Scarcely had Francesco Sangiorgio emerged from the Via Babuino into the
Piazza del Popolo than a handful of coriander seeds went down his neck,
although he could not tell whence they came; a loose bunch of
chicory-flowers then grazed his cheek, and in the rush of people he was
borne away towards the obelisk. A black, noisy, shouting, whistling mob
was surging round the fountain under a white shower of coriander seeds
thrown by pedestrians, from carriages, and from the two great wooden
stands which, as it were, formed a prolongation of the Corso to the
fountain.
This dark crowd, with its excited faces, was shone upon by the afternoon
sunlight, which covered the square with a cheerful spring cape, and in
the tepid air, in the mild February sirocco, the grains of pulverized
coriander inflamed the throat and drew blood to the cheeks. Sangiorgio
was obliged to use elbows and shoulders in pushing his way through the
howling mob, which jerked and jostled him; he was seized with wrath
against an amusement so brutal as to outdo the ferocity of animals at
play.
The crowd reached to the Pincio gates, obstructing them, barring them,
clinging to the open railings, turning their backs upon both the
avenues; but no one went in, no one thought of going up to the Pincio,
all being impressed by the extraordinary spectacle which is always
afforded by an unbridled human mob. Sangiorgio made his way
energetically against the tide, putting a mighty restraint on himself
not to distribute fisticuffs among those who hustled him. But the great
difficulty for him was to get into the Pincio; the people who blocked
the entrance would not let him pass--were afraid of losing their places,
suspecting him of wanting to steal one, believing he wished to establish
himself there, not for a moment imagining that he merely wanted to walk
about inside.
How could a man have the strange taste to walk in the deserted Pincio,
on that holiday, at that warm afternoon hour, when everybody was mad
with carnival mirth, from the Piazza Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo?
The crowd was incredulous of such eccentricity, and refused to let
Francesco Sangiorgio pass. Two or three times he shouted, his cheeks
flushed with anger:
'I am going to the Pincio! I am going to the Pincio!'
He went in. No sooner had he rounded the corner of the avenue than a
great sigh of relief escaped his breast, and a sense of tranquillity
settled upon his overwrought nerves. He was entering upon the green,
sloping solitude of the broad avenue, under the soft shadows of the
elms, budding out anew in the anticipation of spring.
Not a soul was to be seen in the avenue, which in one direction went
towards the Villa Medici and the Trinita dei Monti, and in the other up
to the Pincio; there was not a single passer-by, not a woman, not a
child. Everyone, everyone was in the Corso, in the street, doorways,
balconies, loggias, on the improvised stands, on the pedestals of
lamp-posts, on the backs of carriages; everyone, everyone was in the
Corso, seized with carnival madness.
Francesco Sangiorgio felt more and more at ease and peace, as he
ascended to that place of rural solitude. Now and then a shred of an
echo reached him, from the Piazza del Popolo, of shrill, piercing voices
dampened by distance; but as he went further away the echoes diminished,
became quite faint, and then died. To anyone skirting the wall that
overlooks the Piazza del Popolo, down below there still was visible a
great black, struggling mass, and a great, transparent, white haze, a
white, low haze, such as might hover over a swamp.
On the ample terrace, broad and cheerful, which is almost a plain, which
commands a view of Rome, St. Peter's, the Vatican, Monte Mario, and all
the Campagna adjacent to the Tiber, besides the Flaminian gate, a
poorly-clad old man was sitting on a bench, under a tree. His
walking-stick was left to itself between his legs, the sun was beating
down on his face, and he had closed his eyes, succumbing to age, the
warmth, and sleep. Leaning, or more properly lying, on the broad
baluster of the terrace, a priest was looking at Rome, a little black
spot in front of the large white spot that the city appeared, bathed in
the mellow afternoon sunshine. Francesco Sangiorgio went up to the
priest to see who he was; he found a pale, thin youth, with freckled
face; but he was looking neither at Rome nor the indistinct, dark mass
swaying in the Piazza del Popolo; he was reading his breviary, a stout
book bound in black, with yellow leaves. Sangiorgio moved on quickly,
feeling safer than ever. Indeed, in that whole garden, favoured by
nurses, governesses, and maid-servants, and adored by children, reigned
the stillness of a deserted park, from which every sound and every sign
of life had disappeared.
