“I PROTESTANTI DELLA SIMPATÍA”
It began again to rain disastrously; the days were made up of downpours
and squalls, to the great despair of the foreigners.
At night the Piazza Esedra was a fine sight from the hotel balcony. The
arc lights reflected their glow in the lakes of rain beneath them, and
the great jet of the fountain in the centre took on tones of blue and
mother-of-pearl, where the rays of the electric light pierced through
it.
In the hotel parlour one dance followed another. Everybody complained
gaily of the bad weather.
Shortly before the middle of Lent there arrived a Parisian family at the
hotel, composed of a mother with two daughters and a companion.
This family might be considered a representation of the _entente
cordiale_. The mother was French, the widow first of a Spaniard, Señor
Sandoval, by whom she had had one daughter, and then of an Englishman,
Mr. Dawson, by whom she had had another.
Mme. Dawson was a fat, imposing lady, with tremendous brilliants in
her ears and somewhat theatrical clothes; Mile. Sandoval, the elder
daughter, was of Arab type, with black eyes, an aquiline nose, pale
rose-coloured lips, and a malicious smile, full of mystery, as if it
revealed restless and diabolical intentions.
Her half-sister, Mile. Dawson, was a contrast, being the perfect type of
a grotesque Englishwoman, with a skin like a beet, and freckles.
The governess, Mile. Cadet, was not at all pretty, but she was gay and
sprightly. These four women seated in the middle of the dining-room, a
little stiff, a little out of temper, seemed, particularly the first
few days, to defy anybody that might have wished to approach them. They
replied coolly to the formal bows of the other guests, and none of them
cared to take part in the dances.
The handsome Signor Carminatti shot incendiary glances at Mlle. de
Sandoval; but she remained scornful; so one evening, as the Dawson
family came out of the dining-room, the Neapolitan waved his hand toward
them and said:
“I protestante della simpatia.”
Cæsar made much of this phrase, because it was apt, and he took it
that Carminatti considered the ladies protestants against friendliness,
because they had paid no attention to the charms that he displayed in
their honour.
_CONSEQUENCES OF THE RAIN_
Two or three days later Mme. Dawson bowed to Cæsar on passing him in
the hall, and asked him:
“Aren’t you Spanish?”
“Yes, madam.”
“But don’t you speak French?”
“Very little.”
“My daughter is Spanish too.”
“She is a perfect Spanish type.”
“Really?” asked the daughter referred to.
“Thoroughly.”
“Then I am happy.”
In the evening, after dinner, Cæsar again joined Mme. Dawson and began
to talk with her. The Frenchwoman had a tendency to philosophize, to
criticize, and to find out everything. She had no great capacity for
admiration, and nothing she saw succeeded in dragging warm eulogies from
her lips. There was none of the “_bello! bellissimo!_” of the Italian
ladies in her talk, but a series of exact epithets.
Mme. Dawson had left all her capacity for admiration in France, and was
visiting Italy for the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at the
conclusion that there is no town like Paris, no nation like the French,
and it didn’t matter much to Cæsar whether he agreed or denied it.
Mlle. de Sandoval had a great curiosity about things in Spain and an
absurd idea about everything Spanish.
“It seems impossible,” thought Cæsar, “how stupid French people are
about whatsoever is not French.”
Mlle. de Sandoval asked Cæsar a lot of questions, and finally, with an
ironic gesture, said to him:
“You mustn’t let us keep you from going to talk with the Countess
Brenda. She is looking over at you a great deal.”
Cæsar became a trifle dubious; indeed, the Countess was looking at him
in a fixed and disdainful way.
“The Countess is a very intelligent woman,” said Cæsar; “I think you
would all like her very much.”
Mme. Dawson said nothing; Cæsar rose, took his leave of the family, and
went over to speak to the Countess and her daughter. She received him
coldly. Cæsar thought he would stay long enough to be polite and then
get away, when Carminatti, speaking to him in a very friendly way and
calling him “_mio caro_,” asked him to introduce him to Mme. Dawson.
