At this the Prince, who had listened to the priest with an air of

stupefaction, unable to understand the simile of the tree and its roots,

began to protest distressfully, “No, no, cousin, take Monsieur l’Abbe for

a stroll there if it amuses you. But I’ve been, and don’t want to go

back. Why, when I got home the last time I was so upset that I almost

took to my bed. No, no; such abominations are too awful--it isn’t

possible.”

At this moment a voice, bitter with displeasure, arose from the chimney

corner. Donna Serafina was emerging from her long silence. “Dario is

quite right! Send your alms, my dear, and I will gladly add mine. There

are other places where you might take Monsieur l’Abbe, and which it would

be far more useful for him to see. With that idea of yours you would send

him away with a nice recollection of our city.”

Roman pride rang out amidst the old lady’s bad temper. Why, indeed, show

one’s sores to foreigners, whose visit is possibly prompted by hostile

curiosity? One always ought to look beautiful; Rome should not be shown

otherwise than in the garb of glory.

Narcisse, however, had taken possession of Pierre. “It’s true, my dear

Abbe,” said he; “I forgot to recommend that stroll to you. You really

must visit the new district built over the castle meadows. It’s typical,

and sums up all the others. And you won’t lose your time there, I’ll

warrant you, for nowhere can you learn more about the Rome of the present

day. It’s extraordinary, extraordinary!” Then, addressing Benedetta, he

added, “Is it decided? Shall we say to-morrow morning? You’ll find the

Abbe and me over there, for I want to explain matters to him beforehand,

in order that he may understand them. What do you say to ten o’clock?”

Before answering him the Contessina turned towards her aunt and

respectfully opposed her views. “But Monsieur l’Abbe, aunt, has met

enough beggars in our streets already, so he may well see everything.

Besides, judging by his book, he won’t see worse things than he has seen

in Paris. As he says in one passage, hunger is the same all the world

over.” Then, with her sensible air, she gently laid siege to Dario. “You

know, Dario,” said she, “you would please me very much by taking me

there. We can go in the carriage and join these gentlemen. It will be a

very pleasant outing for us. It is such a long time since we went out

together.”

It was certainly that idea of going out with Dario, of having a pretext

for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself

realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a

joke. “Ah! cousin,” he said, “it will be your fault; I shall have the

nightmare for a week. An excursion like that spoils all the enjoyment of

life for days and days.”

The mere thought made him quiver with revolt. However, laughter again

rang out around him, and, in spite of Donna Serafina’s mute disapproval,

the appointment was finally fixed for the following morning at ten

o’clock. Celia as she went off expressed deep regret that she could not

form one of the party; but, with the closed candour of a budding lily,

she really took interest in Pierina alone. As she reached the ante-room

she whispered in her friend’s ear: “Take a good look at that beauty, my

dear, so as to tell me whether she is so very beautiful--beautiful beyond

compare.”

When Pierre met Narcisse near the Castle of Sant’ Angelo on the morrow,

at nine o’clock, he was surprised to find him again languid and

enraptured, plunged anew in artistic enthusiasm. At first not a word was

said of the excursion. Narcisse related that he had risen at sunrise in

order that he might spend an hour before Bernini’s “Santa Teresa.” It

seemed that when he did not see that statue for a week he suffered as

acutely as if he were parted from some cherished mistress. And his

adoration varied with the time of day, according to the light in which he

beheld the figure: in the morning, when the pale glow of dawn steeped it

in whiteness, he worshipped it with quite a mystical transport of the

soul, whilst in the afternoon, when the glow of the declining sun’s

oblique rays seemed to permeate the marble, his passion became as fiery

red as the blood of martyrs. “Ah! my friend,” said he with a weary air

whilst his dreamy eyes faded to mauve, “you have no idea how delightful

and perturbing her awakening was this morning--how languorously she

opened her eyes, like a pure, candid virgin, emerging from the embrace of

the Divinity. One could die of rapture at the sight!”

Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the

voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of

life: “We’ll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the

buildings yonder; and on our way I’ll tell you what I know of the things

we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those

delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own,

just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind

is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took

part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by

it.”

Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing

technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary

adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome,

should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last

possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which

the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to

say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young

nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern

capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were

sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of

all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what

abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the _Roma sporca_ which

artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked

even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used

for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the

princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect

manure beds which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus vast municipal works

were absolutely necessary, the question was one of health and life

itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building

houses for the newcomers, who would assuredly flock into the city. There

had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment

of the German empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of

thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be

doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for as the new centre of national life the

city would necessarily attract all the _vis viva_ of the provinces. And

at this thought pride stepped in: the fallen government of the Vatican

must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendour she

would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its

thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the

imperial or the papal city.

True, during the early years some prudence was observed; wisely enough,

houses were only built in proportion as they were required. The

population had doubled at one bound, rising from two to four hundred

thousand souls, thanks to the arrival of the little world of employees

and officials of the public services--all those who live on the State or

hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life

whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of

newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that

the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid.

And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was

necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow’s need by

enlarging Rome on all sides. Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the

second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of

light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was

neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of

the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the

work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of

the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal,

predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was

completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies,

those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away

without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All

at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had

been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever

arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A

flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome,

the noblest and easiest of preys. Those needy, famished mountaineers

found spoils for every appetite in that voluptuous South where life is so

benign, and the very delights of the climate helped to corrupt and hasten

moral gangrene. At first, too; it was merely necessary to stoop; money

was to be found by the shovelful among the rubbish of the first districts

which were opened up. People who were clever enough to scent the course

which the new thoroughfares would take and purchase buildings threatened

with demolition increased their capital tenfold in a couple of years. And

after that the contagion spread, infecting all classes--the princes,

burgesses, petty proprietors, even the shop-keepers, bakers, grocers, and

boot-makers; the delirium rising to such a pitch that a mere baker

subsequently failed for forty-five millions.* Nothing, indeed, was left

but rageful gambling, in which the stakes were millions, whilst the lands

and the houses became mere fictions, mere pretexts for stock-exchange

operations. And thus the old hereditary pride, which had dreamt of

transforming Rome into the capital of the world, was heated to madness by

the high fever of speculation--folks buying, and building, and selling

without limit, without a pause, even as one might throw shares upon the

market as fast and as long as presses can be found to print them.

* 1,800,000 pounds. See _ante_ note.--Trans.

No other city in course of evolution has ever furnished such a spectacle.

Nowadays, when one strives to penetrate things one is confounded. The

population had increased to five hundred thousand, and then seemingly

remained stationary; nevertheless, new districts continued to sprout up

more thickly than ever. Yet what folly it was not to wait for a further

influx of inhabitants! Why continue piling up accommodation for thousands

of families whose advent was uncertain? The only excuse lay in having

beforehand propounded the proposition that the third Rome, the triumphant

capital of Italy, could not count less than a million souls, and in

regarding that proposition as indisputable fact. The people had not come,

but they surely would come: no patriot could doubt it without being

guilty of treason. And so houses were built and built without a pause,

for the half-million citizens who were coming. There was no anxiety as to

the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be

expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection

with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished,

pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and

thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other

companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more

districts outside Rome--veritable little towns, of which there was no

need whatever. Beyond the Porta San Giovanni and the Porta San Lorenzo,

suburbs sprang up as by miracle. A town was sketched out over the vast

estate of the Villa Ludovisi, from the Porta Pia to the Porta Salaria and

even as far as Sant’ Agnese. And then came an attempt to make quite a

little city, with church, school, and market, arise all at once on the

fields of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. And it was no question of small

dwellings for labourers, modest flats for employees, and others of

limited means; no, it was a question of colossal mansions three and four

storeys high, displaying uniform and endless facades which made these new

excentral quarters quite Babylonian, such districts, indeed, as only

capitals endowed with intense life, like Paris and London, could contrive

to populate. However, such were the monstrous products of pride and

gambling; and what a page of history, what a bitter lesson now that Rome,

financially ruined, is further disgraced by that hideous girdle of empty,

and, for the most part, uncompleted carcases, whose ruins already strew

the grassy streets!

