The Three Cities Trilogy: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

VIII

WHEN Pierre remained in the morning at the Boccanera mansion he often
spent some hours in the little neglected garden which had formerly ended
with a sort of colonnaded /loggia/, whence two flights of steps descended
to the Tiber. This garden was a delightful, solitary nook, perfumed by
the ripe fruit of the centenarian orange-trees, whose symmetrical lines
were the only indication of the former pathways, now hidden beneath rank
weeds. And Pierre also found there the acrid scent of the large
box-shrubs growing in the old central fountain basin, which had been
filled up with loose earth and rubbish.

On those luminous October mornings, full of such tender and penetrating
charm, the spot was one where all the joy of living might well be
savoured, but Pierre brought thither his northern dreaminess, his concern
for suffering, his steadfast feeling of compassion, which rendered yet
sweeter the caress of the sunlight pervading that atmosphere of love. He
seated himself against the right-hand wall on a fragment of a fallen
column over which a huge laurel cast a deep-black shadow, fresh and
aromatic. In the antique greenish sarcophagus beside him, on which fauns
offered violence to nymphs, the streamlet of water trickling from the
mask incrusted in the wall, set the unchanging music of its crystal note,
whilst he read the newspapers and the letters which he received, all the
communications of good Abbe Rose, who kept him informed of his mission
among the wretched ones of gloomy Paris, now already steeped in fog and
mud.

One morning however, Pierre unexpectedly found Benedetta seated on the
fallen column which he usually made his chair. She raised a light cry of
surprise on seeing him, and for a moment remained embarrassed, for she
had with her his book "New Rome," which she had read once already, but
had then imperfectly understood. And overcoming her embarrassment she now
hastened to detain him, making him sit down beside her, and frankly
owning that she had come to the garden in order to be alone and apply
herself to an attentive study of the book, in the same way as some
ignorant school-girl. Then they began to chat like a pair of friends, and
the young priest spent a delightful hour. Although Benedetta did not
speak of herself, he realised that it was her grief alone which brought
her nearer to him, as if indeed her own sufferings enlarged her heart and
made her think of all who suffered in the world. Patrician as she was,
regarding social hierarchy as a divine law, she had never previously
thought of such things, and some pages of Pierre's book greatly
astonished her. What! one ought to take interest in the lowly, realise
that they had the same souls and the same griefs as oneself, and seek in
brotherly or sisterly fashion to make them happy? She certainly sought to
acquire such an interest, but with no great success, for she secretly
feared that it might lead her into sin, as it could not be right to alter
aught of the social system which had been established by God and
consecrated by the Church. Charitable she undoubtedly was, wont to bestow
small sums in alms, but she did not give her heart, she felt no true
sympathy for the humble, belonging as she did to such a different race,
which looked to a throne in heaven high above the seats of all the
plebeian elect.

She and Pierre, however, found themselves on other mornings side by side
in the shade of the laurels near the trickling, singing water; and he,
lacking occupation, weary of waiting for a solution which seemed to
recede day by day, fervently strove to animate this young and beautiful
woman with some of his own fraternal feelings. He was impassioned by the
idea that he was catechising Italy herself, the queen of beauty, who was
still slumbering in ignorance, but who would recover all her past glory
if she were to awake to the new times with soul enlarged, swelling with
pity for men and things. Reading good Abbe Rose's letters to Benedetta,
he made her shudder at the frightful wail of wretchedness which ascends
from all great cities. With such deep tenderness in her eyes, with the
happiness of love reciprocated emanating from her whole being, why should
she not recognise, even as he did, that the law of love was the sole
means of saving suffering humanity, which, through hatred, incurred the
danger of death? And to please him she did try to believe in democracy,
in the fraternal remodelling of society, but among other nations
only--not at Rome, for an involuntary, gentle laugh came to her lips
whenever his words evoked the idea of the poor still remaining in the
Trastevere district fraternising with those who yet dwelt in the old
princely palaces. No, no, things had been as they were so long; they
could not, must not, be altered! And so, after all, Pierre's pupil made
little progress: she was, in reality, simply touched by the wealth of
ardent love which the young priest had chastely transferred from one
alone to the whole of human kind. And between him and her, as those
sunlit October mornings went by, a tie of exquisite sweetness was formed;
they came to love one another with deep, pure, fraternal affection,
amidst the great glowing passion which consumed them both.

Then, one day, Benedetta, her elbow resting on the sarcophagus, spoke of
Dario, whose name she had hitherto refrained from mentioning. Ah! poor
/amico/, how circumspect and repentant he had shown himself since that
fit of brutal insanity! At first, to conceal his embarrassment, he had
gone to spend three days at Naples, and it was said that La Tonietta, the
sentimental /demi-mondaine/, had hastened to join him there, wildly in
love with him. Since his return to the mansion he had avoided all private
meetings with his cousin, and scarcely saw her except at the Monday
receptions, when he wore a submissive air, and with his eyes silently
entreated forgiveness.

"Yesterday, however," continued Benedetta, "I met him on the staircase
and gave him my hand. He understood that I was no longer angry with him
and was very happy. What else could I have done? One must not be severe
for ever. Besides, I do not want things to go too far between him and
that woman. I want him to remember that I still love him, and am still
waiting for him. Oh! he is mine, mine alone. But alas! I cannot say the
word: our affairs are in such sorry plight."

She paused, and two big tears welled into her eyes. The divorce
proceedings to which she alluded had now come to a standstill, fresh
obstacles ever arising to stay their course.

Pierre was much moved by her tears, for she seldom wept. She herself
sometimes confessed, with her calm smile, that she did not know how to
weep. But now her heart was melting, and for a moment she remained
overcome, leaning on the mossy, crumbling sarcophagus, whilst the clear
water falling from the gaping mouth of the tragic mask still sounded its
flutelike note. And a sudden thought of death came to the priest as he
saw her, so young and so radiant with beauty, half fainting beside that
marble resting-place where fauns were rushing upon nymphs in a frantic
bacchanal which proclaimed the omnipotence of love--that omnipotence
which the ancients were fond of symbolising on their tombs as a token of
life's eternity. And meantime a faint, warm breeze passed through the
sunlit, silent garden, wafting hither and thither the penetrating scent
of box and orange.

"One has so much strength when one loves," Pierre at last murmured.

"Yes, yes, you are right," she replied, already smiling again. "I am
childish. But it is the fault of your book. It is only when I suffer that
I properly understand it. But all the same I am making progress, am I
not? Since you desire it, let all the poor, all those who suffer, as I
do, be my brothers and sisters."

Then for a while they resumed their chat.

On these occasions Benedetta was usually the first to return to the
house, and Pierre would linger alone under the laurels, vaguely dreaming
of sweet, sad things. Often did he think how hard life proved for poor
creatures whose only thirst was for happiness!

One Monday evening, at a quarter-past ten, only the young folks remained
in Donna Serafina's reception-room. Monsignor Nani had merely put in an
appearance that night, and Cardinal Sarno had just gone off.

Even Donna Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have
withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the
chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting
and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were
Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit
the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously,
in the company of a very pretty girl.

"Oh! don't deny it, my dear fellow," continued Narcisse, "for she was
really superb. She was walking beside you, and you turned into a lane
together--the Borgo Angelico, I think."

Dario listened smiling, quite at his ease and incapable of denying his
passionate predilection for beauty. "No doubt, no doubt; it was I, I
don't deny it," he responded. "Only the inferences you draw are not
correct." And turning towards Benedetta, who, without a thought of
jealous anxiety, wore as gay a look as himself, as though delighted that
he should have enjoyed that passing pleasure of the eyes, he went on: "It
was the girl, you know, whom I found in tears six weeks ago. Yes, that
bead-worker who was sobbing because the workshop was shut up, and who
rushed along, all blushing, to conduct me to her parents when I offered
her a bit of silver. Pierina her name is, as you, perhaps, remember."

"Oh! yes, Pierina."

"Well, since then I've met her in the street on four or five occasions.
And, to tell the truth, she is so very beautiful that I've stopped and
spoken to her. The other day, for instance, I walked with her as far as a
manufacturer's. But she hasn't yet found any work, and she began to cry,
and so, to console her a little, I kissed her. She was quite taken aback
at it, but she seemed very well pleased."

At this all the others began to laugh. But suddenly Celia desisted and
said very gravely, "You know, Dario, she loves you; you must not be hard
on her."

Dario, no doubt, was of Celia's opinion, for he again looked at
Benedetta, but with a gay toss of the head, as if to say that, although
the girl might love him, he did not love her. A bead-worker indeed, a
girl of the lowest classes, pooh! She might be a Venus, but she could be
nothing to him. And he himself made merry over his romantic adventure,
which Narcisse sought to arrange in a kind of antique sonnet: A beautiful
bead-worker falling madly in love with a young prince, as fair as
sunlight, who, touched by her misfortune, hands her a silver crown; then
the beautiful bead-worker, quite overcome at finding him as charitable as
handsome, dreaming of him incessantly, and following him everywhere,
chained to his steps by a link of flame; and finally the beautiful
bead-worker, who has refused the silver crown, so entreating the handsome
prince with her soft, submissive eyes, that he at last deigns to grant
her the alms of his heart. This pastime greatly amused Benedetta; but
Celia, with her angelic face and the air of a little girl who ought to
have been ignorant of everything, remained very grave and repeated sadly,
"Dario, Dario, she loves you; you must not make her suffer."

Then the Contessina, in her turn, was moved to pity. "And those poor
folks are not happy!" said she.

