners of the eyes, running
fan-shaped to the temples; in the two deep furrows at the corners of the
mouth, dug out by his smile; in the hardness of all his features, become
almost rigid; in the fleshless neck, where the tendons stood out like
the strings of a violin. But otherwise he was strong and robust in his
leanness, and when he inserted the round, unframed eyeglass, suspended
on a black cord, under his eyebrow, his features assumed a certain
vivacity, became almost youthful.
With Don Silvio Vargas this eyeglass was an infallible barometer: in
his hours of rest the eyebrow scarcely retained it; in the hours of
indifference it seemed dull and tarnished, the eye behind it being
fixed, and closed or half closed; in the hours of utter weariness, of
disgust, the lens loosened from its ring, fell upon his chest, wandered
into the folds of his coat and waistcoat; in the hours of conflict, in
skirmish, and in battle, the glass stood rigid in its place, clear and
bright, and his eye was wide open and scintillant. Both enemies and
friends, too much in earnest to be observers, never took note of these
changes until later, until afterwards; they overlooked the political
barometer; they felt the man's strength, or his weakness, but they did
not see the symbols of either.
When, after luncheon, Angelica heard Sangiorgio announced, she had risen
to leave the room, but her husband, as he folded up a newspaper and
opened another, curtly requested her to stay, as if he intended to be
obeyed. She remained standing by a vase of cineraria, flourishing in
spite of the severe winter weather. She bowed to the new arrival, and
did not join in the conversation. Her slender, youthful figure--she had
recently quitted her mourning--was clad in a soft gown of claustral
colour, material, and style; a thick silk girdle encircled her waist,
and her beautiful white hands were lost in the amplitude of the sleeves.
From time to time she looked up; at a clever or spirited remark from her
husband she would smile, to show that she was interested in the
conversation--that she understood, that she approved. At a reply from
Sangiorgio, at one of his objections or statements, she would cast a
brief glance of appreciative intelligence at him. And meanwhile she
tended her plants, lovingly, eyeing them with great solicitude,
removing the dust with which their leaves were covered, breaking off the
little dried branches and the decayed blossoms, which spoiled their
beauty and freshness. She went to and fro among the quantity of green
plants, which lent the little drawing-room the appearance of a vernal
bower, her tiny white hands coming out of the wide, nunlike sleeves, her
fingers pretty as a child's. As she bent over the plants, the white nape
of her neck was visible, where her dark hair traced a thick wavy line.
When she turned towards Don Silvio or Sangiorgio, it was seen that the
violet shadows were absent from her sweet face, from the lids which had
shed or suppressed so many tears; charming peace reigned there instead.
At a certain moment she cast an inquiring glance at her husband's gloomy
face; the bright eye behind the single glass told her to remain. Yet she
had finished the daily visit to her plants. She took a bunch of roses
from a vase, seated herself in an arm-chair near a bay-window, and
inhaled the scent of the flowers, while a little colour strayed to her
pale cheeks. On chairs, tables, and mantel lay piled a number of
discarded and opened and uncut newspapers, smelling strongly of
printer's ink; ragged packages of various colours were strewn on the
floor, thrown down there hastily and carelessly. But Donna Angelica
neither took up, nor touched, nor even looked at, any of the newspapers;
her foot, as if instinct with neatness, pushed two or three of the
packages aside. She was smelling the flowers.
Sangiorgio had come to that house in the Piazza dell' Apollinare upon
the invitation of Silvio Vargas. The Minister of Home Affairs had
stopped him on the threshold of the Pantheon, had passed his arm into
his, and had spoken to him in an undertone for several minutes. Then he
had insisted upon his coming to his house, not to his office--yes, to
his house, where they could talk after luncheon--and why the deuce was
he never seen there!
'To-morrow, then?' asked Sangiorgio hesitatingly. 'What is the use of
to-morrow? No! to-day--this very day!' said Vargas. He repeated that he
must talk with him, and, leaving Sangiorgio's arm for his wife's, went
off with her.
Sangiorgio went to the Piazza Apollinare at one o'clock. Fearing he
might be too early, he was seized with a fit of hesitation at the door.
But once inside, he was quickly reassured by Don Silvio's cordial
manner. Only, while the Minister talked, he listened to be sure, but
followed Donna Angelica in each of her quiet, graceful movements.
'Smoke! Why don't you smoke?' Don Silvio urged him, offering him some
cigars while he chewed the end of his Tuscan.
