_On Christmas-Day._
ON Christmas-Day, we went, _via_ the Coliseum, for a long drive in the
Campagna. The black cross, at the foot of which many prayers have been
said for many ages, has disappeared from the centre of the arena. It
was necessary to take it down in the course of the excavations that
have revealed the subterranean cells whose existence was unsuspected
until lately. These are mere pits unroofed by the removal of the floor
of the amphitheatre, and in winter are half-full of water left by the
overflow of the Tiber and the autumnal rains. The abundant and varied
Flora of the Coliseum, including more than three hundred different wild
flowers and such affluence of foliage as might almost be catalogued in
the terms used to describe the botanical lore of the philosopher-king
of Israel: “Trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the
hyssop that springeth out of the wall,”—all these have been swept away
by the unsparing hand of Signore Rosa, the superintendent to whom the
care of the ruins of the old city has been committed. To the artistic
eye, the Coliseum and other structures have suffered irretrievable
damage through the measures which, he asserts, are indispensable to
their preservation. We who never saw the rich fringe of ilex and ivy
that made “the outside wall with its top of gigantic stones, seem like
a mountain-barrier of bare rock, enclosing a green and varied valley,”
forget to regret our loss in congratulating ourselves that filth has
been cleared away with the evergreen draperies. Despite the pools of
stagnant water now occupying half of the vast circle enclosed by the
scraped and mended walls, the Coliseum is not one-tenth as dangerous to
the health of him who whiles away a noontide hour there, or threads the
corridors by moonlight as when it was far more picturesque.
The sunlight of this Christmas-Day lay peacefully upon and within the
walls, as we walked around the circular arcades, and paused in the
centre of the floor, looking up to the seats of honor—(the podium)
reserved, on the day of dedication, for Titus, his family, the Senate,
and the Vestal Virgins. When, according to Merrivale, “the capacity of
the vast edifice was tested by the slaughter of five thousand animals
in its circuit.”
The site was a drained lake in the gardens of Nero. His colossal statue
used to stand upon the little pile of earth on the other side of the
street. Twelve thousand captive Jews were overworked to their death
in building the mighty monument to the destroyer of Jerusalem. After
describing the dedicatory pageant and its items of battles between
cranes and pigmies, and of gladiators with women, and a sea-fight for
which the arena was converted into a mimic lake, the historian adds:
“When all was over, Titus himself was seen to weep, perhaps from
fatigue, possibly from vexation and disgust.”
If the last-named emotions had any share in the reactionary hysteria
characterized as “effeminate” by his best friends, his successors did
not profit by the lesson. Hadrian slaughtered, on a birth-day frolic in
the Coliseum, one thousand wild beasts, not to mention less valuable
human beings. The prudent Augustus forbade the entrance of the noble
classes into the arena as combatants, and to avoid a hustle of death,
decreed that not more than sixty pairs of gladiators should be engaged
at one time in the fashionable butchery. Commodus had no such scruples
on the subject of caste or humanity. His imperial form bound about with
a lion’s skin, his locks bedusted with gold, he fought repeatedly upon
the bloody sands, killing his man—he being both emperor and beast—in
every encounter. Ignatius—reputed to have been one of the children
blessed by Our Lord—uttered here his last confession of faith:
“I am as the grain of the field, and must be ground by the teeth of the
lions, that I may become bread fit for HIS table.”
The Christians sought the deserted Coliseum by stealth, that night, to
gather the few bones the lions had left. Some of these, his friends,
may have been among the one hundred and fifteen “obstinates” drawn
up upon the earth scarcely dried from the blood of Ignatius, a line
of steady targets for the arrows of skilled bowmen—a kind of archery
practice in high favor with Roman clubs just then.
