Irene’s first impression on arriving in Rome was one of disappointment.
Her imagination was impregnated with visions of the Roman Forum, of proud
Romans in togas, of fighting gladiators, of the splendour of the Emperors
and the dazzling luxury of the papal court. What wonder, then, if she
almost resented the many-storied houses, the shops, the tramways, and the
prosaic crowd in its ugly, contemporary attire?
Her disappointment, however, was only transitory, and in spite of her
depressed and gloomy state of mind, the magic charm of Rome soon won
the day over her low spirits. It is always, indeed, difficult for a
northerner to resist the sparkling and effervescent sense of gaiety which
awakens in his heart under the rays of the southern sun.
At first, only the mediæval portion of the town absorbed and attracted
Irene. She spent days in wandering through labyrinths of narrow, dirty,
unpaved streets, where people, horses, donkeys, tramways, and bicycles
moved along, an apparently inextricable mass, in the uneven roadway. She
felt sad and sick at heart at sight of the miserable dwellings—rather
hovels than houses—in which, till the present day, the poor of Rome
find shelter. What a contrast between these wretched abodes and the
magnificence of the neighbouring Palazzos, with their splendid courtyards
and marble colonnades enclosing little gardens overgrown with palms and
orange-trees! Even the luxury of the Palazzos, however, depressed Irene.
Her mind wandered back to the Middle Ages, and it seemed to her that
she had found the key to all the cruelty and injustice of those dark,
bygone days. How could kindness and honour and mercy flourish in such
gloomy palaces, in such dismal narrow alleys where God’s sunlight never
penetrated? No wonder, indeed, if humanity, having at last thrown off
the mediæval régime, hastened, immediately after the French Revolution,
to escape from these labyrinths of dark and crooked alleys, and invented
a new type of towns, whose streets were broad and flooded with sunshine.
The only bright spots that relieved, to Irene, the gloom of mediæval
Rome, were the Piazzas, with their gorgeous fountains. Here was the best
place for observing the Roman crowd, a crowd always interesting and
characteristic, even though robbed, in these days, of its picturesque
national costume.
There is a woman, hatless and coatless, in spite of the cold winter’s
day, sitting by the fountain with a child in her arms, drawing water and
finishing her _bambino’s_ toilet in the open air. Opposite her, on the
doorstep of someone’s house, a young carpenter is resting, having left
the new table he was carrying to a customer in the middle of the road, in
everyone’s way. The slight frown on his pink, dirty face distinctly says:
“Gone are the good old times! Where are the bandits that used to hide
among the ruins of the Campagna, and receive with open arms fellows like
me, who love a gay, careless life, and have no mission for hard work?”
His brothers in spirit, healthy, happy, lazy, young scamps, are
loitering about the Piazza, with boxes of cheap mosaic trinkets, smiling
caressingly at passing Englishwomen, and saucily offering them their
goods: “Des mosaïques, madame? Très jolies et pas chères!” There is a
passing _vetturino_ (cabman) raising his finger, and gazing fixedly at
the _forestiere_ (foreigner), implying with look and gesture an obliging
readiness to drive him to the end of the earth. Leaning against a column,
there stands the plague of contemporary Rome: a middle-aged guide, with
the face of a benevolent old father who has had no luck in life. He is
muffled up in a brightly coloured scarf, and with a massive walking-stick
in his hand, he lingers beside a historical monument and awaits his
victim, the next unsuspecting and simple passing tourist. He stares
gloomily at a crowd of shrieking street urchins, who have just emerged
from a neighbouring alley. They are supposed to be selling newspapers,
but actually they are eternally fighting, rolling in the dust, throwing
about and soiling the newly printed journals. They are dispersed and
driven away with a stick by a tall, bent old man, picturesquely draped
in an enormous grey cloth cloak with a fur collar. This garment the old
man has dragged as a remembrance from the shoulders of a late faithful
lodger, recently deceased at an extreme old age. The inconsolable
landlord is going to a _festa_, one of those solemn Masses, with a
Cardinal officiating, which are celebrated almost every day in one or
other of Rome’s innumerable churches. Behind his indescribably dirty
ear, that has never been washed since his birth, he has tucked a red
carnation, as a sign of respect to the saint whose memory he is going to
honour.
