_A WALK IN THE VILLA BORGHESE_
At the beginning of Holy Week Laura returned to the hotel, at
lunch-time.
“And your husband?” Cæsar asked her.
“He didn’t want to come. Rome bores him. He is giving all his attention
to taking care of the heart-disease he says he has.”
“Is it serious?”
“I think not. Every time I see him I find him with a new disease and a
new diet; one time it is vegetarian, another nothing but meat, another
time he says one should eat only grapes, or nothing but bread.”
“Then I see that he belongs to the illustrious brotherhood of the
insane.”
“You are not far from joining that brotherhood yourself.”
“Dear sister, I am one of the few sane men that go stumbling around this
insane asylum let loose we call the earth.”
“What you say about men is the truth, even though you are not an
exception. Really, the more I have to do with men, the more convinced I
am that any one of them who is not crazy, is stupid or vain or proud....
How much more intelligent, discreet, logical we women are!”
“Don’t tell me. You are marvels; modest, kindly toward your rivals, so
little given to humiliating your neighbours, male or female....”
“Yes, yes; but we are not so conceited or such play-actors as you are.
A woman may think herself pretty and amiable and sweet, and not be so.
That is true; but on the other hand, every man thinks himself braver
than the Cid, even if he is afraid of a fly, and more talented than
Seneca, even if he is a dolt.”
“To sum up, men are a calamity.”
“Just so.”
“And women spend their lives fishing for these calamities.”
“They need them; there are inferior things which still are necessary.”
“And there are superior things which are good for nothing.”
“Will you come and take a drive with me, philosopher brother?”
“Where?”
“Let’s go to the Villa Borghese. The carriage will be here in a moment.”
“All right. Let us go there.”
A two-horse victoria with rubber tires was waiting at the door, and
Laura and Cæsar got in. The carriage went past the Treasury, and out
the Porta Salaria, and entered the gardens of the Villa Borghese.
The morning had been rainy; the ground was damp; the wind waved the
tree-tops gently and caused a murmur like the tide. The carriage rolled
slowly along the avenues. Laura was very gay and chatty. Cæsar listened
to her as one listens to a bird warbling.
Many times while listening he thought: “What is there inside this head?
What is the master idea of her life? Has she really any idea about life,
or has she none?”
After several rounds they crossed the viaduct that unites the Villa
Borghese with the Pincio gardens.
_FROM THE PINCIO TERRACE_
They approached the great terrace of the gardens by an avenue that has
busts of celebrated men along both sides.
“Poor great men!” exclaimed Cæsar. “Their statues serve only to
decorate a public garden.” “They had their lives,” replied Laura, gaily;
“now we have ours.”
Laura ordered the coachman to stop a moment. The air was still murmuring
in the foliage, the birds singing, and the clouds flying slowly across
the sky.
A man with a black box approached the carriage to offer them postcards.
“Buy two or three,” said Laura.
Cæsar bought a few and put them into his pocket. The vendor withdrew
and Laura continued to look at Rome with enthusiasm.
“Oh, how beautiful, how lovely it is! I never get tired of looking at
it. It is my favourite city. ‘_O fior d’ogni cittá, donna del mondo_.’”
“She is no longer mistress of the world, little sister.”
“For me she is. Look at St. Peter’s. It looks like a shred of cloud.”
“Yes, that’s so. It’s of a blue shade that seems transparent.”
Bells were ringing and great majestic white clouds kept moving along the
horizon; on the Janiculum the statue of Garibaldi rose up gallantly into
the air, like a bird ready to take wing.
“When I look at Rome this way,” murmured Laura, “I feel a pang, a pang
of grief.”
“Why?”
“Because I remember that I must die, and then I shall not come back
to see Rome. She will be here still, century after century, full of
sunlight, and I shall be dead.... It is horrible, horrible!”
“And your religion?”
“Yes, I know. I believe I shall see other things; but not these things
that are so beautiful.”
“You are an Epicurean.”
“It is so beautiful to be alive!”
They stayed there looking at the panorama. Below, in the Piazza del
Popólo, they saw a red tram slipping along, which looked, at that
distance, like a toy.
A tilbury, driven by a woman, stopped near their carriage. The woman was
blond with green eyes, prominent cheek-bones, and a little fur cap. At
her feet lay an enormous dog with long flame-coloured hair.
“She must be a Russian,” said Cæsar.
“Yes. Do you like that type?”
“She has a lot of character. She looks like one of the women that would
order servants to be whipped.”
The Russian was smiling vaguely. Laura told the coachman to drive on.
They made a few rounds in the avenues of the Pincio. The music was
beginning; a few carriages, and groups of soldiers and seminarians,
crowded around the bandstand; Laura didn’t care for brass bands, they
were too noisy for her, and she gave the coachman orders to drive to the
Corso.
_MEETING MARCHMONT_
They passed in front of the Villa Medici, and when they got near the
Piazza, della Trinitá de’ Monti they met a man on horseback, who, on
seeing them, immediately approached the carriage. It was Archibald
Marchmont, who had just arrived in Rome.
“I thought you had forgotten us,” said Laura.
“I forget you, Marchesa! Never.”
“You say you came to Rome....”
“From Nice I had to return to London, because my father was seriously
ill with an attack of gout.”
“He is well again?”
“Yes, thank you. You are coming back from a drive?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want to come and have tea with my wife and me?”
“Where?”