The life-blood that followed the arrow-thrust was a safe and rapid
stream to float the soul into harbor. One hour of heaven were worth
all the smiting, and thrusting, and tearing, and _theirs_ have been
centuries of bliss. But our hearts ached with pain and sympathy
inexpressible in the Coliseum, on that Christmas-Day. There is poetic
beauty and profound spiritual significance in the churchly fable that
Gregory the Great pressed fresh blood from a handful of earth taken
from the floor of the amphitheatre.
“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall—
And when Rome falls—the world!”
Thus runs the ancient prophecy.
Plundering cardinals and thrifty popes had never heard the saying, or
were strangely indifferent to the fate of their empire and globe for
four hundred years of spoliation and desecration. Cardinal Farnese
built his palace out of the marble casings. It is amazing even to
those who have inspected the massive walls cemented by mortar as hard
as the stones it binds together, that the four thousand men appointed
to tear down and bear off in twelve hours the materials needed for
the Farnese palace, did not demolish or impair the solidity of the
whole structure. After abortive attempts on the part of sundry popes
to utilize the building by turning the corridors into bazaars and
establishing manufactories of woolen goods and saltpetre in the central
space, the place was left to quiet decay and religious rites. Clement
XI. consecrated it to the memory of the faithful disciples who perished
there “for Christ’s sake.” Stations were appointed in the arcades, the
black cross was set up and indulgences granted to all believers who
would say a prayer at its foot for the rest of the martyrs’ souls.
Masses were said every Friday afternoon, each station visited in
turn with chant and prayer, and then a sermon preached by a Capuchin
friar. Vines thickened and trees shot upward from tier and battlement,
night-birds hooted in the upper shades, thieves and lazzaroni prowled
below. Dirt and miasma marked the sacred precincts for their own. We
can but be grateful that the march of improvement, begun when the
Italian troops entered Rome in 1870 through the breach near the Porta
Pia, has reached the Coliseum, cleansing and strengthening, although
not beautifying it.
About midway between the Forum and Coliseum we had passed—as no Jew
ever does—under the Arch of Titus. It spans the Via Sacra, leading
right on from the southern gate of the city through the Forum to the
Capitol. The pavement of huge square blocks of lava is the same on
which rolled, joltingly in their springless chariots, the conquerors
returning in triumph with such griefful captives in their train as
are sculptured upon the inside of this arch. The Goths, the Middle
Ages, and the Popes (or their nephews), dealt terrible blows at the
procession of Jewish prisoners, bearing the seven-branched candlestick,
the table of shew-bread, and the golden trumpets of the priests. Arms
and legs are missing, and features sadly marred. But drooping heads and
lax figures, and the less mutilated faces express the utter dejection,
the proud but hopeless humiliation of the band who left their happier
countrymen dead by famine, crucifixion, the sword and fire, in the
ashes of their city.
A rod or two further, and we were in the Via Appia.
“In that vineyard,” said I, pointing to a rickety gate on our left,
“are the remains of the Porta Capena, where the surviving Horatius met
and killed his sister as she bewailed the death of her lover, the last
of the Curatii. Her brother presented himself to her wearing the cloak
she had embroidered for and given to her betrothed.”
“The whole story is a highly figurative history of a war between
the Romans and Albans,” began Caput, mildly corrective. “The best
authorities are agreed that Horatii and Curatii are alike mythical.”
I should have been vexed upon any other day. Had I not seen, beyond the
fifth milestone on this very road, the tombs of the six combatants? Had
not my girlish heart stood still with awe when Rachel, as Camille, fell
dead upon the stage beneath the steel of her irate brother?
I did say—I _hope_, temperately—“Cicero was welcomed at the Porta
Capena, by the Senate and people, on his return from banishment, B. C.
57. That is, if there was ever such a man as Cicero!”
The Baths of Caracalla; the tombs of the Scipios; the Columbaria of
the Freedmen of Augustus; the Catacombs of St. Sebastian and of St.
