‘Oh!’ replied Minna hastily, ‘I have never done anything worth speaking
of, or calling work. People who wish to imagine that they are sculptors
should not come to Rome. It is the last place in the world for them to
be happy in.’
‘But you are surely working at something now?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Già,’ she said discontentedly.
‘You have bent me to your wish,’ he said; ‘will you not now bend to
mine, and let me see something? It would, moreover, appear odd to
people who should hear that I have been at your studio, but seen none
of your work.’
‘You are a critic. You are a connoisseur in these things,’ she said; ‘I
know it from many things I have heard you say--such just remarks! That
was when I was afraid to speak to you.’
‘And you are afraid of my criticism! If you have anything of the true
artist in you, you ought rather to welcome it.’
‘Yes, you are right. Very well. Pray come this way. Say the worst you
think about it. I dare say it will be only what I deserve.’
She rose, took the lamp in one hand, and a screen in the other to
control the light, and led the way into her studio.
She had not yet wrapped up the clay figure on which she was engaged,
but had merely thrown a cloth over it until she should be ready to go.
She placed the lamp on a table, saying:
‘This is all I can show you. The others are worth nothing.’
‘One moment, signora. Let me judge for myself,’ said he, and, taking
the lamp into his hand, he went round the room, looking at first one
thing and then another, saying, now and then, ‘This is a copy. That you
invented for yourself, did you not?’ to which Minna usually found she
had to reply, ‘Yes.’
He made no comment on any of the work, which annoyed her very much;
she was convinced he was filled with contempt for it. She tried to
reconcile herself to the situation by telling herself that, after what
had passed between them, she owed it to him to let him see her work,
and say anything or nothing, as he might think fit.
When he had gone the round of the room, he turned to her, saying:
‘And now for the _capo d’opera_. So far, it seems to me, you have not
patience enough to finish anything. You begin your thought, but you do
not carry it through.’
‘Don’t expect a _capo d’opera_,’ she said. ‘It may be worse than all
the rest. I only know it interests me the most. If you will take hold
of the cloth at that side, we can lift it off.’
They removed the covering from the figure, and the unfinished work
stood revealed. Minna’s heart was beating fast. He stood and looked at
the figure, and she, standing near him, tried to put herself, as it
were, outside herself, and judge of it as an intelligent outsider might
have done. The effort was useless, of course. She only succeeded in
confusing herself and coming to no conclusion.
Meantime, the work at which they looked was this: a nearly life-size
figure of a young man, somewhat above middle height, but not very tall.
His dress--what there was of it--was the dress of a nineteenth-century
working man; in this case, of an Italian working man. That is to say,
he had on something between a _culotte_ and trousers, short and rather
loose, of some thinnish linen, summer stuff, bound round his waist
with a leathern belt. His shirt had been taken off and was cast in a
little heap on the ground beside him. His sinewy naked feet seemed to
clasp the ground on which he stood, which ground was strewn with bits
of rough stone or pebble; he was standing erect; his right hand grasped
the handle of a stout shovel, the spade part of which was half sunk
in a heap of cindery-looking substance. His left arm was raised and
crooked; the hand drooped somewhat in a peculiar way, with its back
turned towards his forehead. The action was unmistakable: he had been
wiping the sweat from his forehead, and the face of this figure, with
the eyes raised, the head lifted, in the act of one who has suddenly
paused for an instant in a piece of long-continued, strenuous labour,
was filled with an expression of strength, resolution, energy, and at
the same time of patient endurance, which was magnificently conveyed.
It was not a particularly Italian face--that is, though an Italian
had served for its model, he had been one of the fair-haired,
clear-complexioned, blue-eyed men whom one encounters, not
unfrequently, but always with a thrill of surprise, in all parts of
Italy, especially in Rome or its surrounding country, in the most
unexpected way, amidst the swarthy children of a blazing sun and a
fertile earth. There was nothing particularly Southern any more than
particularly Northern in its features: there was a broad, rather rugged
forehead; level eyebrows; a nose of no particular order, unless it
might be called truculent; a mouth whose lips were hidden somewhat
under a little rough moustache; the expression was the expression of
the labouring man, full of life and strength, and not averse to his
work, all the world over.
Signor Giuseppe stood quite still for what seemed to Minna a very long
time, gazing in absolute silence at this figure, measuring it from head
to foot in its strength, its vigour, earnestness, and even brutality.
At last, ‘That is your own--all your own?’ he asked.
‘Yes--and yet no; nothing is quite our own. It was just a coincidence
that brought it about.’