Sangiorgio looked inquiringly in the lady's direction.
'My wife is accustomed to it; she does not object,' briefly commented
the Minister.
Sangiorgio did not smoke, however, Donna Angelica's engaging smile
notwithstanding. Seated near a little round table, he listened rather
than spoke, for Don Silvio liked to be listened to. The Minister, who
adored politics with the fervour of a boy of twenty, was that day
greatly wrought up on the subject. In the very abuse he levelled at
politics, in the very deprecations he showered on them, in his now
sarcastically, now angrily nervous speech, the flaming passion for
politics was evident that burned in the breast of the old
Parliamentarian. And from Don Silvio, Sangiorgio seemed to hear, as if
in a dream, a portion of his own thought, an echo of his own aspiring
ambition, whose fancies he had never confided to a living soul. He
recognised the same fever which had internally consumed him for years,
while in Don Silvio the spiritual fire found expression in ideas and
words. The Minister was too old, and too passionate by nature, to hide
his feelings; he no longer cared to dissemble them. That inner flame
must have kept Don Silvio's enthusiasm aglow. Thus did Sangiorgio reason
out the cause of such prolonged and lasting vigour.
Occasionally, Don Silvio, as he looked at Sangiorgio, suppressed the
sneer which deepened the furrows at the corners of his mouth, and smiled
almost tenderly. Oh, he did not forget, not he, how his predecessor had
fallen after a speech and a motion by Sangiorgio; he remembered
Sangiorgio's brief refusal to enter the reorganized Cabinet. He had
never been able to testify his gratitude, but ever since the opening of
the new session had shown him his affection, had sought his company,
consulted him, in a spirit of mingled deference and cordiality.
'But, at bottom, you are indifferent to power,' said Sangiorgio, after a
pause in the conversation.
'No,' answered Vargas frankly, 'I am not indifferent to it; I like it; I
wanted it. But the Opposition disgusts me. Sometimes it is stupid,
sometimes false, sometimes brutal, and it always acts in bad faith.
Where is our loyal, bold, cruel, implacable Opposition? Instead of open
attack, they indulge in low pantry gossip; instead of fighting, they
sneak in corners; instead of an open onslaught, it is trickery!'
'Man is a paltry creature,' observed Sangiorgio.
'He ought not to be, or ought not to appear so, if he is. By the Lord!
have I not been in Opposition, too? You remember, Angelica, when I was
in Opposition?'
'I remember,' she answered in the sweetest voice, raising her head.
'I was a devil. I took no rest, and gave my enemies none. Never a
moment's truce! Now I am petrifying. I cannot make war now, I must wait
for it; and this eternal brigandage makes my blood boil! How you fell
upon the Minister that day, Sangiorgio! And you were Ministerial! Were
you there that day, Angelica?'
'Yes, I was there.'
'And it is to you we owe it that I am Minister of Home Affairs,' said
Vargas with emotion.
'Oh no!' murmured Sangiorgio, smiling.
'Yes, yes! The Prime Minister would never have had the courage to
disavow his colleague openly. It surprises me, nevertheless, that he
spoke of it to you; no one was aware of it--not even myself.'
'The Premier had told me nothing,' replied Sangiorgio deliberately.
'What! you knew nothing about it?'
'Nothing.'
'There was no understanding?'
'No.'
'By God!' exclaimed Vargas, 'you are wonderful!' And he admiringly
looked Sangiorgio all over. The latter laughed formally, but immediately
perceived that Angelica's face was losing its serenity, and was invaded
by an air of fatigue.
'Come to the Chamber with me, Sangiorgio; it is two o'clock,' said
Vargas, rising to take his departure.
'Shall you be back soon?' asked his wife, fighting down her appearance
of lassitude.
'No; there is the Chamber first, and then the Senate, and afterwards I
must go to my office, to arrange about a transfer of some Prefects.'
'Shall you be here at seven?'
'About eight or nine--I don't know.'
'Shall I call for you at the Chamber?'
'No, go for a walk to the Villa Borghese, or outside the Porta
Pia--anywhere you like. It is no use coming to the Parliament! I shall
dine after I have finished. This affair about the Prefects is very
serious. I will tell you about it on the way, Sangiorgio. If any
letters, or messages, or despatches arrive, let them be sent at once to
wherever I am, in the Chamber, or the Senate, or my office. I am
expecting important news. I am coming, Sangiorgio.'