Suddenly, a group of wandering musicians show themselves on the Piazza.
One plays the violin, another blows a trumpet, while a third, in a
broken top-hat and a rusty overcoat, sings _canzonettas_, and dances.
Immediately, a crowd collects. At all the open windows appear signoras
with black eyes and raven tresses, pushing away with their hands the
rags hung out to dry. They are all laughing and screaming and chattering,
they are all happy. This is still the same pleasure-loving ancient-Roman
crowd, living more in the street than at home, and revelling in anything
in the nature of a pageant. Arrange a gladiator’s fight to-morrow in the
Colosseum, and they will all rush to the spot, and applaud the victor as
passionately as ever did their ancestors.
Sometimes these Piazzas are the scenes of antiquarian markets. Light
wooden booths are erected for the sale of old cassocks and other priestly
vestments, pieces of material, embroideries, lace, old brooches,
bracelets, fans, candlesticks in the shape of antique lamps, books
printed on faded yellow parchment, pictures, and statuettes. All this is
bought up fast and feverishly by Englishwomen and Americans, whom the
wily Romans deceive in the most ungodly manner.
On one such occasion, Irene, to her cost, asked the price of a piece
of lace. The vendor, having asked a hundred lire, followed her twice
round the Piazza, lowering his price at each step, and setting out in
detail all the tragic circumstances that were forcing him to part with
such a treasure. He had received the lace as a present from the Marquise
Abrakadabra-Abrakadabrini. This highly aristocratic name was undoubtedly
familiar to the signora? His “mamma” had been the wet-nurse of the young
Marchesina, so that he, Beppo, was her foster-brother. He had hoped to
mend his fortunes for life by selling this priceless lace, but poverty
(he spoke with great pathos, tragically smiting his chest)—poverty,
signora, was obliging him to act hurriedly, and to abandon his last hope.
At least, he had the one consolation of knowing that this family treasure
was falling into the hands of such a sympathetic signora—“_Look out!_” he
screamed suddenly, clutching hold of the shafts of a cab that threatened
to run them over. He was only too happy to have been able to render the
signora two services: first, that of saving her life, since, but for his
intervention, the _vetturino_ would undoubtedly have run over her; and
second, that of selling her, for a song, a priceless piece of lace, in
which the signora would look as beautiful as a queen.
When he had dropped his price from a hundred lire to twenty, Irene, only
too anxious to be rid of her irksome follower, paid him, and hurried
away with her purchase, for which she had not only lost all interest,
but which she by that time positively detested. On her return home, she
showed it to the landlord of her _pension_. He shook his head pityingly,
twirled his finger in front of his nose, smacked his lips, and announced
that “la pauvre signorina a été volée comme dans un bois.”
Irene began to think that old, mediæval Rome had bewitched her. On many
occasions, she started out with the intention of visiting some museum or
picture gallery, but always it was as if some magic power was drawing
her towards those dingy streets, with their stench and their dirt, and
their smell of cookery, where the poor of Rome were preparing their
unceremonious dinners out-of-doors. Perhaps, indeed, she may have felt
that there was something in common between those gloomy localities and
her own joyless life.
She was greatly attracted by one grim-looking palace, situated at a
particularly dingy, dirty spot, in the neighbourhood of the Ghetto.
A terrible deed had once been perpetrated in this palace. Its owner,
that famous Cenci, so noted for his depravity, had fallen in love with
Beatrice, the daughter of his first marriage, and persecuted her with
his shameful desires. The whole family rose against the mad old villain,
and, under the influence of her brothers and her step-mother, Beatrice
poisoned her father. The crime was discovered, Beatrice was imprisoned,
made a full confession, and was executed.