Calixtus—are situate upon the Appian Way. Each should have its visit in
turn. Any one of them was, in speculators’ slang, “too big a thing” for
one Christmas forenoon. We were on pure pleasure bent—not in bondage
to Baedeker. A quarter of a mile from the road, still to our left, the
ground falls away into a cup-like basin, holding the Fountain of Egeria
enshrined in a grove of dark ilex-trees. A couple of miles further, and
we passed through the Gate of San Sebastian, supported by two towers
in fair preservation. We were still within the corporate limits of
Old Rome. At this gate welcoming processions from the city met those
who returned to her in triumphal pomp, or guests, to whom the Senate
decreed extraordinary honors. A little brook runs across the road at
the bottom of the next hill, and, just beyond it, is the ruined tomb of
the murdered Geta. At a fork in the highway near this is a dirty little
church, set down so close to the road that the mud from passing wheels
has spattered the front. Here, according to the legend, Peter, fleeing
from Nero’s persecution, met his Lord with His face toward the city.
“Lord! whither goest Thou?” exclaimed the astonished apostle.
“I go to Rome to be again crucified!” answered the Master.
Peter, taking the vision as a token that he should not shrink from
martyrdom, returned to Rome.
The chapel—it is nothing more—of “Domine quo vadis” commemorates the
interview. We stepped from the carriage upon the broken threshold, and
tried the locked door. A priest as slovenly as the building unclosed
it. Directly opposite the entrance is a plaster cast of Michael
Angelo’s statue of Our Saviour in the act of addressing Peter. The
foot extended in the forward step has been almost kissed away by
pilgrims. On the right wall is a fresh and flashy, yet graphic fresco
of the Lord, walking swiftly toward Rome; upon the left kneels the
conscience-smitten Peter. Between them, upon the floor, secured by
a grating from the abrading homage of the vulgar, is a copy of the
footprints left upon the rock at the spot where the meeting took place.
The original is in the church of San Sebastiano. The marble is stained
with yellowish blotches. The impression is coarsely cut; the conception
is yet coarser. Two brawny, naked feet, enormous in size, plebeian
in shape, are set squarely and straight, side by side, as no living
man would stand of his own accord. The impudence of these priestly
relics would be contemptible only, were the subjects less sacred.
We turned away from the “fac-simile” in sad disgust. The legend had
been a favorite with us both. We were sorry we had entered the mouldy
little barn. The offer of the sacristan to sell us beads, medals, and
photographs was in keeping with the rest of the show. We gave him a
franc; plucked from the cracked door-stone a bit of pellitory—_herba
parietina_, the sobriquet given to Trajan in derision of his habit of
writing his name upon much which he had not built—and returned to our
carriage.
The way is bordered, until one reaches the tomb of Cæcilia Metella by
vineyard and meadow walls. Most of the stones used in building these
were collected from the ancient pavement, or the _débris_ of fortresses
and tombs that encumbered this. Imbedded in the mortar, and often
defaced by clots and daubs of it, put in beside common rubble-stones
and sherds of tufa, are many sculptured fragments. Here, the corner of
a richly-carved capital projects from the surface; there, a cluster of
flowers, with a serpent stealing out of sight among the leaves. Now, a
baby’s head laughs between lumps of travertine or granite; next comes a
part of a gladiator’s arm, or the curve of a woman’s neck. The ivy is
luxuriantly aggressive and of a species we had never seen elsewhere,
gemmed with glossy, saffron-colored berries. “Wee, crimson-tippéd”
daisies mingled with grass that is never sere. In March we found
anemones of every hue; pink and white cyclamen; wild violets, at once
diffusive and retentive of odor, embalming gloves, handkerchiefs, and
the much-thumbed leaves of our guide-books; reddish-brown wall-flowers,
and hosts of other “wild” blossoms on this road. The dwelling-houses we
passed were rude, slight huts, hovels of reeds and straw, often reared
upon the foundation of a tomb.