The fatal collapse, the disaster proved a frightful one. Narcisse

explained its causes and recounted its phases so clearly that Pierre

fully understood. Naturally enough, numerous financial companies had

sprouted up: the Immobiliere, the Society d’Edilizia e Construzione, the

Fondaria, the Tiberiana, and the Esquilino. Nearly all of them built,

erected huge houses, entire streets of them, for purposes of sale; but

they also gambled in land, selling plots at large profit to petty

speculators, who also dreamt of making large profits amidst the

continuous, fictitious rise brought about by the growing fever of

agiotage. And the worst was that the petty speculators, the middle-class

people, the inexperienced shop-keepers without capital, were crazy enough

to build in their turn by borrowing of the banks or applying to the

companies which had sold them the land for sufficient cash to enable them

to complete their structures. As a general rule, to avoid the loss of

everything, the companies were one day compelled to take back both land

and buildings, incomplete though the latter might be, and from the

congestion which resulted they were bound to perish. If the expected

million of people had arrived to occupy the dwellings prepared for them

the gains would have been fabulous, and in ten years Rome might have

become one of the most flourishing capitals of the world. But the people

did not come, and the dwellings remained empty. Moreover, the buildings

erected by the companies were too large and costly for the average

investor inclined to put his money into house property. Heredity had

acted, the builders had planned things on too huge a scale, raising a

series of magnificent piles whose purpose was to dwarf those of all other

ages; but, as it happened, they were fated to remain lifeless and

deserted, testifying with wondrous eloquence to the impotence of pride.

So there was no private capital that dared or could take the place of

that of the companies. Elsewhere, in Paris for instance, new districts

have been erected and embellishments have been carried out with the

capital of the country--the money saved by dint of thrift. But in Rome

all was built on the credit system, either by means of bills of exchange

at ninety days, or--and this was chiefly the case--by borrowing money

abroad. The huge sum sunk in these enterprises is estimated at a

milliard, four-fifths of which was French money. The bankers did

everything; the French ones lent to the Italian bankers at 3 1-2 or 4 per

cent.; and the Italian bankers accommodated the speculators, the Roman

builders, at 6, 7, and even 8 per cent. And thus the disaster was great

indeed when France, learning of Italy’s alliance with Germany, withdrew

her 800,000,000 francs in less than two years. The Italian banks were

drained of their specie, and the land and building companies, being

likewise compelled to reimburse their loans, were compelled to apply to

the banks of issue, those privileged to issue notes. At the same time

they intimidated the Government, threatening to stop all work and throw

40,000 artisans and labourers starving on the pavement of Rome if it did

not compel the banks of issue to lend them the five or six millions of

paper which they needed. And this the Government at last did, appalled by

the possibility of universal bankruptcy. Naturally, however, the five or

six millions could not be paid back at maturity, as the newly built

houses found neither purchasers nor tenants; and so the great fall began,

and continued with a rush, heaping ruin upon ruin. The petty speculators

fell on the builders, the builders on the land companies, the land

companies on the banks of issue, and the latter on the public credit,

ruining the nation. And that was how a mere municipal crisis became a

frightful disaster: a whole milliard sunk to no purpose, Rome disfigured,

littered with the ruins of the gaping and empty dwellings which had been

prepared for the five or six hundred thousand inhabitants for whom the

city yet waits in vain!

Moreover, in the breeze of glory which swept by, the state itself took a

colossal view of things. It was a question of at once making Italy

triumphant and perfect, of accomplishing in five and twenty years what

other nations have required centuries to effect. So there was feverish

activity and a prodigious outlay on canals, ports, roads, railway lines,

and improvements in all the great cities. Directly after the alliance

with Germany, moreover, the military and naval estimates began to devour

millions to no purpose. And the ever growing financial requirements were

simply met by the issue of paper, by a fresh loan each succeeding year.

In Rome alone, too, the building of the Ministry of War cost ten

millions, that of the Ministry of Finances fifteen, whilst a hundred was

spent on the yet unfinished quays, and two hundred and fifty were sunk on

works of defence around the city. And all this was a flare of the old

hereditary pride, springing from that soil whose sap can only blossom in

extravagant projects; the determination to dazzle and conquer the world

which comes as soon as one has climbed to the Capitol, even though one’s

feet rest amidst the accumulated dust of all the forms of human power

which have there crumbled one above the other.

“And, my dear friend,” continued Narcisse, “if I could go into all the

stories that are current, that are whispered here and there, you would be

stupefied at the insanity which overcame the whole city amidst the

terrible fever to which the gambling passion gave rise. Folks of small

account, and fools and ignorant people were not the only ones to be

ruined; nearly all the Roman nobles lost their ancient fortunes, their

gold and their palaces and their galleries of masterpieces, which they

owed to the munificence of the popes. The colossal wealth which it had

taken centuries of nepotism to pile up in the hands of a few melted away

like wax, in less than ten years, in the levelling fire of modern

speculation.” Then, forgetting that he was speaking to a priest, he went

on to relate one of the whispered stories to which he had alluded:

“There’s our good friend Dario, Prince Boccanera, the last of the name,

reduced to live on the crumbs which fall to him from his uncle the

Cardinal, who has little beyond his stipend left him. Well, Dario would

be a rich man had it not been for that extraordinary affair of the Villa

Montefiori. You have heard of it, no doubt; how Prince Onofrio, Dario’s

father, speculated, sold the villa grounds for ten millions, then bought

them back and built on them, and how, at last, not only the ten millions

were lost, but also all that remained of the once colossal fortune of the

Boccaneras. What you haven’t been told, however, is the secret part which

Count Prada--our Contessina’s husband--played in the affair. He was the

lover of Princess Boccanera, the beautiful Flavia Montefiori, who had

brought the villa as dowry to the old Prince. She was a very fine woman,

much younger than her husband, and it is positively said that it was

through her that Prada mastered the Prince--for she held her old doting

husband at arm’s length whenever he hesitated to give a signature or go

farther into the affair of which he scented the danger. And in all this

Prada gained the millions which he now spends, while as for the beautiful

Flavia, you are aware, no doubt, that she saved a little fortune from the

wreck and bought herself a second and much younger husband, whom she

turned into a Marquis Montefiori. In the whole affair the only victim is

our good friend Dario, who is absolutely ruined, and wishes to marry his

cousin, who is as poor as himself. It’s true that she’s determined to

have him, and that it’s impossible for him not to reciprocate her love.

But for that he would have already married some American girl with a

dowry of millions, like so many of the ruined princes, on the verge of

starvation, have done; that is, unless the Cardinal and Donna Serafina

had opposed such a match, which would not have been surprising, proud and

stubborn as they are, anxious to preserve the purity of their old Roman

blood. However, let us hope that Dario and the exquisite Benedetta will

some day be happy together.”

Narcisse paused; but, after taking a few steps in silence, he added in a

lower tone: “I’ve a relative who picked up nearly three millions in that

Villa Montefiori affair. Ah! I regret that I wasn’t here in those heroic

days of speculation. It must have been very amusing; and what strokes

there were for a man of self-possession to make!”

However, all at once, as he raised his head, he saw before him the

Quartiere dei Prati--the new district of the castle fields; and his face

thereupon changed: he again became an artist, indignant with the modern

abominations with which old Rome had been disfigured. His eyes paled, and

a curl of his lips expressed the bitter disdain of a dreamer whose

passion for the vanished centuries was sorely hurt: “Look, look at it

all!” he exclaimed. “To think of it, in the city of Augustus, the city of

Leo X, the city of eternal power and eternal beauty!”

Pierre himself was thunderstruck. The meadows of the Castle of Sant’

Angelo, dotted with a few poplar trees, had here formerly stretched

alongside the Tiber as far as the first slopes of Monte Mario, thus

supplying, to the satisfaction of artists, a foreground or greenery to

the Borgo and the dome of St. Peter’s. But now, amidst the white,

leprous, overturned plain, there stood a town of huge, massive houses,

cubes of stone-work, invariably the same, with broad streets intersecting

one another at right angles. From end to end similar facades appeared,

suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and

painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised

whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a

wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and

emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful

abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep

pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. There

were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others

which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which

had been carried as high as was intended, and even roofed in, suggesting

skeletons or empty cages. Then there were houses finished excepting that

their walls had not been plastered, others which had been left without

window frames, shutters, or doors; others, again, which had their doors

and shutters, but were nailed up like coffins with not a soul inside

them; and yet others which were partly, and in a few cases fully,

inhabited--animated by the most unexpected of populations. And no words

could describe the fearful mournfulness of that City of the Sleeping

Beauty, hushed into mortal slumber before it had even lived, lying

annihilated beneath the heavy sun pending an awakening which, likely

enough, would never come.

Following his companion, Pierre walked along the broad, deserted streets,

where all was still as in a cemetery. Not a vehicle nor a pedestrian

passed by. Some streets had no foot ways; weeds were covering the unpaved

roads, turning them once more into fields; and yet there were temporary

gas lamps, mere leaden pipes bound to poles, which had been there for

years. To avoid payment of the door and window tax, the house owners had

generally closed all apertures with planks; while some houses, of which

little had been built, were surrounded by high palings for fear lest

their cellars should become the dens of all the bandits of the district.