The large circular space where the band plays looked as if it had been
unoccupied for years; the iron desks used for concerts were standing
about in disorder and rusted, as if they had for an indefinite length of
time been exposed to sun and rain, without ever being touched by the
hand of man; the little stall belonging to the indiarubber ball, hoop,
and skipping-rope vendor was untenanted, and the wares hung on a tree
with no one to think of selling, buying, or stealing them; the
merry-go-round was at a standstill, silent, deserted, with its hideous
blue-and-red horses; the rope of the swing was dragging down as if
weeping at being forsaken. On other days this juvenile playground was
enlivened with childish shrieks, loud laughter, maternal calls, merry
voices; now children and mothers and servants were down below there,
lost in the great vortex of the carnival, seeming to have forgotten
their delightful, verdant retreat, when the nascent spring-tide was
calling everything into bloom.
At the tiny lake, there was no one to throw bread-crumbs to the handsome
white swan, which bent its neck so gracefully, like a drooping maiden,
and swam so deliberately about its small stagnant pond; the swan looked
worn and sad, as though it missed the gentle hands of the creatures wont
to feed it. The water-dial, dirty and splashed, pointed to a
quarter-past five--of what day, what year? One of the wheels was broken.
No one at all was sitting in the shade of the Swiss cottage so much
liked by the strange German seminarists who dress in red, and the pupils
of the Nazzareno College; and from the railing separating the ground of
the Villa Medici from the Pincio a long, dark, dank avenue was in sight.
Under the plane-trees, the marble figures of Mercury, with cheeks
rather washed out by the rains, with their curly locks blackened by the
dampness, looked as if they had for centuries been tired of standing
there.
And Francesco Sangiorgio was glad of these solitary, rural surroundings,
alive with new sap as befitted the soft season. The large garden, with
its spacious walks, seemed entirely his own, left to him by the
roistering multitude, apt for the concealment of his loves, the secluded
nest of a pure, sentimental idyll. From afar, from the rear terrace, he
had reviewed the immense green body of foliage of the Villa Borghese,
where it would have been easy to hide; but she had declined, so as not
to be obliged to cross the Piazza del Popolo on that horrible carnival
day, although the Villa Borghese gardens--yet more than the Pincio--then
resembled a huge natural park, untrodden by man, a vast lonely tract of
virgin country.
Passing the dividing line between the Pincio and the Villa Medici,
Sangiorgio cast a regretful glance at the gloomy darkness of the dense
alley of trees where his sweet idyll would have been safe from the
bright, lavish sunlight, but she had refused, since a special permit
would have been requisite for the Villa Medici. What disturbed
Sangiorgio, in his walk round the big garden, was the part which faced
Rome and the Piazza del Popolo, all that open side, that gigantic
breach, whence at moments came a deep drone, the clamour of the crowd in
its mirth or disappointment. Each time he turned towards the Villa
Borghese, he seemed to be in peace, alone with his love, unmolested in
the beneficent, rural solitude. Whenever he turned back towards Rome,
the sudden view of the city and the drone and the whole of the
unwelcome outer world spoiled all his dreams. That public, that crowd,
meant to him obstacles, difficulties, pain.
When she arrived, he had been awaiting her for an hour, but had not been
impatient, being still unfamiliar with the torture of waiting in
uncertainty, still a believer in woman's word.
She came by the avenue leading to the Trinita dei Monti, having left her
carriage in the Piazza di Spagna; she was dressed in dark-blue cloth,
with a thin white veil over her face, which made her look younger; she
walked softly, without any movement of her skirts, as though she were
gliding over the ground, not coming but approaching. At a certain
moment, both raised their eyes at once, and their glances met at a
distance of thirty paces. She at once cast her eyes down, without
hastening her step; he did not stir from the little buttress he had been
leaning against, as he waited for her, watching her advance in her dark
dress, in her youthful white veil. Surely she was a spring flower, a
large human flower blooming for his special delight.
When they met, they neither bowed nor put out their hands; her small
fist clasped the handle of her sunshade, a miniature cock carved in
wood, with a red comb; they did not speak as they walked together,
without looking at one another.
'Thank you,' said he.
'No, no,' she answered quickly, and, looking round with a timid glance,
she added: 'Everybody will see us here.'
'There is no one; do not be afraid.'
'No one?'
'No one--because of the carnival.'
'True, they are all in the Corso; I was to have gone, too.'
And she stopped on the broad, sunny terrace, whence they could view the
whole, great, riotous sea of the populace in the Piazza del Popolo. He
felt a pang at his heart, as if the sight robbed him of a portion of his
happiness. She laid her slender hand, gloved in chamois, on the parapet,
and gazed upon the great, dark floods of people, from which a noise rose
up as of a volcano.
