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?"