‘Tell me about it. But first let me guess. It is hardly finished enough
yet to tell its own tale clearly. He is a working man with a spade. He
has been pausing in his work and wiping his brow. What is that stuff
into which he has been digging?’
‘Coal--engine coal,’ said Minna rather nervously.
‘Ah-h!’ Signor Giuseppe nodded his head. ‘Coal--bene! Well, what is to
become of the coal?’
‘Here,’ said Minna, pointing to a lump of clay as yet shapeless, near
to which the workman’s shirt was cast on the ground--‘here is to
be--when it is done--one of those strong coarse wicker baskets which he
is filling with coal. Each basket, when it is filled, will be carried
to the tender of the locomotive and emptied into it. He is the stoker.
He is helping because there is haste. I saw it one day when I was
rambling about near the station. I had turned aside to have a look at
my favourite bit of the Agger of Servius which is preserved there; you
know, signore, what I mean: I may as well confess my debts. A writer
of my country, a celebrated historian, who also loves very much many
things connected with your country, has written, amongst other things,
a little article on “The Walls of Rome,” which I have read so often
that I almost know it by heart. Are you tired, or do you want to hear
the whole history of this figure?’
‘I want to hear it all. Tell me about it.’
Minna took up a volume, bearing traces of having been much read, which
lay on a stool near her work. It was the ‘Historical and Architectural
Sketches’ of Freeman, and it opened of itself at the place she spoke
of. She read, translating rapidly into Italian as she did so.
‘This bit is from a sketch called “Mons Sacer,”’ she said; ‘it is not
the one about the walls. He says: “We set out along the Via Nomentana;
we pass by the gimcrack Colosseum of the Prince; we pass by the two
churches which have fared in such opposite ways at infallible hands;
we ask ourselves the purpose of the ruin which stands in their close
neighbourhood, and which, like so many others, bears the name of
Maxentius. But this time we do not turn back when we have reached the
basilica.... We are seeking a spot which tells us of days when as yet
Rome had no prince but her Princeps Senatus; no pontiff but the head
of the religion of Jupiter and Minerva. But before we altogether cast
the modern world behind us, we are forcibly reminded of its presence
as we cross the modern substitute for Appian and Flaminian Ways, the
network of railways which carry out the saying that all roads lead to
Rome. Nor is the reminder out of place,”’ Minna read slowly, and with
emphasis; ‘“the great works of ancient and modern engineering skill
have much in common. There is a likeness sometimes in their actual
appearance--always in the mighty spirit of enterprise, the boundless
command of physical resources, which is common to both and unknown to
intermediate ages.”’
She paused and looked at him, half closing the book. His eyes gleamed
with delight.
‘Bene, bene!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who is this man, this splendid fellow? I
could embrace him. No whining over modern progress as destructive of
ancient grandeur. This man takes hold of the thing at the right end.’
‘Oh, there is plenty of abuse--of things and people he doesn’t like!’
said Minna, laughing, and feeling excited and pleased. ‘Popes, for
instance; and Barberini and Borghesi meet with short shrift from him.’
‘All the better; that is still more after my own heart. If he had
included kings and princes in the list, better still. But go on!’
‘Well, you will understand that, knowing all this writing as I do,
the very words of it went through my mind as I stood leaning against
a railing near the siding at the railway-station, and looking at that
bit of the Agger inside it, and thinking of the ancient engineering
works and of what Freeman says about this weakest corner of the city;
weakest by nature, made specially strong by art. “Here, on the eastern
side, where there was no river to embank, no cliff to scarp, ran the
mighty Agger of Servius Tullius ... within the line of the Agger and
defended by a vast hornwork stood the Colline Gate.... Here was the
natural point of attack for every enemy.... Through the Colline Gate
the revolted army came back to overthrow the tyranny of the Decemvirs.
Over the Colline Gate, so the tale ran, Hannibal hurled his spear--a
tale wild enough, but one which still shows at which point men looked
for Hannibal to have entered Rome if he had entered it at all. And it
was by the Colline Gate that Rome fought her last battle for her being
against Italian enemies. It was there that Scilla saved her when the
last Pontius came to root up the wood which sheltered the wolves that
so long had ravaged Italy. On that day Rome fought, not for dominion,
but for life; she had not to fight for life again till the Colline
Gate and the Servian Agger had passed away, and till Rome had found
that she needed new ramparts to shield her from new enemies.”’
‘Ai--i,’ came like a long sigh from Signor Giuseppe’s lips; his eyes,
his thoughts were far away. These words had roused again that passion
for his country and for her freedom which had been so intense--he lived
through his former struggles; he fought his battles o’er again.