But the most painful sight of all was that of the young ruins, the proud,

lofty structures, which, although unfinished, were already cracking on

all sides, and required the support of an intricate arrangement of

timbers to prevent them from falling in dust upon the ground. A pang came

to one’s heart as though one was in a city which some scourge had

depopulated--pestilence, war, or bombardment, of which these gaping

carcases seem to retain the mark. Then at the thought that this was

abortment, not death--that destruction would complete its work before the

dreamt-of, vainly awaited denizens would bring life to the still-born

houses, one’s melancholy deepened to hopeless discouragement. And at each

corner, moreover, there was the frightful irony of the magnificent marble

slabs which bore the names of the streets, illustrious historical names,

Gracchus, Scipio, Pliny, Pompey, Julius Caesar, blazing forth on those

unfinished, crumbling walls like a buffet dealt by the Past to modern

incompetency.

Then Pierre was once more struck by this truth--that whosoever possesses

Rome is consumed by the building frenzy, the passion for marble, the

boastful desire to build and leave his monument of glory to future

generations. After the Caesars and the Popes had come the Italian

Government, which was no sooner master of the city than it wished to

reconstruct it, make it more splendid, more huge than it had ever been

before. It was the fatal suggestion of the soil itself--the blood of

Augustus rushing to the brain of these last-comers and urging them to a

mad desire to make the third Rome the queen of the earth. Thence had come

all the vast schemes such as the cyclopean quays and the mere ministries

struggling to outvie the Colosseum; and thence had come all the new

districts of gigantic houses which had sprouted like towns around the

ancient city. It was not only on the castle fields, but at the Porta San

Giovanni, the Porta San Lorenzo, the Villa Ludovisi, and on the heights

of the Viminal and the Esquiline that unfinished, empty districts were

already crumbling amidst the weeds of their deserted streets. After two

thousand years of prodigious fertility the soil really seemed to be

exhausted. Even as in very old fruit gardens newly planted plum and

cherry trees wither and die, so the new walls, no doubt, found no life in

that old dust of Rome, impoverished by the immemorial growth of so many

temples, circuses, arches, basilicas, and churches. And thus the modern

houses, which men had sought to render fruitful, the useless, over-huge

houses, swollen with hereditary ambition, had been unable to attain

maturity, and remained there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land

exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt

arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in

such present-day impotency--Rome, who had covered the world with

indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she could only generate

ruins.

“Oh, they’ll be finished some day!” said Pierre.

Narcisse gazed at him in astonishment: “For whom?”

That was the cruel question! Only by dint of patriotic enthusiasm on the

morrow of the conquest had one been able to indulge in the hope of a

mighty influx of population, and now singular blindness was needed for

the belief that such an influx would ever take place. The past

experiments seemed decisive; moreover, there was no reason why the

population should double: Rome offered neither the attraction of pleasure

nor that of gain to be amassed in commerce and industry for those she had

not, nor of intensity of social and intellectual life, since of this she

seemed no longer capable. In any case, years and years would be

requisite. And, meantime, how could one people those houses which were

finished; and for whom was one to finish those which had remained mere

skeletons, falling to pieces under sun and rain? Must they all remain

there indefinitely, some gaunt and open to every blast and others closed

and silent like tombs, in the wretched hideousness of their inutility and

abandonment? What a terrible proof of error they offered under the

radiant sky! The new masters of Rome had made a bad start, and even if

they now knew what they ought to have done would they have the courage to

undo what they had done? Since the milliard sunk there seemed to be

definitely lost and wasted, one actually hoped for the advent of a Nero,

endowed with mighty, sovereign will, who would take torch and pick and

burn and raze everything in the avenging name of reason and beauty.

“Ah!” resumed Narcisse, “here are the Contessina and the Prince.”

Benedetta had told the coachman to pull up in one of the open spaces

intersecting the deserted streets, and now along the broad, quiet, grassy

road--well fitted for a lovers’ stroll--she was approaching on Dario’s

arm, both of them delighted with their outing, and no longer thinking of

the sad things which they had come to see. “What a nice day it is!” the

Contessina gaily exclaimed as she reached Pierre and Narcisse. “How

pleasant the sunshine is! It’s quite a treat to be able to walk about a

little as if one were in the country!”

Dario was the first to cease smiling at the blue sky, all the delight of

his stroll with his cousin on his arm suddenly departing. “My dear,” said

he, “we must go to see those people, since you are bent on it, though it

will certainly spoil our day. But first I must take my bearings. I’m not

particularly clever, you know, in finding my way in places where I don’t

care to go. Besides, this district is idiotic with all its dead streets

and dead houses, and never a face or a shop to serve as a reminder. Still

I think the place is over yonder. Follow me; at all events, we shall

see.”

The four friends then wended their way towards the central part of the

district, the part facing the Tiber, where a small nucleus of a

population had collected. The landlords turned the few completed houses

to the best advantage they could, letting the rooms at very low rentals,

and waiting patiently enough for payment. Some needy employees, some

poverty-stricken families--had thus installed themselves there, and in

the long run contrived to pay a trifle for their accommodation. In

consequence, however, of the demolition of the ancient Ghetto and the

opening of the new streets by which air had been let into the Trastevere

district, perfect hordes of tatterdemalions, famished and homeless, and

almost without garments, had swooped upon the unfinished houses, filling

them with wretchedness and vermin; and it had been necessary to tolerate

this lawless occupation lest all the frightful misery should remain

displayed in the public thoroughfares. And so it was to those frightful

tenants that had fallen the huge four and five storeyed palaces, entered

by monumental doorways flanked by lofty statues and having carved

balconies upheld by caryatides all along their fronts. Each family had

made its choice, often closing the frameless windows with boards and the

gaping doorways with rags, and occupying now an entire princely flat and

now a few small rooms, according to its taste. Horrid-looking linen hung

drying from the carved balconies, foul stains already degraded the white

walls, and from the magnificent porches, intended for sumptuous

equipages, there poured a stream of filth which rotted in stagnant pools

in the roads, where there was neither pavement nor footpath.

On two occasions already Dario had caused his companions to retrace their

steps. He was losing his way and becoming more and more gloomy. “I ought

to have taken to the left,” said he, “but how is one to know amidst such

a set as that!”

Parties of verminous children were now to be seen rolling in the dust;

they were wondrously dirty, almost naked, with black skins and tangled

locks as coarse as horsehair. There were also women in sordid skirts and

with their loose jackets unhooked. Many stood talking together in yelping

voices, whilst others, seated on old chairs with their hands on their

knees, remained like that idle for hours. Not many men were met; but a

few lay on the scorched grass, sleeping heavily in the sunlight. However,

the stench was becoming unbearable--a stench of misery as when the human

animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made

worse by the smell from a small, improvised market--the emanations of the

rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a

few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished,

covetous children.

“Ah! well, my dear, I really don’t know where it is,” all at once

exclaimed the Prince, addressing his cousin. “Be reasonable; we’ve surely

seen enough; let’s go back to the carriage.”

He was really suffering, and, as Benedetta had said, he did not know how

to suffer. It seemed to him monstrous that one should sadden one’s life

by such an excursion as this. Life ought to be buoyant and benign under

the clear sky, brightened by pleasant sights, by dance and song. And he,

with his naive egotism, had a positive horror of ugliness, poverty, and

suffering, the sight of which caused him both mental and physical pain.

Benedetta shuddered even as he did, but in presence of Pierre she desired

to be brave. Glancing at him, and seeing how deeply interested and

compassionate he looked, she desired to persevere in her effort to

sympathise with the humble and the wretched. “No, no, Dario, we must

stay. These gentlemen wish to see everything--is it not so?”

“Oh, the Rome of to-day is here,” exclaimed Pierre; “this tells one more

about it than all the promenades among the ruins and the monuments.”

“You exaggerate, my dear Abbe,” declared Narcisse. “Still, I will admit

that it is very interesting. Some of the old women are particularly

expressive.”

At this moment Benedetta, seeing a superbly beautiful girl in front of

her, could not restrain a cry of enraptured admiration: “_O che

bellezza!_”

And then Dario, having recognised the girl, exclaimed with the same

delight: “Why, it’s La Pierina; she’ll show us the way.”

The girl had been following the party for a moment already without daring

to approach. Her eyes, glittering with the joy of a loving slave, had at

first darted towards the Prince, and then had hastily scrutinised the

Contessina--not, however, with any show of jealous anger, but with an

expression of affectionate submission and resigned happiness at seeing

that she also was very beautiful. And the girl fully answered to the

Prince’s description of her--tall, sturdy, with the bust of a goddess, a

real antique, a Juno of twenty, her chin somewhat prominent, her mouth

and nose perfect in contour, her eyes large and full like a heifer’s, and

her whole face quite dazzling--gilded, so to say, by a sunflash--beneath

her casque of heavy jet-black hair.

