There was an indefinable charm, to a lively man like Caper, in spending
a day in the open country around Rome. Whether it was passed, gun in
hand, near the Solfatara, trying to shoot snipe and woodcock, or, with
paint-box and stool, seated under a large white cotton umbrella,
sketching in the valley of Poussin or out on the Via Appia, that day was
invariably marked down to be remembered.
On one of those golden February mornings, when the pretty English girls
tramp through the long grass of the Villa Borghese, gathering the
perfumed violets into those modest little bouquets, that peep out from
their setting of green leaves, like faith struggling with jealousy,
Caper, Rocjean, and a good-natured German, named Von Bluhmen, made an
excursion out in the Campagna.
They hired a one-horse vetturo in the piazza di Spagna, and packing in
their sketching materials and a basket well filled with luncheon and
bottles of red wine, started off, soon reaching the Saint Sebastian
gate. Further on, they passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and saw
streaming over the Campagna the Roman hunt-hounds, twenty couples,
making straight tails after a red fox, while a score of well-mounted
horsemen--here and there a red coat and white breeches--came riding
furiously after. Along the road-side were handsome open carriages,
filled with wit and beauty, talent and petticoats; and bright were the
blue eyes, and red the healthy cheeks of the English girls, as they saw
how well their countrymen and lovers led off the chase. Englishmen
_have_ good legs.
Continuing along the Appian way, either side of which was bordered by
tombs crumbling to decay; some of them covered with nature's lace, the
graceful ivy, others with only a pile of turf above them, others with
shattered column and mutilated statue at their base--the occupants of
the vetturo were silent. They saw before them the wide plain, shut in on
the horizon by high mountains, with snow-covered peaks and sides, while
they were living in the warmth of an American June morning; the breeze
that swept over them was gentle and exhilarating; in the long grass
waving by the way-side, they heard the shrill cries of the cicadas;
while the clouds, driven along the wide reach of heaven, assuming
fantastic forms, and in changing light and shadow mantling the distant
mountains, gave our trio a rare chance to study cloud-effects to great
advantage.
'I say, driver, what's your name?' asked Rocjean of the _vetturino_.
'Cæsar, _padrone mio_,' answered the man.
'Are you descended from the celebrated Julius?' asked Caper, laughing.
'Yes, sir, my grandfather's name was Julius.'
''That every like is not the same, O Cæsar!
The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon,''
soliloquized Caper; and as by this time they had reached a place where
both he and Rocjean thought a fine view of the ruined aqueduct might be
taken, they ordered the driver to stop, and taking out their sketching
materials, sent him back to Rome, telling him to come out for them about
four o'clock, when they would be ready to return.
While they were yet in the road, there came along a very large
countryman, mounted on a very small jackass; he was sitting side-saddle
fashion, one leg crossed over the other, the lower leg nearly touching
the ground; one hand held a pipe to his mouth, while the other held an
olive branch, by no means an emblem of peace to the jackass, who
twitched one long ear and then the other, in expectation of a momentary
visit from it on either side of his head. Following, at a dutiful
distance behind, came a splendid specimen of a Roman peasant-woman, a
true _contadina_: poised on her head was a very large round basket, from
over the edge of which sundry chickens' heads and cocks' feathers arose,
and while Caper was looking at the basket, he saw two tiny little arms
stuck up suddenly above the chickens, and then heard a faint squall--it
was her baby. An instantaneous desire seized Caper to make a rough
sketch of the family group, and hailing the man, he asked him for a
light to his cigar. The jackass was stopped by pulling his left ear--the
ears answering for reins--and after giving a light, the man was going
on, when Caper, taking a _scudo_ from his pocket, told him that if he
would let him make a sketch of himself, wife, and jackass, he would give
it to him, telling him also that he would not detain them over an hour.
'If you'll give me a _buona mano_ besides the _scudo_, I'll do it,' he
answered.
The _buona mano_ is the ignis fatuus that leads on three fourths of the
Italians; it is the bright spark that wakes them up to exertion. No
matter what the fixed price for doing any thing may be, there must
always be a something undefined ahead of it, to crown the work when
accomplished. It makes labor a lottery; it makes even sawing wood a
species of gambling. Caper promised a _buona mano_.
