of a more homely grace, that Pierre realised that even things have souls.
Ah! that Villa Mattei on one side of the Coelius with its terraced
grounds, its sloping alleys edged with laurel, aloe, and spindle tree,
its box-plants forming arbours, its oranges, its roses, and its
fountains! Pierre spent some delicious hours there, and only found a
similar charm on visiting the Aventine, where three churches are
embowered in verdure. The little garden of Santa Sabina, the birthplace
of the Dominican order, is closed on all sides and affords no view: it
slumbers in quiescence, warm and perfumed by its orange-trees, amongst
which that planted by St. Dominic stands huge and gnarled but still laden
with ripe fruit. At the adjoining Priorato, however, the garden, perched
high above the Tiber, overlooks a vast expanse, with the river and the
buildings on either bank as far as the summit of the Janiculum. And in
these gardens of Rome Pierre ever found the same clipped box-shrubs, the
same eucalypti with white trunks and pale leaves long like hair, the same
ilex-trees squat and dusky, the same giant pines, the same black
cypresses, the same marbles whitening amidst tufts of roses, and the same
fountains gurgling under mantling ivy. Never did he enjoy more gentle,
sorrow-tinged delight than at the Villa of Pope Julius, where all the
life of a gay and sensual period is suggested by the semi-circular
porticus opening on the gardens, a porticus decorated with paintings,
golden trellis-work laden with flowers, amidst which flutter flights of
smiling Cupids. Then, on the evening when he returned from the Farnesina,
he declared that he had brought all the dead soul of ancient Rome away
with him, and it was not the paintings executed after Raffaelle's designs
that had touched him, it was rather the pretty hall on the river side
decorated in soft blue and pink and lilac, with an art devoid of genius
yet so charming and so Roman; and in particular it was the abandoned
garden once stretching down to the Tiber, and now shut off from it by the
new quay, and presenting an aspect of woeful desolation, ravaged, bossy
and weedy like a cemetery, albeit the golden fruit of orange and citron
tree still ripened there.
And for the last time a shock came to Pierre's heart on the lovely
evening when he visited the Villa Medici. There he was on French soil.*
And again what a marvellous garden he found with box-plants, and pines,
and avenues full of magnificence and charm! What a refuge for antique
reverie was that wood of ilex-trees, so old and so sombre, where the sun
in declining cast fiery gleams of red gold amidst the sheeny bronze of
the foliage. You ascend by endless steps, and from the crowning belvedere
on high you embrace all Rome at a glance as though by opening your arms
you could seize it in its entirety. From the villa's dining-room,
decorated with portraits of all the artists who have successfully
sojourned there, and from the spacious peaceful library one beholds the
same splendid, broad, all-conquering panorama, a panorama of unlimited
ambition, whose infinite ought to set in the hearts of the young men
dwelling there a determination to subjugate the world. Pierre, who came
thither opposed to the principle of the "Prix de Rome," that traditional,
uniform education so dangerous for originality, was for a moment charmed
by the warm peacefulness, the limpid solitude of the garden, and the
sublime horizon where the wings of genius seemed to flutter. Ah! how
delightful, to be only twenty and to live for three years amidst such
infinite sweetness, encompassed by the finest works of man; to say to
oneself that one is as yet too young to produce, and to reflect, and
seek, and learn how to enjoy, suffer, and love! But Pierre afterwards
reflected that this was not a fit task for youth, and that to appreciate
the divine enjoyment of such a retreat, all art and blue sky, ripe age
was needed, age with victories already gained and weariness following
upon the accomplishment of work. He chatted with some of the young
pensioners, and remarked that if those who were inclined to dreaminess
and contemplation, like those who could merely claim mediocrity,
accommodated themselves to this life cloistered in the art of the past,
on the other hand artists of active bent and personal temperament pined
with impatience, their eyes ever turned towards Paris, their souls eager
to plunge into the furnace of battle and production.
* Here is the French Academy, where winners of the "Prix de
Rome" in painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving, and
music are maintained by the French Government for three
years. The creation dates from Louis XIV.--Trans.
