the little duchesses, so discreetly educated at the convent of the Sacred
Heart, quitting it for the most part so ignorant and then completing
their education beside their mothers, never going out but to accompany
the latter on the obligatory drive to the Corso, and living through
endless days, cloistered, imprisoned in the depths of sombre mansions.
Nevertheless what tempests raged in those mute souls to which none had
ever penetrated! what stealthy growth of will suddenly appeared from
under passive obedience, apparent unconsciousness of surroundings! How
many there were who stubbornly set their minds on carving out their lives
for themselves, on choosing the man who might please them, and securing
him despite the opposition of the entire world! And the lover was chosen
there from among the stream of young men promenading the Corso, the lover
hooked with a glance during the daily drive, those candid eyes speaking
aloud and sufficing for confession and the gift of all, whilst not a
breath was wafted from the lips so chastely closed. And afterwards there
came love letters, furtively exchanged in church, and the winning-over of
maids to facilitate stolen meetings, at first so innocent. In the end, a
marriage often resulted.
Celia, for her part, had determined to win Attilio on the very first day
when their eyes had met. And it was from a window of the Palazzo
Buongiovanni that she had perceived him one afternoon of mortal
weariness. He had just raised his head, and she had taken him for ever
and given herself to him with those large, pure eyes of hers as they
rested on his own. She was but an /amorosa/--nothing more; he pleased
her; she had set her heart on him--him and none other. She would have
waited twenty years for him, but she relied on winning him at once by
quiet stubbornness of will. People declared that the terrible fury of the
Prince, her father, had proved impotent against her respectful, obstinate
silence. He, man of mixed blood as he was, son of an American woman, and
husband of an English woman, laboured but to retain his own name and
fortune intact amidst the downfall of others; and it was rumoured that as
the result of a quarrel which he had picked with his wife, whom he
accused of not sufficiently watching over their daughter, the Princess
had revolted, full not only of the pride of a foreigner who had brought a
huge dowry in marriage, but also of such plain, frank egotism that she
had declared she no longer found time enough to attend to herself, let
alone another. Had she not already done enough in bearing him five
children? She thought so; and now she spent her time in worshipping
herself, letting Celia do as she listed, and taking no further interest
in the household through which swept stormy gusts.
However, the carriage was again about to pass the Buongiovanni mansion,
and Dario forewarned Pierre. "You see," said he, "Attilio has come back.
And now look up at the third window on the first floor."
It was at once rapid and charming. Pierre saw the curtain slightly drawn
aside and Celia's gentle face appear. Closed, candid lily, she did not
smile, she did not move. Nothing could be read on those pure lips, or in
those clear but fathomless eyes of hers. Yet she was taking Attilio to
herself, and giving herself to him without reserve. And soon the curtain
fell once more.
"Ah, the little mask!" muttered Dario. "Can one ever tell what there is
behind so much innocence?"
As Pierre turned round he perceived Attilio, whose head was still raised,
and whose face was also motionless and pale, with closed mouth, and
widely opened eyes. And the young priest was deeply touched, for this was
love, absolute love in its sudden omnipotence, true love, eternal and
juvenescent, in which ambition and calculation played no part.
Then Dario ordered the coachman to drive up to the Pincio; for, before or
after the Corso, the round of the Pincio is obligatory on fine, clear
afternoons. First came the Piazza del Popolo, the most airy and regular
square of Rome, with its conjunction of thoroughfares, its churches and
fountains, its central obelisk, and its two clumps of trees facing one
another at either end of the small white paving-stones, betwixt the
severe and sun-gilt buildings. Then, turning to the right, the carriage
began to climb the inclined way to the Pincio--a magnificent winding
ascent, decorated with bas-reliefs, statues, and fountains--a kind of
apotheosis of marble, a commemoration of ancient Rome, rising amidst
greenery. Up above, however, Pierre found the garden small, little better
than a large square, with just the four necessary roadways to enable the
carriages to drive round and round as long as they pleased. An
uninterrupted line of busts of the great men of ancient and modern Italy
fringed these roadways. But what Pierre most admired was the trees--trees
of the most rare and varied kinds, chosen and tended with infinite care,
and nearly always evergreens, so that in winter and summer alike the spot
was adorned with lovely foliage of every imaginable shade of verdure. And
beside these trees, along the fine, breezy roadways, Dario's victoria
began to turn, following the continuous, unwearying stream of the other
carriages.