"Oh!" exclaimed the Prince, "it's misery beyond belief. On the day she
took me to the Quartiere dei Prati* I was quite overcome; it was awful,
astonishingly awful!"

* The district of the castle meadows--see /ante/ note.--Trans.

"But I remember that we promised to go to see the poor people," resumed
Benedetta, "and we have done wrong in delaying our visit so long. For
your studies, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, you greatly desired to accompany
us and see the poor of Rome--was that not so?"

As she spoke she raised her eyes to Pierre, who for a moment had been
silent. He was much moved by her charitable thought, for he realised, by
the faint quiver of her voice, that she desired to appear a docile pupil,
progressing in affection for the lowly and the wretched. Moreover, his
passion for his apostolate had at once returned to him. "Oh!" said he, "I
shall not quit Rome without having seen those who suffer, those who lack
work and bread. Therein lies the malady which affects every nation;
salvation can only be attained by the healing of misery. When the roots
of the tree cannot find sustenance the tree dies."

"Well," resumed the Contessina, "we will fix an appointment at once; you
shall come with us to the Quartiere dei Prati--Dario will take us there."

At this the Prince, who had listened to the priest with an air of
stupefaction, unable to understand the simile of the tree and its roots,
began to protest distressfully, "No, no, cousin, take Monsieur l'Abbe for
a stroll there if it amuses you. But I've been, and don't want to go
back. Why, when I got home the last time I was so upset that I almost
took to my bed. No, no; such abominations are too awful--it isn't
possible."

At this moment a voice, bitter with displeasure, arose from the chimney
corner. Donna Serafina was emerging from her long silence. "Dario is
quite right! Send your alms, my dear, and I will gladly add mine. There
are other places where you might take Monsieur l'Abbe, and which it would
be far more useful for him to see. With that idea of yours you would send
him away with a nice recollection of our city."

Roman pride rang out amidst the old lady's bad temper. Why, indeed, show
one's sores to foreigners, whose visit is possibly prompted by hostile
curiosity? One always ought to look beautiful; Rome should not be shown
otherwise than in the garb of glory.

Narcisse, however, had taken possession of Pierre. "It's true, my dear
Abbe," said he; "I forgot to recommend that stroll to you. You really
must visit the new district built over the castle meadows. It's typical,
and sums up all the others. And you won't lose your time there, I'll
warrant you, for nowhere can you learn more about the Rome of the present
day. It's extraordinary, extraordinary!" Then, addressing Benedetta, he
added, "Is it decided? Shall we say to-morrow morning? You'll find the
Abbe and me over there, for I want to explain matters to him beforehand,
in order that he may understand them. What do you say to ten o'clock?"

Before answering him the Contessina turned towards her aunt and
respectfully opposed her views. "But Monsieur l'Abbe, aunt, has met
enough beggars in our streets already, so he may well see everything.
Besides, judging by his book, he won't see worse things than he has seen
in Paris. As he says in one passage, hunger is the same all the world
over." Then, with her sensible air, she gently laid siege to Dario. "You
know, Dario," said she, "you would please me very much by taking me
there. We can go in the carriage and join these gentlemen. It will be a
very pleasant outing for us. It is such a long time since we went out
together."

It was certainly that idea of going out with Dario, of having a pretext
for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself
realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a
joke. "Ah! cousin," he said, "it will be your fault; I shall have the
nightmare for a week. An excursion like that spoils all the enjoyment of
life for days and days."

The mere thought made him quiver with revolt. However, laughter again
rang out around him, and, in spite of Donna Serafina's mute disapproval,
the appointment was finally fixed for the following morning at ten
o'clock. Celia as she went off expressed deep regret that she could not
form one of the party; but, with the closed candour of a budding lily,
she really took interest in Pierina alone. As she reached the ante-room
she whispered in her friend's ear: "Take a good look at that beauty, my
dear, so as to tell me whether she is so very beautiful--beautiful beyond
compare."

When Pierre met Narcisse near the Castle of Sant' Angelo on the morrow,
at nine o'clock, he was surprised to find him again languid and
enraptured, plunged anew in artistic enthusiasm. At first not a word was
said of the excursion. Narcisse related that he had risen at sunrise in
order that he might spend an hour before Bernini's "Santa Teresa." It
seemed that when he did not see that statue for a week he suffered as
acutely as if he were parted from some cherished mistress. And his
adoration varied with the time of day, according to the light in which he
beheld the figure: in the morning, when the pale glow of dawn steeped it
in whiteness, he worshipped it with quite a mystical transport of the
soul, whilst in the afternoon, when the glow of the declining sun's
oblique rays seemed to permeate the marble, his passion became as fiery
red as the blood of martyrs. "Ah! my friend," said he with a weary air
whilst his dreamy eyes faded to mauve, "you have no idea how delightful
and perturbing her awakening was this morning--how languorously she
opened her eyes, like a pure, candid virgin, emerging from the embrace of
the Divinity. One could die of rapture at the sight!"

Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the
voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of
life: "We'll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the
buildings yonder; and on our way I'll tell you what I know of the things
we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those
delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own,
just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind
is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took
part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by
it."

Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing
technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary
adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome,
should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last
possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which
the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to
say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young
nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern
capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were
sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of
all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what
abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the /Roma sporca/ which
artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked
even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used
for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the
princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect
manure beds which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus vast municipal works
were absolutely necessary, the question was one of health and life
itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building
houses for the newcomers, who would assuredly flock into the city. There
had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment
of the German empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of
thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be
doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for as the new centre of national life the
city would necessarily attract all the /vis viva/ of the provinces. And
at this thought pride stepped in: the fallen government of the Vatican
must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendour she
would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its
thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the
imperial or the papal city.

True, during the early years some prudence was observed; wisely enough,
houses were only built in proportion as they were required. The
population had doubled at one bound, rising from two to four hundred
thousand souls, thanks to the arrival of the little world of employees
and officials of the public services--all those who live on the State or
hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life
whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of
newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that
the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid.
And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was
necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow's need by
enlarging Rome on all sides. Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the
second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of
light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was
neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of
the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the
work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of
the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal,
predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was
completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies,
those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away
without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All
at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had
been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever
arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A
flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome,
the noblest and easiest of preys. Those needy, famished mountaineers
found spoils for every appetite in that voluptuous South where life is so
benign, and the very delights of the climate helped to corrupt and hasten
moral gangrene. At first, too; it was merely necessary to stoop; money
was to be found by the shovelful among the rubbish of the first districts
which were opened up. People who were clever enough to scent the course
which the new thoroughfares would take and purchase buildings threatened
with demolition increased their capital tenfold in a couple of years. And
after that the contagion spread, infecting all classes--the princes,
burgesses, petty proprietors, even the shop-keepers, bakers, grocers, and
boot-makers; the delirium rising to such a pitch that a mere baker
subsequently failed for forty-five millions.* Nothing, indeed, was left
but rageful gambling, in which the stakes were millions, whilst the lands
and the houses became mere fictions, mere pretexts for stock-exchange
operations. And thus the old hereditary pride, which had dreamt of
transforming Rome into the capital of the world, was heated to madness by
the high fever of speculation--folks buying, and building, and selling
without limit, without a pause, even as one might throw shares upon the
market as fast and as long as presses can be found to print them.

* 1,800,000 pounds. See /ante/ note.--Trans.

No other city in course of evolution has ever furnished such a spectacle.
Nowadays, when one strives to penetrate things one is confounded. The
population had increased to five hundred thousand, and then seemingly
remained stationary; nevertheless, new districts continued to sprout up
more thickly than ever. Yet what folly it was not to wait for a further
influx of inhabitants! Why continue piling up accommodation for thousands
of families whose advent was uncertain? The only excuse lay in having
beforehand propounded the proposition that the third Rome, the triumphant
capital of Italy, could not count less than a million souls, and in
regarding that proposition as indisputable fact. The people had not come,
but they surely would come: no patriot could doubt it without being
guilty of treason. And so houses were built and built without a pause,
for the half-million citizens who were coming. There was no anxiety as to
the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be
expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection
with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished,
pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and
thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other
companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more
districts outside Rome--veritable little towns, of which there was no
need whatever. Beyond the Porta San Giovanni and the Porta San Lorenzo,
suburbs sprang up as by miracle. A town was sketched out over the vast
estate of the Villa Ludovisi, from the Porta Pia to the Porta Salaria and
even as far as Sant' Agnese. And then came an attempt to make quite a
little city, with church, school, and market, arise all at once on the
fields of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. And it was no question of small
dwellings for labourers, modest flats for employees, and others of
limited means; no, it was a question of colossal mansions three and four
storeys high, displaying uniform and endless facades which made these new
excentral quarters quite Babylonian, such districts, indeed, as only
capitals endowed with intense life, like Paris and London, could contrive
to populate. However, such were the monstrous products of pride and
gambling; and what a page of history, what a bitter lesson now that Rome,
financially ruined, is further disgraced by that hideous girdle of empty,
and, for the most part, uncompleted carcases, whose ruins already strew
the grassy streets!