All those gardens of which Pierre spoke to Dario and Benedetta with so
much rapture, awoke within them the memory of the garden of the Villa
Montefiori, now a waste, but once so green, planted with the finest
orange-trees of Rome, a grove of centenarian orange-trees where they had
learnt to love one another. And the memory of their early love brought
thoughts of their present situation and their future prospects. To these
the conversation always reverted, and evening after evening Pierre
witnessed their delight, and heard them talk of coming happiness like
lovers transported to the seventh heaven. The suit for the dissolution of
Benedetta's marriage was now assuming a more and more favourable aspect.
Guided by a powerful hand, Donna Serafina was apparently acting very
vigorously, for almost every day she had some further good news to
report. She was indeed anxious to finish the affair both for the
continuity and for the honour of the name, for on the one hand Dario
refused to marry any one but his cousin, and on the other this marriage
would explain everything and put an end to an intolerable situation. The
scandalous rumours which circulated both in the white and the black world
quite incensed her, and a victory was the more necessary as Leo XIII,
already so aged, might be snatched away at any moment, and in the
Conclave which would follow she desired that her brother's name should
shine forth with untarnished, sovereign radiance. Never had the secret
ambition of her life, the hope that her race might give a third pope to
the Church, filled her with so much passion. It was as if she therein
sought a consolation for the harsh abandonment of Advocate Morano.
Invariably clad in sombre garb, ever active and slim, so tightly laced
that from behind one might have taken her for a young girl, she was so to
say the black soul of that old palace; and Pierre, who met her
everywhere, prowling and inspecting like a careful house-keeper, and
jealously watching over her brother the Cardinal, bowed to her in
silence, chilled to the heart by the stern look of her withered wrinkled
face in which was set the large, opiniative nose of her family. However
she barely returned his bows, for she still disdained that paltry foreign
priest, and only tolerated him in order to please Monsignor Nani and
Viscount Philibert de la Choue.
A witness every evening of the anxious delight and impatience of
Benedetta and Dario, Pierre by degrees became almost as impassioned as
themselves, as desirous for an early solution. Benedetta's suit was about
to come before the Congregation of the Council once more. Monsignor
Palma, the defender of the marriage, had demanded a supplementary inquiry
after the favourable decision arrived at in the first instance by a bare
majority of one vote--a majority which the Pope would certainly not have
thought sufficient had he been asked for his ratification. So the
question now was to gain votes among the ten cardinals who formed the
Congregation, to persuade and convince them, and if possible ensure an
almost unanimous pronouncement. The task was arduous, for, instead of
facilitating matters, Benedetta's relationship to Cardinal Boccanera
raised many difficulties, owing to the intriguing spirit rife at the
Vatican, the spite of rivals who, by perpetuating the scandal, hoped to
destroy Boccanera's chance of ever attaining to the papacy. Every
afternoon, however, Donna Serafina devoted herself to the task of winning
votes under the direction of her confessor, Father Lorenza, whom she saw
daily at the Collegio Germanico, now the last refuge of the Jesuits in
Rome, for they have ceased to be masters of the Gesu. The chief hope of
success lay in Prada's formal declaration that he would not put in an
appearance. The whole affair wearied and irritated him; the imputations
levelled against him as a man, seemed to him supremely odious and
ridiculous; and he no longer even took the trouble to reply to the
assignations which were sent to him. He acted indeed as if he had never
been married, though deep in his heart the wound dealt to his passion and
his pride still lingered, bleeding afresh whenever one or another of the
scandalous rumours in circulation reached his ears. However, as their
adversary desisted from all action, one can understand that the hopes of
Benedetta and Dario increased, the more so as hardly an evening passed
without Donna Serafina telling them that she believed she had gained the
support of another cardinal.
But the man who terrified them all was Monsignor Palma, whom the
Congregation had appointed to defend the sacred ties of matrimony. His
rights and privileges were almost unlimited, he could appeal yet again,
and in any case would make the affair drag on as long as it pleased him.