Pierre remarked one young woman of modest demeanour and attractive
simplicity who sat alone in a dark-blue victoria, drawn by a
well-groomed, elegantly harnessed horse. She was very pretty, short, with
chestnut hair, a creamy complexion, and large gentle eyes. Quietly robed
in dead-leaf silk, she wore a large hat, which alone looked somewhat
extravagant. And seeing that Dario was staring at her, the priest
inquired her name, whereat the young Prince smiled. Oh! she was nobody,
La Tonietta was the name that people gave her; she was one of the few
/demi-mondaines/ that Roman society talked of. Then, with the freeness
and frankness which his race displays in such matters, Dario added some
particulars. La Tonietta's origin was obscure; some said that she was the
daughter of an innkeeper of Tivoli, and others that of a Neapolitan
banker. At all events, she was very intelligent, had educated herself,
and knew thoroughly well how to receive and entertain people at the
little palazzo in the Via dei Mille, which had been given to her by old
Marquis Manfredi now deceased. She made no scandalous show, had but one
protector at a time, and the princesses and duchesses who paid attention
to her at the Corso every afternoon, considered her nice-looking. One
peculiarity had made her somewhat notorious. There was some one whom she
loved and from whom she never accepted aught but a bouquet of white
roses; and folks would smile indulgently when at times for weeks together
she was seen driving round the Pincio with those pure, white bridal
flowers on the carriage seat.
Dario, however, suddenly paused in his explanations to address a
ceremonious bow to a lady who, accompanied by a gentleman, drove by in a
large landau. Then he simply said to the priest: "My mother."
Pierre already knew of her. Viscount de la Choue had told him her story,
how, after Prince Onofrio Boccanera's death, she had married again,
although she was already fifty; how at the Corso, just like some young
girl, she had hooked with her eyes a handsome man to her liking--one,
too, who was fifteen years her junior. And Pierre also knew who that man
was, a certain Jules Laporte, an ex-sergeant of the papal Swiss Guard, an
ex-traveller in relics, compromised in an extraordinary "false relic"
fraud; and he was further aware that Laporte's wife had made a
fine-looking Marquis Montefiori of him, the last of the fortunate
adventurers of romance, triumphing as in the legendary lands where
shepherds are wedded to queens.
At the next turn, as the large landau again went by, Pierre looked at the
couple. The Marchioness was really wonderful, blooming with all the
classical Roman beauty, tall, opulent, and very dark, with the head of a
goddess and regular if somewhat massive features, nothing as yet
betraying her age except the down upon her upper lip. And the Marquis,
the Romanised Swiss of Geneva, really had a proud bearing, with his solid
soldierly figure and long wavy moustaches. People said that he was in no
wise a fool but, on the contrary, very gay and very supple, just the man
to please women. His wife so gloried in him that she dragged him about
and displayed him everywhere, having begun life afresh with him as if she
were still but twenty, spending on him the little fortune which she had
saved from the Villa Montefiori disaster, and so completely forgetting
her son that she only saw the latter now and again at the promenade and
acknowledged his bow like that of some chance acquaintance.
"Let us go to see the sun set behind St. Peter's," all at once said
Dario, conscientiously playing his part as a showman of curiosities.
The victoria thereupon returned to the terrace, where a military band was
now playing with a terrific blare of brass instruments. In order that
their occupants might hear the music, a large number of carriages had
already drawn up, and a growing crowd of loungers on foot had assembled
there. And from that beautiful terrace, so broad and lofty, one of the
most wonderful views of Rome was offered to the gaze. Beyond the Tiber,
beyond the pale chaos of the new district of the castle meadows,* and
between the greenery of Monte Mario and the Janiculum arose St. Peter's.
Then on the left came all the olden city, an endless stretch of roofs, a
rolling sea of edifices as far as the eye could reach. But one's glances
always came back to St. Peter's, towering into the azure with pure and
sovereign grandeur. And, seen from the terrace, the slow sunsets in the
depths of the vast sky behind the colossus were sublime.
