II
At Rome, as he was lingering outside the station, so tired, so lost, so perplexed that he could not decide what to do, and had only just strength enough left to repel the advances of the hotel porters, Fleurissoire was lucky enough to come upon a facchino who spoke French. Baptistin was a native of Marseilles, a young man with bright eyes and a chin that was still smooth; he recognised a fellow-countryman in Fleurissoire, and offered to guide him and carry his portmanteau.
Fleurissoire had spent the long journey mugging up his Baedeker. A kind of instinct—a presentiment—an inward warning—turned his pious solicitude aside from the Vatican to concentrate it on the Castle of St. Angelo (in ancient days Hadrian’s Mausoleum), the celebrated jail which had sheltered so many illustrious prisoners of yore, and which, it seems, is connected with the Vatican by an underground passage.
He gazed upon the map. “That is where I must find a lodging,” he had decided, setting his forefinger on the Tordinona quay, opposite the Castle of St. Angelo. And by a providential coincidence, that was the very place where Baptistin proposed to take him; not, that is, exactly on the quay, which is in reality nothing but an embankment, but quite near it—Via dei Vecchierelli (of the little old men), which is the third street after the Ponte Umberto, and leads straight on to the river bank; he knew of a quiet house (from the windows of the third floor, by craning forward a little, one can see the Mausoleum) where there were some very obliging ladies, who talked every language, and one in particular who knew French.
“If the gentleman is tired, we can take a carriage; yes, it’s a long way.... Yes, the air is cooler this evening; it’s been raining; a little walk after a long railway journey does one good.... No, the portmanteau is not too heavy; I can easily carry it so far.... The gentleman’s first visit to Rome? He comes from Toulouse, perhaps?... No; from Pau. I ought to have recognised the accent.”
Thus chatting, they walked along. They took the Via Viminale; then the Via Agostino Depretis, which runs into the Viminale at the Pincio; then by way of the Via Nazionale they got into the Corso, which they crossed; after this their way lay through a number of little streets without any names. The portmanteau was not so heavy as to prevent the facchino from stepping out briskly; and Fleurissoire could hardly keep up with him. He trotted along beside Baptistin, dropping with fatigue and dripping with heat.
“Here we are!” said Baptistin at last, just as Amédée was going to beg for quarter.
The street, or rather the alley of the Vecchierelli, was dark and narrow—so much so that Fleurissoire hesitated to enter it. Baptistin, in the meantime, had gone into the second house on the right, the door of which was only a few yards from the quay; at the same moment, Fleurissoire saw a bersagliere come out; the smart uniform which he had noticed at the frontier, reassured him—for he had confidence in the army. He advanced a few steps. A lady appeared on the threshold (the landlady of the inn apparently) and smiled at him affably. She wore an apron of black satin, bracelets, and a sky-blue silk ribbon round her neck; her jet-black hair was piled in an edifice on the top of her head and sat heavily on an enormous tortoise-shell comb.
“Your portmanteau has been carried up to the third floor,” said she to Amédée in French, using the intimate “thou,” which he imagined must be an Italian custom, or must else be set down to want of familiarity with the language.
“Grazia!” he replied, smiling in his turn. “Grazia!—thank you!”—the only Italian word he could say, and which he considered it polite to put into the feminine when he was talking to a lady.
He went upstairs, stopping to gather breath and courage at every landing, for he was worn out with fatigue, and the sordidness of the staircase contributed to sink his spirits still lower. The landings succeeded each other every ten steps; the stairs hesitated, tacked, made three several attempts before they managed to reach a floor. From the ceiling of the first landing hung a canary cage which could be seen from the street. On to the second landing a mangy cat had dragged a haddock skin, which she was preparing to bolt. On the third landing the door of the closet stood wide open and revealed to view the seat, and beside it a yellow earthenware vase, shaped like a top-hat, from whose cup protruded the stick of a small mop; on this landing Amédée refrained from stopping.
On the first floor a smoky gasolene lamp was hanging beside a large glass door, on which the word Salone was written in frosted letters; but the room was dark, and Amédée could barely make out through the glass panes of the door a mirror in a gold frame hanging on the wall opposite.
He was just reaching the seventh landing, when another soldier—an artillery man this time—who had come out of a room on the second floor, bumped up against him; he was running downstairs very fast and, after setting Amédée on his feet again, passed on, muttering a laughing excuse in Italian, for Fleurissoire was stumbling from fatigue and looked as if he were drunk. The first uniform had reassured him, but the second made him uneasy.
“These soldiers are a noisy lot,” thought he. “Fortunately my room is on the third floor. I prefer to have them below me.”
He had no sooner passed the second floor than a woman in a gaping dressing-gown, with her hair undone, came running from the other end of the passage and hailed him.
“She takes me for someone else,” thought he, and hurried on, turning his eyes away so as not to embarrass her by noticing the scantiness of her attire.