For this Way of Triumph was also the Street of Tombs. Sepulchres, or
their ruins, are scattered on every side. We looked past them, where
there occurred a break in the road-wall over the billowing Campagna,
the arches of ancient and modern aqueducts dwindling into cobweb-lines
in the hazy distance; above them at the Sabine and Alban hills, newly
capped with snow, while Spring smiled warmly upon the plains at their
base. We alighted at the best-known of these homes of the dead, not
many of which hold the ashes that gave them names.
Hawthorne describes it in touches few and masterly. “It is built of
great blocks of hewn stone on a vast square foundation of rough,
agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the other
ruinous tombs. But, whatever might be the cause, it is in a far
better state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rise the
battlements of a mediæval fortress, out of the midst of which grow
trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman has
become the dungeon-keep of a castle, and all the care that Cæcilia
Metella’s husband could bestow to secure endless peace for her belovèd
relics only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus
of battles long ages after her death.”
The powerful family of the Gaetani added the battlements that tooth
the top of the enormous tower, when they made it their château and
fortress in the thirteenth century. The ruins of their church are close
to the walls. We paid a trifling fee for the privilege of entering the
court-yard of the Tomb where there was nothing to see, and for peeping
into the ruinous cellar, once the “cave” where “treasure lay, so
locked, so hid”—the sarcophagus about which all these stone swathings
were wound as layers of silk and wool about a costly jewel. The empty
marble coffin is in a Roman museum. A public-spirited pope ripped off
the sculptured casing of the exterior that he might build the Fountain
of Trevi. It would be as futile to seek for this woman’s ashes as for
those of Wickliffe after the Avon had carried them out to sea.
The dreary road-walls terminate here, but the survey of the tombs
diverts the attention from the views of Campagna and mountains. They
must have formed an almost continuous block of buildings for miles.
The foundations may be traced still, and about these are remnants of
the statues and symbolic ornaments that gave them individuality and
beauty. The figure which occurred most frequently was that of a man in
the dress of a Roman citizen, the arm laid over the breast to hold the
toga in place and fold. Most of the heads were missing, and usually
the legs, but the torso had always character, sometimes beauty, in it.
There were hundreds of them here once, probably mounted sentinel-wise
at the doors of the tombs, changeless effigies of men who had been, who
were now a pinch of dust, preserved in a sealed urn for fear the wind
might take them away.
There is a so-called “restored” tomb near the “fourth mile-stone.” A
bas-relief, representing a murder, is let into a brick façade.
“The tomb of Seneca!” said our _cocchière_, confidently.
“Dubious!” commented the genius of wary common sense upon the front
seat. “If he _was_ put to death by Nero’s officers near the fourth
mile-stone, is it probable that he was interred on the spot?”
The driver held to his assertion, and I got out to pick daisies and
violets growing in the shelter of the ugly red-brick front—there was
no back,—souvenirs that lie to-day, faded but fragrant, between the
leaves of my Baedeker. Nearly opposite to the round heaps of turf-grown
rubbish with solid basement walls, “supposed to be the tombs of the
Horatii and Curatii,” across the road and a field, are the ruins of
the Villa of Commodus. He wrested this pleasant country-seat from two
brothers, who were the Naboths of the coveted possession. Conduits have
been dug out from the ruins, stamped with their names, and convicting
him mutely but surely of the theft charged upon him by contemporaries.
He and his favorite Marcia were sojourning here when the house was
“mobbed” by a deputation, several thousand in number, sent from Rome
to call him to account for his misdeeds. He pacified them measurably
by throwing from an upper window the head of Cleander, his obnoxious
premier, and beating out the brains of that official’s child. The
Emperor’s Coliseum practice made such an evening’s work a mere
bagatelle.
Six miles from Rome is the Rotondo, believed to have been the family
mausoleum of a poet-friend of Horace, Massala Corvinus. It is
larger than the tomb of the “wealthiest Roman’s wife,” but not so
well-preserved. A miserable wine-shop was in the court-yard, and we
paid the mistress half-a-franc for permission to mount a flight of
easy steps to the summit. Upon the flat roof, formed by the flooring
of the upper story, the walls of which are half gone, olive-trees have
taken root and overhang the sides. The eye swept the Campagna for
miles, followed the Via Appia, stretched like a white ribbon between
grassy slopes and sepulchre-ruins, back into Rome and onward to Albano.