The fatal collapse, the disaster proved a frightful one. Narcisse
explained its causes and recounted its phases so clearly that Pierre
fully understood. Naturally enough, numerous financial companies had
sprouted up: the Immobiliere, the Society d'Edilizia e Construzione, the
Fondaria, the Tiberiana, and the Esquilino. Nearly all of them built,
erected huge houses, entire streets of them, for purposes of sale; but
they also gambled in land, selling plots at large profit to petty
speculators, who also dreamt of making large profits amidst the
continuous, fictitious rise brought about by the growing fever of
agiotage. And the worst was that the petty speculators, the middle-class
people, the inexperienced shop-keepers without capital, were crazy enough
to build in their turn by borrowing of the banks or applying to the
companies which had sold them the land for sufficient cash to enable them
to complete their structures. As a general rule, to avoid the loss of
everything, the companies were one day compelled to take back both land
and buildings, incomplete though the latter might be, and from the
congestion which resulted they were bound to perish. If the expected
million of people had arrived to occupy the dwellings prepared for them
the gains would have been fabulous, and in ten years Rome might have
become one of the most flourishing capitals of the world. But the people
did not come, and the dwellings remained empty. Moreover, the buildings
erected by the companies were too large and costly for the average
investor inclined to put his money into house property. Heredity had
acted, the builders had planned things on too huge a scale, raising a
series of magnificent piles whose purpose was to dwarf those of all other
ages; but, as it happened, they were fated to remain lifeless and
deserted, testifying with wondrous eloquence to the impotence of pride.

So there was no private capital that dared or could take the place of
that of the companies. Elsewhere, in Paris for instance, new districts
have been erected and embellishments have been carried out with the
capital of the country--the money saved by dint of thrift. But in Rome
all was built on the credit system, either by means of bills of exchange
at ninety days, or--and this was chiefly the case--by borrowing money
abroad. The huge sum sunk in these enterprises is estimated at a
milliard, four-fifths of which was French money. The bankers did
everything; the French ones lent to the Italian bankers at 3 1/2 or 4 per
cent.; and the Italian bankers accommodated the speculators, the Roman
builders, at 6, 7, and even 8 per cent. And thus the disaster was great
indeed when France, learning of Italy's alliance with Germany, withdrew
her 800,000,000 francs in less than two years. The Italian banks were
drained of their specie, and the land and building companies, being
likewise compelled to reimburse their loans, were compelled to apply to
the banks of issue, those privileged to issue notes. At the same time
they intimidated the Government, threatening to stop all work and throw
40,000 artisans and labourers starving on the pavement of Rome if it did
not compel the banks of issue to lend them the five or six millions of
paper which they needed. And this the Government at last did, appalled by
the possibility of universal bankruptcy. Naturally, however, the five or
six millions could not be paid back at maturity, as the newly built
houses found neither purchasers nor tenants; and so the great fall began,
and continued with a rush, heaping ruin upon ruin. The petty speculators
fell on the builders, the builders on the land companies, the land
companies on the banks of issue, and the latter on the public credit,
ruining the nation. And that was how a mere municipal crisis became a
frightful disaster: a whole milliard sunk to no purpose, Rome disfigured,
littered with the ruins of the gaping and empty dwellings which had been
prepared for the five or six hundred thousand inhabitants for whom the
city yet waits in vain!

Moreover, in the breeze of glory which swept by, the state itself took a
colossal view of things. It was a question of at once making Italy
triumphant and perfect, of accomplishing in five and twenty years what
other nations have required centuries to effect. So there was feverish
activity and a prodigious outlay on canals, ports, roads, railway lines,
and improvements in all the great cities. Directly after the alliance
with Germany, moreover, the military and naval estimates began to devour
millions to no purpose. And the ever growing financial requirements were
simply met by the issue of paper, by a fresh loan each succeeding year.
In Rome alone, too, the building of the Ministry of War cost ten
millions, that of the Ministry of Finances fifteen, whilst a hundred was
spent on the yet unfinished quays, and two hundred and fifty were sunk on
works of defence around the city. And all this was a flare of the old
hereditary pride, springing from that soil whose sap can only blossom in
extravagant projects; the determination to dazzle and conquer the world
which comes as soon as one has climbed to the Capitol, even though one's
feet rest amidst the accumulated dust of all the forms of human power
which have there crumbled one above the other.

"And, my dear friend," continued Narcisse, "if I could go into all the
stories that are current, that are whispered here and there, you would be
stupefied at the insanity which overcame the whole city amidst the
terrible fever to which the gambling passion gave rise. Folks of small
account, and fools and ignorant people were not the only ones to be
ruined; nearly all the Roman nobles lost their ancient fortunes, their
gold and their palaces and their galleries of masterpieces, which they
owed to the munificence of the popes. The colossal wealth which it had
taken centuries of nepotism to pile up in the hands of a few melted away
like wax, in less than ten years, in the levelling fire of modern
speculation." Then, forgetting that he was speaking to a priest, he went
on to relate one of the whispered stories to which he had alluded:
"There's our good friend Dario, Prince Boccanera, the last of the name,
reduced to live on the crumbs which fall to him from his uncle the
Cardinal, who has little beyond his stipend left him. Well, Dario would
be a rich man had it not been for that extraordinary affair of the Villa
Montefiori. You have heard of it, no doubt; how Prince Onofrio, Dario's
father, speculated, sold the villa grounds for ten millions, then bought
them back and built on them, and how, at last, not only the ten millions
were lost, but also all that remained of the once colossal fortune of the
Boccaneras. What you haven't been told, however, is the secret part which
Count Prada--our Contessina's husband--played in the affair. He was the
lover of Princess Boccanera, the beautiful Flavia Montefiori, who had
brought the villa as dowry to the old Prince. She was a very fine woman,
much younger than her husband, and it is positively said that it was
through her that Prada mastered the Prince--for she held her old doting
husband at arm's length whenever he hesitated to give a signature or go
farther into the affair of which he scented the danger. And in all this
Prada gained the millions which he now spends, while as for the beautiful
Flavia, you are aware, no doubt, that she saved a little fortune from the
wreck and bought herself a second and much younger husband, whom she
turned into a Marquis Montefiori. In the whole affair the only victim is
our good friend Dario, who is absolutely ruined, and wishes to marry his
cousin, who is as poor as himself. It's true that she's determined to
have him, and that it's impossible for him not to reciprocate her love.
But for that he would have already married some American girl with a
dowry of millions, like so many of the ruined princes, on the verge of
starvation, have done; that is, unless the Cardinal and Donna Serafina
had opposed such a match, which would not have been surprising, proud and
stubborn as they are, anxious to preserve the purity of their old Roman
blood. However, let us hope that Dario and the exquisite Benedetta will
some day be happy together."

Narcisse paused; but, after taking a few steps in silence, he added in a
lower tone: "I've a relative who picked up nearly three millions in that
Villa Montefiori affair. Ah! I regret that I wasn't here in those heroic
days of speculation. It must have been very amusing; and what strokes
there were for a man of self-possession to make!"

However, all at once, as he raised his head, he saw before him the
Quartiere dei Prati--the new district of the castle fields; and his face
thereupon changed: he again became an artist, indignant with the modern
abominations with which old Rome had been disfigured. His eyes paled, and
a curl of his lips expressed the bitter disdain of a dreamer whose
passion for the vanished centuries was sorely hurt: "Look, look at it
all!" he exclaimed. "To think of it, in the city of Augustus, the city of
Leo X, the city of eternal power and eternal beauty!"

Pierre himself was thunderstruck. The meadows of the Castle of Sant'
Angelo, dotted with a few poplar trees, had here formerly stretched
alongside the Tiber as far as the first slopes of Monte Mario, thus
supplying, to the satisfaction of artists, a foreground or greenery to
the Borgo and the dome of St. Peter's. But now, amidst the white,
leprous, overturned plain, there stood a town of huge, massive houses,
cubes of stone-work, invariably the same, with broad streets intersecting
one another at right angles. From end to end similar facades appeared,
suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and
painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised
whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a
wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and
emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful
abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep
pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. There
were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others
which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which
had been carried as high as was intended, and even roofed in, suggesting
skeletons or empty cages. Then there were houses finished excepting that
their walls had not been plastered, others which had been left without
window frames, shutters, or doors; others, again, which had their doors
and shutters, but were nailed up like coffins with not a soul inside
them; and yet others which were partly, and in a few cases fully,
inhabited--animated by the most unexpected of populations. And no words
could describe the fearful mournfulness of that City of the Sleeping
Beauty, hushed into mortal slumber before it had even lived, lying
annihilated beneath the heavy sun pending an awakening which, likely
enough, would never come.

Following his companion, Pierre walked along the broad, deserted streets,
where all was still as in a cemetery. Not a vehicle nor a pedestrian
passed by. Some streets had no foot ways; weeds were covering the unpaved
roads, turning them once more into fields; and yet there were temporary
gas lamps, mere leaden pipes bound to poles, which had been there for
years. To avoid payment of the door and window tax, the house owners had
generally closed all apertures with planks; while some houses, of which
little had been built, were surrounded by high palings for fear lest
their cellars should become the dens of all the bandits of the district.
But the most painful sight of all was that of the young ruins, the proud,
lofty structures, which, although unfinished, were already cracking on
all sides, and required the support of an intricate arrangement of
timbers to prevent them from falling in dust upon the ground. A pang came
to one's heart as though one was in a city which some scourge had
depopulated--pestilence, war, or bombardment, of which these gaping
carcases seem to retain the mark. Then at the thought that this was
abortment, not death--that destruction would complete its work before the
dreamt-of, vainly awaited denizens would bring life to the still-born
houses, one's melancholy deepened to hopeless discouragement. And at each
corner, moreover, there was the frightful irony of the magnificent marble
slabs which bore the names of the streets, illustrious historical names,
Gracchus, Scipio, Pliny, Pompey, Julius Caesar, blazing forth on those
unfinished, crumbling walls like a buffet dealt by the Past to modern
incompetency.