He arrived panting on the third floor, where he found Baptistin; he was talking Italian to a woman of uncertain age, who reminded him extraordinarily—though she was not so fat—of the Blafaphas’ cook.
“Your portmanteau is in No. sixteen—the third door. Take care as you pass of the pail which is in the passage.”
“I put it outside because it was leaking,” explained the woman in French.
The door of No. sixteen was open; outside No. fifteen a tin slop-pail was standing in the middle of a shiny repugnant-looking puddle, which Fleurissoire stepped across. An acrid odour emanated from it. The portmanteau was placed in full view on a chair. As soon as he got inside the stuffy room, Amédée felt his head swim, and flinging his umbrella, his shawl and his hat on to the bed, he sank into an arm-chair. His forehead was streaming; he thought he was going to faint.
“This is Madame Carola, the lady who talks French,” said Baptistin.
They had both come into the room.
“Open the window a little,” sighed Fleurissoire, who was incapable of movement.
“Goodness! how hot he is!” said Madame Carola, sponging his pallid and perspiring countenance with a little scented handkerchief, which she took out of her bodice.
“Let’s push him nearer the window.”
Both together lifted the arm-chair, in which Amédée swung helpless and half unconscious, and put it down where he was able to inhale—in exchange for the tainted atmosphere of the passage—the varied stenches of the street. The coolness, however, revived him. Feeling in his waistcoat pocket, he pulled out the screw of five lire which he had prepared for Baptistin:
“Thank you very much. Please leave me now.”
The facchino went out.
“You oughtn’t to have given him such a lot,” said Carola.
She too used the familiar “thou,” which Amédée accepted as a custom of the country; his one thought now was to go to bed; but Carola showed no signs of leaving; then, carried away by politeness, he began to talk.
“You speak French as well as a Frenchwoman.”
“No wonder. I come from Paris. And you?”
“I come from the south.”
“I guessed as much. When I saw you, I said to myself, that gentleman comes from the provinces. Is it your first visit to Italy?”
“My first.”
“Have you come on business?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a lovely place, Rome. There’s a lot to be seen.”
“Yes ... but this evening I’m rather tired,” he ventured; and as though excusing himself: “I’ve been travelling for three days.”
“It’s a long journey to get here.”
“And I haven’t slept for three nights.”
At those words, Madame Carola, with a sudden Italian familiarity, which Amédée still couldn’t help being astounded at, chucked him under the chin.
“Naughty!” said she.
This gesture brought a little blood back into Amédée’s face, and in his desire to repudiate the unfair insinuation, he at once began to expatiate on fleas, bugs and mosquitoes.
“You’ll have nothing of that kind here, dearie; you see how clean it is.”
“Yes; I hope I shall sleep well.”
But still she didn’t go. He rose with difficulty from his arm-chair, raised his hand to the top button of his waistcoat and said tentatively:
Madame Carola understood Fleurissoire’s embarrassment.
“You’d like me to leave you for a bit, I see,” said she tactfully.
As soon as she had gone, Fleurissoire turned the key in the lock, took his night-shirt out of his portmanteau and got into bed. But apparently the catch of the lock was not working, for before he had time to blow out his candle, Carola’s head reappeared in the half-opened door—behind the bed—close to the bed—smiling....
An hour later, when he came to himself, Carola was lying against him, in his arms, naked.
He disengaged his left arm, which had “fallen asleep,” and then drew away. She was asleep. A light from the alley below filled the room with its feeble glimmer, and not a sound was to be heard but the woman’s regular breathing. An unwonted languor lay heavy on Amédée’s body and soul; he drew out his thin legs from between the sheets; and sitting on the edge of the bed, he wept.
As first his sweat, so now his tears washed his face and mingled with the dust of the railway carriage; they welled up—silently, uninterruptedly, in a slow and steady stream, coming from his inmost depths, as from a hidden spring. He thought of Arnica, of Blafaphas, alas! Ah! if they could see him now! Never again would he dare to take his place beside them. Then he thought of his august mission, for ever compromised; he groaned below his breath:
“It’s over! I’m no longer worthy! Oh! it’s over! It’s all over!”
The strange sounds of his sobbing and sighing had in the meantime awakened Carola. There he was, kneeling now, at the foot of the bed, hammering on his weakly chest with little blows of his fist; and Carola, lost in amazement, heard him repeat, as his teeth chattered and his sobs shook him:
“Save us! Save us! The Church is crumbling!”
At last, unable to contain herself any longer:
“You poor old dear, what’s wrong with you? Have you gone crazy?”
He turned towards her:
“Please, Madame Carola, leave me. I must—I absolutely must be alone. I’ll see you to-morrow morning.”
Then, as after all it was only himself that he blamed, he kissed her gently on the shoulder:
“Ah! you don’t know what a dreadful thing we’ve done. No, no! You don’t know. You can never know.”