His first report, in reply to Morano's memoir, had been a terrible blow,
and it was now said that a second one which he was preparing would prove
yet more pitiless, establishing as a fundamental principle of the Church
that it could not annul a marriage whose nonconsummation was purely and
simply due to the action of the wife in refusing obedience to her
husband. In presence of such energy and logic, it was unlikely that the
cardinals, even if sympathetic, would dare to advise the Holy Father to
dissolve the marriage. And so discouragement was once more overcoming
Benedetta when Donna Serafina, on returning from a visit to Monsignor
Nani, calmed her somewhat by telling her that a mutual friend had
undertaken to deal with Monsignor Palma. However, said she, even if they
succeeded, it would doubtless cost them a large sum.
Monsignor Palma, a theologist expert in all canonical affairs, and a
perfectly honest man in pecuniary matters, had met with a great
misfortune in his life. He had a niece, a poor and lovely girl, for whom,
unhappily, in his declining years he conceived an insensate passion, with
the result that to avoid a scandal he was compelled to marry her to a
rascal who now preyed upon her and even beat her. And the prelate was now
passing through a fearful crisis, weary of reducing himself to beggary,
and indeed no longer having the money necessary to extricate his nephew
by marriage from a very nasty predicament, the result of cheating at
cards. So the idea was to save the young man by a considerable pecuniary
payment, and then to procure him employment without asking aught of his
uncle, who, as if offering complicity, came in tears one evening, when
night had fallen, to thank Donna Serafina for her exceeding goodness.
Pierre was with Dario that evening when Benedetta entered the room,
laughing and joyfully clapping her bands. "It's done, it's done!" she
said, "he has just left aunt, and vowed eternal gratitude to her. He will
now be obliged to show himself amiable."
However Dario distrustfully inquired: "But was he made to sign anything,
did he enter into a formal engagement?"
"Oh! no; how could one do that? It's such a delicate matter," replied
Benedetta. "But people say that he is a very honest man." Nevertheless,
in spite of these words, she herself became uneasy. What if Monsignor
Palma should remain incorruptible in spite of the great service which had
been rendered him? Thenceforth this idea haunted them, and their suspense
began once more.
Dario, eager to divert his mind, was imprudent enough to get up before he
was perfectly cured, and, his wound reopening, he was obliged to take to
his bed again for a few days. Every evening, as previously, Pierre strove
to enliven him with an account of his strolls. The young priest was now
getting bolder, rambling in turn through all the districts of Rome, and
discovering the many "classical" curiosities catalogued in the
guide-books. One evening he spoke with a kind of affection of the
principal squares of the city which he had first thought commonplace, but
which now seemed to him very varied, each with original features of its
own. There was the noble Piazza del Popolo of such monumental symmetry
and so full of sunlight; there was the Piazza di Spagna, the lively
meeting-place of foreigners, with its double flight of a hundred and
thirty steps gilded by the sun; there was the vast Piazza Colonna, always
swarming with people, and the most Italian of all the Roman squares from
the presence of the idle, careless crowd which ever lounged round the
column of Marcus Aurelius as if waiting for fortune to fall from heaven;
there was also the long and regular Piazza Navona, deserted since the
market was no longer held there, and retaining a melancholy recollection
of its former bustling life; and there was the Campo dei Fiori, which was
invaded each morning by the tumultuous fruit and vegetable markets, quite
a plantation of huge umbrellas sheltering heaps of tomatoes, pimentoes,
and grapes amidst a noisy stream of dealers and housewives. Pierre's
great surprise, however, was the Piazza del Campidoglio--the "Square of
the Capitol"--which to him suggested a summit, an open spot overlooking
the city and the world, but which he found to be small and square, and on
three sides enclosed by palaces, whilst on the fourth side the view was
of little extent.* There are no passers-by there; visitors usually come
up by a flight of steps bordered by a few palm-trees, only foreigners
making use of the winding carriage-ascent. The vehicles wait, and the
tourists loiter for a while with their eyes raised to the admirable
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, in antique bronze, which occupies
the centre of the piazza. Towards four o'clock, when the sun gilds the
left-hand palace, and the slender statues of its entablature show vividly
against the blue sky, you might think yourself in some warm cosy square
of a little provincial town, what with the women of the neighbourhood who
sit knitting under the arcade, and the bands of ragged urchins who
disport themselves on all sides like school-boys in a playground.
