anyway? _À chaque saint sa chandelle._ Otherwise, what would become
of that marble block from the floor of the Appian Way—which the
stubborn archæologists will insist was really paved with silex—that
is preserved with so much reverence in the church of Domine Quo Vadis,
as showing the impressions of the feet of Our Lord and St. Peter when
they faced each other there on the occasion of the memorable rebuke
of the latter for his proposed flight from Rome? And how about the
_scala santa_—the worn and venerated marble steps in the shrine near
the church of St. John Lateran, which were brought from Jerusalem and
up which we are told Christ passed on his way to the judgment seat of
Pilate? The faithful thank God for the privilege of ascending them on
their knees, praying, and receiving the indulgence of a thousand years
of purgatory; and they were worn thin with kisses long before the day
when Martin Luther got halfway up and suddenly quit and came tramping
down with a voice crying in his ears, “The just shall live by faith.”
And without faith, where would be the use of the miraculous Bambino,
the adored and bejeweled little wooden image that a Franciscan pilgrim
carved from a tree of the Mount of Olives and which is imposingly
domiciled in a glass case in the church of Ara Cœli? They say there
is no disease that the Bambino cannot cure; and when his keepers
accompany him through the streets on his errands of mercy, conveyed
in his magnificent buff coach, people kneel by hundreds and beseech a
blessing. Such blessing may be secured, though possibly of a diminished
efficacy, by buying one of his legended cards at the church and having
the priest rub it across the glass top of the case. Who would eschew
faith and forfeit such advantages? Would we not still have Life’s
puzzle, and without this key? Might we not even be reduced to a plane
as confused and desperate as that of the famous Sultan of Turkey, who
knew so little of music that, when his new Italian band had finished
tuning-up, he shouted in delight to the leader, “Marshallah! Let the
dogs play that tune again!”
At this languorous hour of the afternoon the broad, sunny piazzas with
their many fountains afford incomparably lovely loitering-places on the
way to the Pincio. The one of the Quirinal is a near neighbor to the
Colonna Gardens, and there you may shelter under eucalyptus trees and
dream over the brown old obelisk and the vigorous fountain sculptures
of the “horse-tamers” that once graced the Baths of Constantine, and
philosophize over the irony of fate that converted a papal summer
residence into a royal palace. Or you can thread your way through
narrow streets of the Middle Ages that are lined by ochre-colored
houses with sun-shades, where artists have their studios and transients
their _hôtels garnis_, and down which a belated wine-cart may jangle
or a gayly painted Campagna wagon creak, with its oxen festive in
bells and crimson tassels and its rugged driver clad in blue. Were
you to follow these typical byways of mediæval Rome until you came to
the embankment of the Sant’ Angelo Bridge, you would pass by where
Benvenuto Cellini lived among his goldsmiths, and could identify the
Gothic window of the old Inn of the Bear where Montaigne stopped,
centuries ago.
At this hour the Trevi Fountain is doubly appealing and refreshing,
rejoicing the whole side of its roomy square with sparkling waters that
dash merrily about Neptune and his allies in the wall niches. Devoted
as one may be to the venerable tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Appian
Way, he will fervently commend Pope Clement for having pillaged some
of its stone to supply this cheery fountain with its dramatic setting.
Were this our last day in the city we should certainly toss a copper
coin over our left shoulder into these boiling waters, to insure a
return to Rome. Of course, one is pretty sure to come again anyhow; but
that makes it a certainty. Besides, it is much less trouble than going
away out to Tivoli to ask the same thing of the Sibyl in the Grotto.
Were you to yield to the fountain habit, you would go bird-hopping all
over town, for no city has so many or such beautiful ones as Rome,
thanks to its huge aqueducts. It is a never-failing delight to turn a
corner and come across one of these sun-deluged pleasaunces with its
crowds of picturesque loungers; its tritons, “rivers,” and sea gods
disporting themselves in attitudes of aqueous grace and gayety; its
flower-girls banked behind fragrant barriers of roses and violets; and
the slender columns of water streaming sideways like tattered flags in
a breeze.