“At the Hotel Excelsior. We are staying there. Will you come?” “All
right.”
Laura accepted, and they went to the Via Veneto with the Englishman
riding beside them.
They went into the hotel and passed through to the “hall” full of
people, Marchmont sent word to his wife by a servant, to come down.
Laura and Cæsar seated themselves with the Englishman.
“This hotel is unbearable,” exclaimed Marchmont; “there is nothing here
but Americans.”
“Your wife, however, must like that,” said Cæsar.
“No. Susanna is more European every day, and she doesn’t care for the
shrieking elegance of her compatriots. Besides, her father is here, and
that makes her feel less American.”
“It is an odd form of filial enthusiasm,” remarked Cæsar.
“It doesn’t shock me. I almost think it’s the rule,” replied Marchmont;
“at home I could see that my brothers and sisters hated one another
cordially, and that every member of the family wanted to get away from
the others. You two who are so fond of each other are a very rare
instance. Is it frequent in Spain that brothers and sisters like one
another?”
“Yes, there are instances of it,” answered Cæsar, laughing.
Mrs. Marchmont arrived, accompanied by an old man who evidently was her
father, and two other men. Susanna was most smart; she greeted Laura and
Cæsar very affably, and presented her father, Mr. Russell; then she
presented an English author, tall, skinny, with blue eyes, a white
beard, and hair like a halo; and then a young Englishman from the
Embassy, a very distinguished person named Kennedy, who was a Catholic.
_TEA_
After the introductions they passed into the dining-room, which was
most impressive. It was an exhibition of very smart women, some of
them ideally beautiful, and idle men. All about them resounded a nasal
English of the American sort.
Susanna Marchmont served the tea and did the honours to her guests.
They all talked French, excepting Mr. Russell, who once in a long while
uttered some categorical monosyllable in his own language.
Mr. Russell was not of the classic Yankee type; he looked like a vulgar
Englishman. He was a serious man, with a short moustache, grey-headed,
with three or four gold teeth.
What to Cæsar seemed wonderful in this gentleman was his economy of
words. There was not one useless expression in his vocabulary, and
not the slightest redundancy; whatever partook of merit, prestige, or
nobility was condensed, for him, to the idea of value; whatever partook
of arrangement, cleanliness, order, was condensed to the word “comfort”;
so that Mr. Russell, with a very few words, had everything specified.
To Susanna, imbued with her preoccupation in supreme _chic_, her father
no doubt did not seem a completely decorative father; but he gave Cæsar
the impression of a forceful man.
Near them, at a table close by, was a little blond man, with a hooked
nose and a scanty imperial, in company with a fat lady. They bowed to
Marchmont and his wife.
“That gentleman looks like a Jew,” said Cæsar.
“He is,” replied Marchmont, “that is Señor Pereyra, a rich Jew; of
Portuguese origin, I think.”
“How quickly you saw it!” exclaimed Susanna.
“He has that air of a sick goat, so frequent in Jews.”
“His wife has nothing sickly about her, or thin either,” remarked Laura.
“No,” said Cæsar; “his wife represents another Biblical type; one of
the fat kine of somebody’s dream, which foretold abundance and a good
harvest.”
The Englishman, Kennedy, had also little liking for Jews.
“I do not hate a Jew as anti-Christian,” said Cæsar; “but as
super-Christian. Nor do I hate the race, but the tendency they have
never to be producers, but always middlemen, and because they incarnate
so well for our era the love of money, and of joy and pleasure.”
The English author was a great partisan of Jews, and he asserted that
they were more distinguished in science and the arts than any other
race. The Jewish question was dropped in an instant, when they saw a
smart lady come in accompanied by a pale man with a black shock of hair
and an uneasy eye.
“That is the Hungarian violinist Kolozsvar,” said Susanna.
“Kolozsvar, Kolozsvar!” they heard everybody saying.
“Is he a great virtuoso?” Cæsar asked Kennedy.
“No, I think not,” answered Kennedy. “It seems that this Hungarian’s
speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country,
which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not
obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London
fight for him. His game is to pass himself off as a fallen man,
depraved, worn-out. There you have his phraseology.... They see a man to
save, to raise up, and convert into a great artist, and almost all of
them yield to this temptation.”
“That is comical,” said Cæsar, looking curiously at the fiddler and his
lady.
“To a Spaniard,” replied Kennedy, “it is comical; and probably it would
be to an Italian too; but in England there are many women that have a
purely imaginative idealism, a romanticism fed on ridiculous novels, and
they fall into traps like these, which seem clumsy and grotesque to you
here in the South, where people are more clear-sighted and realistic.”
Cæsar watched the brave fiddler, who played the role of a man used up,
to great perfection.
After tea, Susanna invited them to go up to her rooms, and Laura and her
brother and Kennedy and Mr. Russell went.
The English author had met a colleague, with whom he stayed behind
talking, and Marchmont remained in the “hall,” as if it did not seem to
him proper for him to go to his wife’s rooms.
Susanna’s rooms were very high, had balconies on the Via Veneto, and
were almost opposite Queen Margherita’s palace. One overlooked the
garden and could see the Queen Mother taking her walks, which is not
without its importance for persons who live in a republic.
Susanna was most amiable to Laura; repeated to all of them her
invitation to come and see her again; and after they had all promised
to see one another frequently, Cæsar and Laura went down to their
carriage, and took a turn on the Corso by twilight.