* The Piazza del Campidoglio is really a depression between the
Capitolium proper and the northern height called the Arx. It is
supposed to have been the exact site of Romulus's traditional
Asylum.--Trans.
Then, on another evening Pierre told Benedetta and Dario of his
admiration for the Roman fountains, for in no other city of the world
does water flow so abundantly and magnificently in fountains of bronze
and marble, from the boat-shaped Fontana della Barcaccia on the Piazza di
Spagna, the Triton on the Piazza Barberini, and the Tortoises which give
their name to the Piazza delle Tartarughe, to the three fountains of the
Piazza Navona where Bernini's vast central composition of rock and
river-gods rises so triumphantly, and to the colossal and pompous
fountain of Trevi, where King Neptune stands on high attended by lofty
figures of Health and Fruitfulness. And on yet another evening Pierre
came home quite pleased, relating that he had at last discovered why it
was that the old streets around the Capitol and along the Tiber seemed to
him so strange: it was because they had no footways, and pedestrians,
instead of skirting the walls, invariably took the middle of the road,
leisurely wending their way among the vehicles. Pierre was very fond of
those old districts with their winding lanes, their tiny squares so
irregular in shape, and their huge square mansions swamped by a
multitudinous jumble of little houses. He found a charm, too, in the
district of the Esquiline, where, besides innumerable flights of
ascending steps, each of grey pebbles edged with white stone, there were
sudden sinuous slopes, tiers of terraces, seminaries and convents,
lifeless, with their windows ever closed, and lofty, blank walls above
which a superb palm-tree would now and again soar into the spotless blue
of the sky. And on yet another evening, having strolled into the Campagna
beside the Tiber and above the Ponte Molle, he came back full of
enthusiasm for a form of classical art which hitherto he had scarcely
appreciated. Along the river bank, however, he had found the very scenery
that Poussin so faithfully depicted: the sluggish, yellow stream fringed
with reeds; low riven cliffs, whose chalky whiteness showed against the
ruddy background of a far-stretching, undulating plain, bounded by blue
hills; a few spare trees with a ruined porticus opening on to space atop
of the bank, and a line of pale-hued sheep descending to drink, whilst
the shepherd, with an elbow resting on the trunk of an ilex-tree, stood
looking on. It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of
nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but
ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching
along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of
the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of
Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the
world.
One day when Pierre came back from seeing the great modern cemetery, the
Campo Verano, he found Celia, as well as Benedetta, by the side of
Dario's bed. "What, Monsieur l'Abbe!" exclaimed the little Princess when
she learnt where he had been; "it amuses you to visit the dead?"
"Oh those Frenchmen," remarked Dario, to whom the mere idea of a cemetery
was repulsive; "those Frenchmen seem to take a pleasure in making their
lives wretched with their partiality for gloomy scenes."
"But there is no escaping the reality of death," gently replied Pierre;
"the best course is to look it in the face."
This made the Prince quite angry. "Reality, reality," said he, "when
reality isn't pleasant I don't look at it; I try never to think of it
even."
In spite of this rejoinder, Pierre, with his smiling, placid air, went on
enumerating the things which had struck him: first, the admirable manner
in which the cemetery was kept, then the festive appearance which it
derived from the bright autumn sun, and the wonderful profusion in which
marble was lavished in slabs, statues, and chapels. The ancient atavism
had surely been at work, the sumptuous mausoleums of the Appian Way had
here sprung up afresh, making death a pretext for the display of pomp and
pride. In the upper part of the cemetery the Roman nobility had a
district of its own, crowded with veritable temples, colossal statues,
groups of several figures; and if at times the taste shown in these
monuments was deplorable, it was none the less certain that millions had
been expended on them. One charming feature of the place, said Pierre,
was that the marbles, standing among yews and cypresses were remarkably
well preserved, white and spotless; for, if the summer sun slowly gilded
them, there were none of those stains of moss and rain which impart an
aspect of melancholy decay to the statues of northern climes.
