The rage of speculation was at its height in Rome. Thousands, perhaps
hundreds of thousands of persons were embarked in enterprises which soon
afterwards ended in total ruin to themselves and in very serious injury
to many of the strongest financial bodies in the country. Yet it is a
fact worth recording that the general principle upon which affairs were
conducted was an honest one. The land was a fact, the buildings put up
were facts, and there was actually a certain amount of capital, of
genuine ready money, in use. The whole matter can be explained in a few
words.
The population of Rome had increased considerably since the Italian
occupation, and house-room was needed for the newcomers. Secondly, the
partial execution of the scheme for beautifying the city had destroyed
great numbers of dwellings in the most thickly populated parts, and more
house-room was needed to compensate the loss of habitations, while
extensive lots of land were suddenly set free and offered for sale upon
easy conditions in all parts of the town.
Those who availed themselves of these opportunities before the general
rush began, realised immense profits, especially when they had some
capital of their own to begin with. But capital was not indispensable. A
man could buy his lot on credit; the banks were ready to advance him
money on notes of hand, in small amounts at high interest, wherewith to
build his house or houses. When the building was finished the bank took
a first mortgage upon the property, the owner let the house, paid the
interest on the mortgage out of the rent and pocketed the difference, as
clear gain. In the majority of eases it was the bank itself which sold
the lot of land to the speculator. It is clear therefore that the only
money which actually changed hands was that advanced in small sums by
the bank itself.
As the speculation increased, the banks could not of course afford to
lock up all the small notes of hand they received from various quarters.
This paper became a circulating medium as far as Vienna, Paris and even
London. The crash came when Vienna, Paris and London lost faith in the
paper, owing, in the first instance, to one or two small failures, and
returned it upon Rome; the banks, unable to obtain cash for it at any
price, and being short of ready money, could then no longer discount the
speculator's further notes of hand; so that the speculator found himself
with half-built houses upon his hands which he could neither let, nor
finish, nor sell, and owing money upon bills which he had expected to
meet by giving the bank a mortgage on the now valueless property.
That is what took place in the majority of cases, and it is not
necessary to go into further details, though of course chance played all
the usual variations upon the theme of ruin.
What distinguishes the period of speculation in Rome from most other
manifestations of the kind in Europe is the prominent part played in it
by the old land-holding families, a number of which were ruined in wild
schemes which no sensible man of business would have touched. This was
more or less the result of recent changes in the laws regulating the
power of persons making a will.
Previous to 1870 the law of primogeniture was as much respected in Rome
as in England, and was carried out with considerably greater strictness.
The heir got everything, the other children got practically nothing but
the smallest pittance. The palace, the gallery of pictures and statues,
the lands, the villages and the castles, descended in unbroken
succession from eldest son to eldest son, indivisible in principle and
undivided in fact.
The new law requires that one half of the total property shall be
equally distributed by the testator amongst all his children. He may
leave the other half to any one he pleases, and as a matter of practice
he of course leaves it to his eldest son.
Another law, however, forbids the alienation of all collections of works
of art either wholly or in part, if they have existed as such for a
certain length of time, and if the public has been admitted daily or on
any fixed days, to visit them. It is not in the power of the Borghese,
or the Colonna, for instance, to sell a picture or a statue out of their
galleries, nor to raise money upon such an object by mortgage or
otherwise.
Yet these works of art figure at a very high valuation, in the total
property of which the testator must divide one half amongst his
children, though in point of fact they yield no income whatever. But it
is of no use to divide them, since none of the heirs could be at liberty
to take them away nor realise their value in any manner.
The consequence is, that the principal heir, after the division has
taken place, finds himself the nominal master of certain enormously
valuable possessions, which in reality yield him nothing or next to
nothing. He also foresees that in the next generation the same state of
things will exist in a far higher degree, and that the position of the
head of the family will go from bad to worse until a crisis of some kind
takes place.
Such a case has recently occurred. A certain Roman prince is bankrupt.