* See /ante/ note on castle meadows.
Sometimes there are topplings of sanguineous clouds, battles of giants
hurling mountains at one another and succumbing beneath the monstrous
ruins of flaming cities. Sometimes only red streaks or fissures appear on
the surface of a sombre lake, as if a net of light has been flung to fish
the submerged orb from amidst the seaweed. Sometimes, too, there is a
rosy mist, a kind of delicate dust which falls, streaked with pearls by a
distant shower, whose curtain is drawn across the mystery of the horizon.
And sometimes there is a triumph, a /cortege/ of gold and purple chariots
of cloud rolling along a highway of fire, galleys floating upon an azure
sea, fantastic and extravagant pomps slowly sinking into the less and
less fathomable abyss of the twilight.
But that night the sublime spectacle presented itself to Pierre with a
calm, blinding, desperate grandeur. At first, just above the dome of St.
Peter's, the sun, descending in a spotless, deeply limpid sky, proved yet
so resplendent that one's eyes could not face its brightness. And in this
resplendency the dome seemed to be incandescent, you would have said a
dome of liquid silver; whilst the surrounding districts, the house-roofs
of the Borgo, were as though changed into a lake of live embers. Then, as
the sun was by degrees inclined, it lost some of its blaze, and one could
look; and soon afterwards sinking with majestic slowness it disappeared
behind the dome, which showed forth darkly blue, while the orb, now
entirely hidden, set an aureola around it, a glory like a crown of
flaming rays. And then began the dream, the dazzling symbol, the singular
illumination of the row of windows beneath the cupola which were
transpierced by the light and looked like the ruddy mouths of furnaces,
in such wise that one might have imagined the dome to be poised upon a
brazier, isolated, in the air, as though raised and upheld by the
violence of the fire. It all lasted barely three minutes. Down below the
jumbled roofs of the Borgo became steeped in violet vapour, sank into
increasing gloom, whilst from the Janiculum to Monte Mario the horizon
showed its firm black line. And it was the sky then which became all
purple and gold, displaying the infinite placidity of a supernatural
radiance above the earth which faded into nihility. Finally the last
window reflections were extinguished, the glow of the heavens departed,
and nothing remained but the vague, fading roundness of the dome of St.
Peter's amidst the all-invading night.
And, by some subtle connection of ideas, Pierre at that moment once again
saw rising before him the lofty, sad, declining figures of Cardinal
Boccanera and old Orlando. On the evening of that day when he had learnt
to know them, one after the other, both so great in the obstinacy of
their hope, they seemed to be there, erect on the horizon above their
annihilated city, on the fringe of the heavens which death apparently was
about to seize. Was everything then to crumble with them? was everything
to fade away and disappear in the falling night following upon
accomplished Time?
V
ON the following day Narcisse Habert came in great worry to tell Pierre
that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo complained of being unwell, and asked for
a delay of two or three days before receiving the young priest and
considering the matter of his audience. Pierre was thus reduced to
inaction, for he dared not make any attempt elsewhere in view of seeing
the Pope. He had been so frightened by Nani and others that he feared he
might jeopardise everything by inconsiderate endeavours. And so he began
to visit Rome in order to occupy his leisure.
His first visit was for the ruins of the Palatine. Going out alone one
clear morning at eight o'clock, he presented himself at the entrance in
the Via San Teodoro, an iron gateway flanked by the lodges of the
keepers. One of the latter at once offered his services, and though
Pierre would have preferred to roam at will, following the bent of his
dream, he somehow did not like to refuse the offer of this man, who spoke
French very distinctly, and smiled in a very good-natured way. He was a
squatly built little man, a former soldier, some sixty years of age, and
his square-cut, ruddy face was barred by thick white moustaches.
"Then will you please follow me, Monsieur l'Abbe," said he. "I can see
that you are French, Monsieur l'Abbe. I'm a Piedmontese myself, but I
know the French well enough; I was with them at Solferino. Yes, yes,
whatever people may say, one can't forget old friendships. Here, this
way, please, to the right."
