CHAPTER V.
OF THE PLEBEIANS.
The subjects of the Holy Father are divided by birth and fortune into three very distinct classes,—nobility, citizens, and people, or plebeians. The Gospel has omitted to consecrate the inequality of men, but the law of the State—that is to say, the will of the Popes—carefully maintains it. Benedict XIV. declared it honourable and salutary in his Bull of January 4, 1746, and Pius IX. expressed himself in the same terms at the beginning of his Chirografo of May 2, 1853.
If I do not reckon the clergy among the classes of society, it is because that body is foreign to the nation by its interests, by its privileges, and often by its origin. The Cardinals and Prelates are not, properly speaking, the Pope's subjects, but rather his ghostly confederates, and the partners of his omnipotence.
The distinction of class is more especially perceptible at Rome, near the Pontifical throne. It gradually disappears, together with many other abuses, in proportion to their distance from their source. There are bottomless abysses between the noble Roman and the citizen of Rome, between the citizen of Rome and the plebeian of the city. The plebeian himself discharges a portion of the scorn expressed by the two superior classes for himself, upon the peasants he meets at market: it is a sort of cascade of contempt. At Rome, thanks to the traditions of history, and the education given by the Popes, the inferior thinks he can get out of his nothingness, and become something, by begging the favour and support of a superior. A general system of dependence and patronage makes the plebeian kneel before the man of the middle class, who again kneels before the prince, who in his turn kneels more humbly than all the others before the sovereign clergy.
At twenty leagues' distance from Rome there is very little kneeling; beyond the Apennines none at all. When you reach Bologna you find an almost French equality in the manners: for the simple reason that Napoleon has left his mark there.
The absolute value of the men in each category increases according to the square of the distance. You may feel almost certain that a Roman noble will be less educated, less capable, and less free than a gentleman of the Marches or of the Romagna. The middle class, with some exceptions which I shall presently mention, is infinitely more numerous, more enlightened, and wealthier, to the east of the Apennines, than in and about the capital. The plebeians themselves have more honesty and morality when they live at a respectful distance from the Vatican.
The plebeians of the Eternal City are overgrown children badly brought up, and perverted in various ways by their education. The Government, which, being in the midst of them, fears them, treats them mildly. It demands few taxes of them; it gives them shows, and sometimes bread, the panem et circenses prescribed by the Emperors of the Decline. It does not teach them to read, neither does it forbid them to beg. It sends Capuchins to their homes. The Capuchin gives the wife lottery-tickets, drinks with the husband, and brings up the children after his kind, and sometimes in his likeness. The plebeians of Rome are certain never to die of hunger; if they have no bread, they are allowed to help themselves from the baker's basket; the law allows it. All that is required of them is to be good Christians, to prostrate themselves before the priests, to humble themselves before the rich, and to abstain from revolutions. They are severely punished if they refuse to take the Sacrament at Easter, or if they talk disrespectfully of the Saints. The tribunal of the Vicariates listens to no excuses on this head; but the police is enough as to everything else. Crimes are forgiven them, they are encouraged in meanness; the only offences for which there is no pardon are the cry for liberty, revolt against an abuse, the assertion of manhood.
It is marvellous to me that with such an education there is any good left in them at all. The worst half of the people is that which dwells in the Monti district. If, in seeking the Convent of the Neophytes, or the house of Lucrezia Borgia, you miss your way among those foul narrow streets, you will find yourself in the midst of a strange medley of thieves, sharpers, guitar-players, artists' models, beggars, ciceroni, and ruffiani. If you speak to them, you may be sure they will kiss your Excellency's hand, and pick your Excellency's pocket. I do not think a worse breed is to be found in any city in Europe, not even in London. All these people practise religion, without the least believing in God. The police does not meddle much with them. To be sure they are sent to prison now and then, but thanks to a favourable word in the right quarter, or to the want of prison accommodation, they are soon set at liberty. Even the honest workmen their neighbours occasionally get into scrapes. They have made plenty of money in the winter, and spent it all in the Carnival—as is the common custom. Summer comes, the foreign visitors depart; no more work and no more money. Moral training, which might sustain them, is wholly wanting. The love of show, that peculiar disease of Rome, is their bane. The wife, if she be pretty, sells herself, or the husband does what he had better leave undone.
Judge them not too harshly. Remember, they have read nothing, they have never been out of Rome; the example of ostentation is set them by the Cardinals, of misconduct by the prelates, of venality by the different functionaries, of squandering by the Finance Minister. And above all, remember that care has been taken to root out from their hearts, as if it were a destructive weed, that noble sentiment of human dignity which is the principle of every virtue.
The blood which flows in Italian veins must be very generous, or so notable a portion of the plebeians of Rome as the people of the Trastevere, could never have preserved their manly virtues, as is notoriously the case with them. I have met with men in this quarter of the city, coarse, violent, sometimes ferocious, but really men; nice as to their honour, to the extent of poniarding any one who is wanting in respect to them. They are fully as ignorant as the people of the Monti; they have learnt the same lessons, and witnessed the same examples; they have the same improvidence, the same love of pleasure, the same brutality in their passions; but they are incapable of stooping, even to pick anything up.