[Illustration: ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA]
Mid-afternoon is an admirable time to drop in at the most popular of
all the piazzas, the Spanish Square. One wonders how the jewelers
of the Via Condotti manage to make both ends meet, with such a
superior attraction at hand. It is certainly one of the most charming
nooks in Rome. A heavy golden sunshine glorifies, at this hour, the
broad reach of the Spanish Steps, themselves quite as wide as the
square, that sweep between picturesque parapets like a yellow cascade
from the terraces of the church at S. Trinità de’ Monte to the
boat-shaped fountain in the piazza below. About them, drowsy, dusty,
Old-World houses supply a pleasant background of soft color, and the
crystal-clear Italian sky spreads above like a cathedral dome. The
flower market is the crowning touch, with a flood of fragrant blooms
welling over the lower steps and rimming the fountain edge in brilliant
hues of purple Roman anemones, orange wallflowers, white narcissus,
golden daffodils, snowy gardenias, violets, camelias, hyacinths,
mignonettes, and every fair and odorous blossom. A lovely, sunny,
fragrant spot—this Piazza di Spagna; a place to dream whole days away
in; a well-beloved corner of fascinating Rome, where one may realize to
its fullness the beautiful, consoling reflection of Don Quixote, “But
still there’s sunshine on the wall.”
Literature has had its chosen seat in the Piazza di Spagna. Half the
traveled world of letters has lived or visited there. It invests the
spot with a fresh and human interest to know that it has been the
musing-place of such rare spirits as Byron, Smollett, Madame de Staël,
Cooper, Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Hawthorne, Goethe, Chateaubriand,
Dickens, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Lowell, and Longfellow. One
thinks of the Brownings entertaining Thackeray, Lockhart, and Fanny
Kemble. But, of course, the closest memories are of Keats and Shelley,
who lived in either corner house—those radiant friends whose ashes
repose under myrtles and violets in the cypress-shaded cemetery beyond
the Aurelian Wall. The works of all these authors, as also of the
others who may or may not have seen the Piazza di Spagna,—along with
the idealism of Fogazzaro, the sensuality of D’ Annunzio, the realism
of Verga, and the grace of De Amicis,—are to be had at the celebrated
shops of Piale or Spithöver, in the square; where, also, you may at
little expense become a momentary part of Rome’s bohemia over toast and
muffins in the adjoining tea-rooms.
_Chacun à son goût._ If you are cold to tea there may be something
else to interest in the numerous cafés of the neighborhood that begin
to hum with activity as the hour approaches four. And, indeed, they
may be angels in disguise for such as have tried _pension_ life and
grown sadly familiar with puddings as mysterious as Scotch haggis,
meat that suggested _travertine_, and pies constructed of something
like _silex_ and _tufa_. Besides, in the cafés you can regale yourself
with vermouth, syrups, or ices, and at the same time observe the Roman
at his afternoon ease—thus realizing in yourself the acuteness of
the Italian proverb, “One blow at the hoop and one at the cask.” It
is quite worth the cost to see how quickly the chairs and little
marble-topped tables, out on the sidewalk, are taken by leisurely
_habitués_ bent on gossip; by precise old gentlemen in lavender gloves
who drop in for a tumbler of black coffee and a hand at dominoes; or
by foppish young men in duck trousers, who clatter on the tables for
the _cameriere_ to bring copies of the “Tribuna” so they may sup on
frivolities and horrors along with coffee and tobacco.
A ruder jocundity also, at this time, is making its start for high tide
in poorer sections, where in arbored _osteries_, Tuscan wine-shops, and
_spacci da vino_ straw-covered fiascos of chianti are passing, along
with glasses of local wines whose prices will be found conspicuously
chalked up on the outsides of the taverns at so many _soldi_ per
half-litre.
As we follow the Corso toward the Pincian Gardens we find the
congestion increasing, with a decided addition of carriages all bound
in our direction. It is now the hour of the afternoon _passeggiata_;
and one marvels that the ancient campus Martius should still be the
heart of Rome, and wonders how this narrow street could have held its
crowds when the mad, brilliant scenes of Carnival riot and revelry
were enacted before these old Renaissance palaces. Every restaurant of
the tumultuous Piazza Colonna is working to capacity, and groups of
gay army officers swagger about the corners and over by the marble
basin beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius where the taxi-cabs have
their chief stand. No red-and-white street car dares venture in this
favorite square, but busses and cabs supplant them to distraction.