“So you will show us the way?” said Benedetta, familiar and smiling,

already consoled for all the surrounding ugliness by the thought that

there should be such beautiful creatures in the world.

“Oh yes, signora, yes, at once!” And thereupon Pierina ran off before

them, her feet in shoes which at any rate had no holes, whilst the old

brown woollen dress which she wore appeared to have been recently washed

and mended. One seemed to divine in her a certain coquettish care, a

desire for cleanliness, which none of the others displayed; unless,

indeed, it were simply that her great beauty lent radiance to her humble

garments and made her appear a goddess.

“_Che bellezza! the bellezza!_” the Contessina repeated without wearying.

“That girl, Dario _mio_, is a real feast for the eyes!”

“I knew she would please you,” he quietly replied, flattered at having

discovered such a beauty, and no longer talking of departure, since he

could at last rest his eyes on something pleasant.

Behind them came Pierre, likewise full of admiration, whilst Narcisse

spoke to him of the scrupulosity of his own tastes, which were for the

rare and the subtle. “She’s beautiful, no doubt,” said he; “but at bottom

nothing can be more gross than the Roman style of beauty; there’s no

soul, none of the infinite in it. These girls simply have blood under

their skins without ever a glimpse of heaven.”

Meantime Pierina had stopped, and with a wave of the hand directed

attention to her mother, who sat on a broken box beside the lofty doorway

of an unfinished mansion. She also must have once been very beautiful,

but at forty she was already a wreck, with dim eyes, drawn mouth, black

teeth, broadly wrinkled countenance, and huge fallen bosom. And she was

also fearfully dirty, her grey wavy hair dishevelled and her skirt and

jacket soiled and slit, revealing glimpses of grimy flesh. On her knees

she held a sleeping infant, her last-born, at whom she gazed like one

overwhelmed and courageless, like a beast of burden resigned to her fate.

“_Bene, bene,_” said she, raising her head, “it’s the gentleman who came

to give me a crown because he saw you crying. And he’s come back to see

us with some friends. Well, well, there are some good hearts in the world

after all.”

Then she related their story, but in a spiritless way, without seeking to

move her visitors. She was called Giacinta, it appeared, and had married

a mason, one Tomaso Gozzo, by whom she had had seven children, Pierina,

then Tito, a big fellow of eighteen, then four more girls, each at an

interval of two years, and finally the infant, a boy, whom she now had on

her lap. They had long lived in the Trastevere district, in an old house

which had lately been pulled down; and their existence seemed to have

then been shattered, for since they had taken refuge in the Quartiere dei

Prati the crisis in the building trade had reduced Tomaso and Tito to

absolute idleness, and the bead factory where Pierina had earned as much

as tenpence a day--just enough to prevent them from dying of hunger--had

closed its doors. At present not one of them had any work; they lived

purely by chance.

“If you like to go up,” the woman added, “you’ll find Tomaso there with

his brother Ambrogio, whom we’ve taken to live with us. They’ll know

better than I what to say to you. Tomaso is resting; but what else can he

do? It’s like Tito--he’s dozing over there.”

So saying she pointed towards the dry grass amidst which lay a tall young

fellow with a pronounced nose, hard mouth, and eyes as admirable as

Pierina’s. He had raised his head to glance suspiciously at the visitors,

a fierce frown gathering on his forehead when he remarked how rapturously

his sister contemplated the Prince. Then he let his head fall again, but

kept his eyes open, watching the pair stealthily.

“Take the lady and gentlemen upstairs, Pierina, since they would like to

see the place,” said the mother.

Other women had now drawn near, shuffling along with bare feet in old

shoes; bands of children, too, were swarming around; little girls but

half clad, amongst whom, no doubt, were Giacinta’s four. However, with

their black eyes under their tangled mops they were all so much alike

that only their mothers could identify them. And the whole resembled a

teeming camp of misery pitched on that spot of majestic disaster, that

street of palaces, unfinished yet already in ruins.

With a soft, loving smile, Benedetta turned to her cousin. “Don’t you

come up,” she gently said; “I don’t desire your death, Dario _mio_. It

was very good of you to come so far. Wait for me here in the pleasant

sunshine: Monsieur l’Abbe and Monsieur Habert will go up with me.”

Dario began to laugh, and willingly acquiesced. Then lighting a

cigarette, he walked slowly up and down, well pleased with the mildness

of the atmosphere.

La Pierina had already darted into the spacious porch whose lofty,

vaulted ceiling was adorned with coffers displaying a rosaceous pattern.

However, a veritable manure heap covered such marble slabs as had already

been laid in the vestibule, whilst the steps of the monumental stone

staircase with sculptured balustrade were already cracked and so grimy

that they seemed almost black. On all sides appeared the greasy stains of

hands; the walls, whilst awaiting the painter and gilder, had been

smeared with repulsive filth.

On reaching the spacious first-floor landing Pierina paused, and

contented herself with calling through a gaping portal which lacked both

door and framework: “Father, here’s a lady and two gentlemen to see you.”

Then to the Contessina she added: “It’s the third room at the end.” And

forthwith she herself rapidly descended the stairs, hastening back to her

passion.

Benedetta and her companions passed through two large rooms, bossy with

plaster under foot and having frameless windows wide open upon space; and

at last they reached a third room, where the whole Gozzo family had

installed itself with the remnants it used as furniture. On the floor,

where the bare iron girders showed, no boards having been laid down, were

five or six leprous-looking palliasses. A long table, which was still

strong, occupied the centre of the room, and here and there were a few

old, damaged, straw-seated chairs mended with bits of rope. The great

business had been to close two of the three windows with boards, whilst

the third one and the door were screened with some old mattress ticking

studded with stains and holes.

Tomaso’s face expressed the surprise of a man who is unaccustomed to

visits of charity. Seated at the table, with his elbows resting on it and

his chin supported by his hands, he was taking repose, as his wife

Giacinta had said. He was a sturdy fellow of five and forty, bearded and

long-haired; and, in spite of all his misery and idleness, his large face

had remained as serene as that of a Roman senator. However, the sight of

the two foreigners--for such he at once judged Pierre and Narcisse to be,

made him rise to his feet with sudden distrust. But he smiled on

recognising Benedetta, and as she began to speak of Dario, and to explain

the charitable purpose of their visit, he interrupted her: “Yes, yes, I

know, Contessina. Oh! I well know who you are, for in my father’s time I

once walled up a window at the Palazzo Boccanera.”

Then he complaisantly allowed himself to be questioned, telling Pierre,

who was surprised, that although they were certainly not happy they would

have found life tolerable had they been able to work two days a week. And

one could divine that he was, at heart, fairly well content to go on

short commons, provided that he could live as he listed without fatigue.

His narrative and his manner suggested the familiar locksmith who, on

being summoned by a traveller to open his trunk, the key of which was

lost, sent word that he could not possibly disturb himself during the

hour of the siesta. In short, there was no rent to pay, as there were

plenty of empty mansions open to the poor, and a few coppers would have

sufficed for food, easily contented and sober as one was.

“But oh, sir,” Tomaso continued, “things were ever so much better under

the Pope. My father, a mason like myself, worked at the Vatican all his

life, and even now, when I myself get a job or two, it’s always there. We

were spoilt, you see, by those ten years of busy work, when we never left

our ladders and earned as much as we pleased. Of course, we fed ourselves

better, and bought ourselves clothes, and took such pleasure as we cared

for; so that it’s all the harder nowadays to have to stint ourselves. But

if you’d only come to see us in the Pope’s time! No taxes, everything to

be had for nothing, so to say--why, one merely had to let oneself live.”

At this moment a growl arose from one of the palliasses lying in the

shade of the boarded windows, and the mason, in his slow, quiet way,

resumed: “It’s my brother Ambrogio, who isn’t of my opinion.

“He was with the Republicans in ‘49, when he was fourteen. But it doesn’t

matter; we took him with us when we heard that he was dying of hunger and

sickness in a cellar.”

The visitors could not help quivering with pity. Ambrogio was the elder

by some fifteen years; and now, though scarcely sixty, he was already a

ruin, consumed by fever, his legs so wasted that he spent his days on his

palliasse without ever going out. Shorter and slighter, but more

turbulent than his brother, he had been a carpenter by trade. And,

despite his physical decay, he retained an extraordinary head--the head

of an apostle and martyr, at once noble and tragic in its expression, and

encompassed by bristling snowy hair and beard.

“The Pope,” he growled; “I’ve never spoken badly of the Pope. Yet it’s

his fault if tyranny continues. He alone in ‘49 could have given us the

Republic, and then we shouldn’t have been as we are now.”