The man told his wife that the Signore was to make a _ritratto_, a
picture of them all, including the jackass, at which she laughed
heartily, showing a splendid set of brilliantly white teeth. A finer
type of woman it would be hard to find, for she was tall, straight, with
magnificent bust and broad hips. Her hair, thick and black, was drawn
back from her forehead like a Chinese, and was confined behind her head
with two long silver pins, the heads representing flowers; heavy,
crescent-shaped, gold earrings hung from her ears; around her full
throat circled two strings of red coral beads. Her boddice of crimson
cloth was met by the well-filled out-folds of her white linen shirt,
the sleeves of which fell from her shoulders below her elbows, in full,
graceful folds; her skirt was of heavy white woolen stuff, while her
blue apron, of the same material, had three broad stripes of golden
yellow, one near the top and the other two near each other at the
bottom; the folds of the apron were few, and fell in heavy, regular
lines. A full, liquid-brown pair of eyes gazed calmly on the painter, as
she stood beside her husband, easily, gracefully; without a sign from
the artist, taking a position that the most studied care could not have
improved.
'_Benissimo_!' cried Caper, 'the position couldn't be better;' and
seizing his sketch-book and pencils, unfolding his umbrella and planting
its spiked end in the ground, and arranging his sketching-stool, he was
in five minutes hard at work. As soon as he could draw the basket, he
told the woman she might take it from her head and put it on the ground,
for he believed the weight must incommode her. This done, she resumed
her position, and Caper, working with all his might, had his sketch
sufficiently finished before the hour was over to tell his group that it
was finished, at the same time handing the man a _scudo_ and a handsome
_buona mano_.
Rocjean and Von Bluhmen, who had assiduously looked on, now and then
joking with the _contadino_ and his wife, proposed, after the sketch was
finished, that Caper should ask his friends to help them finish their
luncheon; this was joyously agreed to, and the party, having left the
road and found a pleasant spot, under a group of ilex-trees, were soon
busy finishing the eatables. It was refreshing to see how the handsome
_contadina_ emptied glass after glass of red wine. The husband did his
share of drinking; but his wife eclipsed him. Having learned from Caper
that his first name was Giacomo, she shouted forth a rondinella, making
up the words as she went along, and in it gave a ludicrous account of
Giacomo, the artist, who took a jackass's portrait, herself and husband
holding him, and the baby squalling in harmony. This met with an
embarrassment of success, and amid the applause of Rocjean, Caper, and
Von Bluhmen, the _contadino_, wife, and baggage departed. She, however,
told Caper where she lived in the Campagna, and that she had a beautiful
little sister, whose _ritratta_ he should take, if he would come to see
her.
[It is needless to inform the reader that _he went_.]
Lighting cigars, Rocjean and Caper declared they must have a siesta,
even if they had to doze on their stools, for neither of them ever could
accustom himself to the Roman fashion of throwing one's self on the
ground, and sleeping with their faces to the earth. Von Bluhmen, a fiery
amateur of sketching, walked off to take a 'near view' of the aqueduct,
and the two artists were left to repose.
'I say, Caper, does it ever come into your head to people all this broad
Campagna with old Romans?' asked Rocjean.
'Yes, all the time. Do you know that when I am out here, and stumble
over the door-way of an old Roman tomb, or find one of those thousand
caves in the tufa rock, I often have a curious feeling that from out
that tomb or cave will stalk forth in broad daylight some old Roman
centurion or senator, in flowing robe.'
'Do you ever think,' asked Rocjean, 'of those seventy thousand poor
devils of Jews who helped build the Coliseum and the Arch of Titus? Do
you ever reflect over the millions of _slaves_ who worked for these same
poetical, flowing-robed, old senators and centurions? _Ma foi_! for a
Republic, you men of the United States have a finished education for any
thing but republicans. The great world-long struggle of a few to crush
and destroy the many, you learn profoundly; you know in all its
glittering cruelty and horror the entire history, and you weave from it
no god-like moral. Nothing astonished me more, during my residence in
the United States, than this same lack of drawing from the experience of
ages the deduction that you were the only really blessed and happy
nation in the world. Your educated men know less of the history of their
own country, and feel less its sublime teachings, than any other race of
men in the world. The instruction your young men receive at school and
college, in what way does it prepare them to become men fit for a
republic?'
'You are preaching a sermon,' said Caper.
'I am reciting the text; the sermon will be preached by the god of
battles to the roar of cannons and the crack of rifles, and I hope
you'll profit by it after you hear it.'
'Well,' interrupted Caper, 'what do you think of the English?'
'For a practical people, they are the greatest fools on the earth.
Thoroughly convinced at heart that they have no _esprit_, they rush in
to show the world that they have a superabundance of it.... It
interferes with their principles, no matter; it touches their pockets,
behold it is gone, and the cold, flat, dead reality stares you in the
face.'