Then Pierre was once more struck by this truth--that whosoever possesses
Rome is consumed by the building frenzy, the passion for marble, the
boastful desire to build and leave his monument of glory to future
generations. After the Caesars and the Popes had come the Italian
Government, which was no sooner master of the city than it wished to
reconstruct it, make it more splendid, more huge than it had ever been
before. It was the fatal suggestion of the soil itself--the blood of
Augustus rushing to the brain of these last-comers and urging them to a
mad desire to make the third Rome the queen of the earth. Thence had come
all the vast schemes such as the cyclopean quays and the mere ministries
struggling to outvie the Colosseum; and thence had come all the new
districts of gigantic houses which had sprouted like towns around the
ancient city. It was not only on the castle fields, but at the Porta San
Giovanni, the Porta San Lorenzo, the Villa Ludovisi, and on the heights
of the Viminal and the Esquiline that unfinished, empty districts were
already crumbling amidst the weeds of their deserted streets. After two
thousand years of prodigious fertility the soil really seemed to be
exhausted. Even as in very old fruit gardens newly planted plum and
cherry trees wither and die, so the new walls, no doubt, found no life in
that old dust of Rome, impoverished by the immemorial growth of so many
temples, circuses, arches, basilicas, and churches. And thus the modern
houses, which men had sought to render fruitful, the useless, over-huge
houses, swollen with hereditary ambition, had been unable to attain
maturity, and remained there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land
exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt
arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in
such present-day impotency--Rome, who had covered the world with
indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she could only generate
ruins.

"Oh, they'll be finished some day!" said Pierre.

Narcisse gazed at him in astonishment: "For whom?"

That was the cruel question! Only by dint of patriotic enthusiasm on the
morrow of the conquest had one been able to indulge in the hope of a
mighty influx of population, and now singular blindness was needed for
the belief that such an influx would ever take place. The past
experiments seemed decisive; moreover, there was no reason why the
population should double: Rome offered neither the attraction of pleasure
nor that of gain to be amassed in commerce and industry for those she had
not, nor of intensity of social and intellectual life, since of this she
seemed no longer capable. In any case, years and years would be
requisite. And, meantime, how could one people those houses which were
finished; and for whom was one to finish those which had remained mere
skeletons, falling to pieces under sun and rain? Must they all remain
there indefinitely, some gaunt and open to every blast and others closed
and silent like tombs, in the wretched hideousness of their inutility and
abandonment? What a terrible proof of error they offered under the
radiant sky! The new masters of Rome had made a bad start, and even if
they now knew what they ought to have done would they have the courage to
undo what they had done? Since the milliard sunk there seemed to be
definitely lost and wasted, one actually hoped for the advent of a Nero,
endowed with mighty, sovereign will, who would take torch and pick and
burn and raze everything in the avenging name of reason and beauty.

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

Benedetta had told the coachman to pull up in one of the open spaces
intersecting the deserted streets, and now along the broad, quiet, grassy
road--well fitted for a lovers' stroll--she was approaching on Dario's
arm, both of them delighted with their outing, and no longer thinking of
the sad things which they had come to see. "What a nice day it is!" the
Contessina gaily exclaimed as she reached Pierre and Narcisse. "How
pleasant the sunshine is! It's quite a treat to be able to walk about a
little as if one were in the country!"

Dario was the first to cease smiling at the blue sky, all the delight of
his stroll with his cousin on his arm suddenly departing. "My dear," said
he, "we must go to see those people, since you are bent on it, though it
will certainly spoil our day. But first I must take my bearings. I'm not
particularly clever, you know, in finding my way in places where I don't
care to go. Besides, this district is idiotic with all its dead streets
and dead houses, and never a face or a shop to serve as a reminder. Still
I think the place is over yonder. Follow me; at all events, we shall
see."

The four friends then wended their way towards the central part of the
district, the part facing the Tiber, where a small nucleus of a
population had collected. The landlords turned the few completed houses
to the best advantage they could, letting the rooms at very low rentals,
and waiting patiently enough for payment. Some needy employees, some
poverty-stricken families--had thus installed themselves there, and in
the long run contrived to pay a trifle for their accommodation. In
consequence, however, of the demolition of the ancient Ghetto and the
opening of the new streets by which air had been let into the Trastevere
district, perfect hordes of tatterdemalions, famished and homeless, and
almost without garments, had swooped upon the unfinished houses, filling
them with wretchedness and vermin; and it had been necessary to tolerate
this lawless occupation lest all the frightful misery should remain
displayed in the public thoroughfares. And so it was to those frightful
tenants that had fallen the huge four and five storeyed palaces, entered
by monumental doorways flanked by lofty statues and having carved
balconies upheld by caryatides all along their fronts. Each family had
made its choice, often closing the frameless windows with boards and the
gaping doorways with rags, and occupying now an entire princely flat and
now a few small rooms, according to its taste. Horrid-looking linen hung
drying from the carved balconies, foul stains already degraded the white
walls, and from the magnificent porches, intended for sumptuous
equipages, there poured a stream of filth which rotted in stagnant pools
in the roads, where there was neither pavement nor footpath.

On two occasions already Dario had caused his companions to retrace their
steps. He was losing his way and becoming more and more gloomy. "I ought
to have taken to the left," said he, "but how is one to know amidst such
a set as that!"

Parties of verminous children were now to be seen rolling in the dust;
they were wondrously dirty, almost naked, with black skins and tangled
locks as coarse as horsehair. There were also women in sordid skirts and
with their loose jackets unhooked. Many stood talking together in yelping
voices, whilst others, seated on old chairs with their hands on their
knees, remained like that idle for hours. Not many men were met; but a
few lay on the scorched grass, sleeping heavily in the sunlight. However,
the stench was becoming unbearable--a stench of misery as when the human
animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made
worse by the smell from a small, improvised market--the emanations of the
rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a
few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished,
covetous children.

"Ah! well, my dear, I really don't know where it is," all at once
exclaimed the Prince, addressing his cousin. "Be reasonable; we've surely
seen enough; let's go back to the carriage."

He was really suffering, and, as Benedetta had said, he did not know how
to suffer. It seemed to him monstrous that one should sadden one's life
by such an excursion as this. Life ought to be buoyant and benign under
the clear sky, brightened by pleasant sights, by dance and song. And he,
with his naive egotism, had a positive horror of ugliness, poverty, and
suffering, the sight of which caused him both mental and physical pain.

Benedetta shuddered even as he did, but in presence of Pierre she desired
to be brave. Glancing at him, and seeing how deeply interested and
compassionate he looked, she desired to persevere in her effort to
sympathise with the humble and the wretched. "No, no, Dario, we must
stay. These gentlemen wish to see everything--is it not so?"

"Oh, the Rome of to-day is here," exclaimed Pierre; "this tells one more
about it than all the promenades among the ruins and the monuments."

"You exaggerate, my dear Abbe," declared Narcisse. "Still, I will admit
that it is very interesting. Some of the old women are particularly
expressive."

At this moment Benedetta, seeing a superbly beautiful girl in front of
her, could not restrain a cry of enraptured admiration: "/O che
bellezza!"

And then Dario, having recognised the girl, exclaimed with the same
delight: "Why, it's La Pierina; she'll show us the way."

The girl had been following the party for a moment already without daring
to approach. Her eyes, glittering with the joy of a loving slave, had at
first darted towards the Prince, and then had hastily scrutinised the
Contessina--not, however, with any show of jealous anger, but with an
expression of affectionate submission and resigned happiness at seeing
that she also was very beautiful. And the girl fully answered to the
Prince's description of her--tall, sturdy, with the bust of a goddess, a
real antique, a Juno of twenty, her chin somewhat prominent, her mouth
and nose perfect in contour, her eyes large and full like a heifer's, and
her whole face quite dazzling--gilded, so to say, by a sunflash--beneath
her casque of heavy jet-black hair.

"So you will show us the way?" said Benedetta, familiar and smiling,
already consoled for all the surrounding ugliness by the thought that
there should be such beautiful creatures in the world.

"Oh yes, signora, yes, at once!" And thereupon Pierina ran off before
them, her feet in shoes which at any rate had no holes, whilst the old
brown woollen dress which she wore appeared to have been recently washed
and mended. One seemed to divine in her a certain coquettish care, a
desire for cleanliness, which none of the others displayed; unless,
indeed, it were simply that her great beauty lent radiance to her humble
garments and made her appear a goddess.

"/Che bellezza! the bellezza!/" the Contessina repeated without wearying.
"That girl, Dario /mio/, is a real feast for the eyes!"

"I knew she would please you," he quietly replied, flattered at having
discovered such a beauty, and no longer talking of departure, since he
could at last rest his eyes on something pleasant.

Behind them came Pierre, likewise full of admiration, whilst Narcisse
spoke to him of the scrupulosity of his own tastes, which were for the
rare and the subtle. "She's beautiful, no doubt," said he; "but at bottom
nothing can be more gross than the Roman style of beauty; there's no
soul, none of the infinite in it. These girls simply have blood under
their skins without ever a glimpse of heaven."

Meantime Pierina had stopped, and with a wave of the hand directed
attention to her mother, who sat on a broken box beside the lofty doorway
of an unfinished mansion. She also must have once been very beautiful,
but at forty she was already a wreck, with dim eyes, drawn mouth, black
teeth, broadly wrinkled countenance, and huge fallen bosom. And she was
also fearfully dirty, her grey wavy hair dishevelled and her skirt and
jacket soiled and slit, revealing glimpses of grimy flesh. On her knees
she held a sleeping infant, her last-born, at whom she gazed like one
overwhelmed and courageless, like a beast of burden resigned to her fate.