And who, indeed, does not prefer an omnibus to a street car! It may
want the latter’s business-like directness, but what a holiday air it
has of cozy, informal deliberateness! It is coaching in town. You may
not arrive so soon, but what a lark you had! And if you mock at the
faithful bus, there are the impertinent Roman cabs. Here is speed,
seclusion, and economy. You cannot fail to be suited both financially
and æsthetically, for you may pick between the latest varnished
output of the factory and venerable, decrepit ramshackles that look
to have been contemporary with the Colosseum. The Roman cabmen are an
inconsequent lot; they wear green felt hats and greasy coats, and dash
at one with a reckless scorn of human life that strengthens a suspicion
that they are really banditti of the Campagna, transparently disguised.
The famous Column of the philosophic Emperor never lacks its groupings
of adaptable “rubber-necks,” who are twisting themselves into suicide
graves trying to read the spiral band of reliefs that winds away up to
the statue of St. Paul.
The Corso _passeggiata_ is an interesting affair. Toward four o’clock
it quite fills the street. Young girls are out, with their inevitable
chaperons, kittenish and alert-eyed; Bergamasque nurses, with scarlet
ribbons and extraordinary silver ornaments falling below their snowy
muslin caps; clerks in sober black; Douane men, in short capes
and shining hats with yellow rosettes; hatless women, with light
mantillas over their blue-black hair; the stolid country-folk,—the
_contadini_,—with the men in brown velvet jackets and goatskin
breeches, and the women in faded blue skirts and with red stays
stitched outside their bodices; the despised _forestieri_, with
guidebooks; _carabinieri_, in pairs, resplendent in braided uniforms
and cocked hats; the nervous Bersaglieri, with shining round hats
and glossy cocks’-feather plumes; army officers in cloaks or bright
blue guard-coats, fresh from vermouth at Aragni’s; Savoyards in steel
helmets and gold crests; diplomats in silk hats and Prince Albert
coats; and clericals by the hundreds. The clericals, indeed, may
always be relied upon to supply an effective color-touch anywhere in
Rome. They come along in fluttering groups of every hue: English and
French seminarists in cassocks of black, Germans in scarlet, Scotch
in purple, and Roumanians in orange and blue; it is diverting to see
them raise their black beavers to one another with the quietest and
most serious air imaginable. Solemn lay brethren shuffle past in sombre
brown of Franciscan and Capuchin, or white of the cowled and tonsured
Dominicans. Occasionally, along a side street, one passes slowly,
absorbed in his breviary, like Don Abbondio in “I Promessi Sposi.”
Rome abounds in shovel-hats, shaven heads, sandals, and hempen girdles.
But you must not expect to see them all in a Corso _passeggiata_.
Unless we have yielded too much to the blandishments along the way, we
should be crossing the sunny, somnolent circle of the Piazza del Popolo
and climbing the fountained and statue-set terraces of the Pincian
Gardens as the first strains of the promenade concert usher in the
hour of four. The spectacle that confronts us on the low, broad brow
of the old hill is animated and brilliant. Hundreds of motor-cars,
private carriages and hired cabs roll in a long, gay procession around
the driveways, their occupants arrayed in the last word of Italian
fashion, and a multitude of happy loiterers stroll leisurely in the
mild afternoon sunshine along sylvan paths hedged with box or bordered
with flowers, where long lines of marble portrait-busts of Italy’s
dead immortals extend into the pleasant shade of groves of myrtles and
fragrant acacias. What a contrast in occupation to the scenes that in
olden days were enacted here—the luxury and splendor of the golden
suppers that the war-worn Lucullus gave to Rome’s poets and artists;
or the vicious and voluptuous orgies with which the vile Messalina
indulged the depraved favorites of the Claudian court! Young Rome, this
afternoon, has decked itself in its gayest raiment, and youth vies
with youth in gallantries to the fashionable beauties who prefer the
fascinating town, even in summer, to the listless diversions of the
country. “Visiting” goes on between carriage-parties, which is said to
answer the social requirements of calls at the house. Mild refreshments
are being served in a lively little café to which many repair when
weary with lounging among the brilliant flowers and lovely foliaged
paths; and groups ramble across the new viaduct and stroll among the
sycamores and stone-pines of the neighboring Villa Borghese. The
Pincian Gardens seem very formal and compact and precisely ornate as
compared with our parks at home, but there is much more of sociability
and comfort than is to be found Sunday afternoons in New York’s Central
Park, for instance. That is probably because New York’s pedestrians
are centred in the Mall to hear the band, or around the lakes to watch
the boating, and all her carriage-folk are by themselves in the East
Side Drive. The Pincian promenade mingles both classes into a great
family party. It is a brilliant scene, but it must have been much more
so in other days when the popes joined the company in the great glass
coach drawn by six black horses in crimson trappings, and outriders and
footmen flocked about them.