'How they are enjoying themselves down there,' she murmured sadly.
He waited behind her, seized with a fit of impatience.
'Come away, come away,' he urged.
She turned her back to the city, and accompanied him to the large avenue
at the left; she kept her eyes on the ground as if wrapt in thought.
'No, there is nobody about,' she said, as though in relief. 'It is
fortunate that it is carnival time. The people are nearly mad. Would you
not rather be down there?'
'How can you possibly believe----?' he began in an injured tone.
'There are many things I can no longer believe in,' she whispered, as
though in self-communion.
'You are so kind; I do not know what to say; be merciful,' he begged,
with the humility of a Christian before the Blessed Image.
'I have sad tidings to tell you, my friend,' she continued, with her
beautiful, sympathetic voice.
'Not to-day, not to-day--to-morrow--another day----'
'Better to-day than to-morrow,' she interposed, settling her lovely,
mild eyes upon the Villa Borghese gardens. 'You must have courage.'
'I have none, none at all----'
'You must,' she insisted, 'in order to be at peace with your
conscience.'
And with a shiver she wrapped her little fur pelisse about her, since
they were passing close to the sombre, chilly region of the Villa
Medici.
'Conscience, conscience!' he exclaimed rebelliously. 'And what of love?'
'We must not love,' she said sententiously.
'And why not?'
'Because they will not allow it.'
'Who will not allow it?'
'They.' And, pointing with her finger, she indicated Rome and the Piazza
del Popolo, where the carnival fever was at its height.
'But you do not know who they are.'
'They are our conscience: I could never endure doing wrong for the sake
of love.'
'You do not love,' he bitterly remarked.
'Perhaps,' she said, lost in contemplation of Monte Mario.
'Come away, come away,' he repeated, seized with a spasm of repentance,
and desirous of drawing her away from the spectacle of the crowd.
Indeed, as she turned her back upon the panorama of Rome, her face
cleared, and her thoughts seemed to flow in a brighter channel. The
great peace of the Pincian hill, the solitude, the first breath of
spring, the sweet afternoon in the green, the tepid air, the looks of
love and respect he bestowed upon her, the fidelity which he manifested,
the amorous reverence with which he spoke to her, made her forget the
tumult and the shouting of the carnival-smitten town, made her forget
that another world existed besides the country, besides spring, besides
love.
He understood--oh yes--that a little of that soul was his, that it
inclined towards him, in that deserted place, in the presence of the
foliage, the falling waters of the fountain, the brazen, open horizon.
But he divined that some of that feminine soul escaped him, that most of
that heart was closed against him.
In this solitude, amid the new budding of tree and flower, where Nature
was so full of charm, she was kind, and sweet, and affectionately
sympathetic. But at the sight of that hard, malignant city, that never
forgives, she summoned up all her courage to maintain herself
inflexible, stiffened in her purpose to demand and insure the sacrifice
of love. For this reason he did his utmost not to let her return to the
terrace and to the view upon the town, persuaded that the hour, weather,
and place had a softening influence on her.
'One must not love too late,' she resumed, with melancholy infinitely
sweet; 'it is useless and painful. Where were you five years ago?'
'Down there in the Basilicata,' he replied, with a vague gesture.
'And I was up there--up there in the mountains, among the snows. I
believed in the snows of the glaciers, the invincible glaciers. I
married Don Silvio; he was kind; I knew nothing of the sun. Now the sun
has come to me too late.'
'Do not say so--do not say so!' he implored.
'We must not turn the snow into mud, my friend.'
Then there was silence. He became extremely pale, as though he were
dying. Her eyes were full of tears; and he gazed into the brimming orbs,
trembling at the sight of those flowing tears, as distressed as if his
last hour had come.
But he did not tell her how he was suffering; he would not, could not
complain; everything that came from her was good, was sweet. With the
profound unselfishness of true, strong love, he forgot all his own
griefs when he looked at those lovely, tearful eyes, saw the mournful
droop of those lips. Her sorrow spurred him and lifted him up; he was
carried away by a powerful, voluptuous thrill of sentiment.
'Life is very hard for me, I must tell you,' she continued faintly, as
if her emotions had overpowered her. 'I have no children to keep my
heart warm with a mother's love. I have an old man who is utterly cold
towards me; he is entirely taken up with his passion for something else,
for another idea. Oh, if you only knew, my friend, what this solitude
means, this eternal silence!'