"/Bene, bene,/" said she, raising her head, "it's the gentleman who came
to give me a crown because he saw you crying. And he's come back to see
us with some friends. Well, well, there are some good hearts in the world
after all."

Then she related their story, but in a spiritless way, without seeking to
move her visitors. She was called Giacinta, it appeared, and had married
a mason, one Tomaso Gozzo, by whom she had had seven children, Pierina,
then Tito, a big fellow of eighteen, then four more girls, each at an
interval of two years, and finally the infant, a boy, whom she now had on
her lap. They had long lived in the Trastevere district, in an old house
which had lately been pulled down; and their existence seemed to have
then been shattered, for since they had taken refuge in the Quartiere dei
Prati the crisis in the building trade had reduced Tomaso and Tito to
absolute idleness, and the bead factory where Pierina had earned as much
as tenpence a day--just enough to prevent them from dying of hunger--had
closed its doors. At present not one of them had any work; they lived
purely by chance.

"If you like to go up," the woman added, "you'll find Tomaso there with
his brother Ambrogio, whom we've taken to live with us. They'll know
better than I what to say to you. Tomaso is resting; but what else can he
do? It's like Tito--he's dozing over there."

So saying she pointed towards the dry grass amidst which lay a tall young
fellow with a pronounced nose, hard mouth, and eyes as admirable as
Pierina's. He had raised his head to glance suspiciously at the visitors,
a fierce frown gathering on his forehead when he remarked how rapturously
his sister contemplated the Prince. Then he let his head fall again, but
kept his eyes open, watching the pair stealthily.

"Take the lady and gentlemen upstairs, Pierina, since they would like to
see the place," said the mother.

Other women had now drawn near, shuffling along with bare feet in old
shoes; bands of children, too, were swarming around; little girls but
half clad, amongst whom, no doubt, were Giacinta's four. However, with
their black eyes under their tangled mops they were all so much alike
that only their mothers could identify them. And the whole resembled a
teeming camp of misery pitched on that spot of majestic disaster, that
street of palaces, unfinished yet already in ruins.

With a soft, loving smile, Benedetta turned to her cousin. "Don't you
come up," she gently said; "I don't desire your death, Dario /mio/. It
was very good of you to come so far. Wait for me here in the pleasant
sunshine: Monsieur l'Abbe and Monsieur Habert will go up with me."

Dario began to laugh, and willingly acquiesced. Then lighting a
cigarette, he walked slowly up and down, well pleased with the mildness
of the atmosphere.

La Pierina had already darted into the spacious porch whose lofty,
vaulted ceiling was adorned with coffers displaying a rosaceous pattern.
However, a veritable manure heap covered such marble slabs as had already
been laid in the vestibule, whilst the steps of the monumental stone
staircase with sculptured balustrade were already cracked and so grimy
that they seemed almost black. On all sides appeared the greasy stains of
hands; the walls, whilst awaiting the painter and gilder, had been
smeared with repulsive filth.

On reaching the spacious first-floor landing Pierina paused, and
contented herself with calling through a gaping portal which lacked both
door and framework: "Father, here's a lady and two gentlemen to see you."
Then to the Contessina she added: "It's the third room at the end." And
forthwith she herself rapidly descended the stairs, hastening back to her
passion.

Benedetta and her companions passed through two large rooms, bossy with
plaster under foot and having frameless windows wide open upon space; and
at last they reached a third room, where the whole Gozzo family had
installed itself with the remnants it used as furniture. On the floor,
where the bare iron girders showed, no boards having been laid down, were
five or six leprous-looking palliasses. A long table, which was still
strong, occupied the centre of the room, and here and there were a few
old, damaged, straw-seated chairs mended with bits of rope. The great
business had been to close two of the three windows with boards, whilst
the third one and the door were screened with some old mattress ticking
studded with stains and holes.

Tomaso's face expressed the surprise of a man who is unaccustomed to
visits of charity. Seated at the table, with his elbows resting on it and
his chin supported by his hands, he was taking repose, as his wife
Giacinta had said. He was a sturdy fellow of five and forty, bearded and
long-haired; and, in spite of all his misery and idleness, his large face
had remained as serene as that of a Roman senator. However, the sight of
the two foreigners--for such he at once judged Pierre and Narcisse to be,
made him rise to his feet with sudden distrust. But he smiled on
recognising Benedetta, and as she began to speak of Dario, and to explain
the charitable purpose of their visit, he interrupted her: "Yes, yes, I
know, Contessina. Oh! I well know who you are, for in my father's time I
once walled up a window at the Palazzo Boccanera."

Then he complaisantly allowed himself to be questioned, telling Pierre,
who was surprised, that although they were certainly not happy they would
have found life tolerable had they been able to work two days a week. And
one could divine that he was, at heart, fairly well content to go on
short commons, provided that he could live as he listed without fatigue.
His narrative and his manner suggested the familiar locksmith who, on
being summoned by a traveller to open his trunk, the key of which was
lost, sent word that he could not possibly disturb himself during the
hour of the siesta. In short, there was no rent to pay, as there were
plenty of empty mansions open to the poor, and a few coppers would have
sufficed for food, easily contented and sober as one was.

"But oh, sir," Tomaso continued, "things were ever so much better under
the Pope. My father, a mason like myself, worked at the Vatican all his
life, and even now, when I myself get a job or two, it's always there. We
were spoilt, you see, by those ten years of busy work, when we never left
our ladders and earned as much as we pleased. Of course, we fed ourselves
better, and bought ourselves clothes, and took such pleasure as we cared
for; so that it's all the harder nowadays to have to stint ourselves. But
if you'd only come to see us in the Pope's time! No taxes, everything to
be had for nothing, so to say--why, one merely had to let oneself live."

At this moment a growl arose from one of the palliasses lying in the
shade of the boarded windows, and the mason, in his slow, quiet way,
resumed: "It's my brother Ambrogio, who isn't of my opinion.

"He was with the Republicans in '49, when he was fourteen. But it doesn't
matter; we took him with us when we heard that he was dying of hunger and
sickness in a cellar."

The visitors could not help quivering with pity. Ambrogio was the elder
by some fifteen years; and now, though scarcely sixty, he was already a
ruin, consumed by fever, his legs so wasted that he spent his days on his
palliasse without ever going out. Shorter and slighter, but more
turbulent than his brother, he had been a carpenter by trade. And,
despite his physical decay, he retained an extraordinary head--the head
of an apostle and martyr, at once noble and tragic in its expression, and
encompassed by bristling snowy hair and beard.

"The Pope," he growled; "I've never spoken badly of the Pope. Yet it's
his fault if tyranny continues. He alone in '49 could have given us the
Republic, and then we shouldn't have been as we are now."

Ambrogio had known Mazzini, whose vague religiosity remained in him--the
dream of a Republican pope at last establishing the reign of liberty and
fraternity. But later on his passion for Garibaldi had disturbed these
views, and led him to regard the papacy as worthless, incapable of
achieving human freedom. And so, between the dream of his youth and the
stern experience of his life, he now hardly knew in which direction the
truth lay. Moreover, he had never acted save under the impulse of violent
emotion, but contented himself with fine words--vague, indeterminate
wishes.

"Brother Ambrogio," replied Tomaso, all tranquillity, "the Pope is the
Pope, and wisdom lies in putting oneself on his side, because he will
always be the Pope--that is to say, the stronger. For my part, if we had
to vote to-morrow I'd vote for him."

Calmed by the shrewd prudence characteristic of his race, the old
carpenter made no haste to reply. At last he said, "Well, as for me,
brother Tomaso, I should vote against him--always against him. And you
know very well that we should have the majority. The Pope-king indeed!
That's all over. The very Borgo would revolt. Still, I won't say that we
oughtn't to come to an understanding with him, so that everybody's
religion may be respected."

Pierre listened, deeply interested, and at last ventured to ask: "Are
there many socialists among the Roman working classes?"

This time the answer came after a yet longer pause. "Socialists? Yes,
there are some, no doubt, but much fewer than in other places. All those
things are novelties which impatient fellows go in for without
understanding much about them. We old men, we were for liberty; we don't
believe in fire and massacre."

Then, fearing to say too much in presence of that lady and those
gentlemen, Ambrogio began to moan on his pallet, whilst the Contessina,
somewhat upset by the smell of the place, took her departure, after
telling the young priest that it would be best for them to leave their
alms with the wife downstairs. Meantime Tomaso resumed his seat at the
table, again letting his chin rest on his hands as he nodded to his
visitors, no more impressed by their departure than he had been by their
arrival: "To the pleasure of seeing you again, and am happy to have been
able to oblige you."

On the threshold, however, Narcisse's enthusiasm burst forth; he turned
to cast a final admiring glance at old Ambrogio's head, "a perfect
masterpiece," which he continued praising whilst he descended the stairs.

Down below Giacinta was still sitting on the broken box with her infant
across her lap, and a few steps away Pierina stood in front of Dario,
watching him with an enchanted air whilst he finished his cigarette.
Tito, lying low in the grass like an animal on the watch for prey, did
not for a moment cease to gaze at them.

"Ah, signora!" resumed the woman, in her resigned, doleful voice, "the
place is hardly inhabitable, as you must have seen. The only good thing
is that one gets plenty of room. But there are draughts enough to kill
me, and I'm always so afraid of the children falling down some of the
holes."

Thereupon she related a story of a woman who had lost her life through
mistaking a window for a door one evening and falling headlong into the
street. Then, too, a little girl had broken both arms by tumbling from a
staircase which had no banisters. And you could die there without anybody
knowing how bad you were and coming to help you. Only the previous day
the corpse of an old man had been found lying on the plaster in a lonely
room. Starvation must have killed him quite a week previously, yet he
would still have been stretched there if the odour of his remains had not
attracted the attention of neighbours.