Ambrogio had known Mazzini, whose vague religiosity remained in him--the

dream of a Republican pope at last establishing the reign of liberty and

fraternity. But later on his passion for Garibaldi had disturbed these

views, and led him to regard the papacy as worthless, incapable of

achieving human freedom. And so, between the dream of his youth and the

stern experience of his life, he now hardly knew in which direction the

truth lay. Moreover, he had never acted save under the impulse of violent

emotion, but contented himself with fine words--vague, indeterminate

wishes.

“Brother Ambrogio,” replied Tomaso, all tranquillity, “the Pope is the

Pope, and wisdom lies in putting oneself on his side, because he will

always be the Pope--that is to say, the stronger. For my part, if we had

to vote to-morrow I’d vote for him.”

Calmed by the shrewd prudence characteristic of his race, the old

carpenter made no haste to reply. At last he said, “Well, as for me,

brother Tomaso, I should vote against him--always against him. And you

know very well that we should have the majority. The Pope-king indeed!

That’s all over. The very Borgo would revolt. Still, I won’t say that we

oughtn’t to come to an understanding with him, so that everybody’s

religion may be respected.”

Pierre listened, deeply interested, and at last ventured to ask: “Are

there many socialists among the Roman working classes?”

This time the answer came after a yet longer pause. “Socialists? Yes,

there are some, no doubt, but much fewer than in other places. All those

things are novelties which impatient fellows go in for without

understanding much about them. We old men, we were for liberty; we don’t

believe in fire and massacre.”

Then, fearing to say too much in presence of that lady and those

gentlemen, Ambrogio began to moan on his pallet, whilst the Contessina,

somewhat upset by the smell of the place, took her departure, after

telling the young priest that it would be best for them to leave their

alms with the wife downstairs. Meantime Tomaso resumed his seat at the

table, again letting his chin rest on his hands as he nodded to his

visitors, no more impressed by their departure than he had been by their

arrival: “To the pleasure of seeing you again, and am happy to have been

able to oblige you.”

On the threshold, however, Narcisse’s enthusiasm burst forth; he turned

to cast a final admiring glance at old Ambrogio’s head, “a perfect

masterpiece,” which he continued praising whilst he descended the stairs.

Down below Giacinta was still sitting on the broken box with her infant

across her lap, and a few steps away Pierina stood in front of Dario,

watching him with an enchanted air whilst he finished his cigarette.

Tito, lying low in the grass like an animal on the watch for prey, did

not for a moment cease to gaze at them.

“Ah, signora!” resumed the woman, in her resigned, doleful voice, “the

place is hardly inhabitable, as you must have seen. The only good thing

is that one gets plenty of room. But there are draughts enough to kill

me, and I’m always so afraid of the children falling down some of the

holes.”

Thereupon she related a story of a woman who had lost her life through

mistaking a window for a door one evening and falling headlong into the

street. Then, too, a little girl had broken both arms by tumbling from a

staircase which had no banisters. And you could die there without anybody

knowing how bad you were and coming to help you. Only the previous day

the corpse of an old man had been found lying on the plaster in a lonely

room. Starvation must have killed him quite a week previously, yet he

would still have been stretched there if the odour of his remains had not

attracted the attention of neighbours.

“If one only had something to eat things wouldn’t be so bad!” continued

Giacinta. “But it’s dreadful when there’s a baby to suckle and one gets

no food, for after a while one has no milk. This little fellow wants his

titty and gets angry with me because I can’t give him any. But it isn’t

my fault. He has sucked me till the blood came, and all I can do is to

cry.”

As she spoke tears welled into her poor dim eyes. But all at once she

flew into a tantrum with Tito, who was still wallowing in the grass like

an animal instead of rising by way of civility towards those fine people,

who would surely leave her some alms. “Eh! Tito, you lazy fellow, can’t

you get up when people come to see you?” she called.

After some pretence of not hearing, the young fellow at last rose with an

air of great ill-humour; and Pierre, feeling interested in him, tried to

draw him out as he had done with the father and uncle upstairs. But Tito

only returned curt answers, as if both bored and suspicious. Since there

was no work to be had, said he, the only thing was to sleep. It was of no

use to get angry; that wouldn’t alter matters. So the best was to live as

one could without increasing one’s worry. As for socialists--well, yes,

perhaps there were a few, but he didn’t know any. And his weary,

indifferent manner made it quite clear that, if his father was for the

Pope and his uncle for the Republic, he himself was for nothing at all.

In this Pierre divined the end of a nation, or rather the slumber of a

nation in which democracy has not yet awakened. However, as the priest

continued, asking Tito his age, what school he had attended, and in what

district he had been born, the young man suddenly cut the questions short

by pointing with one finger to his breast and saying gravely, “_Io son’

Romano di Roma_.”

And, indeed, did not that answer everything? “I am a Roman of Rome.”

Pierre smiled sadly and spoke no further. Never had he more fully

realised the pride of that race, the long-descending inheritance of glory

which was so heavy to bear. The sovereign vanity of the Caesars lived

anew in that degenerate young fellow who was scarcely able to read and

write. Starveling though he was, he knew his city, and could

instinctively have recounted the grand pages of its history. The names of

the great emperors and great popes were familiar to him. And why should

men toil and moil when they had been the masters of the world? Why not

live nobly and idly in the most beautiful of cities, under the most

beautiful of skies? “_Io son’ Romano di Roma_!”

Benedetta had slipped her alms into the mother’s hand, and Pierre and

Narcisse were following her example when Dario, who had already done so,

thought of Pierina. He did not like to offer her money, but a pretty,

fanciful idea occurred to him. Lightly touching his lips with his

finger-tips, he said, with a faint laugh, “For beauty!”

There was something really pretty and pleasing in the kiss thus wafted

with a slightly mocking laugh by that familiar, good-natured young Prince

who, as in some love story of the olden time, was touched by the

beautiful bead-worker’s mute adoration. Pierina flushed with pleasure,

and, losing her head, darted upon Dario’s hand and pressed her warm lips

to it with unthinking impulsiveness, in which there was as much divine

gratitude as tender passion. But Tito’s eyes flashed with anger at the

sight, and, brutally seizing his sister by the skirt, he threw her back,

growling between his teeth, “None of that, you know, or I’ll kill you,

and him too!”

It was high time for the visitors to depart, for other women, scenting

the presence of money, were now coming forward with outstretched hands,

or despatching tearful children in their stead. The whole wretched,

abandoned district was in a flutter, a distressful wail ascended from

those lifeless streets with high resounding names. But what was to be

done? One could not give to all. So the only course lay in flight--amidst

deep sadness as one realised how powerless was charity in presence of

such appalling want.

When Benedetta and Dario had reached their carriage they hastened to take

their seats and nestle side by side, glad to escape from all such

horrors. Still the Contessina was well pleased with her bravery in the

presence of Pierre, whose hand she pressed with the emotion of a pupil

touched by the master’s lesson, after Narcisse had told her that he meant

to take the young priest to lunch at the little restaurant on the Piazza

of St. Peter’s whence one obtained such an interesting view of the

Vatican.

“Try some of the light white wine of Genzano,” said Dario, who had become

quite gay again. “There’s nothing better to drive away the blues.”

However, Pierre’s curiosity was insatiable, and on the way he again

questioned Narcisse about the people of modern Rome, their life, habits,

and manners. There was little or no education, he learnt; no large

manufactures and no export trade existed. The men carried on the few

trades that were current, all consumption being virtually limited to the

city itself. Among the women there were bead-workers and embroiderers;

and the manufacture of religious articles, such as medals and chaplets,

and of certain popular jewellery had always occupied a fair number of

hands. But after marriage the women, invariably burdened with numerous

offspring, attempted little beyond household work. Briefly, the

population took life as it came, working just sufficiently to secure

food, contenting itself with vegetables, pastes, and scraggy mutton,

without thought of rebellion or ambition. The only vices were gambling

and a partiality for the red and white wines of the Roman province--wines

which excited to quarrel and murder, and on the evenings of feast days,

when the taverns emptied, strewed the streets with groaning men, slashed

and stabbed with knives. The girls, however, but seldom went wrong; one

could count those who allowed themselves to be seduced; and this arose

from the great union prevailing in each family, every member of which

bowed submissively to the father’s absolute authority. Moreover, the

brothers watched over their sisters even as Tito did over Pierina,

guarding them fiercely for the sake of the family honour. And amidst all

this there was no real religion, but simply a childish idolatry, all

hearts going forth to Madonna and the Saints, who alone were entreated

and regarded as having being: for it never occurred to anybody to think

of God.

Thus the stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood.

Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been

encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When

they were neither masons, nor carpenters, nor bakers, they were servants

serving the priests, and more or less directly in the pay of the Vatican.