‘Just then,’ said Minna, taking up her own narrative again, ‘while I
was thinking about all this, my eye fell upon an engine and tender
in the siding. There was the engine-driver, seated on a log of wood,
eating his supper; there was a boy, and there was a young man who was
the stoker, and they were talking. You see, I understand what they say.
I am better off than so many people who come here. There was some
discussion about coals being loaded into the tender. Someone who ought
to have been there then, helping, had not come, and there was some
haste. Suddenly this young man sprang up, seized a shovel, and fell to
upon the work. He got hot, he threw his shirt off, and worked with a
sort of fury. The sweat poured from him. The boy was working no less
vigorously, seizing the baskets and emptying them into the coal place
on the tender. I wished I could help them. They were splendid. Then
all at once this fellow stopped short, wiped his brow with his hand,
and stood still as you see him here. As he looked then, it seemed to
me that his pose was almost classical. For all his energy, there was
real rest and repose in the attitude. There flashed into my mind a
recollection of that figure of the ‘Chariot-driver’ in the _Sala della
Biga_ at the Vatican--you remember?’
He nodded.
‘A handsome lad, isn’t he? in all his elegant trappings, even if it
isn’t very precious as a work of art. He stands there with great calm
and self-possession, looking cool and comfortable; but all the same
one knows, one feels, that sometimes he must have had to exert himself
pretty hard, guiding his team of four or six, perhaps, or racing in
grim earnest round the amphitheatre, amidst the cheers and howls of the
greens and blues. He did not always look so cool and comfortable. I
don’t know how my thoughts followed one another, but suddenly there it
was--the connection, the analogue--that marble boy in the Vatican, and
these, the real chariot-drivers of to-day, with their surroundings. I
had always felt that there are things to-day as suited to be put into
marble or bronze, and to live as records of our times, as there were in
those other days which we study with such interest and delight. Only I
had never been quite able to hit upon the exact thing that I wanted.
Here it was, I thought--one instance of it, at any rate. The thought
in my mind was a grand and beautiful one. I fell to work at once, in a
fever of delight; then came doubts and difficulties, and that is all
the result--all there is to show for it.’
She looked dejectedly at the figure.
‘All,’ echoed Signor Giuseppe, and then continued in tones of decision;
‘it contains the material for a very good “all.” Defy that feeling
of discouragement. Work it out to the best of your power. You will
never be satisfied with it; what artist ever was satisfied with his
own embodiment of his own thought? But it has original power, it is
distinctly a work of art; it has a right to live, to fulfil its mission
of being exposed to view and giving pleasure and wakening thought in
others. You say there was something classical in the young man’s pose
as he paused in his toil. Well, as your work stands now, you have
succeeded in conveying that classical quality into this work of to-day.
It is the rarest good-fortune. You need wish for no higher praise than
that, and I give it you confidently because I know what I am talking
about.’
‘I cannot believe it. It seems impossible,’ said Minna, whose eyes were
shining and whose heart was beating.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whether you believe or not, it is so. What
do you intend to call it?’
‘I have thought of a great many names. The one that displeases me the
least is simply the words “In the sweat of thy brow”--with “Roma” and
the date when--if ever--it is finished. What do you think?’
She was astonished to find herself giving him such confidences; it was
generally almost impossible for her to talk about her work.
‘Good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Don’t admit the idea of any other name into
your mind. That fits it. That will do. Don’t soften it down, either
the work or the name. There is a tinge of ferocity underlying all its
repose. That is what gives it its character.’
‘You’ll turn my head with such praise.’
‘Che! Where did you get hold of the model for it?’
‘Oh, I was lucky in that. A young man to whose mother I had done some
little kindnesses came and stood for it. He was glad of the money and
interested in the whole thing; and there was a vast difference between
him and the professional ones who lounge about on the Spanish Steps.’
‘Then, this face is not the face of the man you originally saw, when
the idea occurred to you?’
‘No. That man was swarthy and black-browed--an unmistakable Italian.
This, as you may guess, is one of the fair-haired, light-complexioned
men whom I might see without surprise working on my brother’s land, or
digging in my own garden, at home. But I thought it was so much the
better. It is meant quite as much to be expressive of to-day, of work
in general, as of Italy, so I did not see the need of having a purely
Italian type.’
‘No; you were right,’ said Signor Giuseppe, helping her to envelop the
figure again it its damp cloths. ‘I congratulate you,’ he added very
gently, in a voice that shook Minna’s feelings somewhat. ‘Once,’ he
added, ‘I thought of devoting myself to art. But there were obstacles
in the way. I had to drop it. I had not time for even the least
attempts at such a thing.’
