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.