The sale of his gallery would certainly relieve the pressure, and would
possibly free him from debt altogether. But neither he nor his creditors
can lay a finger upon the pictures, nor raise a centime upon them. This
man, therefore, is permanently reduced to penury, and his creditors are
large losers, while he is still _de jure_ and _de facto_ the owner of
property probably sufficient to cover all his obligations. Fortunately,
he chances to be childless, a fact consoling, perhaps, to the
philanthropist, but not especially so to the sufferer himself.
It is clear that the temptation to increase "distributable" property,
if one may coin such, an expression, is very great, and accounts for the
way in which many Roman gentlemen have rushed headlong into speculation,
though possessing none of the qualities necessary for success, and only
one of the requisites, namely, a certain amount of ready money, or free
and convertible property. A few have been fortunate, while the majority
of those who have tried the experiment have been heavy losers. It cannot
be said that any one of them all has shown natural talent for finance.
Let the reader forgive these dry explanations if he can. The facts
explained have a direct bearing upon the story I am telling, but shall
not, as mere facts, be referred to again.
I have already said that Ugo Del Ferice had returned to Rome soon after
the change, had established himself with his wife, Donna Tullia, and was
at the time I am speaking about, deeply engaged in the speculations of
the day. He had once been, tolerably popular in society, having been
looked upon as a harmless creature, useful in his way and very obliging.
But the circumstances which had attended his flight some years earlier
had become known, and most of his old acquaintances turned him the cold
shoulder. He had expected this and was neither disappointed nor
humiliated. He had made new friends and acquaintances during his exile,
and it was to his interest to stand by them. Like many of those who had
played petty and dishonourable parts in the revolutionary times, he had
succeeded in building up a reputation for patriotism upon a very slight
foundation, and had found persons willing to believe him a sufferer who
had escaped martyrdom for the cause, and had deserved the crown of
election to a constituency as a just reward of his devotion. The Romans
cared very little what became of him. The old Blacks confounded Victor
Emmanuel with Garibaldi, Cavour with Persiano, and Silvio Pellico with
Del Ferice in one sweeping condemnation, desiring nothing so much as
never to hear the hated names mentioned in their houses. The Grey
party, being also Roman, disapproved of Ugo on general principles and
particularly because he had been a spy, but the Whites, not being Romans
at all and entertaining an especial detestation for every distinctly
Roman opinion, received him at his own estimation, as society receives
most people who live in good houses, give good dinners and observe the
proprieties in the matter of visiting-cards. Those who knew anything
definite of the man's antecedents were mostly persons who had little
histories of their own, and they told no tales out of school. The great
personages who had once employed him would have been magnanimous enough
to acknowledge him in any case, but were agreeably disappointed when
they discovered that he was not amongst the common herd of pension
hunters, and claimed no substantial rewards save their politeness and a
line in the visiting lists of their wives. And as he grew in wealth and
importance they found that he could be useful still, as bank directors
and members of parliament can be, in a thousand ways. So it came to pass
that the Count and Countess Del Ferice became prominent persons in the
Roman world.
Ugo was a man of undoubted talent. By his own individual efforts, though
with small scruple as to the means he employed, he had raised himself
from obscurity to a very enviable position. He had only once in his life
been carried away by the weakness of a personal enmity, and he had been
made to pay heavily for his caprice. If Donna Tullia had abandoned him
when he was driven out of Rome by the influence of the Saracinesca, he
might have disappeared altogether from the scene. But she was an odd
compound of rashness and foresight, of belief and unbelief, and she had
at that time felt herself bound by an oath she dared not break, besides
being attached to him by a hatred of Giovanni Saracinesca almost as
great as his own. She had followed him and had married him without
hesitation; but she had kept the undivided possession of her fortune
while allowing him a liberal use of her income. In return, she claimed
a certain liberty of action when she chose to avail herself of it. She
would not be bound in the choice of her acquaintances nor criticised in
the measure of like or dislike she bestowed upon them. She was by no
means wholly bad, and if she had a harmless fancy now and then, she
required her husband to treat her as above suspicion. On the whole, the
arrangement worked very well. Del Ferice, on his part, was unswervingly
faithful to her in word and deed, for he exhibited in a high degree that
unfaltering constancy which is bred of a permanent, unalienable,
financial interest. Bad men are often clever, but if their cleverness is
of a superior order they rarely do anything bad. It is true that when
they yield to the pressure of necessity their wickedness surpasses that
of other men in the same degree as their intelligence. Not only honesty,
but all virtue collectively, is the best possible policy, provided that
the politician can handle such a tremendous engine of evil as goodness
is in the hands of a thoroughly bad man.