Thence sprang the two antagonistic parties, on the one hand the more

numerous party composed of the old Carbonari, Mazzinians, and

Garibaldians, the _elite_ of the Trastevere; and on the other the

“clients” of the Vatican, all who lived on or by the Church and regretted

the Pope-King. But, after all, the antagonism was confined to opinions;

there was no thought of making an effort or incurring a risk. For that,

some sudden flare of passion, strong enough to overcome the sturdy

calmness of the race, would have been needed. But what would have been

the use of it? The wretchedness had lasted for so many centuries, the sky

was so blue, the siesta preferable to aught else during the hot hours!

And only one thing seemed positive--that the majority was certainly in

favour of Rome remaining the capital of Italy. Indeed, rebellion had

almost broken out in the Leonine City when the cession of the latter to

the Holy See was rumoured. As for the increase of want and poverty, this

was largely due to the circumstance that the Roman workman had really

gained nothing by the many works carried on in his city during fifteen

years. First of all, over 40,000 provincials, mostly from the North, more

spirited and resistant than himself, and working at cheaper rates, had

invaded Rome; and when he, the Roman, had secured his share of the

labour, he had lived in better style, without thought of economy; so that

after the crisis, when the 40,000 men from the provinces were sent home

again, he had found himself once more in a dead city where trade was

always slack. And thus he had relapsed into his antique indolence, at

heart well pleased at no longer being hustled by press of work, and again

accommodating himself as best he could to his old mistress, Want, empty

in pocket yet always a _grand seigneur_.

However, Pierre was struck by the great difference between the want and

wretchedness of Rome and Paris. In Rome the destitution was certainly

more complete, the food more loathsome, the dirt more repulsive. Yet at

the same time the Roman poor retained more ease of manner and more real

gaiety. The young priest thought of the fireless, breadless poor of

Paris, shivering in their hovels at winter time; and suddenly he

understood. The destitution of Rome did not know cold. What a sweet and

eternal consolation; a sun for ever bright, a sky for ever blue and

benign out of charity to the wretched! And what mattered the vileness of

the dwelling if one could sleep under the sky, fanned by the warm breeze!

What mattered even hunger if the family could await the windfall of

chance in sunlit streets or on the scorched grass! The climate induced

sobriety; there was no need of alcohol or red meat to enable one to face

treacherous fogs. Blissful idleness smiled on the golden evenings,

poverty became like the enjoyment of liberty in that delightful

atmosphere where the happiness of living seemed to be all sufficient.

Narcisse told Pierre that at Naples, in the narrow odoriferous streets of

the port and Santa Lucia districts, the people spent virtually their

whole lives out-of-doors, gay, childish, and ignorant, seeking nothing

beyond the few pence that were needed to buy food. And it was certainly

the climate which fostered the prolonged infancy of the nation, which

explained why such a democracy did not awaken to social ambition and

consciousness of itself. No doubt the poor of Naples and Rome suffered

from want; but they did not know the rancour which cruel winter implants

in men’s hearts, the dark rancour which one feels on shivering with cold

while rich people are warming themselves before blazing fires. They did

not know the infuriated reveries in snow-swept hovels, when the guttering

dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak

justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save

wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a

warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers

with the bitter cold--therein lies the excess of social injustice, the

most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their

sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, and swear to make those

sufferings cease, even if in doing so they annihilate all olden society!

And in that same clemency of the southern heavens Pierre also found an

explanation of the life of St. Francis,* that divine mendicant of love

who roamed the high roads extolling the charms of poverty. Doubtless he

was an unconscious revolutionary, protesting against the overflowing

luxury of the Roman court by his return to the love of the humble, the

simplicity of the primitive Church. But such a revival of innocence and

sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land. The

enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight

nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were

needed to effect it. And yet how was it possible that a St. Francis,

glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays

so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and

contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope? Is it

because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the

experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now

beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism,

whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in

the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North,

from the nations whose sunlight is so limited? Yes, doubtless all that

has much to do with the change, and the success of St. Francis was in

particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his

lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad,

during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an

ardent need of love and compassion then consumed.

* St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of

mendicant friars.--Trans.

While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St.

Peter’s, and they sat down at one of the little tables skirting the

pavement outside the restaurant where they had lunched once before. The

linen was none too clean, but the view was splendid. The Basilica rose up

in front of them, and the Vatican on the right, above the majestic curve

of the colonnade. Just as the waiter was bringing the _hors-d’oeuvre_,

some _finocchio_* and anchovies, the young priest, who had fixed his eyes

on the Vatican, raised an exclamation to attract Narcisse’s attention:

“Look, my friend, at that window, which I am told is the Holy Father’s.

Can’t you distinguish a pale figure standing there, quite motionless?”

* Fennel-root, eaten raw, a favourite “appetiser” in Rome during

the spring and autumn.--Trans.

The young man began to laugh. “Oh! well,” said he, “it must be the Holy

Father in person. You are so anxious to see him that your very anxiety

conjures him into your presence.”

“But I assure you,” repeated Pierre, “that he is over there behind the

window-pane. There is a white figure looking this way.”

Narcisse, who was very hungry, began to eat whilst still indulging in

banter. All at once, however, he exclaimed: “Well, my dear Abbe, as the

Pope is looking at us, this is the moment to speak of him. I promised to

tell you how he sunk several millions of St. Peter’s Patrimony in the

frightful financial crisis of which you have just seen the ruins; and,

indeed, your visit to the new district of the castle fields would not be

complete without this story by way of appendix.”

Thereupon, without losing a mouthful, Narcisse spoke at considerable

length. At the death of Pius IX the Patrimony of St. Peter, it seemed,

had exceeded twenty millions of francs. Cardinal Antonelli, who

speculated, and whose ventures were usually successful, had for a long

time left a part of this money with the Rothschilds and a part in the

hands of different nuncios, who turned it to profit abroad. After

Antonelli’s death, however, his successor, Cardinal Simeoni, withdrew the

money from the nuncios to invest it at Rome; and Leo XIII on his

accession entrusted the administration of the Patrimony to a commission

of cardinals, of which Monsignor Folchi was appointed secretary. This

prelate, who for twelve years played such an important _role_, was the

son of an employee of the Dataria, who, thanks to skilful financial

operations, had left a fortune of a million francs. Monsignor Folchi

inherited his father’s cleverness, and revealed himself to be a financier

of the first rank in such wise that the commission gradually relinquished

its powers to him, letting him act exactly as he pleased and contenting

itself with approving the reports which he laid before it at each

meeting. The Patrimony, however, yielded scarcely more than a million

francs per annum, and, as the expenditure amounted to seven millions, six

had to be found. Accordingly, from that other source of income, the

Peter’s Pence, the Pope annually gave three million francs to Monsignor

Folchi, who, by skilful speculations and investments, was able to double

them every year, and thus provide for all disbursements without ever

breaking into the capital of the Patrimony. In the earlier times he

realised considerable profit by gambling in land in and about Rome. He

took shares also in many new enterprises, speculated in mills, omnibuses,

and water-services, without mentioning all the gambling in which he

participated with the Banca di Roma, a Catholic institution. Wonderstruck

by his skill, the Pope, who, on his own side, had hitherto speculated

through the medium of a confidential employee named Sterbini, dismissed

the latter, and entrusted Monsignor Folchi with the duty of turning his

money to profit in the same way as he turned that of the Holy See. This

was the climax of the prelate’s favour, the apogee of his power. Bad days

were dawning, things were tottering already, and the great collapse was

soon to come, sudden and swift like lightning. One of Leo XIII’s

practices was to lend large sums to the Roman princes who, seized with

the gambling frenzy, and mixed up in land and building speculations, were

at a loss for money. To guarantee the Pope’s advances they deposited

shares with him, and thus, when the downfall came, he was left with heaps

of worthless paper on his hands. Then another disastrous affair was an

attempt to found a house of credit in Paris in view of working off the

shares which could not be disposed of in Italy among the French

aristocracy and religious people. To egg these on it was said that the

Pope was interested in the venture; and the worst was that he dropped

three millions of francs in it.* The situation then became the more

critical as he had gradually risked all the money he disposed of in the

terrible agiotage going on in Rome, tempted thereto by the prospect of

huge profits and perhaps indulging in the hope that he might win back by

money the city which had been torn from him by force. His own

responsibility remained complete, for Monsignor Folchi never made an

important venture without consulting him; and he must have been therefore

the real artisan of the disaster, mastered by his passion for gain, his

desire to endow the Church with a huge capital, that great source of

power in modern times. As always happens, however, the prelate was the

only victim. He had become imperious and difficult to deal with; and was

no longer liked by the cardinals of the commission, who were merely

called together to approve such transactions as he chose to entrust to

them. So, when the crisis came, a plot was laid; the cardinals terrified

the Pope by telling him of all the evil rumours which were current, and

then forced Monsignor Folchi to render a full account of his

speculations. The situation proved to be very bad; it was no longer

possible to avoid heavy losses. And so Monsignor Folchi was disgraced,

and since then has vainly solicited an audience of Leo XIII, who has

always refused to receive him, as if determined to punish him for their

common fault--that passion for lucre which blinded them both. Very pious

and submissive, however, Monsignor Folchi has never complained, but has

kept his secrets and bowed to fate. Nobody can say exactly how many

millions the Patrimony of St. Peter lost when Rome was changed into a

gambling-hell, but if some prelates only admit ten, others go as far as

thirty. The probability is that the loss was about fifteen millions.**

* The allusion is evidently to the famous Union Generale, on

which the Pope bestowed his apostolic benediction, and with

which M. Zola deals at length in his novel _Money_. Certainly

a very brilliant idea was embodied in the Union Generale, that

of establishing a great international Catholic bank which

would destroy the Jewish financial autocracy throughout Europe,

and provide both the papacy and the Legitimist cause in several

countries with the sinews of war. But in the battle which

ensued the great Jew financial houses proved the stronger, and

the disaster which overtook the Catholic speculators was a

terrible one.--Trans.