A faintly-tinged haze brought the mountains nearer, instead of hiding
them—purpled the thymy dells between the swells of the far-reaching
prairies. Flocks of sheep browsed upon these, attended by shepherds and
dogs. A party of English riders cantered by from Rome, the blue habit
and scarlet plume of the only lady equestrian made conspicuous by the
white road and green banks. Near and far, the course of the ancient
highway was defined by masses of masonry in ruins, some overgrown
by herbs, vines, and even trees, but most of them naked to the sun
and wind. These have not been the destroyers of the tombs. On the
contrary, the uncovered foundations are hardened by the action of the
elements, until bricks are as unyielding as solid marble and cement is
like flint. Nature and neglect are co-workers, whose operations upon
buildings raised by man, are far less to be feared in this than in
Northern climates. The North, that let loose her brutish hordes upon a
land so much fairer than their own that their dull eyes could not be
tempted by her beauty except to wanton devastation. They were grown-up
children who battered the choicest and most delicate objects for the
pleasure of seeing and hearing the crash.
“Some day,” said Caput, wistful lights in the eyes that looked far away
to where the road lost itself in the blue hills—“Some day, I mean to
drive all the way to the Appii Forum, and follow St. Paul’s track back
to the city.”
He brought out his pocket Testament, and, amid the broken walls, the
shadows of the olive-boughs flickering upon the page, we read how
the Great Apostle longed to “see Rome,” yet knowing that bonds and
imprisonment awaited him wherever he went—the Rome he was never to quit
as a free man, and where he was to leave a multitude of witnesses to
his fidelity and the living power of the Gospel, of which he was an
ambassador in bonds. Thence we passed to the few words describing his
journey and reception:
“We came the next day unto Puteoli, where we found brethren, and were
desired to tarry with them seven days. And so we went toward Rome. And
from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far
as Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. Whom, when Paul saw, he thanked
GOD and took courage.”
For some miles the Way has been cleared down to the ancient pavement.
It was something to see the stones over which St. Paul had walked.
We took St. Peter’s in our drive home. When one is used to the
immensity of its spaces, has accommodated his imagination comfortably
to the aisle-vistas and the height of the ceilings, St. Peter’s is the
most restful temple in Rome. The equable temperature—never cold in
winter, never hot in summer; the solemn quiet of a vastness in which
the footfalls upon the floor die away with out echo, and the sound of
organ and chant from one of the many chapels only stirs a musical throb
which never swells into reverberation; the subdued light—all contribute
to the sense of grateful tranquillity that allures one to frequent
visits and slow, musing promenades within the magnificent Basilica.
Madame de Staël says in one line what others have failed to express in
pages of labored rhetoric:
“_L’Architecture de St. Pierre est une musique fixée._”
Listening with all our souls, we strolled up one side of the church
past the bronze Image, in appearance more Fetish than saint. A statue
of Jupiter was melted down to make it. The frown of the Thunderer still
contracts the brows that seem to find the round of glory, spoked like
a wheel, too heavy. The projecting toe, often renewed, bright as a new
brass kettle from the attrition of kisses, rests upon a pedestal five
feet, at least, from the floor. Men can conveniently touch it with
their lips. Short women stand on tiptoe, and children are lifted to it.
Each wipes it carefully before kissing, a ceremony made necessary by a
popular trick of the Roman _gamins_. They watch their chance to anoint
the holy toe with damp red pepper, then hide behind a column to note
the effect of the next osculation. At the Jubilee of Pius IX., June 16,
1871, they dressed the hideous black effigy in pontifical vestments,
laced and embroidered to the last degree of gorgeousness, and fastened
the cope of cloth-of-gold with a diamond brooch!