He did so, and when he had left the handsome Neapolitan leaning back
in a chair beside the French ladies, he made the excuse that he had a
letter to write, and said good-night.
“I see that you are an ogre,” said Mlle. de Sandoval.
“Do you want me for anything?”
“No, no; you may go when you choose.”
Cæsar repaired to his room.
“I don’t mind those people,” he said; “but if they think I am a man made
for entertaining ladies, they are very clever.”
The next day Mme. Dawson talked with Cæsar very affably, and Mlle. de
Sandoval made a few ironical remarks about his savage ways.
Of all the family Cæsar conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most
intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a
turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke,
her voice had certain falsetto inflexions that were very comical.
Mlle. Cadet was on to everything the moment it happened. Cæsar asked
her jokingly about the people in the hotel, and he was thunderstruck to
find that she had discovered in three or four days who all the guests
were and where they came from.
Mlle. Cadet also told him that Carminatti had sent an ardent declaration
of love to the Sandoval girl the first day he saw her.
“The devil!” exclaimed Cæsar. “What an inflammable Neapolitan it is!
And what did she reply?”
“What would she reply? Nothing.”
“As you are already familiar with everything going on here,” said
Cæsar, “I am going to ask you a question: what is the noise in the
court every night? I am always thinking of asking somebody.”
“Why, it is charging the accumulator of the lift,” replied Mlle. Cadet.
“You have relieved me from a terrible doubt which worried me.”
“I have never heard a noise,” said Mlle. de Sandoval, breaking into the
conversation.
“That’s because your room is on the square,” Cæsar answered, “and the
noise is in the court; on the poor side of the house.”
“Pshaw! There is no reason to complain,” remarked Mlle. Cadet, “if they
give us a serenade.”
“Do you consider yourself poor?” Mlle. de Sandoval asked Cæsar,
disdainfully.
“Yes, I consider myself poor, because I am.”
During the following days Mme. Dawson and her daughters were introduced
to the rest of the people in the hotel, and became intimate with them.
The “Contessina” Brenda and the San Martino girls made friends with the
French girls, and the Neapolitan and his gentlemen friends flitted among
them all.
The Countess Brenda at first behaved somewhat stiff with Mme. Dawson and
her daughters, but later she little by little submitted and permitted
them to be her friends.
She introduced the French ladies to the other ladies in the hotel; but
doubtless her aristocratic ideas would not allow her to consider Mlle.
Cadet a person worthy to be introduced, for whenever she got to her she
acted as if she didn’t know her.
The governess, noticing this repeated contempt, would blush at it, and
once she murmured, addressing Cæsar with tears ready to escape from her
eyes:
“That’s a nice thing to do! Just because I am poor, I don’t think they
ought to despise me.”
“Don’t pay any attention,” said Cæsar, quite aloud; “these middle-class
people are often very rude.”
Mlle. de Sandoval gave Cæsar a look half startled and half reproving;
and he explained, smiling:
“I was telling Mlle. Cadet a funny story.”
Mme. Dawson and her daughters soon became friends with the most
distinguished persons in the hotel; only the Marchesa Sciacca, the
Maltese, avoided them as if they inspired her with profound contempt.
In a few days the Countess Brenda and Cæsar’s friendship passed beyond
the bonds of friendship; but in the course of time it cooled off again.
_INFLUENCE OF THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH’S AXIS ON WHAT IS CALLED
LOVE_
One evening, when the Countess Brenda’s daughter had left Rome to go
with her father to a villa they owned in the North, the Countess and
Cæsar had a long conversation in the salon. They were alone; a great
tenor was singing at the Costanzi, and the whole hotel was at the
theatre. The Countess chatted with Cæsar, she reclining in a chaise
longue, and he seated in a low chair. That evening the Countess was
feeling in a provocative humour, and she made fun of Cæsar’s mode of
life and his ideas, not with the phrases and the manners of a great
lady, but with the boldness and spice of a woman of the people.