A government worthy of the name would make something of this ignorant force, first taming, and then directing it. The man who stabs his fellow in a wineshop might prove a good soldier on a battle-field. But we are in the capital of the Pope. The Trasteverini neither attack God nor the Government; they meddle neither with theology nor politics; no more is asked of them. And in token of its appreciation of their good conduct, a paternal administration allows them to cut one another's throats ad libitum.
Neither the people of the Trastevere nor of the Monti give the least sign of political existence, whereat the Cardinals rub their hands, and congratulate themselves upon having kept so many men in profound ignorance of all their rights. I am not quite certain that the theory is a sound one. Suppose, for example, that the democratic committees of London and Leghorn were to send a few recruiting officers into the Pope's capital. An honest, mild, enlightened plebeian would reflect twice before enrolling himself. He would weigh the pros and the cons, and balance for a long time between the vices of the government, and the dangers of revolution. But the mob of the Monti would take fire like a heap of straw at the mere prospect of a scramble, while the Trastevere savages would rise to a man, if the Papal despotism were represented to them as an attack upon their honour. It would be better to have in these plebeians foes capable of reasoning. The Pope might often have to reckon with them, but he need never tremble before them.
I trust the masters of the country may never more be obliged to fight with the plebeians of Rome. They were easily carried away by the leaders of 1848, although the name of Republic resounded for the first time in their ears. Have they forgotten it? No. They will long remember that magic word, which abased the great, and exalted the humble. Moreover, the hidden Mazzinists, who agitate throughout the city, don't collect the workmen in the quarter of the Regola to preach submission to them.
I have said that the plebeians of the city of Rome despise the plebeians of the country. Be assured, however, the latter are not deserving of scorn, even in the Mediterranean provinces. In this unhappy half of the Pontifical States, the influence of the Vatican has not yet quite morally destroyed the population. The country people are poor, ignorant, superstitious, rather wild, but kind, hospitable, and generally honest. If you wish to study them more closely, go to one of the villages in the province of Frosinone, towards the Neapolitan frontier. Cross the plains which malaria has made dreary solitudes, take the stony path which winds painfully up the side of the mountain. You will come to a town of five or ten thousand souls, which is little more than a dormitory for five or ten thousand peasants. Viewed from a distance, this country town has an almost grand appearance. The dome of a church, a range of monastic buildings, the tower of a feudal castle, invest it with a certain air of importance. A troop of women are coming down to the fountain with copper vessels on their heads. You smile instinctively. Here is movement and life. Enter! You are struck with a sensation of coldness, dampness, and darkness. The streets are narrow flights of steps, which every now and then plunge beneath low arches. The houses are closed, and seem to have been deserted for a century. Not a human being at the doors, or at the windows. The streets, silent and solitary.
You would imagine that the curse of heaven had fallen on the country, but for the large placards on the house-fronts, which prove that missionary fathers have passed through the place. "Viva Gesù! Viva Maria! Viva il sangue di Gesù! Viva il cor di Maria! Bestemmiatori, tacetevi per l'amor di Maria!"
These devotional sentences are like so many signboards of the public simplicity.
A quarter of an hour's walk brings you to the principal square. Half-a-dozen civil officials are seated in a circle before a café, gaping at one another. You join them. They ask you for news of something that happened a dozen years ago. You ask them in turn, what epidemic has depopulated the country?
Presently some thirty market-men and women begin to display on the pavement an assortment of fruit and vegetables. Where are the buyers of these products of the earth? Here they come! Night is approaching. The entire population begins to return at once from their labour in the fields; a stalwart and sturdy population; the thew and sinew of some fine regiments. Every one of these half-clad men, armed with pickaxe and shovel, rose two hours before the sun this morning, and went forth to weed a little field, or to dig round a few olive-trees. Many of them have their little domains several miles off, and thither they go daily, accompanied by a child and a pig. The pig is not very fat, and the man and his child are very lean. Still they seem light-hearted and merry. They have plucked some wild flowers by the roadside. The boy is crowned with roses, like Lucullus at table. The father buys a handful of vegetables, and a cake of maize, which will furnish the family supper. They will sleep well enough on this diet—if the fleas allow them. If you like to follow these poor people home, they will give you a kindly welcome, and will not fail to ask you to partake of their modest meal. Their furniture is very simple, their conversation limited; their heads are as well furnished as their dwellings.
The wife who has been awaiting the return of her lord, will open the door to you. Of all useful animals, the wife is the one which the Roman peasant employs most profitably. She makes the bread and the cakes; she spins, weaves, and sews; she goes every day three miles for wood, and one and a half for water; she carries a mule's load on her head; she works from sunrise to sunset, without question or complaint. Her numerous children are in themselves a precious resource: at four years old they are able to tend sheep and cattle.