The _baldacchino_, or canopy, built above the high altar and
overshadowing the tomb of St. Peter, is of gilded bronze that once
covered the roof of the Pantheon,—another example of popely thrift.
Beneath, yawns an open crypt, lined with precious marbles and gained by
marble stairs. Upon the encompassing balustrade above is a circle of
ever-burning golden lamps, eighty-six in number. Pius VI. (in marble by
Canova) kneels forever, as he requested in his will, before the closed
door of St. Peter’s tomb, below.
“I wish I could believe that Peter’s bones are there!” Caput broke a
long thought-laden pause, given to silent gazing upon the kneeling
form. “Roman Catholic historians say that an oratory was erected here
above his remains, A.D. 90. The circus of Nero was hereabouts. The
chapel was in honor of the thousands who died a martyr’s death in his
reign, as well as to mark the spot of Peter’s burial. In the days of
Constantine, a Basilica superseded the humble chapel, at which date St.
Peter’s bones were encased in a bronze sarcophagus. Five hundred years
afterward, the Saracens plundered the Basilica. Did they take Peter—if
he were ever here—or in Rome at all? Or, did they spare his bones
when they carried off the gilt-bronze coffin and inner casket of pure
silver?”
Another silence.
“The Basilica and tomb were here when English Ethelwolf brought his boy
Alfred to Rome,” I said aloud.
“But the Popes did their will upon it afterward. Pulled down and built
up at the bidding of caprice and architects until not one of the
original stones was left upon another. After two centuries of this sort
of work—or play—the present church was planned and was one hundred and
seventy-odd years in building. I hope Peter’s bones were cared for in
the squabble. I should like to believe it!”
We looked for a long minute more at the praying pope. _He_ believed it
so much as to desire to kneel there, with clasped hands and bowed head,
awaiting through the coming cycles the opening of the sealèd door.
Wanderings in and out of stately chapels ensued, until we had enough of
dead popes, marble and bronze.
The surname of Pope Pignatella, signifying “little cream-jug,”
suggested to the sculptor the neat conceit of mingling sundry
cream-pots with other ornaments of his tomb.
Gregory XIII., he of the Gregorian calendar, is an aged man, invoking
the benediction of Heaven upon whomsoever it may concern, while Wisdom,
as Minerva, and Faith hold a tablet inscribed—“_Novi opera hujus et
fidem_.”
Urban VIII., the patron of Bernini, is almost forgiven by those who
have sickened over the countless and cruel devices of his _protégé_
when one beholds his master-piece of absurdity in his sovereign’s tomb.
The pontiff, in the popular attitude of benediction, towers above the
black marble coffin, in charge of Prudence and Justice,—the drapery of
the latter evidently a decorous afterthought,—while a very airy gilded
skeleton is writing, with a _dégagé_ air, the names and titles of Urban
upon an obituary list. The Barberini bees crawl over the monument, as
busily officious and in as bad taste as was Bernini himself.
Pius VII., the prisoner-Pope of Napoleon I., is there—a mild old man,
looking as if he had suffered and forgiven much—sitting dreamily, or
drowsily, in a chair, and kept in countenance by Courage and Faith.
Innocent VIII. sleeps, like a tired man, upon his sarcophagus, while
his animated Double is enthroned above it, one hand, of course,
extended in blessing, the other holding a copy of the sacred lance that
pierced the Saviour’s side, presented to him by Bajazet, and by the
pope to St. Peter’s.
More interesting to us than these and the tiresome array of the many
other pontifical and prelatical personages, was the arch near the
front door of the Basilica, which covers the remains of the last of
the Stuarts. Canova carved the memorial-stone of James III. (the
Pretender), his sons, Charles Edward (the Young Pretender), and
Henry, who,—with desperate fidelity worthy of a better cause, wearied
out by the successive failures and misfortunes of his race,—gave
himself wholly to the Church, devotion to which had cost his father
independence, happiness, and England. Henry Stuart died, as we read
here, Cardinal York. Marie Clementine Sobieski, wife of James III.,
named upon the tablet, “Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland,”
who never set foot within the British Empire,—completes the family
group. It is said the expenses of these testimonials were defrayed by
the then reigning House of Hanover. It could well afford to do it.