The angle that the earth’s axis makes with the trajectory of the
ecliptic, and which produces those absurd phenomena that we Spaniards
call seasons, determined at that period the arrival of spring, and
spring had no doubt shaken the Countess Brenda’s nerves.
Spring gave cooling inflexions to the lady’s voice and made her express
herself with warmth and with a shamelessly libertine air.
No doubt the core of her personality was joyful, provoking, and somewhat
licentious.
Her eyes flashed, and on her lips there was a sensual expression of
challenge and mockery.
Cæsar, that evening, without knowing why, was dull at expressing
himself, and depressed. Some of the Countess’s questions left him in a
stupid unreadiness.
“Poor child; I am sorry for you,” she suddenly said.
“Why?”
“Because you are so weak; you have such an air of exhaustion. What do
you do to make you like this? I am sure you ought to be given some sort
of iron tonic, like the anaemic girls.”
“Do you really think I am so weak?” asked Cæsar.
“Isn’t it written all over you?”
“Well, anyway, I am stronger than you, Countess.”
“In a discussion, perhaps. But otherwise.... You have no strength except
in your brains.”
“And in my hands. Give me your hand.”
The Countess gave him her hand and Cæsar pressed it tighter and
tighter.
“You are strong after all,” she said.
“That is nothing. You wait,” and Cæsar squeezed the Countess’s hand
until he made her give a sharp scream. A servant entered the salon.
“It’s nothing,” said the Countess, getting up; “I seemed to have turned
my foot.”
“I will take you to your room,” exclaimed Cæsar, offering her his arm.
“No, no. Thanks very much.”
“Yes. It has to be.”
“Then, all right,” she murmured, and added, “Now you frighten me.”
“Bah, you will get over that!” and Cæsar went into her room with
her....
The next day Cæsar appeared in the salon looking as if he had been
buried and dug up.
“What is the matter?” Mme. Dawson and her daughters asked him.
“Nothing; only I had a headache and I took a big dose of antipyrine.”
The relations of the Brenda lady and Cæsar soon cooled. Their
temperaments were incompatible: there was no harmony between their
imaginations or between their skins. In reality, the Countess, with all
her romanticism, did not care for long and compromising liaisons, but
for hotel adventures, which leave neither vivid memories nor deep
imprints. Cæsar noted that despite her lyricism and her sentimental
talk, there was a great deal of firmness in this plump woman, and a lack
of sensitiveness.
Moreover, this woman, so little aristocratic in intimacy, had much
vanity about stupid things and a great passion for jewelry; but what
contributed most to making Cæsar feel a profound hatred for her was
his discovering what good health she enjoyed. This good health seemed
offensive to Cæsar, above all when he compared it to his own, to his
weak nerves and his restless brain.
From considering her a spiritual and delicate lady he passed to
considering her a powerful mare, which deserved no more than a whip and
spurs.
The love-affair contributed to upsetting Cæsar and making him more
sarcastic and biting. This spiritual ulceration of Cæsar’s profoundly
astonished Mlle. Cadet.
One day a Roman aristocrat, nothing less than a prince, came to call on
Mme. Dawson. He talked with her, with her daughters, and the Countess
Brenda, and held forth about whether the hotels in Rome were full or
empty, about the _pensions_, and the food in the restaurants, with a
great wealth of details; afterwards he lamented that Mme. Dawson, as a
relative of his, even though a very distant one, should have gone to a
_ricevimento_ at the French Embassy, and he boasted of belonging to the
Black party in Rome.
When he was gone, Mlle. Cadet came over to Cæsar, who was sunk in an
arm-chair gazing at the ceiling, and asked him:
“What did you think of the prince?”
“What prince?”
“The gentleman who was here talking a moment ago.”
“Ah, was he a prince?”
“Yes.”
“As he talked about nothing but hotels, I took him to be the proprietor
of one.”
Mlle. Cadet told Mme. Dawson what Cæsar had said, and she and her
daughters were amused at his error.