** That is 600,000 pounds.

Whilst Narcisse was giving this account he and Pierre had despatched

their cutlets and tomatoes, and the waiter was now serving them some

fried chicken. “At the present time,” said Narcisse by way of conclusion,

“the gap has been filled up; I told you of the large sums yielded by the

Peter’s Pence Fund, the amount of which is only known by the Pope, who

alone fixes its employment. And, by the way, he isn’t cured of

speculating: I know from a good source that he still gambles, though with

more prudence. Moreover, his confidential assistant is still a prelate.

And, when all is said, my dear Abbe, he’s in the right: a man must belong

to his times--dash it all!”

Pierre had listened with growing surprise, in which terror and sadness

mingled. Doubtless such things were natural, even legitimate; yet he, in

his dream of a pastor of souls free from all terrestrial cares, had never

imagined that they existed. What! the Pope--the spiritual father of the

lowly and the suffering--had speculated in land and in stocks and shares!

He had gambled, placed funds in the hands of Jew bankers, practised

usury, extracted hard interest from money--he, the successor of the

Apostle, the Pontiff of Christ, the representative of Jesus, of the

Gospel, that divine friend of the poor! And, besides, what a painful

contrast: so many millions stored away in those rooms of the Vatican, and

so many millions working and fructifying, constantly being diverted from

one speculation to another in order that they might yield the more gain;

and then down below, near at hand, so much want and misery in those

abominable unfinished buildings of the new districts, so many poor folks

dying of hunger amidst filth, mothers without milk for their babes, men

reduced to idleness by lack of work, old ones at the last gasp like

beasts of burden who are pole-axed when they are of no more use! Ah! God

of Charity, God of Love, was it possible! The Church doubtless had

material wants; she could not live without money; prudence and policy had

dictated the thought of gaining for her such a treasure as would enable

her to fight her adversaries victoriously. But how grievously this

wounded one’s feelings, how it soiled the Church, how she descended from

her divine throne to become nothing but a party, a vast international

association organised for the purpose of conquering and possessing the

world!

And the more Pierre thought of the extraordinary adventure the greater

was his astonishment. Could a more unexpected, startling drama be

imagined? That Pope shutting himself up in his palace--a prison, no

doubt, but one whose hundred windows overlooked immensity; that Pope who,

at all hours of the day and night, in every season, could from his window

see his capital, the city which had been stolen from him, and the

restitution of which he never ceased to demand; that Pope who, day by

day, beheld the changes effected in the city--the opening of new streets,

the demolition of ancient districts, the sale of land, and the gradual

erection of new buildings which ended by forming a white girdle around

the old ruddy roofs; that Pope who, in presence of this daily spectacle,

this building frenzy, which he could follow from morn till eve, was

himself finally overcome by the gambling passion, and, secluded in his

closed chamber, began to speculate on the embellishments of his old

capital, seeking wealth in the spurt of work and trade brought about by

that very Italian Government which he reproached with spoliation; and

finally that Pope losing millions in a catastrophe which he ought to have

desired, but had been unable to foresee! No, never had dethroned monarch

yielded to a stranger idea, compromised himself in a more tragical

venture, the result of which fell upon him like divine punishment. And it

was no mere king who had done this, but the delegate of God, the man who,

in the eyes of idolatrous Christendom, was the living manifestation of

the Deity!

Dessert had now been served--a goat’s cheese and some fruit--and Narcisse

was just finishing some grapes when, on raising his eyes, he in turn

exclaimed: “Well, you are quite right, my dear Abbe, I myself can see a

pale figure at the window of the Holy Father’s room.”

Pierre, who scarcely took his eyes from the window, answered slowly:

“Yes, yes, it went away, but has just come back, and stands there white

and motionless.”

“Well, after all, what would you have the Pope do?” resumed Narcisse with

his languid air. “He’s like everybody else; he looks out of the window

when he wants a little distraction, and certainly there’s plenty for him

to look at.”

The same idea had occurred to Pierre, and was filling him with emotion.

People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy

palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all

Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself

had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the _loggie_ of

Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter’s, and so he well knew what it was

that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the

Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven

illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. His eyes

ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in

Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce

in Gerusalemme, Sant’ Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes

of the Gesu of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei

Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make

the city like a _campo santo_ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could

moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive

centuries--the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was

transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of

the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the

abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns,

porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the

sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo

Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of facades and

roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope

was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle

fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned

by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view

stretched over the ravaged valley at the foot of Monte Mario, where so

many brick-works were established during the building frenzy. The green

slopes are still ripped up, yellow trenches intersect them in all

directions, and the closed works and factories have become wretched ruins

with lofty, black, and smokeless chimneys. And at any other hour of the

day Leo XIII could not approach his window without beholding the

abandoned houses for which all those brick-fields had worked, those

houses which had died before they even lived, and where there was now

nought but the swarming misery of Rome, rotting there like some

decomposition of olden society.

However, Pierre more particularly thought of Leo XIII, forgetting the

rest of the city to let his thoughts dwell on the Palatine, now bereft of

its crown of palaces and rearing only its black cypresses towards the

blue heavens. Doubtless in his mind he rebuilt the palaces of the

Caesars, whilst before him rose great shadowy forms arrayed in purple,

visions of his real ancestors, those emperors and Supreme Pontiffs who

alone could tell him how one might reign over every nation and be the

absolute master of the world. Then, however, his glances strayed to the

Quirinal, and there he could contemplate the new and neighbouring

royalty. How strange the meeting of those two palaces, the Quirinal and

the Vatican, which rise up and gaze at one another across the Rome of the

middle ages and the Renascence, whose roofs, baked and gilded by the

burning sun, are jumbled in confusion alongside the Tiber. When the Pope

and the King go to their windows they can with a mere opera-glass see

each other quite distinctly. True, they are but specks in the boundless

immensity, and what a gulf there is between them--how many centuries of

history, how many generations that battled and suffered, how much

departed greatness, and how much new seed for the mysterious future!

Still, they can see one another, and they are yet waging the eternal

fight, the fight as to which of them--the pontiff and shepherd of the

soul or the monarch and master of the body--shall possess the people

whose stream rolls beneath them, and in the result remain the absolute

sovereign. And Pierre wondered also what might be the thoughts and dreams

of Leo XIII behind those window-panes where he still fancied he could

distinguish his pale, ghostly figure. On surveying new Rome, the ravaged

olden districts and the new ones laid waste by the blast of disaster, the

Pope must certainly rejoice at the colossal failure of the Italian

Government. His city had been stolen from him; the newcomers had

virtually declared that they would show him how a great capital was

created, and their boast had ended in that catastrophe--a multitude of

hideous and useless buildings which they did not even know how to finish!

He, the Pope, could moreover only be delighted with the terrible worries

into which the usurping _regime_ had fallen, the political crisis, and

the financial crisis, the whole growing national unrest amidst which that

_regime_ seemed likely to sink some day; and yet did not he himself

possess a patriotic soul? was he not a loving son of that Italy whose

genius and ancient ambition coursed in the blood of his veins? Ah! no,

nothing against Italy; rather everything that would enable her to become

once more the mistress of the world. And so, even amidst the joy of hope,

he must have been grieved to see her thus ruined, threatened with

bankruptcy, displaying like a sore that overturned, unfinished Rome which

was a confession of her impotency. But, on the other hand, if the House

of Savoy were to be swept away, would he not be there to take its place,

and at last resume possession of his capital, which, from his window, for

fifteen years past, he had beheld in the grip of masons and demolishers?

And then he would again be the master and reign over the world, enthroned

in the predestined city to which prophecy has ensured eternity and

universal dominion.