One wonders whether Pius X does not sometimes think with a sigh of
regret of the liberties of his early predecessors, as he paces the
flowered garden paths of his voluntary prison and lifts his gentle,
shining face toward these pleasant Pincian heights. How often will the
memory recur to me of that mild and friendly man, as once I saw him
in the Vatican’s Court of the Pine, in his snowy robes and the little
cap scarce whiter than his hair. I remember his only ornaments to have
been the famous Fisherman’s ring, and a long gold chain about his
neck from which a great crucifix was pendent. It was the occasion of
a calisthenic drill given by a local orphan asylum for his Holiness’s
special benefit. Each little athlete in gray was burning to do his
very best in so notable a presence, and was, indeed, succeeding, with
the glaring exception of the smallest of the band, whose eager efforts
had resulted only in an uninterrupted series of comical mischances,
to the infinite chagrin of himself and associates and the increasing
amusement of the Pope. In due time the performance came to an end,
and the boys were drawn up facing each other in a double line through
which, attended by cardinals, chamberlains, and members of the Papal
Guard, his Holiness passed extending his hand to be kissed. When he
reached the diminutive and blushing blunderer, he halted his imposing
train and laid his hand on the boy’s head and smoothed his hair and
patted his cheek with affectionate tenderness, whispering the while an
intimate message of good cheer, as though it were something strictly
confidential between himself and that fatherless little waif whose face
was shining with reverence and awe and whose eyes were full of happy
tears. I am, I trust, as confirmed a Protestant as the next, but I
confess that my heart was bowed as well as my head as that white-robed
figure turned, as it disappeared through a door of the Vatican, and
raised a hand toward us in the sign of the cross.
The marble parapet of the Pincio is, at this hour, a prime favorite
among Roman loafing-places. As from an upper theatre box, one looks
precipitously down into the great, peaceful, siesta-drugged circle
of the Piazza del Popolo, the scene in other days of so much cruelty
and often of so much happiness. The stone lions of the fountain spout
patiently to the delighted observation of scores of playing children,
and drowsy cabmen nod on the boxes of the long rank of waiting
victorias. One may indulge to his fullest in moral reflections over the
slender obelisk from the Heliopolis Temple to the Sun, upon which Moses
himself may have gazed in days before Rome was thought of, and when the
celestial consorts, Isis and Osiris, still waved their lotus sceptres
and ruled the quick and the dead. Nineteen hundred years ago Nero,
who should have begun blood-letting with himself instead of ending it
there, was buried in this ground, and you are told how the evil spirits
that haunted the accursed spot were not finally exorcised until yonder
church of Santa Maria had been reared above his tomb. One will find it
more agreeable to look across the piazza at the portal of the Flaminian
Way and re-create the scenes of the triumphant entrance of the noble,
hardy Trajan walking by the side of his fair and amiable wife.
The elm-tops are rustling in the deep groves of the Villa Borghese,
and the yellow Tiber, “too large to be harmless and too small to be
useful,” slips swiftly between the yellow walls of its quays. To the
mind’s eye, in the azure distance Mons Sacer is clear, and Tivoli and
the Sabine Farm of Horace. Like the Archangel Michael on the Castle
of Sant’ Angelo, the sun, too, begins to sheathe his sword, and its
glitter throws a warm mantle over the shoulders of the marble angels on
the bridge. Most conspicuously, as is proper, it lingers on the pale
dome of St. Peter’s, touches into life the sculptured saints of the
portico, and floods obelisk, fountains, and all that vast elliptical
piazza toward which are extended the sheltering arms of Bernini’s
colonnade. How fair, beneath that roof, are the dazzling marbles,
shining tombs, sculptured effigies, and glowing mosaics! But fairer
far is this prospect from the hill, of Rome in her soft coat of many
colors, the velvety ruins of the Palatine, the stone-pines in sentinel
stiffness down the distant Appian Way, the sunny piazzas, the sparkling
fountains, and the verdure and bloom of the slopes of the Janiculum,
under the cloudless blue of a soft Italian sky. _Ave, Roma eterna!_
[Illustration]
PRAGUE
4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.