Having heard by chance that a famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci, the work
of Guido Reni, is preserved at the Palazzo Barberini, Irene went to see
it. She expected to see a queenly, tragic beauty, and found, instead, a
simple girl, almost a child, in the very springtime of life—an innocent
young soul to whom love and passion can as yet have had no meaning. The
artist has represented her in prison, dressed in the white prisoners’
attire. Her little face is worn and drawn through sleepless nights, her
beautiful eyes are red with tears, her little childish lips are swollen,
just as all children’s lips are swollen when they cry. The whole touching
little face seemed to say quite clearly: “Yes—I am a criminal! Everyone
tells me that I must pay for my crime with my life; that I must leave
the lovely world that I love so much, leave the sunshine and the birds
and the flowers, and go away into a cold tomb. What can I do? I have no
strength to protest! But you, who will live instead of me, do not curse
poor Beatrice! Love her! Pity her!”
Irene’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at this martyred child, and
she hid her face under her veil to hide her emotion. Other visitors to
the Palazzo Barberini were also weeping and trying to conceal their tears.
“You are revenged, little Beatrice!” thought Irene. “Thousands are
weeping at your sad fate, and are cursing your tyrants.”
Irene soon became known in her _pension_ as the tourist who had been
living in Rome for three months and had not seen the Forum. All the
Englishwomen in the house, deeply shocked at this omission, persuaded,
implored, and at last forcibly dragged her there. From that moment,
the charms of the mediæval city vanished for her, and she lost herself
entirely in the antique world.
The weather was warm and sunny. The colossal walls of ruined ancient
palaces and shrines, that must surely have been built for giants, stood
out in relief against the blue sky. The silence was intense, the Roman
season had not yet begun. Unknown crowds of English travellers had not
yet descended from the Swiss mountains, nor sailed across the waters
from Egypt. Irene felt quite at home among the ruins. She wandered for
days among the ruins of the Forum and the Palatine, trying to imagine
the life of the past, when the sun shone down not on the crumbling
stones before her but on a world of glistening marble and pagan luxury;
when the immense sculptured gods, sheltered at present in the galleries
of the Vatican, rose on their pedestals high above the heads of the
gorgeous crowd with its classic draperies and its garlands of flowers,
worshipping, offering sacrifices, burning incense. What a beautiful, gay,
triumphant picture! Why did it all end? What could have driven these
people away from their beloved green hills, down to the unhealthy banks
of the Tiber and those dirty, dark alleys? And why are people now in
their turn moving away from these alleys and returning to the hills and
the sunshine, and a new, healthier life?
For the first time the thought occurred to Irene that the world, like
each individual human being, must gradually pass through all the
different periods of life. First, the early years, with their faltering
steps and their uncertain memory. Then, at about five years old, the
beginning of gay, happy, early childhood, white raiment, crowns and
garlands and flowers, dance and song and laughter and summer-time. Dolls
are indispensable at this age—modelled of clay, hewn out of stone,
carved in wood, at first very primitive and clumsy like those of the
Egyptians, then always more and more lifelike, and finally perfected by
the Greeks. And like a child who, having made itself a rag doll, takes it
seriously and endows it with all sorts of qualities, so the Greeks and
Romans place the gods they have made on pedestals, and call them Jupiter
the terrible, Venus the passionate, Amor the little rogue, Minerva the
wise, etc.
They dance around their gods with the careless gaiety of childhood; they
love gorgeous processions, banquets, chariot-racing, and gladiators’
fights for life or death, upon which they look with laughter, since pity
is to them, as to all children, a thing unknown.
But time passes, and the child grows older. New ideas and requirements
awaken in him; games and gaiety lose their interest. He grows pensive,
pale, and thin, and he feels the need of suffering and tears. Irene
remembered how, at the age of seven, she had suddenly experienced a
great desire to fast during all the seven weeks of Lent. Pale, fragile
child as she had been, such privation had weakened her terribly; but
incredible as it may seem, with a strength gleaned Heaven knows from
where, she had actually held out to the end! She remembered also certain
religious pilgrimages in the small provincial town, near which she had
sometimes passed the summer with her father. Many a time in the torrid
heat of a sultry July day had she walked for four or five hours through
clouds of dust, along a rough, uneven road, in a procession behind an
ikon, returning home half dead with fatigue, but unable to sleep, through
sheer religious exaltation. Her thoughts, too, wandered back to the
neighbouring convent, whither she had often gone to pray, and where,
having attended vespers, she had sometimes stood through the whole night
in prayer, soaring on the wings of a religious ecstasy, and feeling no
fatigue. Her young soul had needed these raptures, fasts, and prayers.
