“My dear Cæsar,” said Kennedy, “I believe it will be very difficult for
you to find what you want by looking for it. You ought to leave it a
little to chance.”
“Abandon myself to events as they arrive? All right, it seems a good
idea.”
“Then if you find something practicable, utilize it.”
Kennedy took his friend to a statue-shop where he used to pass some of
his hours. The shop was in a lane near the Forum, and its stock was in
antiques, majolicas, and plaster casts of pagan gods.
The shop was dark and rather gloomy, with a small court at the back
covered with vines. The proprietor was an old man, with a moustache,
an imperial, and a shock of white hair. His name was Giovanni Battista
Lanza. He professed revolutionary ideas and had great enthusiasm about
Mazzini. He expressed himself in an ironical and malicious manner.
Signora Vittoria, his wife, was a grumbling old woman, rather devoted to
wine. She spoke like a Roman of the lowest class, was olive-coloured and
wrinkled, and of her former beauty there remained only her very black
eyes and hair that was still black.
The daughter, Simonetta, a girl who resembled her father, blond, with
the build of a goddess, was the one that waited on customers and kept
the accounts.
Simonetta, being the manager, divided up the profits; the elder son was
head of the workshop and he made the most money; then came two workmen
from outside; and then the father who still got his day’s wages, out
of consideration for his age; and finally the younger son, twelve or
fourteen years old, who was an apprentice.
Simonetta gave her mother what was indispensable for household expenses
and managed the rest herself.
Kennedy retailed this information the first day they went to Giovanni
Battista Lanza’s house. Cæsar could see Simonetta keeping the books,
while the small brother, in a white blouse that came to his heels, was
chasing a dog, holding a pipe in his hand by the thick part, as if it
were a pistol, the dog barking and hanging on to the blouse, the small
boy shrieking and laughing, when Signora Vittoria came bawling out.
Kennedy presented Simonetta to his friend Cæsar, and she smiled and
gave her hand.
“Is Signore Giovanni Battista here?” Kennedy asked Signora Vittoria.
“Yes, he is in the court.” she answered in her gloomy way.
“Is something wrong with your mamma?” said Kennedy to Simonetta.
“Nothing.”
They went into the court and Giovanni Battista arose, very dignified,
and bowed to Cæsar. The elder son and the two workmen in white blouses
and paper caps were busy with water and wires, cleaning a plaster mould
they had just emptied.
The mould was a big has-relief of the Way of the Cross. Giovanni
Battista permitted himself various jocose remarks about the Way of
the Cross, which his son and the other two workmen heard with
great indifference; but while he was still emptying his store of
anti-Christian irony, the voice of Signora Vittoria was heard, crying
domineeringly:
“Giovanni Battista!”
“What is it?”
“That’s enough, that’s enough! I can hear you from here.”
“That’s my wife,” said Giovanni Battista, “she doesn’t like me to be
lacking in respect for plaster saints.” “You are a pagan!” screamed the
old woman. “You shall see, you shall see what will happen to you.”
“What do you expect to have happen to me, darling?”
“Leave her alone,” exclaimed the elder son, ill at ease; “you always
have to be making mother fly into a rage.”
“No, my boy, no; she is the one who makes me fly into a rage.”
“Giovanni Battista is used to living among gods,” said Kennedy, “and he
despises saints.”
“No, no,” replied the cast-maker; “some saints are all right. If all
the churches had figures by Donatello or Robbia, I would go to church
oftener; but to go and look at those statues in the Jesuit churches,
those figures with their arms spread and their eyes rolling.... Oh, no!
I cannot look at such things.”
Cæsar could see that Giovanni Battista expressed himself very well;
but that he was not precisely a star when it came to working. After the
mould for the bas-relief was cleaned and fixed, the cast-maker invited
Cæsar and Kennedy to have a glass of wine in a wine-shop near by.
“How’s this, are you leaving already, father?” said Simonetta, as he
went through the shop to get to the street.
“I’m coming back, I’m coming back right away.”
_SUPERSTITIONS_
The three of them went to a rather dirty tavern in the same lane,
and settled themselves by the window. This post was a good point of
observation for that narrow street, so crowded and so picturesque.
Workmen went by, and itinerant vendors, women with kerchiefs, half
head-dress and half muffler, and with black eyes and expressive faces.
Opposite was a booth of coloured candies, dried figs strung on a reed,
and various kinds of sweets.
A wine-cart passed, and Kennedy made Cæsar observe how decorative it
was with its big arm-seat in the middle and its hood above, like a
prompter’s box.
Giovanni Battista ordered a flask of wine for the three of them. While
he chatted and drank, friends of his came to greet them. They were men
with beards, long hair, and soft hats, of the Garbaldi and Verdi type so
abundant in Italy.