Raising his eyes, Pierre had just perceived the line of cypresses edging
the plateau of the Palatine on the side of the Tiber; and in the delicate
blue atmosphere the intense greenery of these trees showed like a black
fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey,
stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which
peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged,
leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men
of learning could wax enthusiastic.
"The palaces of Tiberius, Caligula, and the Flavians are up above,"
resumed the guide. "We must keep then for the end and go round."
Nevertheless he took a few steps to the left, and pausing before an
excavation, a sort of grotto in the hillside, exclaimed: "This is the
Lupercal den where the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Just here at the
entry used to stand the Ruminal fig-tree which sheltered the twins."
Pierre could not restrain a smile, so convinced was the tone in which the
old soldier gave these explanations, proud as he was of all the ancient
glory, and wont to regard the wildest legends as indisputable facts.
However, when the worthy man pointed out some vestiges of Roma
Quadrata--remnants of walls which really seemed to date from the
foundation of the city--Pierre began to feel interested, and a first
touch of emotion made his heart beat. This emotion was certainly not due
to any beauty of scene, for he merely beheld a few courses of tufa
blocks, placed one upon the other and uncemented. But a past which had
been dead for seven and twenty centuries seemed to rise up before him,
and those crumbling, blackened blocks, the foundation of such a mighty
eclipse of power and splendour, acquired extraordinary majesty.
Continuing their inspection, they went on, skirting the hillside. The
outbuildings of the palaces must have descended to this point; fragments
of porticoes, fallen beams, columns and friezes set up afresh, edged the
rugged path which wound through wild weeds, suggesting a neglected
cemetery; and the guide repeated the words which he had used day by day
for ten years past, continuing to enunciate suppositions as facts, and
giving a name, a destination, a history, to every one of the fragments.
"The house of Augustus," he said at last, pointing towards some masses of
earth and rubbish.
Thereupon Pierre, unable to distinguish anything, ventured to inquire:
"Where do you mean?"
"Oh!" said the man, "it seems that the walls were still to be seen at the
end of the last century. But it was entered from the other side, from the
Sacred Way. On this side there was a huge balcony which overlooked the
Circus Maximus so that one could view the sports. However, as you can
see, the greater part of the palace is still buried under that big garden
up above, the garden of the Villa Mills. When there's money for fresh
excavations it will be found again, together with the temple of Apollo
and the shrine of Vesta which accompanied it."
Turning to the left, he next entered the Stadium, the arena erected for
foot-racing, which stretched beside the palace of Augustus; and the
priest's interest was now once more awakened. It was not that he found
himself in presence of well-preserved and monumental remains, for not a
column had remained erect, and only the right-hand walls were still
standing. But the entire plan of the building had been traced, with the
goals at either end, the porticus round the course, and the colossal
imperial tribune which, after being on the left, annexed to the house of
Augustus, had afterwards opened on the right, fitting into the palace of
Septimius Severus. And while Pierre looked on all the scattered remnants,
his guide went on chattering, furnishing the most copious and precise
information, and declaring that the gentlemen who directed the
excavations had mentally reconstructed the Stadium in each and every
particular, and were even preparing a most exact plan of it, showing all
the columns in their proper order and the statues in their niches, and
even specifying the divers sorts of marble which had covered the walls.
"Oh! the directors are quite at ease," the old soldier eventually added
with an air of infinite satisfaction. "There will be nothing for the
Germans to pounce on here. They won't be allowed to set things
topsy-turvy as they did at the Forum, where everybody's at sea since they
came along with their wonderful science!"
Pierre--a Frenchman--smiled, and his interest increased when, by broken
steps and wooden bridges thrown over gaps, he followed the guide into the
great ruins of the palace of Severus. Rising on the southern point of the
Palatine, this palace had overlooked the Appian Way and the Campagna as
far as the eye could reach. Nowadays, almost the only remains are the
substructures, the subterranean halls contrived under the arches of the
terraces, by which the plateau of the hill was enlarged; and yet these
dismantled substructures suffice to give some idea of the triumphant
palace which they once upheld, so huge and powerful have they remained in
their indestructible massiveness. Near by arose the famous Septizonium,
the tower with the seven tiers of arcades, which only finally disappeared
in the sixteenth century. One of the palace terraces yet juts out upon
cyclopean arches and from it the view is splendid. But all the rest is a
commingling of massive yet crumbling walls, gaping depths whose ceilings
have fallen, endless corridors and vast halls of doubtful destination.