"If one only had something to eat things wouldn't be so bad!" continued
Giacinta. "But it's dreadful when there's a baby to suckle and one gets
no food, for after a while one has no milk. This little fellow wants his
titty and gets angry with me because I can't give him any. But it isn't
my fault. He has sucked me till the blood came, and all I can do is to
cry."

As she spoke tears welled into her poor dim eyes. But all at once she
flew into a tantrum with Tito, who was still wallowing in the grass like
an animal instead of rising by way of civility towards those fine people,
who would surely leave her some alms. "Eh! Tito, you lazy fellow, can't
you get up when people come to see you?" she called.

After some pretence of not hearing, the young fellow at last rose with an
air of great ill-humour; and Pierre, feeling interested in him, tried to
draw him out as he had done with the father and uncle upstairs. But Tito
only returned curt answers, as if both bored and suspicious. Since there
was no work to be had, said he, the only thing was to sleep. It was of no
use to get angry; that wouldn't alter matters. So the best was to live as
one could without increasing one's worry. As for socialists--well, yes,
perhaps there were a few, but he didn't know any. And his weary,
indifferent manner made it quite clear that, if his father was for the
Pope and his uncle for the Republic, he himself was for nothing at all.
In this Pierre divined the end of a nation, or rather the slumber of a
nation in which democracy has not yet awakened. However, as the priest
continued, asking Tito his age, what school he had attended, and in what
district he had been born, the young man suddenly cut the questions short
by pointing with one finger to his breast and saying gravely, "/Io son'
Romano di Roma/."

And, indeed, did not that answer everything? "I am a Roman of Rome."
Pierre smiled sadly and spoke no further. Never had he more fully
realised the pride of that race, the long-descending inheritance of glory
which was so heavy to bear. The sovereign vanity of the Caesars lived
anew in that degenerate young fellow who was scarcely able to read and
write. Starveling though he was, he knew his city, and could
instinctively have recounted the grand pages of its history. The names of
the great emperors and great popes were familiar to him. And why should
men toil and moil when they had been the masters of the world? Why not
live nobly and idly in the most beautiful of cities, under the most
beautiful of skies? "/Io son' Romano di Roma/!"

Benedetta had slipped her alms into the mother's hand, and Pierre and
Narcisse were following her example when Dario, who had already done so,
thought of Pierina. He did not like to offer her money, but a pretty,
fanciful idea occurred to him. Lightly touching his lips with his
finger-tips, he said, with a faint laugh, "For beauty!"

There was something really pretty and pleasing in the kiss thus wafted
with a slightly mocking laugh by that familiar, good-natured young Prince
who, as in some love story of the olden time, was touched by the
beautiful bead-worker's mute adoration. Pierina flushed with pleasure,
and, losing her head, darted upon Dario's hand and pressed her warm lips
to it with unthinking impulsiveness, in which there was as much divine
gratitude as tender passion. But Tito's eyes flashed with anger at the
sight, and, brutally seizing his sister by the skirt, he threw her back,
growling between his teeth, "None of that, you know, or I'll kill you,
and him too!"

It was high time for the visitors to depart, for other women, scenting
the presence of money, were now coming forward with outstretched hands,
or despatching tearful children in their stead. The whole wretched,
abandoned district was in a flutter, a distressful wail ascended from
those lifeless streets with high resounding names. But what was to be
done? One could not give to all. So the only course lay in flight--amidst
deep sadness as one realised how powerless was charity in presence of
such appalling want.

When Benedetta and Dario had reached their carriage they hastened to take
their seats and nestle side by side, glad to escape from all such
horrors. Still the Contessina was well pleased with her bravery in the
presence of Pierre, whose hand she pressed with the emotion of a pupil
touched by the master's lesson, after Narcisse had told her that he meant
to take the young priest to lunch at the little restaurant on the Piazza
of St. Peter's whence one obtained such an interesting view of the
Vatican.

"Try some of the light white wine of Genzano," said Dario, who had become
quite gay again. "There's nothing better to drive away the blues."

However, Pierre's curiosity was insatiable, and on the way he again
questioned Narcisse about the people of modern Rome, their life, habits,
and manners. There was little or no education, he learnt; no large
manufactures and no export trade existed. The men carried on the few
trades that were current, all consumption being virtually limited to the
city itself. Among the women there were bead-workers and embroiderers;
and the manufacture of religious articles, such as medals and chaplets,
and of certain popular jewellery had always occupied a fair number of
hands. But after marriage the women, invariably burdened with numerous
offspring, attempted little beyond household work. Briefly, the
population took life as it came, working just sufficiently to secure
food, contenting itself with vegetables, pastes, and scraggy mutton,
without thought of rebellion or ambition. The only vices were gambling
and a partiality for the red and white wines of the Roman province--wines
which excited to quarrel and murder, and on the evenings of feast days,
when the taverns emptied, strewed the streets with groaning men, slashed
and stabbed with knives. The girls, however, but seldom went wrong; one
could count those who allowed themselves to be seduced; and this arose
from the great union prevailing in each family, every member of which
bowed submissively to the father's absolute authority. Moreover, the
brothers watched over their sisters even as Tito did over Pierina,
guarding them fiercely for the sake of the family honour. And amidst all
this there was no real religion, but simply a childish idolatry, all
hearts going forth to Madonna and the Saints, who alone were entreated
and regarded as having being: for it never occurred to anybody to think
of God.

Thus the stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood.
Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been
encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When
they were neither masons, nor carpenters, nor bakers, they were servants
serving the priests, and more or less directly in the pay of the Vatican.
Thence sprang the two antagonistic parties, on the one hand the more
numerous party composed of the old Carbonari, Mazzinians, and
Garibaldians, the /elite/ of the Trastevere; and on the other the
"clients" of the Vatican, all who lived on or by the Church and regretted
the Pope-King. But, after all, the antagonism was confined to opinions;
there was no thought of making an effort or incurring a risk. For that,
some sudden flare of passion, strong enough to overcome the sturdy
calmness of the race, would have been needed. But what would have been
the use of it? The wretchedness had lasted for so many centuries, the sky
was so blue, the siesta preferable to aught else during the hot hours!
And only one thing seemed positive--that the majority was certainly in
favour of Rome remaining the capital of Italy. Indeed, rebellion had
almost broken out in the Leonine City when the cession of the latter to
the Holy See was rumoured. As for the increase of want and poverty, this
was largely due to the circumstance that the Roman workman had really
gained nothing by the many works carried on in his city during fifteen
years. First of all, over 40,000 provincials, mostly from the North, more
spirited and resistant than himself, and working at cheaper rates, had
invaded Rome; and when he, the Roman, had secured his share of the
labour, he had lived in better style, without thought of economy; so that
after the crisis, when the 40,000 men from the provinces were sent home
again, he had found himself once more in a dead city where trade was
always slack. And thus he had relapsed into his antique indolence, at
heart well pleased at no longer being hustled by press of work, and again
accommodating himself as best he could to his old mistress, Want, empty
in pocket yet always a /grand seigneur/.

However, Pierre was struck by the great difference between the want and
wretchedness of Rome and Paris. In Rome the destitution was certainly
more complete, the food more loathsome, the dirt more repulsive. Yet at
the same time the Roman poor retained more ease of manner and more real
gaiety. The young priest thought of the fireless, breadless poor of
Paris, shivering in their hovels at winter time; and suddenly he
understood. The destitution of Rome did not know cold. What a sweet and
eternal consolation; a sun for ever bright, a sky for ever blue and
benign out of charity to the wretched! And what mattered the vileness of
the dwelling if one could sleep under the sky, fanned by the warm breeze!
What mattered even hunger if the family could await the windfall of
chance in sunlit streets or on the scorched grass! The climate induced
sobriety; there was no need of alcohol or red meat to enable one to face
treacherous fogs. Blissful idleness smiled on the golden evenings,
poverty became like the enjoyment of liberty in that delightful
atmosphere where the happiness of living seemed to be all sufficient.
Narcisse told Pierre that at Naples, in the narrow odoriferous streets of
the port and Santa Lucia districts, the people spent virtually their
whole lives out-of-doors, gay, childish, and ignorant, seeking nothing
beyond the few pence that were needed to buy food. And it was certainly
the climate which fostered the prolonged infancy of the nation, which
explained why such a democracy did not awaken to social ambition and
consciousness of itself. No doubt the poor of Naples and Rome suffered
from want; but they did not know the rancour which cruel winter implants
in men's hearts, the dark rancour which one feels on shivering with cold
while rich people are warming themselves before blazing fires. They did
not know the infuriated reveries in snow-swept hovels, when the guttering
dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak
justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save
wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a
warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers
with the bitter cold--therein lies the excess of social injustice, the
most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their
sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, and swear to make those
sufferings cease, even if in doing so they annihilate all olden society!

And in that same clemency of the southern heavens Pierre also found an
explanation of the life of St. Francis,* that divine mendicant of love
who roamed the high roads extolling the charms of poverty. Doubtless he
was an unconscious revolutionary, protesting against the overflowing
luxury of the Roman court by his return to the love of the humble, the
simplicity of the primitive Church. But such a revival of innocence and
sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land. The
enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight
nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were
needed to effect it. And yet how was it possible that a St. Francis,
glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays
so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and
contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope? Is it
because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the
experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now
beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism,
whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in
the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North,
from the nations whose sunlight is so limited? Yes, doubtless all that
has much to do with the change, and the success of St. Francis was in
particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his
lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad,
during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an
ardent need of love and compassion then consumed.