It is vain to ask these country people what is their opinion of Rome and the government: their idea of these matters is infinitely vague and shadowy. The Government manifests itself to them in the person of an official, who, for the sum of three pounds sterling per month, administers and sells justice among them. This individual is the only gift Rome has ever conferred upon them. In return for the great benefit of his presence, they pay taxes on a tolerably extensive scale: so much for the house, so much for the livestock, so much for the privilege of lighting a fire, so much on the wine, and so much on the meat—when they are able to enjoy that luxury. They grumble, though not very bitterly, regarding the taxes as a sort of periodical hailstorm falling on their year's harvest. If they were to learn that Rome had been swallowed up by an earthquake, they certainly would not put on mourning. They would go forth to their fields as usual, they would sell their crops for the usual price, and they would pay less taxes. This is what all towns inhabited by peasants think of the metropolis. Every township lives by itself, and for itself; it is an isolated body, which has arms to work, and a belly to fill. The cultivator of the land is everything, as was the case in the Middle Ages. There is neither trade, nor manufactures, nor business on any extended scale, nor movement of ideas, nor political life, nor any of those powerful bonds which, in well-governed countries, link the provincial towns to the capital, as the members to the heart.
If there be a capital for these poor people, it is Paradise. They believe in it fervently, and strive to attain it with all their might. The very peasant who grudges the State two crowns for his hearth-tax, willingly pays two and a half to have Viva Maria scrawled over his door. Another complains of the £3 per month paid to the Government official, without a murmur at the thirty priests supported by the township. There is a gentle disease which consoles them for all their ills, called Faith. It does not restrain them from dealing a stab with a knife, when the wine is in their brains, or rage in their hearts; but it will always prevent them from eating meat on a Friday.
If you would see them in all the ardour of their simplicity, you must visit the town on the day of a grand festival. Everybody, men, women, and children are rushing to the church. A carpet of flowers is spread along the road. Every countenance is glowing with excitement. What is the meaning of it all? Don't you know?—It is the festival of Sant' Antonio. A musical Mass is being performed in honour of Sant' Antonio. A grand procession is being formed in honour of that Saint, probably the patron of the place. There are little boys dressed up as angels, and men arrayed in the sack-like garment of their brotherhoods: here we have peasants of The Heart of Jesus; here, those of The Name of Mary; and here come The Souls of Purgatory. The procession is formed with some little confusion. The people embrace one another, upset one another, and fight with one another—all in the name of Sant' Antonio. But see! The statue of the worthy Saint is coming out of the church: a wooden doll, with flaming red cheeks. Victoria! Off go the petards! The women weep with joy—the children cry out at the top of their shrill voices, "Viva Sant' Antonio!" At night there are fireworks: a balloon shaped in the semblance of the Saint ascends amid the shouts of the people, and bursts in grand style right over the church. Verily, unless Sant' Antonio be very difficult to please, such homage must go straight to his heart. And I should think the plebeians of the country very exacting, if, after such an intoxicating festival, they were to complain of wanting bread.
Let us seek a little repose on the other side of the Apennines. Although the population may not be sufficiently sheltered by a chain, of mountains, you will find in the towns and villages the stuff for a noble nation. The ignorance is still very great; the blood ever boiling, and the hand ever quick; but already we find men who reason. If the workman of the towns be not successful, he guesses the reason; he seeks a remedy, he looks forward, he economizes. If the tenant be not rich, he studies with his landlord the means of becoming so. Everywhere agriculture is making progress, and it will ere long have no further progress to make. Man becomes better and greater by dint of struggling with Nature. He learns his own value, he sees whither he is tending; in cultivating his field, he cultivates himself.
I am compelled in strict truth to admit that religion loses ground a little in these fine provinces. I vainly sought in the towns of the Adriatic for those mural inscriptions of Viva Gesù! Viva Maria! and so on, which had so edified me on the other side of the Apennines. At Bologna I read sonnets at the corners of all the streets,—sonnet to Doctor Massarenti, who cured Madame Tagliani; sonnet to young Guadagni, on the occasion of his becoming Bachelor of Arts, etc., etc. At Faenza, these mural inscriptions evinced a certain degree of fanaticism, but the fanaticism of the dramatic art: Viva la Ristori! Viva la diva Rossi! At Rimini, and at Forlì, I read Viva Verdi! (which words had not then the political significance they have recently attained,) Viva la Lotti! together with a long list of dramatic and musical celebrities.
While I was visiting the holy house of Loretto, which, as all the world knows, or ought to know, was transported by Angels, furniture and all, from Palestine, to the neighbourhood of Ancona, a number of pilgrims came in upon their knees, shedding tears and licking the flags with their tongues. I thought these poor creatures belonged to some neighbouring village, but I found out my mistake from a workman of Ancona, who happened to be near me. "Sir," he said, "these unhappy people must certainly belong to the other side of the Apennines, since they still make pilgrimages. Fifty years ago we used to do the same thing; we now think it better to work!"