And orders were dealt out, short and concise, to his wife and to the
secretary who had entered the room; they were delivered in a tone of
military command. Don Silvio stood there firm, erect, and strong, like a
young man. His feverish ardour was his support; his enthusiasm was his
salvation. He went into his study, taking his secretary with him,
speaking in low tones and very sharply. Francesco and Angelica remained
alone, he standing upright, she with head bent as if in prayer, her
fingers playing with the silk girdle about her waist. They did not
speak, and the moments went by in the prolonged vibration of a musical
beat. Suddenly she looked at him with saddened eyes, clasped her hands,
and said:
'Why did you want us to have this Home Minister's place?' And her voice
trembled with restrained feeling.
Don Silvio returned with overcoat and hat, rolling the extinguished
stump of his Tuscan cigar between his lips, his secretary following,
with a portfolio full of papers.
'Would you like a rose?' said Angelica to her husband, on the spur of
the moment, offering to put one in his buttonhole.
'What can you be thinking of!' he cried, repelling the white hand with a
certain degree of roughness. 'Do you want the Opposition to quizz me? A
Minister with a rose! I should become the subject of caricatures in the
newspapers at once!'
Donna Angelica timidly drew back, casting a furtive glance at
Sangiorgio. But she did not give him the rose.
* * * * *
A low sky, with gray, leaden, heavy clouds, becoming black on the
horizon, over the Tusculan hills, on Soratte, which itself might have
been a great cloud settled down upon the earth; the Campagna bare and
wan, undulating in places as though heaving up its inwards; two black
hedges, two prickly scant hedges, without a sign of green, without a
blossom; a tavern, with a rude depiction on the damp wall of three black
decanters standing on a triangle and a girl drinking wine, but with
doors and windows barred by decayed wooden shutters; the large gray
building where the widow Mangani gives Roman summer and autumn
holiday-makers tripe in sauce to eat on a terrace, in an arbour, or in a
small yard, where there is room for a table and a pint of white wine;
the curious ruin, alone in a field, which bears the semblance of a
gigantic armchair with a chipped back, and which in fact is known as the
Devil's Chair; a carter lying dozing, face down, on a load of volcano
ashes he was bringing into Rome; an occasional fat drop of rain that
fell upon the ground; this side St. Agnes' a Cardinal's carriage
returning leisurely from the Catacombs, and a few priests walking on
both sides of the road; immediately beyond St. Agnes' two carabineers
sitting rigid on horseback, wrapped up in their dark cloaks; a gentle,
mild breeze that swept the earth; a pungent smell, the peculiar smell of
the Roman Campagna, which goes to the brain, and from the brain goes
into the system like an insidious miasma; a strange dog, all muddy, that
went sniffing along the hedges and looked at every wayfarer with sad,
unhappy eyes--these were the things, people, animals, surroundings, seen
by Francesco Sangiorgio, towards the close of a winter's day, in the Via
Nomentana. And over all things, animals, houses, churches, hung the deep
gloom of the imminent rainstorm, the tremendous gloom of a Roman sunset
in the Campagna.
'Here is the Ponte Nomentana,' said the coachman, pointing to it with
his whip.
'Stop; I wish to get out. And wait for me here,' said Sangiorgio.
He walked up the little slope to the bridge, the strange walled bridge,
whose broad, graceful arch curves over the gurgling waters of the
Aniene, with two large casements facing up stream and down. Sangiorgio
stood on the bridge, and, leaning on a ledge, looked into the distance
whence the river came.
It flowed with a narrow, but deep, winding and singularly rapid current,
increased by winter rains; it flowed a dull, silvery, but cold white,
without a shimmer and utterly glacial. A number of little whirlpools
took shape, tiny circles with an interior mouth round which the water
coursed in circular ripplets.
On the bank was a little mould of lighter colour, but no vegetation, no
gravel, no volcano ashes, and round about was the great desert of the
Roman Campagna.
It was not raining as yet, but the vapours from the river and the moist
sirocco had imparted a certain dampness to the old bridge, and as he
touched the wall at a casement where he was standing, Sangiorgio felt
the trickling wet; the elbows of his coat were soaking and dirtied. He
scanned the Campagna intently, but neither the poorest specimen of a
tree nor the meanest specimen of a human being was in sight; the river,
which at Tivoli is so magnificent, so gay, so clamorous, over there ran
to a very mournful strain.