It had needed also the food of legends, and the more wonderful, the more
supernatural these legends the dearer had they grown to her imagination.
Her mind had acknowledged no logic, and had needed none.
Did not the same thing happen to the world in the Middle Ages, that
period of Humanity’s later childhood? Christianity, or rather its
rites and ceremonies (since its real meaning was unattainable to
these children), was accepted with enthusiasm, because these rites
and ceremonies exactly answered the requirements of the age: ecstasy,
martyrdom, torture rapturously borne, naïve and lovely legends. Humanity
would have no more of dolls and toys, and wrathfully destroyed the
statues of the gods. Later on, in more recent times, those same people
tenderly and lovingly collected the broken fragments of the statues and
preserved them in their museums as cherished remembrances of childhood.
It is thus that a grown-up man will pay a large sum for a broken doll, or
for a faded coloured print that amused him in his early days.
Just as modelling is the heritage of babyhood, so painting is the delight
of childhood. First come naïve little drawings, like the work of the
Primitives, in which the figures of saints of high religious rank are
made twice as large as those of their inferiors, or like the pictures of
Perugino and his school, in which the infant Christ is depicted wearing a
coral ornament similar to those put round the necks of Italian children
to save them from the evil eye!
Day by day, art develops and grows more perfect, reaching its apotheosis
almost simultaneously in all the countries of Europe. Yet in all their
magnificence and perfection, something naïve and childlike remains even
in the works of the great masters. They draw pictures from the life of
Christ, for instance, with background and accessories of the Middle Ages.
They represent some Pope in all his Catholic vestments and with his papal
tiara kneeling humbly before the Virgin, with the Child in her arms. They
are not in the least disturbed by the thought that if a Roman Pope exists
at all, it is only because this Christ Child grew up, and because His
Apostles founded the Church. Their childish mind does not occupy itself
with such contradictions, and Michael Angelo gives to the world his
famous Pièta, a magnificent marble group, in which the Virgin Mother is
younger than her Son.
The defenceless child, unable to revenge himself on his tyrants and
tormentors, loves to console himself with dreams of how the Divine
Power—God and His angels, the Archangel Michael with a sword in his
hand—will descend from heaven to help him. The wicked will be burnt in
hell, and he, the offended and insulted one, will receive his reward in
Paradise. Had he not this dream and this consolation, life would indeed
be too heavy a burden.
But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on the
threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School has
taught him but little—a few facts and some elementary information. But
he has learnt to reason logically, and to examine the solid foundations
on which the world rests. He begins to apply his logic to everything,
and when he approaches religion, doubt trembles in his soul. The absurd
improbability of the legends of the Middle Ages disgusts him, and at the
same time he is obsessed by the fear of remaining without a religion, a
fear which has been inculcated into his mind by his entire upbringing.
Calm and cold-blooded people think it all out, and become confirmed
Atheists. Not so, however, those others with fervent, burning souls!
Poor Tolstoy, in the wrath of his old age, destroys and insults the
very elements on which he has founded and formed his life, and, having
insulted them, goes to church as before, prays humbly among beggars,
throws himself into a monastery, and dies of despair on the highway.
How many such martyrs are there in our days! With tears and sobs they
fall on their knees, stretch forth their hands to Heaven, and cry from
the depths of their souls: “God! show me some miracle that I may again
believe in Thee! It is only through Thy wonders and miracles worked in
the early days of Christianity that people turned to Thee and believed.
Why were these early Christians dearer to Thee than I? I love thee; it
is hard for me to tear myself away from Thee! A miracle, a miracle, I
beseech Thee! I will then believe _anything_, even what is against all
reason and logic—only come to my help I implore Thee! Give me a sign or a
miracle!”
But there are no more miracles, and death and despair enter like iron
into the soul of the sufferer.