Accompanied by Kennedy, Cæsar called repeatedly on the most auspicious
members of the French clerical element living in Rome, and found persons
more cultivated than among the rough Spanish monks; but, as was natural,
nobody gave him any useful information offering the possibility of his
putting his financial talents to the proof.
“Something must turn up,” he used to say to himself, “and at the least
opening we will dive into the work.”
Cæsar kept gathering notes about people who had connections in Spain
with the Black party in Rome; he called several times on Father
Herreros, despite his uncle’s prohibition, and succeeded in getting the
monk to write to the Marquesa de Montsagro, asking if there were no
means of making Cæsar Moneada, Cardinal Fort’s nephew, Conservative
Deputy for her district.
The Marquesa wrote back that it was impossible; the Conservative Deputy
for the district was very popular and a man with large properties there.
When Holy Week was over, Laura and the Countess Brenda and her daughter
decided to spend a while at Florence, and invited Cæsar to accompany
them; but he was quite out of harmony with the Brenda lady, and said
that he had to stay on in Rome.
A few days later Mme. Dawson and her daughters left, and the San
Martinos and the Marchesa Sciacca; and an avalanche of English people
and Germans, armed with their red Baedekers, took the hotel by storm.
Susanna Marchmont had gone to spend some days at Corfu.
In less than a week Cæsar remained alone, knowing nobody in the hotel,
and despite his believing that he was going to be perfectly indifferent
about this, he felt deserted and sad. The influence of the springtime
also affected him. The deep blue sky, cloudless, dense, dark, made him
languish. Instead of entertaining himself with something or other, he
did scarcely anything all day long but walk.
_TWO ABSURD MEN_
“I have continually near me in the hotel,” wrote Cæsar to Alzugaray,
“two absurd fellows: one is one of those stout red Germans with a square
head; the other a fine slim Norwegian. The German, who is a captain in
some service or other, is a restless man, always busy about what the
devil I don’t know. He is constantly carrying about trunks and boxes,
with the aid of a sorrowful valet, dressed in black, who appears to
detest his position. The captain must devote the morning to doing
gymnastics, for I hear him from my room, which is next to his, jumping
and dropping weights on the floor, each of which must weigh half a ton,
to judge by the noise they make.
“He does all this to vocal commands, and when some feat doesn’t go right
he reprimands himself.
“This German isn’t still a moment; he opens the salon door, crosses the
room, stands at the window, takes up a paper, puts it down. He is a type
that makes me nervous.
“The Norwegian at first appeared to be a reasonable man, somewhat
sullen. He looked frowningly at me, and I watched him equally
frowningly, and took him for a thinker, an Ibsenite whose imagination
was lost among the ice of his own country. Now and then I would see
him walking up and down the corridor, rubbing his hands together so
continuously and so frantically that they made a noise like bones.
“Suddenly, this gentleman is transformed as if by magic; he begins to
joke with the servants, he seizes a chair and dances with it, and the
other day I saw him alone in the salon marching around with a paper hat
on his head, like children playing soldiers, and blowing on a cornet,
also made of paper.” I stared at him in amazement, he smiled like a
child, and asked if he was disturbing me.
“‘No, no, not in the least,’ I told him.
“I have asked in the hotel if this man is crazy, and they have told me
that he is not, but is a professor, a man of science, who is known to
have these strange fits of gaiety.
“Another of the Norwegian’s doings has been to compose a serenade, with
a vulgar melody that would disgust you, and which he has dedicated ‘_A
la bella Italia_.’ He wrote the Italian words himself, but as he knows
no music, he had a pianist come here and write out his serenade. What
he especially wants is that it should be full of sentiment; and so the
pianist arranged it with directions and many pauses, which satisfied
the Norwegian. Almost every night the serenade ‘_A la bella Italia_’
is sung. Somebody who wants to amuse himself goes to the piano, the
Norwegian strikes a languid attitude and chants his serenade. Sometimes
he goes in front of the piano, sometimes behind, but invariably he hears
the storm of applause when it ends, and he bows with great gusto.
“I don’t know whether it’s the other people who are laughing at him, or
he who is laughing at the others.
“The other day he said to me in his macaronic Italian:
“‘Mr. Spaniard, I have good eyesight, good hearing, a good sense of
smell, and... lots of sentiment.’
“I didn’t exactly understand what he meant me to think, and I didn’t pay
any attention to him.
“It seems that the Norwegian is going away soon, and as the day of his
departure approaches, he grows funereal.”