* St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of
mendicant friars.--Trans.

While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St.
Peter's, and they sat down at one of the little tables skirting the
pavement outside the restaurant where they had lunched once before. The
linen was none too clean, but the view was splendid. The Basilica rose up
in front of them, and the Vatican on the right, above the majestic curve
of the colonnade. Just as the waiter was bringing the /hors-d'oeuvre/,
some /finocchio/* and anchovies, the young priest, who had fixed his eyes
on the Vatican, raised an exclamation to attract Narcisse's attention:
"Look, my friend, at that window, which I am told is the Holy Father's.
Can't you distinguish a pale figure standing there, quite motionless?"

* Fennel-root, eaten raw, a favourite "appetiser" in Rome during
the spring and autumn.--Trans.

The young man began to laugh. "Oh! well," said he, "it must be the Holy
Father in person. You are so anxious to see him that your very anxiety
conjures him into your presence."

"But I assure you," repeated Pierre, "that he is over there behind the
window-pane. There is a white figure looking this way."

Narcisse, who was very hungry, began to eat whilst still indulging in
banter. All at once, however, he exclaimed: "Well, my dear Abbe, as the
Pope is looking at us, this is the moment to speak of him. I promised to
tell you how he sunk several millions of St. Peter's Patrimony in the
frightful financial crisis of which you have just seen the ruins; and,
indeed, your visit to the new district of the castle fields would not be
complete without this story by way of appendix."

Thereupon, without losing a mouthful, Narcisse spoke at considerable
length. At the death of Pius IX the Patrimony of St. Peter, it seemed,
had exceeded twenty millions of francs. Cardinal Antonelli, who
speculated, and whose ventures were usually successful, had for a long
time left a part of this money with the Rothschilds and a part in the
hands of different nuncios, who turned it to profit abroad. After
Antonelli's death, however, his successor, Cardinal Simeoni, withdrew the
money from the nuncios to invest it at Rome; and Leo XIII on his
accession entrusted the administration of the Patrimony to a commission
of cardinals, of which Monsignor Folchi was appointed secretary. This
prelate, who for twelve years played such an important /role/, was the
son of an employee of the Dataria, who, thanks to skilful financial
operations, had left a fortune of a million francs. Monsignor Folchi
inherited his father's cleverness, and revealed himself to be a financier
of the first rank in such wise that the commission gradually relinquished
its powers to him, letting him act exactly as he pleased and contenting
itself with approving the reports which he laid before it at each
meeting. The Patrimony, however, yielded scarcely more than a million
francs per annum, and, as the expenditure amounted to seven millions, six
had to be found. Accordingly, from that other source of income, the
Peter's Pence, the Pope annually gave three million francs to Monsignor
Folchi, who, by skilful speculations and investments, was able to double
them every year, and thus provide for all disbursements without ever
breaking into the capital of the Patrimony. In the earlier times he
realised considerable profit by gambling in land in and about Rome. He
took shares also in many new enterprises, speculated in mills, omnibuses,
and water-services, without mentioning all the gambling in which he
participated with the Banca di Roma, a Catholic institution. Wonderstruck
by his skill, the Pope, who, on his own side, had hitherto speculated
through the medium of a confidential employee named Sterbini, dismissed
the latter, and entrusted Monsignor Folchi with the duty of turning his
money to profit in the same way as he turned that of the Holy See. This
was the climax of the prelate's favour, the apogee of his power. Bad days
were dawning, things were tottering already, and the great collapse was
soon to come, sudden and swift like lightning. One of Leo XIII's
practices was to lend large sums to the Roman princes who, seized with
the gambling frenzy, and mixed up in land and building speculations, were
at a loss for money. To guarantee the Pope's advances they deposited
shares with him, and thus, when the downfall came, he was left with heaps
of worthless paper on his hands. Then another disastrous affair was an
attempt to found a house of credit in Paris in view of working off the
shares which could not be disposed of in Italy among the French
aristocracy and religious people. To egg these on it was said that the
Pope was interested in the venture; and the worst was that he dropped
three millions of francs in it.* The situation then became the more
critical as he had gradually risked all the money he disposed of in the
terrible agiotage going on in Rome, tempted thereto by the prospect of
huge profits and perhaps indulging in the hope that he might win back by
money the city which had been torn from him by force. His own
responsibility remained complete, for Monsignor Folchi never made an
important venture without consulting him; and he must have been therefore
the real artisan of the disaster, mastered by his passion for gain, his
desire to endow the Church with a huge capital, that great source of
power in modern times. As always happens, however, the prelate was the
only victim. He had become imperious and difficult to deal with; and was
no longer liked by the cardinals of the commission, who were merely
called together to approve such transactions as he chose to entrust to
them. So, when the crisis came, a plot was laid; the cardinals terrified
the Pope by telling him of all the evil rumours which were current, and
then forced Monsignor Folchi to render a full account of his
speculations. The situation proved to be very bad; it was no longer
possible to avoid heavy losses. And so Monsignor Folchi was disgraced,
and since then has vainly solicited an audience of Leo XIII, who has
always refused to receive him, as if determined to punish him for their
common fault--that passion for lucre which blinded them both. Very pious
and submissive, however, Monsignor Folchi has never complained, but has
kept his secrets and bowed to fate. Nobody can say exactly how many
millions the Patrimony of St. Peter lost when Rome was changed into a
gambling-hell, but if some prelates only admit ten, others go as far as
thirty. The probability is that the loss was about fifteen millions.**

* The allusion is evidently to the famous Union Generale, on
which the Pope bestowed his apostolic benediction, and with
which M. Zola deals at length in his novel /Money/. Certainly
a very brilliant idea was embodied in the Union Generale, that
of establishing a great international Catholic bank which
would destroy the Jewish financial autocracy throughout Europe,
and provide both the papacy and the Legitimist cause in several
countries with the sinews of war. But in the battle which
ensued the great Jew financial houses proved the stronger, and
the disaster which overtook the Catholic speculators was a
terrible one.--Trans.

** That is 600,000 pounds.

Whilst Narcisse was giving this account he and Pierre had despatched
their cutlets and tomatoes, and the waiter was now serving them some
fried chicken. "At the present time," said Narcisse by way of conclusion,
"the gap has been filled up; I told you of the large sums yielded by the
Peter's Pence Fund, the amount of which is only known by the Pope, who
alone fixes its employment. And, by the way, he isn't cured of
speculating: I know from a good source that he still gambles, though with
more prudence. Moreover, his confidential assistant is still a prelate.
And, when all is said, my dear Abbe, he's in the right: a man must belong
to his times--dash it all!"

Pierre had listened with growing surprise, in which terror and sadness
mingled. Doubtless such things were natural, even legitimate; yet he, in
his dream of a pastor of souls free from all terrestrial cares, had never
imagined that they existed. What! the Pope--the spiritual father of the
lowly and the suffering--had speculated in land and in stocks and shares!
He had gambled, placed funds in the hands of Jew bankers, practised
usury, extracted hard interest from money--he, the successor of the
Apostle, the Pontiff of Christ, the representative of Jesus, of the
Gospel, that divine friend of the poor! And, besides, what a painful
contrast: so many millions stored away in those rooms of the Vatican, and
so many millions working and fructifying, constantly being diverted from
one speculation to another in order that they might yield the more gain;
and then down below, near at hand, so much want and misery in those
abominable unfinished buildings of the new districts, so many poor folks
dying of hunger amidst filth, mothers without milk for their babes, men
reduced to idleness by lack of work, old ones at the last gasp like
beasts of burden who are pole-axed when they are of no more use! Ah! God
of Charity, God of Love, was it possible! The Church doubtless had
material wants; she could not live without money; prudence and policy had
dictated the thought of gaining for her such a treasure as would enable
her to fight her adversaries victoriously. But how grievously this
wounded one's feelings, how it soiled the Church, how she descended from
her divine throne to become nothing but a party, a vast international
association organised for the purpose of conquering and possessing the
world!

And the more Pierre thought of the extraordinary adventure the greater
was his astonishment. Could a more unexpected, startling drama be
imagined? That Pope shutting himself up in his palace--a prison, no
doubt, but one whose hundred windows overlooked immensity; that Pope who,
at all hours of the day and night, in every season, could from his window
see his capital, the city which had been stolen from him, and the
restitution of which he never ceased to demand; that Pope who, day by
day, beheld the changes effected in the city--the opening of new streets,
the demolition of ancient districts, the sale of land, and the gradual
erection of new buildings which ended by forming a white girdle around
the old ruddy roofs; that Pope who, in presence of this daily spectacle,
this building frenzy, which he could follow from morn till eve, was
himself finally overcome by the gambling passion, and, secluded in his
closed chamber, began to speculate on the embellishments of his old
capital, seeking wealth in the spurt of work and trade brought about by
that very Italian Government which he reproached with spoliation; and
finally that Pope losing millions in a catastrophe which he ought to have
desired, but had been unable to foresee! No, never had dethroned monarch
yielded to a stranger idea, compromised himself in a more tragical
venture, the result of which fell upon him like divine punishment. And it
was no mere king who had done this, but the delegate of God, the man who,
in the eyes of idolatrous Christendom, was the living manifestation of
the Deity!

Dessert had now been served--a goat's cheese and some fruit--and Narcisse
was just finishing some grapes when, on raising his eyes, he in turn
exclaimed: "Well, you are quite right, my dear Abbe, I myself can see a
pale figure at the window of the Holy Father's room."