In a chapel at the left of the entrance is a mammoth font of dark-red
porphyry which has a remarkable—I can hardly say, in view of cognate
facts—a singular history. It is the inverted cover of Hadrian’s
sarcophagus. Having rested within its depths longer than his life had
entitled him to do, this Emperor was ejected and Otho III. took his
place. In due season, a pope of a pious and practical turn of mind
ousted Otho, and transferred the lid of the coffin to its present
place. The bronze fir-cone from the top of the mausoleum of Hadrian,
now the Castle of San Angelo, is a prominent ornament in the gardens of
the Vatican. Near it are two bronze peacocks, the birds of Juno, from
the porch of the same edifice.
“Entirely and throughout consistent,” said Caput, caustically.
“I beg your pardon! Did you address me, sir?” asked a startled voice.
The Traveling American was upon us. Pater Familias, moreover, to the
sanguine young people who had attacked systematically, Baedeker, Murray
and Forbes in hand—the opposite chapel, the gem of which is Michael
Angelo’s _Pietà_—the Dead Christ upon his mother’s knees. We recognized
our interlocutor. A very worthy gentleman, an enterprising and opulent
citizen of the New World, whom we had met, last week, in the _salon_
of a friend. He was making, he had informed a listening circle,
“the grand Eu_ro_pean tour for the third time, now, for educational
purposes, having brought his boys and girls along. A thing few of our
country-people have money and brains to undertake!”
“I was saying”—explained Caput, “that the Popes have done more toward
the destruction of the monuments of pagan Rome than barbarians and
centuries combined. I lose patience and temper when I see what they
have ‘consecrated’ to the use of their Church. Vandalism is an insipid
word to employ in this connection.”
Pater Familias put out one foot; lifted a hortatory hand.
“I have learned to cast such considerations behind me, sir!
Anachronisms do not trouble me. Nor solecisms, except in artistic
execution. I travel with a purpose—that of self-improvement and the
foundation, in the bosoms of my family, of true principles of art,
the cultivation of the instinct of the beautiful in their souls and
in mine. Despising the statistical, and, to a certain degree, the
historical, as things of slight moment, I rise into the region of
the purely æsthetic. For example:” The hortatory hand pointed to the
opposite arch, within which is a gorgeous modern copy, in mosaic, of
Raphael’s “Transfiguration.” “For example, pointing to that inimitable
masterpiece, I say to my children—‘Do not examine into the ingredients
of the pigments staining the canvas, nor criticise, anatomically, the
structure of the figures. But catch, if you can, the spirit and tone of
the whole composition. Behold, recognize, and make your own the very
soul and mood, the inspiration of _Michael Angelo_!’”
Caput drew out his watch.
“Do you know, my dear,” he said, plaintively, “that it is an hour past
our luncheon-time?”
At the bottom of the gentle incline leading from the church-door into
the wide Piazza di San Piétro, we stopped for breath and composure.
Caput grew serious in turning to survey the façade of the Basilica,
with the guard of saints and their Master upon the balustrade; the
Dome, light in semblance as the clouds swimming in summer languor
above it, strong as Soracte; the sweep of the colonnades to the right
and left, “with the holy ones walking upon their roofs;” the Obelisk of
Heliopolis in the centre of the Court and its flashing fountains—the
heaven of rich, tender blue—
“That man has crossed the ocean three times to behold all this!” he
said. “He can bring his rabble of children to see it with him. While
men who could enter the arcana of whose mysteries he prattles; to whom
the life he is leading would be like a walk through Paradise—are tied
down to desk and drugs and country parishes! That these things exist is
a tough problem!”