_THE SADNESS OF LIFE_
“I don’t know why I don’t go away,” Cæsar wrote to his friend another
time. “When I go out in the evening and see the ochre-coloured houses on
both sides and the blue sky above, a horrible sadness takes me. These
spring days oppress me, make me want to weep; it seems to me it would
be better to be dead, leaving no tomb or name or other ridiculous and
disagreeable thing, but disappearing into the air or the sea. It
doesn’t seem natural; but I have never been so happy as one time when I
was in Paris sick, alone and with a fever. I was in an hotel room and
my window looked into the garden of a fine house, where I could see the
tops of the trees; and I transformed them into a virgin forest, wherein
marvellous adventures happened to me.
“Since then I have often thought that things are probably neither good
nor bad, neither sad nor happy, in themselves; he who has sound, normal
nerves, and a brain equally sound, reflects the things around him like a
good mirror, and feels with comfort the impression of his conformity to
nature; nowadays we who have nerves all upset and brains probably upset
too, form deceptive reflections. And so, that time in Paris, sick and
shut in, I was happy; and here, sound and strong, when toward nightfall,
I look at the splendid skies, the palaces, the yellow walls that take an
extraordinary tone, I feel that I am one of the most miserable men on
the planet....”
_ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON_
His lack of tranquillity led Cæsar to make absurd resolutions which he
didn’t carry out.
One Sunday in the beginning of April, he went out into the street,
disposed to take a walk outside of Rome, following the road anywhere it
led. A hard, fine rain was falling, the sky was grey, the air mild, the
streets were full of puddles, the shops closed; a few flower merchants
were offering branches of almond in blossom.
Cæsar was very depressed. He went into a church to get out of the rain.
The church was full; there were many people in the centre of it; he
didn’t know what they were doing. Doubtless they were gathered there for
some reason, although Cæsar didn’t understand what. Cæsar sat down on
a bench, worn out; he would have liked to listen to organ music, to a
boy choir. No ideas occurred to him but sentimental ones. Some time
passed, and a priest began to preach. Cæsar got up and went into the
street.
“I must get rid of these miserable impressions, get back to noble ideas.
I must fight this sentimental leprosy.”
He started to walk with long strides through the sad, empty streets.
He went toward the river and met Kennedy, who was coming back, he told
him, from the studio of a sculptor friend of his.
“You look like desolation. What has happened to you?”
“Nothing, but I am in a perfectly hellish humour.”
“I am melancholy too. It must be the weather. Let’s take a walk.”
They went along the bank of the Tiber. Full of clay, more turbid than
ever, and very high between the white embankments hemming it in, the
river looked like a big sewer.
“This is not the ‘coeruleus Tibris’ that Virgil speaks of in the
Aeneld, which presented itself to Aeneas in the form of an ancient man
with his head crowned with roses,” said Kennedy.
“No. This is a horrible river,” Cæsar opined.
They followed the shore, passed the Castel Sant’ Angelo and the bridge
with the statues.
From the embankment, to the right, they could now see narrow lanes, sunk
almost below the level of the river. On the other bank a new, white
edifice towered in the rain.
They went as far as the Piazza d’Armi, and then came back at nightfall
to Rome. The rain was gradually ceasing and the sky looked less
threatening. A file of greenish gaslights followed the river-wall and
then crossed over the bridge.
They walked to the Piazza del Popólo and through the Via Babuino to the
Piazza di Spagna.
“Would you like to go to a Benedictine abbey tomorrow?” asked Kennedy.
“All right.”
“And if you are still melancholy, we will leave you there.”
_THE ABBEY_
The next day, after lunch, Kennedy and Cæsar went to visit the abbey of
Sant’ Anselmo on the Aventine. The abbot, Hildebrand, was a friend
of Kennedy’s, and like him an Englishman.
They took a carriage and Kennedy told it to stop at the church of Santa
Sabina.
“It is still too early to go to the abbey. Let us look at this church,
which is the best preserved of all the old Roman ones.”
They entered the church; but it was so cold there that Cæsar went out
again directly and waited in the porch. There was a man there selling
rosaries and photographs who spoke scarcely any Italian or French, but
did speak Spanish. Probably he was a Jew.
Cæsar asked him where they manufactured those religious toys, and the
pedlar told him in Westphalia.
Kennedy went to look at a picture by Sassoferrato, which is in one of
the chapels, and meanwhile the rosary-seller showed the church door to
Cæsar and explained the different bas-reliefs, cut in cypress wood by
Greek artists of the V Century, and representing scenes from the Old and
New Testaments.
Kennedy came back, they got into the carriage again, and they drove to
the Benedictine abbey.
“Is the abbot Hildebrandus here?” asked Kennedy.
Out came the abbot, a man of about fifty, with a gold cross on his
breast. They exchanged a few friendly words, and the superior showed
them the convent.