Those who desired pecuniary accommodation of the bank in which Del
Ferice had an interest, had no better friend than he. His power with the
directors seemed to be as boundless as his desire to assist the
borrower. But he was helpless to prevent the foreclosure of a mortgage,
and had been moved almost to tears in the expression of his sympathy
with the debtor and of his horror at the hard-heartedness shown by his
partners. To prove his disinterested spirit it only need be said that on
many occasions he had actually come forward as a private individual and
had taken over the mortgage himself, distinctly stating that he could
not hold it for more than a year, but expressing a hope that the debtor
might in that time retrieve himself. If this really happened, he earned
the man's eternal gratitude; if not, he foreclosed indeed, but the loser
never forgot that by Del Fence's kindness he had been offered a last
chance at a desperate moment. It could not be said to be Del Ferice's
fault that the second case was the more frequent one, nor that the
result to himself was profit in either event.
In his dealings with his constituency he showed a noble desire for the
public welfare, for he was never known to refuse anything in reason to
the electors who applied to him. It is true that in the case of certain
applications, he consumed so much time in preliminary enquiries and
subsequent formalities that the applicants sometimes died and sometimes
emigrated to the Argentine Republic before the matter could be settled;
but they bore with them to South America--or to the grave--the belief
that the Onorevole Del Ferice was on their side, and the instances of
his prompt, decisive and successful action were many. He represented a
small town in the Neapolitan Province, and the benefits and advantages
he had obtained for it were numberless. The provincial high road had
been made to pass through it; all express trains stopped at its station,
though the passengers who made use of the inestimable privilege did not
average twenty in the month; it possessed a Piazza Vittorio Emmanuela, a
Corso Garibaldi, a Via Cavour, a public garden of at least a quarter of
an acre, planted with no less than twenty-five acacias and adorned by a
fountain representing a desperate-looking character in the act of firing
a finely executed revolver at an imaginary oppressor. Pigs were not
allowed within the limits of the town, and the uniforms of the municipal
brass band were perfectly new. Could civilisation do more? The bank of
which Del Ferice was a director bought the octroi duties of the town at
the periodical auction, and farmed them skilfully, together with those
of many other towns in the same province.
So Del Ferice was a very successful man, and it need scarcely be said
that he was now not only independent of his wife's help but very much
richer than she had ever been. They lived in a highly decorated,
detached modern house in the new part of the city. The gilded gate
before the little plot of garden, bore their intertwined initials,
surmounted by a modest count's coronet. Donna Tullia would have
preferred a coat of arms, or even a crest, but Ugo was sensitive to
ridicule, and he was aware that a count's coronet in Rome means nothing
at all, whereas a coat of arms means vastly more than in most cities.
Within, the dwelling was somewhat unpleasantly gorgeous. Donna Tullia
had always loved red, both for itself and because it made her own
complexion seem less florid by contrast, and accordingly red satin
predominated in the drawing-rooms, red velvet in the dining-room, red
damask in the hall and red carpets on the stairs. Some fine specimens of
gilding were also to be seen, and Del Ferice had been one of the first
to use electric light. Everything was new, expensive and polished to its
extreme capacity for reflection. The servants wore vivid liveries and on
formal occasions the butler appeared in short-clothes and black silk
stockings. Donna Tullia's equipage was visible at a great distance, but
Del Fence's own coachman and groom wore dark green with, black
epaulettes.