'You are a Frenchman, Rocjean, and you do them injustice. Had Shakspeare
no _esprit_?' asked Caper.
'Shakspeare was a Frenchman,' replied Rocjean.
'We--ll!'
'Prove to me that he was not?'
'Prove to me that he was!'
'Certainly. The family of Jacques Pierre was as certainly French as
Raimond de Rocjean's. Jacques Pierre became Shakspeare at once, on
emigrating to England, and the 'Immortal Williams,' recognizing the
advantages to a poor man of living in a country where only the guineas
dance, took up his abode there and made the music for the money to jump
into his pockets.'
'Very ingenious. But in relation to Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson,
and--as we are in Italy--Rogers?'
'_Mon ami_, if you seriously prefer ice-cream and trifle to venison and
_dindon aux truffes_, choose. If either one of the four poets--I do not
include Rogers among poets--ever conceived in his mind, and then
produced on paper, a work, composed from his memory, of things terrible
in nature, more sublime than Dante's _Inferno_, I will grant you that he
had _esprit_ and imagination; otherwise, not. It is of the English as a
nation, however, that I make my broad and sweeping assertion, one that
was fixed in my mind yesterday, when I saw a well-dressed and
well-_educated_ Englishman deliberately pick up a stone, knock off the
head of a figure carved on a sarcophagus, found in one of those
newly-discovered tombs on the Via Latina, and put the broken head in his
pocket.... What man, with one grain of _esprit_ or imagination in his
head, would mutilate a work of ancient art, solely that he might possess
a piece of stone, when memory had already placed the entire work forever
in his mind. _Basta_! enough. Look at the effect of the sunlight on the
Albanian mountains. How proudly Mount Gennaro towers over the desolate
Campagna! Hallo! Von Bluhmen down there is in trouble. Come along.'
Throwing down his umbrella, under which he had been sitting in the
shade, Rocjean grasped the iron-pointed shaft, into which the handle of
the umbrella fitted, and, accompanied by Caper, rushed to the rescue of
the German. It was none too soon. While sketching, a shepherd, with a
very large flock of sheep, had gradually approached nearer and nearer
the spot where the artist was sitting at his task; his dogs, eight or
ten in number, fierce, shaggy, white and black beasts, with slouching
gait and pointed ears and noses, followed near him. As Von Bluhmen paid
no attention to them, the shepherd had wandered off; but one or two of
his dogs hung back, and the artist, dropping a pencil, suddenly stooped
to pick it up, when one of the savage creatures, thinking or
'instincting' that a stone was coming at him, rushed in, with loud
barking, to make mince-meat of the German noble. He seized his
camp-stool, and kept the dog at bay; but in a moment the whole pack were
down on him. Just at this instant, in rushed Rocjean, staff in hand,
beating the beasts right and left, and shouting to the shepherd, who was
but a short distance off, to call off his dogs. But the _pecorajo_,
evidently a cross-grained fellow, only blackguarded the artists, until
Rocjean, whose blood was up, swore if he did not call them off, he would
shoot them, pulling a revolver from his pocket and aiming at the most
savage dog as he spoke. The shepherd only blackguarded him the more,
and, just as the dog grabbed him by the pantaloons, Rocjean pulled the
trigger, and with foaming jaws and blood pouring from his mouth, the dog
fell dead at his feet. The shot scared the other dogs, who fled, tails
under. The shepherd ran for the entrance of a cave, and came out in a
minute with a single-barreled gun: coming down to within twenty feet of
Rocjean, he cocked it, and taking aim, screamed out: 'Give me ten
_scudi_ for that dog, or I fire.'
'Do you see that pistol?' said Rocjean to the shepherd, while he held up
his revolver, 'I have five loads in it yet.' And then advancing straight
toward him, with death in his eyes, he told him to throw down his gun,
or he was a dead man.... Down fell the gun. Rocjean picked it up.
'To-morrow,' said he, 'inquire of the chief of police in Rome for this
gun and for the ten _scudi_!'
They were never called for.
'You see,' said Caper, as, shortly after this little excitement, the
one-horse vetturo, bearing Cæsar and his fortunes, hove in sight, and
they entered and returned to Rome; 'you see how charming it is to sketch
on the Campagna.'
'Very,' replied Von Bluhmen; 'but, my dear Rocjean, how long were you in
America?'
'Twelve years.'
'_Main Gott!_ they were not wasted.'