Well cared for by the new administration, swept and cleansed of weeds,
the ruins have lost their romantic wildness and assumed an aspect of bare
and mournful grandeur. However, flashes of living sunlight often gild the
ancient walls, penetrate by their breaches into the black halls, and
animate with their dazzlement the mute melancholy of all this dead
splendour now exhumed from the earth in which it slumbered for centuries.
Over the old ruddy masonry, stripped of its pompous marble covering, is
the purple mantle of the sunlight, draping the whole with imperial glory
once more.
For more than two hours already Pierre had been walking on, and yet he
still had to visit all the earlier palaces on the north and east of the
plateau. "We must go back," said the guide, "the gardens of the Villa
Mills and the convent of San Bonaventura stop the way. We shall only be
able to pass on this side when the excavations have made a clearance. Ah!
Monsieur l'Abbe, if you had walked over the Palatine merely some fifty
years ago! I've seen some plans of that time. There were only some
vineyards and little gardens with hedges then, a real campagna, where not
a soul was to be met. And to think that all these palaces were sleeping
underneath!"
Pierre followed him, and after again passing the house of Augustus, they
ascended the slope and reached the vast Flavian palace,* still half
buried by the neighbouring villa, and composed of a great number of halls
large and small, on the nature of which scholars are still arguing. The
aula regia, or throne-room, the basilica, or hall of justice, the
triclinium, or dining-room, and the peristylium seem certainties; but for
all the rest, and especially the small chambers of the private part of
the structure, only more or less fanciful conjectures can be offered.
Moreover, not a wall is entire; merely foundations peep out of the
ground, mutilated bases describing the plan of the edifice. The only ruin
preserved, as if by miracle, is the house on a lower level which some
assert to have been that of Livia,* a house which seems very small beside
all the huge palaces, and where are three halls comparatively intact,
with mural paintings of mythological scenes, flowers, and fruits, still
wonderfully fresh. As for the palace of Tiberius, not one of its stones
can be seen; its remains lie buried beneath a lovely public garden;
whilst of the neighbouring palace of Caligula, overhanging the Forum,
there are only some huge substructures, akin to those of the house of
Severus--buttresses, lofty arcades, which upheld the palace, vast
basements, so to say, where the praetorians were posted and gorged
themselves with continual junketings. And thus this lofty plateau
dominating the city merely offered some scarcely recognisable vestiges to
the view, stretches of grey, bare soil turned up by the pick, and dotted
with fragments of old walls; and it needed a real effort of scholarly
imagination to conjure up the ancient imperial splendour which once had
triumphed there.
* Begun by Vespasian and finished by Domitian.--Trans.
** Others assert it to have been the house of Germanicus,
father of Caligula.--Trans.
Nevertheless Pierre's guide, with quiet conviction, persisted in his
explanations, pointing to empty space as though the edifices still rose
before him. "Here," said he, "we are in the Area Palatina. Yonder, you
see, is the facade of Domitian's palace, and there you have that of
Caligula's palace, while on turning round the temple of Jupiter Stator is
in front of you. The Sacred Way came up as far as here, and passed under
the Porta Mugonia, one of the three gates of primitive Rome."
He paused and pointed to the northwest portion of the height. "You will
have noticed," he resumed, "that the Caesars didn't build yonder. And
that was evidently because they had to respect some very ancient
monuments dating from before the foundation of the city and greatly
venerated by the people. There stood the temple of Victory built by
Evander and his Arcadians, the Lupercal grotto which I showed you, and
the humble hut of Romulus constructed of reeds and clay. Oh! everything
has been found again, Monsieur l'Abbe; and, in spite of all that the
Germans say there isn't the slightest doubt of it."
Then, quite abruptly, like a man suddenly remembering the most
interesting thing of all, he exclaimed: "Ah! to wind up we'll just go to
see the subterranean gallery where Caligula was murdered."