On the morning which Orsino and Madame d'Aragona had spent in Gouache's
studio the Countess Del Ferice entered her husband's study in order to
consult him upon a rather delicate matter. He was alone, but busy as
usual. His attention was divided between an important bank operation and
a petition for his help in obtaining a decoration for the mayor of the
town he represented. The claim to this distinction seemed to rest
chiefly on the petitioner's unasked evidence in regard to his own moral
rectitude, yet Del Ferice was really exercising all his ingenuity to
discover some suitable reason for asking the favour. He laid the papers
down with a sigh as Donna Tullia came in.
"Good morning, my angel," he said suavely, as he pointed to a chair at
his side--the one usually occupied at this hour by seekers for financial
support. "Have you rested well?"
He never failed to ask the question.
"Not badly, not badly, thank Heaven!" answered Donna Tullia. "I have a
dreadful cold, of course, and a headache--my head is really splitting."
"Rest--rest is what you need, my dear--"
"Oh, it is nothing. This Durakoff is a great man. If he had not made me
go to Carlsbad--I really do not know. But I have something to say to
you. I want your help, Ugo. Please listen to me."
Ugo's fat white face already expressed anxious attention. To accentuate
the expression of his readiness to listen, he now put all his papers
into a drawer and turned towards his wife.
"I must go to the Jubilee," said Donna Tullia, coming to the point.
"Of course you must go--"
"And I must have my seat among the Roman ladies"
"Of course you must," repeated Del Ferice with a little less alacrity.
"Ah! You see. It is not so easy. You know it is not. Yet I have as good
a right to my seat as any one--better perhaps."
"Hardly that," observed Ugo with a smile. "When you married me, my
angel, you relinquished your claims to a seat at the Vatican functions."
"I did nothing of the kind. I never said so, I am sure."
"Perhaps if you could make that clear to the majorduomo--"
"Absurd, Ugo. You know it is. Besides, I will not beg. You must get me
the seat. You can do anything with your influence."
"You could easily get into one of the diplomatic tribunes," observed
Ugo.
"I will not go there. I mean to assert myself. I am a Roman lady and I
will have my seat, and you must get it for me."
"I will do my best. But I do not quite see where I am to begin. It will
need time and consideration and much tact."
"It seems to me very simple. Go to one of the clerical deputies and say
that you want the ticket for your wife--"
"And then?"
"Give him to understand that you will vote for his next measure. Nothing
could be simpler, I am sure."
Del Ferice smiled blandly at his wife's ideas of parliamentary
diplomacy.
"There are no clerical deputies in the parliament of the nation. If
there were the thing might be possible, and it would be very interesting
to all the clericals to read an account of the transaction in the
Osservatore Romano. In any case, I am not sure that it will be much to
our advantage that the wife of the Onorevole Del Ferice should be seen
seated in the midst of the Black ladies. It will produce an unfavourable
impression."
"If you are going to talk of impressions--" Donna Tullia shrugged her
massive shoulders.
"No, my dear. You mistake me. I am not going to talk of them, because,
as I at once told you, it is quite right that you should go to this
affair. If you go, you must go in the proper way. No doubt there will be
people who will have invitations but will not use them. We can perhaps
procure you the use of such a ticket."
"I do not care what name is on the paper, provided I can sit in the
right place."
"Very well," answered Del Ferice. "I will do my best."
"I expect it of you, Ugo. It is not often that I ask anything of you, is
it? It is the least you can do. The idea of getting a card that is not
to be used is good; of course they will all get them, and some of them
are sure to be ill."
Donna Tullia went away satisfied that what she wanted would be
forthcoming at the right moment. What she had said was true. She rarely
asked anything of her husband. But when she did, she gave him to
understand that she would have it at any price. It was her way of
asserting herself from time to time. On the present occasion she had no
especial interest at stake and any other woman might have been satisfied
with a seat in the diplomatic tribune, which could probably have been
obtained without great difficulty. But she had heard that the seats
there were to be very high and she did not really wish to be placed in
too prominent a position. The light might be unfavourable, and she knew
that she was subject to growing very red in places where it was hot. She
had once been a handsome woman and a very vain one, but even her vanity
could not survive the daily shock of the looking-glass torture. To sit
for four or five hours in a high light, facing fifty thousand people,
was more than she could bear with equanimity.