They went back into the sitting-room, and Minna began to put on her
bonnet.
‘Do you drive?’ he asked, ‘or may I escort you to the house?’
‘I will walk if you will walk with me,’ replied Minna; and in a
minute or two she had locked the door behind her, and they were going
downstairs.
It was a mild and beautiful night, and they went slowly along the
lighted streets and glittering _piazze_ towards Casa Dietrich. Rome
was awake and alive, as she always begins to be about that hour. It is
true, the turmoil never ceases for a moment throughout the day; but it
is at night that the particularly vivid, eager life starts up, that
crowds most do throng the streets, and pour in and out of the cafés,
the faces gleam keener, and wit flows more freely, and gesticulation is
more animated, and the cries are shriller of those who call newspapers
and matches and sermons of fashionable preachers, and sponges and
crockery, and miscellaneous toys and goods of every description, as
well as the thousand other things which are hawked through Roman
streets by stentorian Roman lungs.
Ever more piercing, ever more confounding to a sensitive set of nerves,
ever more delightful and inspiring, do they grow to this wondrous race,
which, while brimming over with life and eagerness and nervous force,
yet seem to be sublimely ignorant of the existence of nerves in the
sense of having them to be pained and wearied. It is unknown how many
hours of sleep the average Roman extracts from the twenty-four, but
probably fewer than the inhabitants of any other place in the world.
Minna knew the turmoil, the tumult, and the excitement, and loved
them. They came to her ever fresh, ever interesting, ever inspiring.
She loved them alike in these winter nights, in the spring evenings,
and late in summer nights, when the mighty world-city with its great
mystery had been during the burning hours of the day quelled into
silence, but at night rose up, and, as it were, adorned herself and
said, ‘I will go forth and wander in my gardens, and sit in my places
of entertainment, and rest beside my fountains, and listen to the mirth
of my children, for life is good.’ She loved it all, and loved to be
in it. And as she and Signor Giuseppe paced slowly along on their way
from her studio to the house, she tried to explain to him some of this
feeling that she had, and some of the emotions which the spectacle of
this mighty and throbbing life roused in her.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is dear to me, too. You think it noisy, as all
foreigners do, disturbing, clashing, shrill. Yet I often come and
wander about in it, to find quiet and peace. Then I study it, and every
time I study it it twines itself more firmly about my heart. The roots
of my love for it strike deeper and more inextricably into my being.
Sometimes I see its tragic side most plainly, sometimes its happier
one, but always it is wonderful and fascinating and indescribable, as
it always must be for those who can see more than the mere outside. My
city was once the mistress of the world. Times are changed since then;
she is barely mistress of herself now that she has choked and strangled
the power of her tyrants. But she has done it, and that power will
never lift its head again. I know that the same spirit is still in my
countrymen as was in them when that was built.’ He looked up at the
Pantheon, beside which they now emerged from a side-street.
In less than five minutes they had climbed the stairs of Casa Dietrich,
and stood within the hall. From the drawing-room was coming the usual
evening clatter. On the hall-table stood a kind of infernal machine,
miscalled a musical box, which, on being as it were fed with circular
pieces of cardboard, riddled with holes and labelled with the names
of different tunes--and on a handle being turned, ground forth the
semblance of the said tunes. It formed an unfailing source of delight
and recreation to at any rate the Italian portion of the company, one
of whom was even now industriously turning the handle and producing a
feeble and distorted version of the ‘Beautiful blue Danube’ waltzes--a
performance which it made Minna shudder to hear.
When the Italian boy saw them he waved his disengaged hand gaily,
wished them good-evening, and asked if the music was not charming. In a
distant dark corner a figure was gyrating gracefully all alone, humming
the notes of the air. As they advanced into the hall, its movements
ceased, it also came forward, smiling, and undulating still in its
walk--it was the fallen patrician Ettore, who bowed himself before
them, saying gently:
‘With the permission of the signorina yonder, I was diverting myself
and practising my dancing at the same time. I also wished to be on the
spot when the Signor Oriole should return, in order to tell him that
the signora and the Signorina Fulvia arrived an hour ago, and desired
to speak to him the instant he came in.’
‘The signora has returned,’ repeated Signor Giuseppe, in a tone almost
of bewilderment; and then, suddenly recovering himself:
‘Bene, bene! I will be with her in a moment.’
He turned to Minna with a face to which had returned, as she at once
saw, all its old look of vexation and discontent, and with an effort
wished her good-night. Then, as if wishful to get a bad business over
as quickly as might be, he strode off in the direction of Signora
Dietrich’s room, leaving Minna to go her own way.