Touched by the discomfort of Dario, Benedetta, hitherto silent, ended by
interrupting Pierre. "And was the hunt interesting?" she asked, turning
to Celia.
The little Princess had been taken by her mother to see a fox-hunt, and
had been speaking of it when the priest entered the room.
"Yes, it was very interesting, my dear," she replied; "the meet was at
noon near the tomb of Caecilia Metella, where a buffet had been arranged
under a tent. And there was such a number of people--the foreign colony,
the young men of the embassies, and some officers, not to mention
ourselves--all the men in scarlet and a great many ladies in habits. The
'throw-off' was at one o'clock, and the gallop lasted more than two hours
and a half, so that the fox had a very long run. I wasn't able to follow,
but all the same I saw some extraordinary things--a great wall which the
whole hunt had to leap, and then ditches and hedges--a mad race indeed in
the rear of the hounds. There were two accidents, but nothing serious;
one gentleman, who was unseated, sprained his wrist badly, and another
broke his leg."*
* The Roman Hunt, which counts about one hundred subscribers,
has flourished since 1840. There is a kennel of English
hounds, an English huntsman and whip, and a stable of
English hunters.--Trans.
Dario had listened to Celia with passionate interest, for fox-hunting is
one of the great pleasures of Rome, and the Campagna, flat and yet
bristling with obstacles, is certainly well adapted to the sport. "Ah!"
said the young Prince in a despairing tone, "how idiotic it is to be
riveted to this room! I shall end by dying of /ennui/!"
Benedetta contented herself with smiling; neither reproach nor expression
of sadness came from her at this candid display of egotism. Her own
happiness at having him all to herself in the room where she nursed him
was great indeed; still her love, at once full of youth and good sense,
included a maternal element, and she well understood that he hardly
amused himself, deprived as he was of his customary pleasures and severed
from his friends, few of whom he was willing to receive, for he feared
that they might think the story of the dislocated shoulder suspicious. Of
course there were no more /fetes/, no more evenings at the theatre, no
more flirtations. But above everything else Dario missed the Corso, and
suffered despairingly at no longer seeing or learning anything by
watching the procession of Roman society from four to five each
afternoon. Accordingly, as soon as an intimate called, there were endless
questions: Had the visitor seen so and so? Had such a one reappeared? How
had a certain friend's love affair ended? Was any new adventure setting
the city agog? And so forth; all the petty frivolities, nine days'
wonders, and puerile intrigues in which the young Prince had hitherto
expended his manly energy.
After a pause Celia, who was fond of coming to him with innocent gossip,
fixed her candid eyes on him--the fathomless eyes of an enigmatical
virgin, and resumed: "How long it takes to set a shoulder right!"
Had she, child as she was, with love her only business, divined the
truth? Dario in his embarrassment glanced at Benedetta, who still smiled.
However, the little Princess was already darting to another subject: "Ah!
you know, Dario, at the Corso yesterday I saw a lady--" Then she stopped
short, surprised and embarrassed that these words should have escaped
her. However, in all bravery she resumed like one who had been a friend
since childhood, sharing many a little love secret: "Yes, a very pretty
person whom you know. Well, she had a bouquet of white roses with her all
the same."
At this Benedetta indulged in a burst of frank merriment, and Dario,
still looking at her, also laughed. She had twitted him during the early
days because no young woman ever sent to make inquiries about him. For
his part, he was not displeased with the rupture, for the continuance of
the connection might have proved embarrassing; and so, although his
vanity may have been slightly hurt, the news that he was already replaced
in La Tonietta's affections was welcome rather than otherwise. "Ah!" he
contented himself with saying, "the absent are always in the wrong."
"The man one loves is never absent," declared Celia with her grave,
candid air.
However, Benedetta had stepped up to the bed to raise the young man's
pillows: "Never mind, Dario /mio/," said she, "all those things are over;
I mean to keep you, and you will only have me to love."