Del Ferice, being left to himself, returned to the question of the
mayor's decoration which was of vastly greater importance to him than
his wife's position at the approaching function. If he failed to get the
man what he wanted, the fellow would doubtless apply to some one of the
opposite party, would receive the coveted honour and would take the
whole voting population of the town with him at the next general
election, to the total discomfiture of Del Ferice. It was necessary to
find some valid reason for proposing him for the distinction. Ugo could
not decide what to do just then, but he ultimately hit upon a successful
plan. He advised his correspondent to write a pamphlet upon the rapid
improvement of agricultural interests in his district under the existing
ministry, and he even went so far as to enclose with his letter some
notes on the subject. These notes proved to be so voluminous and
complete that when the mayor had copied them he could not find a pretext
for adding a single word or correction. They were printed upon excellent
paper, with ornamental margins, under the title of "Onward,
Parthenope!" Of course every one knows that Parthenope means Naples, the
Neapolitans and the Neapolitan Province, a siren of that name having
come to final grief somewhere between the Chiatamone and Posilippo. The
mayor got his decoration, and Del Ferice was re-elected; but no one has
inquired into the truth of the statements made in the pamphlet upon
agriculture.
It is clear that a man who was capable of taking so much trouble for so
small a matter would not disappoint his wife when she had set her heart
upon such a trifle as a ticket for the Jubilee. Within three days he had
the promise of what he wanted. A certain lonely lady of high position
lay very ill just then, and it need scarcely be explained that her
confidential servant fell upon the invitation as soon as it arrived and
sold it for a round sum to the first applicant, who happened to be Count
Del Ferice's valet. So the matter was arranged, privately and without
scandal.
All Rome was alive with expectation. The date fixed was the first of
January, and as the day approached the curious foreigner mustered in his
thousands and tens of thousands and took the city by storm. The hotels
were thronged. The billiard tables were let as furnished rooms, people
slept in the lifts, on the landings, in the porters' lodges. The thrifty
Romans retreated to roofs and cellars and let their small dwellings.
People reaching the city on the last night slept in the cabs they had
hired to take them to St. Peter's before dawn. Even the supplies of food
ran low and the hungry fed on what they could get, while the delicate of
taste very often did not feed at all. There was of course the usual
scare about a revolutionary demonstration, to which the natives paid
very little attention, but which delighted the foreigners.
Not more than half of those who hoped to witness the ceremony saw
anything of it, though the basilica will hold some eighty thousand
people at a pinch, and the crowd on that occasion was far greater than
at the opening of the Oecumenical Council in 1869.
Madame d'Aragona had also determined to be present, and she expressed
her desire to Gouache. She had spoken the strict truth when she had said
that she knew no one in Rome, and so far as general accuracy is
concerned it was equally true that she had not fixed the length of her
stay. She had not come with any settled purpose beyond a vague idea of
having her portrait painted by the French artist, and unless she took
the trouble to make acquaintances, there was nothing attractive enough
about the capital to keep her. She allowed herself to be driven about
the town, on pretence of seeing churches and galleries, but in reality
she saw very little of either. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts
and subject to fits of abstraction. Most things seemed to her intensely
dull, and the unhappy guide who had been selected to accompany her on
her excursions, wasted his learning upon her on the first morning, and
subsequently exhausted the magnificent catalogue of impossibilities
which he had concocted for the especial benefit of the uncultivated
foreigner, without eliciting so much as a look of interest or an
expression of surprise. He was a young and fascinating guide, wearing a
white satin tie, and on the third day he recited some verses of
Stecchetti and was about to risk a declaration of worship in ornate
prose, when he was suddenly rather badly scared by the lady's yellow
eyes, and ran on nervously with a string of deceased popes and their
dates.
"Get me a card for the Jubilee," she said abruptly.
"An entrance is very easily procured," answered the guide. "In fact I
have one in my pocket, as it happens. I bought it for twenty francs this
morning, thinking that one of my foreigners would perhaps take it of me.