We told the story, leaving the pathetic enigma out of sight, over our
Christmas-dinner, that evening. My Florentine angel of mercy, her
brothers and sister, were our guests. Mince and pumpkin pies were
not to be thought of, much less obtained here. But our Italian cook
had under my eye, stuffed and roasted a turkey, the best we could
buy in the poultry-shop just around the corner from the Pantheon. I
did not spoil my friends’ appetites by describing the manner of its
“taking-off” which may, however, interest poultry-fanciers. I wanted
a larger bird than any displayed by the turkey-vender, and he bade me
return in fifteen minutes, when he would have just what I desired.
We gave half an hour to a ramble around the square surrounding the
Pantheon, the most nearly perfect pagan building in Rome. Urban VIII.
abstracted nearly five hundred thousand pounds of gilt bronze from
portico and dome, to be wrought into the twisted columns of St. Peter’s
baldacchino, and into cannon for the defence of that refuge for scared
and hunted popes—the Castle of San Angelo. In recompense for the
liberty he had taken with the Temple of all the Gods, he added, by
the hand of his obsequious architect, the comical little towers like
mustard-pots, known to the people as the “asses’ ears of Bernini.”
Another pope, one of the Benedicts, offered no apology in word or deed,
for pulling off the rare old marbles facing the inner side of the dome,
and using them for the adornment of churches and palaces.
But to our turkey! The merchant had him well in hand when we got back.
He had tied a stout twine tightly around the creature’s neck, and while
it died by slow strangulation, held it fast between his knees and
stripped off the feathers from the palpitating body. All our fowls came
to us with this twine necklace knotted about the gullet, and all had a
trick of shrinking unaccountably in cooking.
“He is a-swellin’ wisibly before my eyes!” quoted Caput from the elder
Weller, as we gazed, horror-stricken, upon the operation.
The merchant laughed—the sweet, childish laugh of the Italian of
whatever rank, that showed his snowy teeth and brought sparkle to his
black eyes.
“Altro?” he said. “_Buono? Bon?_ Signora like ’im mooch?”
I tried not to remember how little I _had_ liked it when my guests
praised the brown, fat bird.
Canned cranberries and tomatoes we had purchased from Brown, the polite
English grocer in Via della Croce, who makes a specialty of “American
goods.” Nazzari, the Incomparable (in Rome), furnished the dessert.
Soup, fish, and some of the vegetables were essentially Italian, and
none the worse on that account.
There was a strange commingling and struggle of pain and pleasure in
that “make-believe” Christmas-at-home in a foreign land. It was a
new and fantastically-wrought link in a golden chain that ran back
until lost in the misty brightness of infancy. We gathered about
our parlor-fire, for which we had, with some difficulty, procured
a Yule-log of respectable dimensions; talked of loved and distant
ones and other days; said, with heart and tongue, “Heaven bless the
country we love the best, and the friends who, to-night, remember us
as we think of them!” We told funny stories, all we could remember, in
which the Average Briton and Traveling American figured conspicuously.
We laughed amiably at each other’s jokes. We planned days and weeks
of sight-seeing and excursions, waxed enthusiastic over the wealth
of Roman ruins, and declared ourselves more than satisfied with the
experiment of trans-ocean travel.
We were, or should be, on the morrow.
Now, between the eyes of our spirit and the storied riches of this
sunbright elysium, the Italia of kings, consuls, emperors, and
popes, glided visions of ice-bound rivers and snow-clad hills—of
red firesides and jocund frolic, and clan-gatherings, from near and
from far—of Christmas stockings, and Christmas trees, and Christmas
greetings—of ringing skates, making resonant moonlit nights, and the
tintinnabulations of sleigh-bells—of silent grave-yards, where the snow
was lying spotless and smooth.
Beneath laugh and jest, and graver talk of visions fulfilled, and
projects for future enjoyment—underlying all these was a slow-heaving
main, hardly repressed—an indefinable, yet exquisite, heart-ache very
far down.