'But why do you submit?'
'Because I do,' she said, as if this were the inscrutable decree of
fate.
And she went on walking, speechless and still slower, as though
succumbing to fatigue; he kept by her side, without seeing or hearing
anything further, his mind and his senses a blank.
The sun was setting behind St. Peter's, between the church and Monte
Mario.
'It is over, my friend--all over. I almost feel as if I were dead.
People see my placid face, my invariable calmness, and they must know
nothing more; they must never guess the truth. But there is nothing left
in here.'
And she tapped her cloak over the place where her heart was. She was
unaware what a cruel blow she had dealt the enamoured man in telling him
she could never love him. At that hour and that spot she was yielding
to one of the melancholy and egoistic outbursts of self-contained
spirits; she had lost sight of her companion; she gave herself up to all
the private woes of a disenchanted young soul.
'But,' he murmured, 'you have a disinterested, steadfast friend, whose
devotion will stand any test; whatever you wish, he wishes; his desire
to help you, humbly, secretly, knows no limit----'
And he stopped short, because his voice quavered, because his words
choked him, because this, his unspeakable love, threatened to overleap
all bounds.
'Thank you--thank you,' she said, a sad smile lighting up her
countenance; 'I know it.'
'You cannot--cannot know. I have never told you. I never shall tell you.
I never could tell you. I only assure you that it is devotion of the
deepest kind. Why reject it? How can you refuse it?'
'Because it is too much like love, my friend.'
'Love is not mentioned.'
'It can be inferred.'
'You must not understand it so; you must not infer thus. I am asking
nothing; I want no more than to be allowed to give you this devotion.'
'So you say to-day; to-morrow love will demand love.'
'Who says so?'
'Ah me! Experience, my friend!'
'Experience lies!' exclaimed the other, with violence. 'My love is like
no other.'
Angelica bowed her head for a moment as if convinced, and Sangiorgio
repented his violence.
'Forgive me,' he humbly said, 'but the idea of losing you is
unendurable.'
'But we must part--better now than later. Later on we should suffer much
more; I should be more in the wrong, and you would have a better right
to accuse me. Habit aggravates and intensifies love. A day would come
when we could not possibly separate--a day of exultation for you, of
shame for me. Now--we are still free. What are we to each other?
Nothing--and it is best so. We have seen one another four or five
times----'
'I have always seen you.'
'In the midst of life's frivolities----'
'I wept with you when you wept in the Pantheon.'
'Among inquisitive, evil-minded people----'
'I watched you for an hour, that day, from the Ponte Nomentano, when you
let the rose-leaves drift on the current of the Aniene. You were
alone--we were alone----'
'Among the conventional formalities of political life----'
'How lovely you were that night at the Quirinal ball! I went away with
you. You did not speak. You said nothing to me. How lovely you were!'
'It is a dream--it is a dream,' she returned, inspired to the sacrifice
by his vibrant words of love. 'We must awake; we must part.'
'Then it is death.'
'Who is speaking of death?'
He did not answer her question, but she understood his look of pain and
reproach. The sun had set, and the great purple, crepuscular shrouds now
rose from the earth to the white sky; a cold, noxious breeze sprang up;
from the terrace the priest had vanished, the reader of the breviary;
from the wooden bench the old man had vanished, the whole Pincian hill
was becoming dark, and down below the crowd was howling louder than
ever, excited at the coming of evening. She prepared to leave by the
broad road to the Trinita dei Monti, but he went with her, as if
bewitched, without a word, but intent upon going anywhere with her. At
the stone buttress where she had met him, she turned, and put out her
hand:
'Good-bye, my friend.'
'No, not good-bye!'
'It is late,' said the beloved voice in a measured tone.
And Angelica was lost in the vapours of evenfall.
* * * * *
From the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Venezia the little candles
were now being lit. There were a myriad tiny points of fire, wandering
flamelets, in the streets, on verandas, balconies, carts; tiny,
nondescript, dirty bundles flew about; long-handled fans were active;
handkerchiefs and rags were in motion; there was jumping about and
puffing out of mouths--all manner of contrivances, all pranks, all sorts
of violence and brutality were indulged in to extinguish the candles.
And the shouts of resistance and attack sounded in the universal human
echo:
'Candles, candles, candles!'
Through all the lights, all the uproar, and all the tumultuous
merry-making, a poor mortal was making his way, agonized with pain,
unconsciously pushed about, shouldered, jostled.