I do not even gain a franc--my word of honour."
Madame d'Aragona glanced at the slip of paper.
"Not that," she answered. "Do you imagine that I will stand? I want a
seat in one of the tribunes."
The guide lost himself in apologies, but explained that he could not
get what she desired.
"What are you for?" she inquired.
She was an indolent woman, but when by any chance she wanted anything,
Donna Tullia herself was not more restless. She drove at once to
Gouache's studio. He was alone and she told him what she needed.
"The Jubilee, Madame? Is it possible that you have been forgotten?"
"Since they have never heard of me! I have not the slightest claim to a
place."
"It is you who say that. But your place is already secured. Fear
nothing. You will be with the Roman ladies."
"I do not understand--"
"It is simple. I was thinking of it yesterday. Young Saracinesca comes
in and begins to talk about you. There is Madame d'Aragona who has no
seat, he says. One must arrange that. So it is arranged."
"By Don Orsino?"
"You would not accept? No. A young man, and you have only met once. But
tell me what you think of him. Do you like him?"
"One does not like people so easily as that," said Madame d'Aragona,
"How have you arranged about the seat?"
"It is very simple. There are to be two days, you know. My wife has her
cards for both, of course. She will only go once. If you will accept the
one for the first day, she will be very happy."
"You are angelic, my dear friend! Then I go as your wife?" She laughed.
"Precisely. You will be Faustina Gouache instead of Madame d'Aragona."
"How delightful! By the bye, do not call me Madame d'Aragona. It is not
my name. I might as well call you Monsieur de Paris, because you are a
Parisian."
"I do not put Anastase Gouache de Paris on my cards," answered Gouache
with a laugh. "What may I call you? Donna Maria?"
"My name is Maria Consuelo d'Aranjuez."
"An ancient Spanish name," said Gouache.
"My husband was an Italian."
"Ah! Of Spanish descent, originally of Aragona. Of course."
"Exactly. Since I am here, shall I sit for you? You might almost finish
to-day."
"Not so soon as that. It is Don Orsino's hour, but as he has not come,
and since you are so kind--by all means."
"Ah! Is he punctual?"
"He is probably running after those abominable dogs in pursuit of the
feeble fox--what they call the noble sport."
Gouache's face expressed considerable disgust."
"Poor fellow!" said Maria Consuelo. "He has nothing else to do."
"He will get used to it. They all do. Besides, it is really the natural
condition of man. Total idleness is his element. If Providence meant man
to work, it should have given him two heads, one for his profession and
one for himself. A man needs one entire and undivided intelligence for
the study of his own individuality."
"What an idea!"
"Do not men of great genius notoriously forget themselves, forget to eat
and drink and dress themselves like Christians? That is because they
have not two heads. Providence expects a man to do two things at
once--an air from an opera and invent the steam-engine at the same
moment. Nature rebels. Then Providence and Nature do not agree. What
becomes of religion? It is all a mystery. Believe me, Madame, art is
easier than, nature, and painting is simpler than theology."
Maria Consuelo listened to Gouache's extraordinary remarks with a smile.
"You are either paradoxical, or irreligious, or both," she said.
"Irreligious? I, who carried a rifle at Mentana? No, Madame, I am a good
Catholic."
"What does that mean?"
"I believe in God, and I love my wife. I leave it to the Church to
define my other articles of belief. I have only one head, as you see."
Gouache smiled, but there was a note of sincerity in the odd statement
which did not escape his hearer.
"You are not of the type which belongs to the end of the century," she
said.
"That type was not invented when I was forming myself."
"Perhaps you belong rather to the coming age--the age of
simplification."
"As distinguished from the age of mystification--religious, political,
scientific and artistic," suggested Gouache. "The people of that day
will guess the Sphynx's riddle."
"Mine? You were comparing me to a sphynx the other day."
"Yours, perhaps, Madame. Who knows? Are you the typical woman of the
ending century?"
"Why not?" asked Maria Consuelo with a sleepy look.