Among them were two serious old men; one was a model, a native of
Frascati, with the face of a venerable apostle; the other, for contrast,
looked like a buffoon and was the possessor of a grotesque nose, long,
thin at the end and adorned with a red wart.
“My wife has a deadly hatred for all of them,” said Giovanni Battista,
laughing.
“And why so?” asked Cæsar.
“Because we talk politics and sometimes they ask me for a few
pennies....”
“Your wife must have a lively temper,...” said Cæsar.
“Yes, an unhappy disposition; good, awfully good; but very
superstitious. Christianity has produced nothing but superstitions.”
“Giovanni Battista is a pagan, as his wife well says,” asserted Kennedy.
“What superstitions has your wife?” asked Cæsar.
“All of them. Romans are very superstitious and my wife is a Roman. If
you see a hunchback, it is good luck; if you see three, then your luck
is magnificent and you have to swallow your saliva three times; on the
other hand, if you see a humpbacked woman it is a bad omen and you must
spit on the ground to keep away the _jettatura_. Three priests together
is a very good sign. We ought all to get along very well in Rome,
because we see three and up to thirty priests together.”
“A spider is also very significant,” said Kennedy; “in the morning it is
of bad augury, and in the evening good.”
“And at noon?” asked Cæsar.
“At noon,” answered Lanza, laughing, “it means nothing to speak of. But
if you wish to make sure whether it is a good auspice or a bad, you kill
the spider and count its legs. If they are an even number, it is a good
omen; if uneven, bad.”
“But I believe spiders always have an even number of legs,” said Cæsar.
“Certainly,” responded the old man; “but my wife swears they do not;
that she has seen many with seven and nine legs. It is religious
unreasonableness.”
“Are there many people like that, so credulous?” asked Cæsar.
“Oh, lots,” replied Lanza; “in the shops you will find amulets, horns,
hands made of coral or horseshoes, all to keep away bad luck. My wife
and the neighbour women play the lottery, by combining the numbers of
their birthdays, and the ages of their fathers, their mothers, and their
children. When some relative dies, they make a magic combination of
the dates of birth and death, the day and the month, and buy a lottery
ticket. They never win; and instead of realizing that their systems
are of no avail, they say that they omitted to count in the number of
letters in the name or something of that sort. It is comical, so much
religion and so much superstition.”
“But you confuse religion and superstition, my friend,” said Kennedy.
“It’s all the same,” answered the old man, smiling his suavely ironical
smile. “There is nothing except Nature.”
“You do not believe in miracles, Giovanni Battista?” asked the
Englishman.
“Yes, I believe in the earth’s miracles, making trees and flowers grow,
and the miracle of children’s being born from their mothers. The other
miracles I do not believe in. What for? They are so insignificant beside
the works of Nature!”
“He is a pagan,” Kennedy again stated.
_YOUNG PAINTERS_
They were chatting, when three young lads came into the tavern, all
three having the air of artists, black clothes, soft hats, flowing
cravats, long hair, and pipes. “Two of them are fellow-countrymen of
yours,” Kennedy told Cæsar.
“They are Spanish painters,” the old man added. “The other is a sculptor
who has been in the Argentine, and he talks Spanish too.”
The three entered and sat down at the same table and were introduced to
Cæsar. Everybody chattered. Buonacossi, the Italian, was a real type.
Of very low stature, he had a giant’s torso and strong little legs. His
head was like a woe-begone eagle, his nose hooked, thin, and reddish,
eyes round, and hair black.
Buonacossi proved to be gay, exuberant, changeable, and full of
vehemence.
He explained his artistic ideas with picturesque warmth, mingling them
with blasphemies and curses. Things struck him as the best or the worst
in the world. For him there doubtless were no middle terms.
One of the two Spaniards was serious, grave, jaundiced, sour-visaged,
and named Cortés; the other, large, ordinary, fleshy, and coarse, seemed
rather a bully.
Giovanni Battista was not able to be long outside the workshop, no doubt
because his conscience troubled him, and though with difficulty, he got
up and left. Kennedy, Cæsar, and the two Spaniards went toward the
Piazza, del Campidoglio, and Buonacossi marched off in the opposite
direction.
On reaching the Via Nazionale, Kennedy took his leave and Cæsar
remained with the two Spaniards. The red, fleshy one, who had the air of
a bully, started in to make fun of the Italians, and to mimic their bows
and salutes; then he said that he had an engagement with a woman and
made haste to take his leave.
When he had gone, the grave Spaniard with the sour face, said to Cæsar:
“That chap is like the dandies here; that’s why he imitates them so
well.”
Afterwards Cortés talked about his studies in painting; he didn’t get
on well, he had no money, and anyway Rome didn’t please him at all.
Everything seemed wrong to him, absurd, ridiculous.
Cæsar, after he had said good-bye to him, murmured: “The truth is that
we Spaniards are impossible people.”