But the horizon spread out, and Pierre wondered what Leo XIII beheld

beyond Rome, beyond the Campagna and the Sabine and Alban mountains. What

had he seen for eighteen years past from that window whence he obtained

his only view of the world? What echoes of modern society, its truths and

certainties, had reached his ears? From the heights of the Viminal, where

the railway terminus stands, the prolonged whistling of engines must have

occasionally been carried towards him, suggesting our scientific

civilisation, the nations brought nearer together, free humanity marching

on towards the future. Did he himself ever dream of liberty when, on

turning to the right, he pictured the sea over yonder, past the tombs of

the Appian Way? Had he ever desired to go off, quit Rome and her

traditions, and found the Papacy of the new democracies elsewhere? As he

was said to possess so clear and penetrating a mind he ought to have

understood and trembled at the far-away stir and noise that came from

certain lands of battle, from those United States of America, for

instance, where revolutionary bishops were conquering, winning over the

people. Were they working for him or for themselves? If he could not

follow them, if he remained stubborn within his Vatican, bound on every

side by dogma and tradition, might not rupture some day become

unavoidable? And, indeed, the fear of a blast of schism, coming from

afar, must have filled him with growing anguish. It was assuredly on that

account that he had practised the diplomacy of conciliation, seeking to

unite in his hands all the scattered forces of the Church, overlooking

the audacious proceedings of certain bishops as far as possible, and

himself striving to gain the support of the people by putting himself on

its side against the fallen monarchies. But would he ever go any farther?

Shut up in that Vatican, behind that bronze portal, was he not bound to

the strict formulas of Catholicism, chained to them by the force of

centuries? There obstinacy was fated; it was impossible for him to resign

himself to that which was his real and surpassing power, the purely

spiritual power, the moral authority which brought mankind to his feet,

made thousands of pilgrims kneel and women swoon. Departure from Rome and

the renunciation of the temporal power would not displace the centre of

the Catholic world, but would transform him, the head of the Catholic

Church, into the head of something else. And how anxious must have been

his thoughts if the evening breeze ever brought him a vague presentiment

of that something else, a fear of the new religion which was yet dimly,

confusedly dawning amidst the tramp of the nations on the march, and the

sound of which must have reached him at one and the same time from every

point of the compass.

At this precise moment, however, Pierre felt that the white and

motionless shadow behind those windowpanes was held erect by pride, by

the ever present conviction of victory. If man could not achieve it, a

miracle would intervene. He, the Pope, was absolutely convinced that he

or some successor would recover possession of Rome. Had not the Church

all eternity before it? And, moreover, why should not the victor be

himself? Could not God accomplish the impossible? Why, if it so pleased

God, on the very morrow his city would be restored to him, in spite of

all the objections of human reason, all the apparent logic of facts. Ah!

how he would welcome the return of that prodigal daughter whose equivocal

adventures he had ever watched with tears bedewing his paternal eyes! He

would soon forget the excesses which he had beheld during eighteen years

at all hours and in all seasons. Perhaps he dreamt of what he would do

with those new districts with which the city had been soiled. Should they

be razed, or left as evidence of the insanity of the usurpers? At all

events, Rome would again become the august and lifeless city, disdainful

of such vain matters as material cleanliness and comfort, and shining

forth upon the world like a pure soul encompassed by the traditional

glory of the centuries. And his dream continued, picturing the course

which events would take on the very morrow, no doubt. Anything, even a

republic was preferable to that House of Savoy. Why not a federal

republic, reviving the old political divisions of Italy, restoring Rome

to the Church, and choosing him, the Pope, as the natural protector of

the country thus reorganised? But his eyes travelled beyond Rome and

Italy, and his dream expanded, embracing republican France, Spain which

might become republican again, Austria which would some day be won, and

indeed all the Catholic nations welded into the United States of Europe,

and fraternising in peace under his high presidency as Sovereign Pontiff.

And then would follow the supreme triumph, all the other churches at last

vanishing, and all the dissident communities coming to him as to the one

and only pastor, who would reign in the name of Jesus over the universal

democracy.

However, whilst Pierre was immersed in this dream which he attributed to

Leo XIII, he was all at once interrupted by Narcisse, who exclaimed: “Oh!

my dear Abbe, just look at those statues on the colonnade.” The young

fellow had ordered a cup of coffee and was languidly smoking a cigar,

deep once more in the subtle aesthetics which were his only

preoccupation. “They are rosy, are they not?” he continued; “rosy, with a

touch of mauve, as if the blue blood of angels circulated in their stone

veins. It is the sun of Rome which gives them that supra-terrestrial

life; for they live, my friend; I have seen them smile and hold out their

arms to me during certain fine sunsets. Ah! Rome, marvellous, delicious

Rome! One could live here as poor as Job, content with the very

atmosphere, and in everlasting delight at breathing it!”

This time Pierre could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse’s language,

for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen

when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young

priest’s mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled

his heart as for the last time all the want and suffering rose before

him. Again he beheld the horrible filth which was tainting so many human

beings, that shocking proof of the abominable social injustice which

condemns the greater number to lead the joyless, breadless lives of

accursed beasts. And as his glance returned yet once more to the window

of the Vatican, and he fancied he could see a pale hand uplifted behind

the glass panes, he thought of that papal benediction which Leo XIII gave

from that height, over Rome, and over the plain and the hills, to the

faithful of all Christendom. And that papal benediction suddenly seemed

to him a mockery, destitute of all power, since throughout such a

multitude of centuries it had not once been able to stay a single one of

the sufferings of mankind, and could not even bring a little justice for

those poor wretches who were agonising yonder beneath the very window.

IX.

THAT evening at dusk, as Benedetta had sent Pierre word that she desired

to see him, he went down to her little _salon_, and there found her

chatting with Celia.

“I’ve seen your Pierina, you know,” exclaimed the latter, just as the

young priest came in. “And with Dario, too. Or rather, she must have been

watching for him; he found her waiting in a path on the Pincio and smiled

at her. I understood at once. What a beauty she is!”

Benedetta smiled at her friend’s enthusiasm; but her lips twitched

somewhat painfully, for, however sensible she might be, this passion,

which she realised to be so naive and so strong, was beginning to make

her suffer. She certainly made allowances for Dario, but the girl was too

much in love with him, and she feared the consequences. Even in turning

the conversation she allowed the secret of her heart to escape her. “Pray

sit down, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she said, “we are talking scandal, you see.

My poor Dario is accused of making love to every pretty woman in Rome.

People say that it’s he who gives La Tonietta those white roses which she

has been exhibiting at the Corso every afternoon for a fortnight past.”

“That’s certain, my dear,” retorted Celia impetuously. “At first people

were in doubt, and talked of little Pontecorvo and Lieutenant Moretta.

But every one now knows that La Tonietta’s caprice is Dario. Besides, he

joined her in her box at the Costanzi the other evening.”

Pierre remembered that the young Prince had pointed out La Tonietta at

the Pincio one afternoon. She was one of the few _demi-mondaines_ that

the higher-class society of Rome took an interest in. For a month or so

the rich Englishman to whom she owed her means had been absent,

travelling.

“Ah!” resumed Benedetta, whose budding jealousy was entirely confined to

La Pierina, “so my poor Dario is ruining himself in white roses! Well, I

shall have to twit him about it. But one or another of these beauties

will end by robbing me of him if our affairs are not soon settled.

Fortunately, I have had some better news. Yes, my suit is to be taken in

hand again, and my aunt has gone out to-day on that very account.”

Then, as Victorine came in with a lamp, and Celia rose to depart,

Benedetta turned towards Pierre, who also was rising from his chair:

“Please stay,” said she; “I wish to speak to you.”

However, Celia still lingered, interested by the mention of the divorce

suit, and eager to know if the cousins would soon be able to marry. And

at last throwing her arms round Benedetta, she kissed her passionately.

“So you are hopeful, my dear,” she exclaimed. “You think that the Holy

Father will give you back your liberty? Oh! I am so pleased; it will be

so nice for you to marry Dario! And I’m well pleased on my own account,

for my father and mother are beginning to yield. Only yesterday I said to

them with that quiet little air of mine, ‘I want Attilio, and you must

give him me.’ And then my father flew into a furious passion and

upbraided me, and shook his fist at me, saying that if he’d made my head

as hard as his own he would know how to break it. My mother was there

quite silent and vexed, and all at once he turned to her and said: ‘Here,

give her that Attilio she wants, and then perhaps we shall have some

peace!’ Oh yes! I’m well pleased, very well pleased indeed!”

As she spoke her pure virginal face beamed with so much innocent,

celestial joy that Pierre and Benedetta could not help laughing. And at

last she went off attended by a maid who had waited for her in the first

_salon_.