The refectory was clean and very spacious; the long table of shining
wood; the floor made of mosaic. The crypt held a statue, which Cæsar
assumed must be of Sant’ Anselmo. The church was severe, without
ornaments, without pictures; it had a primitive air, with its columns of
fine granite that looked like marble. A monk was playing the harmonium,
and in the opaque veiled light, the thin music gave a strange impression
of something quite outside this life.
Afterwards they crossed a large court with palm-trees. They went up to
the second story, and down a corridor with cells, each of which had on
the lintel the name of the patron saint of the respective monk. Each
door had a card with the name of the occupant of the room.
It looked more like a bath-house than a monastery. The cells were
comfortable inside, without any air of sadness; each held a bed, a
divan, and a small bookcase.
By a window at the end of the passage, one could see, far away, the
Alban Hills, looking like a blue mountain-range, half hidden in white
haze, and nearby one could see the trees in the Protestant cemetery and
the pyramid of Caïus Cestius close to them.
Cæsar felt a sort of deep repugnance for the people shut up here,
remote from life and protected from it by a lot of things.
“The man who is playing the harmonium in this church with its opaque
light, is a coward,” he said to himself. “One must live and struggle in
the open air, among men, in the midst of their passions and hatreds,
even though one’s miserable nerves quiver and tremble.”
After showing them the monastery, the abbot Hildebrand took them to his
study, where he worked at revising ancient translations of the Bible. He
had photographic copies of all the Latin texts and he was collating them
with the original.
They talked of the progress of the Church, and the abbot commented with
some contempt on the worldly success of the Jesuit churches, with their
saints who serve as well to get husbands and rich wives as to bring
winning numbers in the lottery.
Before going out, they went to a window, at the other end of the
corridor from where they had looked out before. Below them they could
see the Tiber as far as the Ripa harbour; opposite, the heights of the
Janiculum, and further, Saint Peter’s.
When they went out, Kennedy said to Cæsar:
“What devilish effect has the abbey produced in you, that you are so
much gayer than when we went in?”
“It has confirmed me in my idea, which I had lost for a few days.”
“What idea is that?”
“That we must not defend ourselves in this life, but attack, always
attack.”
“And now you are contented at having found it again?”
“Yes.”
_PIRANESI’S GARDEN_
“I am glad, because you have such a pitiable air when you are sad. Would
you like to go to the Priory of Malta, which is only a step from here?”
“Good.”
They went down in the carriage to the Priory of Malta. They knocked at
the gate and a woman came out who knew Kennedy, and who told them to
wait a moment and she would open the church.
“Here,” said Kennedy, “you have all that remains of the famous Order of
Saint John of Jerusalem. That anti-historic man Bonaparte rooted it
out of Malta. The Order attempted to establish itself in Catania, and
afterwards at Ferrara, and finally took refuge here. Now it has no
property left, and all that remains are its memories and its archives.”
“That is how our descendants will see our Holy Mother the Church. In
Chicago or Boston some traveller will find an abandoned chapel, and will
ask: ‘What is this? ‘And they will tell him: ‘This is what remains of
the Catholic Church.’”
“Don’t talk like an Homais,” said Kennedy.
“I don’t know who Homais is,” retorted Cæsar.
“An atheistical druggist in Flaubert’s novel, _Madame Bovary_. Haven’t
you read it?”
“Yes; I have a vague idea that I have read it. A very heavy thing; yes,
... I think I have read it.”
The woman opened the door and they went into the church. It was small,
overcharged with ornaments. They saw the tomb of Bishop Spinelli and
Giotto’s Virgin, and then went into a hall gay with red flags with a
white cross, on whose walls they could read the names of the Grand
Masters of the Order of Malta. The majority of the names were French and
Polish. Two or three were Spanish, and among them that of Cæsar Borgia.
“Your countryman and namesake was also a Grand Master of Malta,” said
Kennedy.
“So it seems,” replied Cæsar with indifference. “I see that you speak
with contempt of that extraordinary man. Is he not congenial to you?”
“The fact is I don’t know his history.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“How strange! We must go tomorrow to the Borgia Apartment in the
Vatican.”
“Good.”
They saw the model of an ancient galley which was in the same hall, and
went out through the church into the garden planned by Piranesi.
The woman showed them a very old palm, with a hole in it made by a
hand-grenade in the year ‘49. It had remained that way more than half
a century, and it was only a few days since the trunk of the palm had
broken.
From the garden they went, by a path between trees, to the bastion of
Paul III, a little terrace, from which they could see the Tiber at their
feet, and opposite the panorama of Rome and its environs, in the light
of a beautiful spring sunshine....