A brooding, stolid city is Prague; the sombre capital of a restless,
feverish people. It is the hotbed and “darling seat” of all Bohemia;
and Bohemia languishes for her lost independence as Israel did by the
waters of Babylon. She does not, however, pine in hopeless despair like
the Hebrews, but nourishes a keen expectation of regaining her lost
estate, and grits her teeth, in the mean while, with fiery impatience.
She points, and with reason, to the fact that the Slavs—Czechs,
Slovaks, and Moravians—easily outnumber the Hungarians; yet Hungary
is free, and she in bondage. And so Bohemia, for all her exterior
of gracious courtesy, is bitter and hard at heart; a people of a
passionate, thwarted patriotism; a people that has suffered and been
degraded, but that has never for a moment forgotten. Prague is an
expression of all this; in her sullen, gloomy architecture; in the
persistence of national types and characteristics; and peculiarly in
the wild, reckless Moldau, which visualizes the traditional, savage
intolerance that is bred in the bone of the fatalistic Slav.
There are too many daws about for Prague to wear her heart on her
sleeve, so while she bides her time she presents a smiling mask. It
may sometimes be a rather weary smile, and the forests that engulf
her are gloomy and sinister; but her skies are not always lowering
and overcast, and the peace of her fatigue from the national struggle
is profound. It is just this deep, brooding peace that appeals to the
stranger within her gates; and along with it he senses here a wonderful
charm and underlying subtility that invests this curious old city with
a lambent play of the imagination.
It was of Prague that Alexander von Humboldt said: “It is the most
beautiful inland city I have ever seen.” And it must have been of some
such spot that “R. L. S.” was mindful when he expressed the paradox
that “any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only
in a few, and those highly favored, that we can pass a few hours
agreeably.” Restfulness is surely one of the prime essentials of the
“highly favored” few; and there is no restfulness at all comparable
with that we feel in some venerated spot whose present hush and quiet
is a reaction from its other days of fever and turmoil. One finds these
qualities in Prague, whose calm and serenity seem doubly intense in
contrast with its history of tumult and savagery and the hatred and
violence that racked and convulsed it for hundreds of years. It has
frequently been lightly disposed of as being an “out-of-the-way place”;
but no place is more delightful than an “out-of-the-way” place, and
particularly when it has the natural and architectural beauty of this
one, or has been the theatre of such unusual and stirring occurrences.
Had we but one hour to spend in Prague we should certainly choose the
charmed one between four and five o’clock of an afternoon. The sunshine
is then most languid and golden, and the day declines slowly over
the castled tops of the Hradschin-crowned slope, and the lengthening
shadows of towers and turrets creep out on the river, and the copper
domes and ruddy tiles of the Neustadt glow in bright spots against the
darkling green of the wooded hillsides. If one does not then feel a
profound and elevating sense of tranquillity and translating beauty, it
will be because he has eyes to see yet sees not.
Since Prague rests under the imputation of being “out of the way,”—and
even Shakespeare set this inland kingdom down as “a desert country
near the sea,” and lost his compass completely in the shipwreck in
the “Winter’s Tale” with Antigonus exclaiming: “Our ship hath touch’d
upon the deserts of Bohemia”; and a confused mariner replying, “Aye,
my lord; and fear we’ve landed in ill time,”—we may, perhaps, be
pardoned for observing that in general appearance it is a wooded
valley traversed in its full length by a swift, turbulent river, which
follows a northerly course excepting where it bends sharply to the
east in the very heart of the city. This stream, the Moldau, rushes
along as if in desperate haste to throw itself into the Elbe, and
seems to have the one idea, as it dashes through Prague, of getting
done with its business and on its way at the earliest moment possible.
It has scoured its islands into ovals, slashed the rocky bases of the
hills, and continually assailed its bridges and quays. But through all
its exhibitions of ill humor the Praguers have indulgently condoned
and even extolled it; it was only when the beloved and venerated
Karlsbrücke fell a partial victim to its violence, a dozen years ago,
that patience ceased to be a virtue and the unnatural marauder was
comprehensively anathematized with all the sibilant fury of the hissing
tongue of the Czech. Speed apart, there is little to complain of with
the Moldau; it is broad and of a pleasant deep blue, and the beauty it
supplies to the setting of the city is supplemented by the importance
of its traffic, the amusements on its many little wooded islands, and
the delights of its boating and bathing. In a word, it is a noble
stream—and none the less Bohemian, perhaps, for being a little proud
and head-strong.