Pierre, who scarcely took his eyes from the window, answered slowly:
"Yes, yes, it went away, but has just come back, and stands there white
and motionless."

"Well, after all, what would you have the Pope do?" resumed Narcisse with
his languid air. "He's like everybody else; he looks out of the window
when he wants a little distraction, and certainly there's plenty for him
to look at."

The same idea had occurred to Pierre, and was filling him with emotion.
People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy
palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all
Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself
had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the /loggie/ of
Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter's, and so he well knew what it was
that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the
Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven
illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. His eyes
ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in
Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce
in Gerusalemme, Sant' Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes
of the Gesu of Sant' Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei
Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make
the city like a /campo santo/ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could
moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive
centuries--the Castle of Sant' Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was
transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of
the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the
abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns,
porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the
sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo
Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of facades and
roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope
was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle
fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned
by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view
stretched over the ravaged valley at the foot of Monte Mario, where so
many brick-works were established during the building frenzy. The green
slopes are still ripped up, yellow trenches intersect them in all
directions, and the closed works and factories have become wretched ruins
with lofty, black, and smokeless chimneys. And at any other hour of the
day Leo XIII could not approach his window without beholding the
abandoned houses for which all those brick-fields had worked, those
houses which had died before they even lived, and where there was now
nought but the swarming misery of Rome, rotting there like some
decomposition of olden society.

However, Pierre more particularly thought of Leo XIII, forgetting the
rest of the city to let his thoughts dwell on the Palatine, now bereft of
its crown of palaces and rearing only its black cypresses towards the
blue heavens. Doubtless in his mind he rebuilt the palaces of the
Caesars, whilst before him rose great shadowy forms arrayed in purple,
visions of his real ancestors, those emperors and Supreme Pontiffs who
alone could tell him how one might reign over every nation and be the
absolute master of the world. Then, however, his glances strayed to the
Quirinal, and there he could contemplate the new and neighbouring
royalty. How strange the meeting of those two palaces, the Quirinal and
the Vatican, which rise up and gaze at one another across the Rome of the
middle ages and the Renascence, whose roofs, baked and gilded by the
burning sun, are jumbled in confusion alongside the Tiber. When the Pope
and the King go to their windows they can with a mere opera-glass see
each other quite distinctly. True, they are but specks in the boundless
immensity, and what a gulf there is between them--how many centuries of
history, how many generations that battled and suffered, how much
departed greatness, and how much new seed for the mysterious future!
Still, they can see one another, and they are yet waging the eternal
fight, the fight as to which of them--the pontiff and shepherd of the
soul or the monarch and master of the body--shall possess the people
whose stream rolls beneath them, and in the result remain the absolute
sovereign. And Pierre wondered also what might be the thoughts and dreams
of Leo XIII behind those window-panes where he still fancied he could
distinguish his pale, ghostly figure. On surveying new Rome, the ravaged
olden districts and the new ones laid waste by the blast of disaster, the
Pope must certainly rejoice at the colossal failure of the Italian
Government. His city had been stolen from him; the newcomers had
virtually declared that they would show him how a great capital was
created, and their boast had ended in that catastrophe--a multitude of
hideous and useless buildings which they did not even know how to finish!
He, the Pope, could moreover only be delighted with the terrible worries
into which the usurping /regime/ had fallen, the political crisis, and
the financial crisis, the whole growing national unrest amidst which that
/regime/ seemed likely to sink some day; and yet did not he himself
possess a patriotic soul? was he not a loving son of that Italy whose
genius and ancient ambition coursed in the blood of his veins? Ah! no,
nothing against Italy; rather everything that would enable her to become
once more the mistress of the world. And so, even amidst the joy of hope,
he must have been grieved to see her thus ruined, threatened with
bankruptcy, displaying like a sore that overturned, unfinished Rome which
was a confession of her impotency. But, on the other hand, if the House
of Savoy were to be swept away, would he not be there to take its place,
and at last resume possession of his capital, which, from his window, for
fifteen years past, he had beheld in the grip of masons and demolishers?
And then he would again be the master and reign over the world, enthroned
in the predestined city to which prophecy has ensured eternity and
universal dominion.

But the horizon spread out, and Pierre wondered what Leo XIII beheld
beyond Rome, beyond the Campagna and the Sabine and Alban mountains. What
had he seen for eighteen years past from that window whence he obtained
his only view of the world? What echoes of modern society, its truths and
certainties, had reached his ears? From the heights of the Viminal, where
the railway terminus stands, the prolonged whistling of engines must have
occasionally been carried towards him, suggesting our scientific
civilisation, the nations brought nearer together, free humanity marching
on towards the future. Did he himself ever dream of liberty when, on
turning to the right, he pictured the sea over yonder, past the tombs of
the Appian Way? Had he ever desired to go off, quit Rome and her
traditions, and found the Papacy of the new democracies elsewhere? As he
was said to possess so clear and penetrating a mind he ought to have
understood and trembled at the far-away stir and noise that came from
certain lands of battle, from those United States of America, for
instance, where revolutionary bishops were conquering, winning over the
people. Were they working for him or for themselves? If he could not
follow them, if he remained stubborn within his Vatican, bound on every
side by dogma and tradition, might not rupture some day become
unavoidable? And, indeed, the fear of a blast of schism, coming from
afar, must have filled him with growing anguish. It was assuredly on that
account that he had practised the diplomacy of conciliation, seeking to
unite in his hands all the scattered forces of the Church, overlooking
the audacious proceedings of certain bishops as far as possible, and
himself striving to gain the support of the people by putting himself on
its side against the fallen monarchies. But would he ever go any farther?
Shut up in that Vatican, behind that bronze portal, was he not bound to
the strict formulas of Catholicism, chained to them by the force of
centuries? There obstinacy was fated; it was impossible for him to resign
himself to that which was his real and surpassing power, the purely
spiritual power, the moral authority which brought mankind to his feet,
made thousands of pilgrims kneel and women swoon. Departure from Rome and
the renunciation of the temporal power would not displace the centre of
the Catholic world, but would transform him, the head of the Catholic
Church, into the head of something else. And how anxious must have been
his thoughts if the evening breeze ever brought him a vague presentiment
of that something else, a fear of the new religion which was yet dimly,
confusedly dawning amidst the tramp of the nations on the march, and the
sound of which must have reached him at one and the same time from every
point of the compass.

At this precise moment, however, Pierre felt that the white and
motionless shadow behind those windowpanes was held erect by pride, by
the ever present conviction of victory. If man could not achieve it, a
miracle would intervene. He, the Pope, was absolutely convinced that he
or some successor would recover possession of Rome. Had not the Church
all eternity before it? And, moreover, why should not the victor be
himself? Could not God accomplish the impossible? Why, if it so pleased
God, on the very morrow his city would be restored to him, in spite of
all the objections of human reason, all the apparent logic of facts. Ah!
how he would welcome the return of that prodigal daughter whose equivocal
adventures he had ever watched with tears bedewing his paternal eyes! He
would soon forget the excesses which he had beheld during eighteen years
at all hours and in all seasons. Perhaps he dreamt of what he would do
with those new districts with which the city had been soiled. Should they
be razed, or left as evidence of the insanity of the usurpers? At all
events, Rome would again become the august and lifeless city, disdainful
of such vain matters as material cleanliness and comfort, and shining
forth upon the world like a pure soul encompassed by the traditional
glory of the centuries. And his dream continued, picturing the course
which events would take on the very morrow, no doubt. Anything, even a
republic was preferable to that House of Savoy. Why not a federal
republic, reviving the old political divisions of Italy, restoring Rome
to the Church, and choosing him, the Pope, as the natural protector of
the country thus reorganised? But his eyes travelled beyond Rome and
Italy, and his dream expanded, embracing republican France, Spain which
might become republican again, Austria which would some day be won, and
indeed all the Catholic nations welded into the United States of Europe,
and fraternising in peace under his high presidency as Sovereign Pontiff.
And then would follow the supreme triumph, all the other churches at last
vanishing, and all the dissident communities coming to him as to the one
and only pastor, who would reign in the name of Jesus over the universal
democracy.

However, whilst Pierre was immersed in this dream which he attributed to
Leo XIII, he was all at once interrupted by Narcisse, who exclaimed: "Oh!
my dear Abbe, just look at those statues on the colonnade." The young
fellow had ordered a cup of coffee and was languidly smoking a cigar,
deep once more in the subtle aesthetics which were his only
preoccupation. "They are rosy, are they not?" he continued; "rosy, with a
touch of mauve, as if the blue blood of angels circulated in their stone
veins. It is the sun of Rome which gives them that supra-terrestrial
life; for they live, my friend; I have seen them smile and hold out their
arms to me during certain fine sunsets. Ah! Rome, marvellous, delicious
Rome! One could live here as poor as Job, content with the very
atmosphere, and in everlasting delight at breathing it!"

This time Pierre could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse's language,
for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen
when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young
priest's mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled
his heart as for the last time all the want and suffering rose before
him. Again he beheld the horrible filth which was tainting so many human
beings, that shocking proof of the abominable social injustice which
condemns the greater number to lead the joyless, breadless lives of
accursed beasts. And as his glance returned yet once more to the window
of the Vatican, and he fancied he could see a pale hand uplifted behind
the glass panes, he thought of that papal benediction which Leo XIII gave
from that height, over Rome, and over the plain and the hills, to the
faithful of all Christendom. And that papal benediction suddenly seemed
to him a mockery, destitute of all power, since throughout such a
multitude of centuries it had not once been able to stay a single one of
the sufferings of mankind, and could not even bring a little justice for
those poor wretches who were agonising yonder beneath the very window.

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