He then posted himself at the casement on the left, and watched the
water flow swiftly down to join the Tiber. From here the Via Nomentana
was seen to continue over the plain, to make an angle and vanish. In the
middle of a field stood a cottage, a tumbledown hovel, with two rooms
and no ceiling, and walls like broken teeth; at the corner of the road
was a tidy, white little cottage, the Huntsman's Inn, from which a fine
meadow stretched down to the river. In the water stood willow bushes,
with blackish, scrawny branches; on the banks were small willows,
equally scrawny. A boat was held in the stream by means of a rope
attached to a wooden post driven into the shore; the water broke
gurgling against boat, willows, and rope.
With the descending darkness, the sky, too, seemed to descend. Gazing
with the strenuousness of an earnest searcher, Sangiorgio perceived a
closed carriage to stop near the Huntsman's Inn, but it had halted in
such a way that he could see neither horse nor coachman. And then, from
afar, on the river's right bank, he saw a dark spot that grew and grew,
and he recognised the sweet lady who had wept in church.
Dressed in black, she wended her solitary way along the river, walking
up-stream, pausing every now and then to look at the speeding current;
she moved gently, very close to the water, sinking into the spongy soil,
advancing with measured footsteps.
When she had drawn nearer, he observed against the dark dress the bunch
of white roses from the room at home full of green plants; she held them
clasped to her waist with her hands. Two or three times she turned to
the horizon, in admiration of the sad sky, which seemed about to smother
the earth, and looked for the Tusculan hills already hidden by the
approaching storm. Then she resumed her lonely walk with such lightness
of action that she seemed barely to graze the earth.
Not once did she raise her eyes to the walls of the bridge, to the wide
casement where stood he who was watching her. Assuredly she believed
herself in absolute solitude, in that vast bare Campagna, that
threatening tempest, that last hour of daylight, that melancholy
landscape, from which the vulgar would shrink; she believed herself
alone, as if in church, praying to God, speaking to God.
At fifty paces from the bridge, near the rotten post to which the boat's
rope was tied, Donna Angelica stopped short. She looked as if she had
been suddenly overtaken by fatigue, despite the slowness of her gait, or
perhaps she had succumbed to the great fascination of running water that
seizes upon the spirit of the beholder and keeps it under a spell.
Indeed, leaning against the post, as if rooted to the river-bank, at one
step from the coursing stream, which bent the dark boughs of the
willows, Donna Angelica was entirely lost in contemplation of the river.
An immense dark roof of clouds--a shroud forestalling night--now shut in
the whole horizon round about, and the light seemed slowly perishing, as
if being crushed between sky and earth. Sangiorgio was unconscious of
everything save that female form, standing stark as a statue on the bank
of the river. But a rumbling noise came from the Via Nomentana, a sound
of wheels, of trotting horses; and in the gray light something red and
bright flashed by. Under the lowered hood of a Daumont carriage
something white passed by--a fugitive face, a royal face. The royal
carriage crossed the bridge at a trot, the royal lady having responded
to Sangiorgio's bow; and the whole brief, vivid, transient vision
disappeared in the direction of Rome. Sangiorgio again turned to the
river.
The lady was unaware of all this. Lost in thought, the noise and the
purple passage of the royal equipage--a sort of brilliant, gleaming
comet, which for an instant had lit up the darkness of the
cloud-ensombred twilight--had escaped her. She seemed to be unable to
tear herself away from the sight of the austere Aniene, with its gelid
waters. He saw her bend over several times, as if she were trying to
mirror herself in the river, or to discern the bottom of it. Her fingers
hereupon plucked a rose to pieces, and threw the white leaves into the
hurrying flood, which carried them away; one after another she picked
off all the leaves, throwing them adrift upon the current by handfuls.
She did not angrily ravish the white leaves from their stem, but
detached them lingeringly, as if everything in her soul were actually
departing or dying with the departing, dying leaves. The hands
relinquishing those floral lives had also known the desolation and death
of other lives. The last leaf, indeed, faded between her fingers. He
could not see all this from the distance, but he guessed it; and as the
last leaf went, withered and crumpled, he felt a languor as of death
overtake him. After a last look at the Aniene, the lady went back to the
road without a backward glance, and got into her carriage. It passed
over the bridge at high speed. Donna Angelica did not see Sangiorgio,
but he saw very plainly how the pale creature was still pressing the
stripped stems of the dead roses to her side.