IV. PEOPLE WHO PASS CLOSE BY
THE SAN MARTINO YOUNG LADIES
Arrived at Rome, Laura and Cæsar went up to the hotel, and were received by a bald gentleman with a pointed moustache, who showed them into a large round salon with a very high ceiling.
It was a theatrical salon, with antique furniture and large red-velvet arm-chairs with gilded legs. The enormous mirrors, somewhat tarnished by age, made the salon appear even larger. On the consoles and cabinets gleamed objects of majolica and porcelain.
The big window of this salon opened on the Piazza Esedra di Termini. Cæsar and Laura looked out through the glass. It was beginning to rain again; the great semi-circular extent of the square was shining with rain.
The passing trams slipped around the curve in the track; a caravan of tourists in ten or twelve carriages in file, all with their umbrellas open, were preparing to visit the monuments of Rome; strolling pedlars were showing them knick-knacks and religious gewgaws.
Cæsar’s and Laura’s rooms were got ready and the manager of the hotel asked them again if they had need of nothing else.
“What are you going to do?” said Laura to her brother.
“I am going to stretch myself out in bed for a while.”
“Lunch at half-past twelve.”
“Good, I will get up at that time.”
“Good-bye, bambino. Have a good rest. Put on your black suit to come to the table.”
“Very well.” Cæsar stretched himself on the bed, slept off and on, somewhat feverish from fatigue, and at about twelve he woke at the noise they made in bringing his luggage into the room. He got up to open the trunks, washed and dressed, and when the customary gong resounded, he presented himself in the salon.
Laura was chatting with two young ladies and an older lady, the Countess of San Martino and her daughters. They were in Rome for the season and lived regularly in Venice.
Laura introduced her brother to these ladies, and the Countess pressed Cæsar’s hand between both of hers, very affectionately.
The Countess was tiny and dried-up: a mummy with the face of a grey-hound, her skin close to her bones, her lips painted, little penetrating blue eyes, and great vivacity in her movements. She dressed in a showy manner; wore jewels on her bosom, on her head, on her fingers.
The daughters looked like two little blond princesses: with rosy cheeks, eyebrows like two golden brush-strokes, almost colourless, clear blue eyes of a heavenly blue, and such small red lips, that on seeing them, the classical simile of cherries came at once to one’s mind.
The Countess of San Martino asked Cæsar like a shot if he was married and if he hadn’t a sweetheart. Cæsar replied that he was a bachelor and that he had no sweetheart, and then the Countess came back by asking if he felt no vocation for matrimony.
“No, I believe I don’t,” responded Cæsar.
The two young women smiled, and their mother said, with truly diverting familiarity, that men were becoming impossible. Afterwards she added that she was anxious for her daughters to marry.
“When one of these children is married and has a bambino, I shall be more contented! If God sent me a cheru-bino del cielo, I shouldn’t be more so.”
Laura laughed, and one of the little blondes remarked with aristocratic indifference: “Getting married comes first, mamma.”
To this the Countess of San Martino observed that she didn’t understand the behaviour of girls nowadays.
“When I was a young thing, I always had five or six beaux at once; but my daughters haven’t the same idea. They are so indifferent, so superior!”
“It seems that you two don’t take all the notice you should,” said Cæsar to the girls in French.
“You see what a mistake it is,” answered one of them, smiling.
The last round of the gong sounded and various persons entered the salon. Laura knew the majority of them and introduced them, as they came, to her brother.
OBSERVATIONS BY CÆSAR
The waiter appeared at the door, announced that lunch was ready, and they all passed into the dining-room.
Laura and her brother were installed at a small table beside the window.
The dining-room, very large and very high, flaunted decorations copied from some palace. They consisted of a tapestry with garlands of flowers, and medallions. In each medallion were the letters S.P.Q.R. and various epicurean phrases of the Romans: “Carpe diem. Post mortem nulla voluptas,” et cetera.
“Beautiful decoration, but very cold,” said Cæsar. “I should prefer rather fewer mottoes and a little more warmth.”
“You are very hard to please,” retorted Laura.
Shortly after getting seated, everybody began to talk from table to table and even from one end of the room to the other. There was none of that classic coolness among the people in the hotel which the English have spread everywhere, along with underdone meat and bottled sauces.
Cæsar devoted himself for the first few moments to ethnology.
“Even from the people you find here, you can see that there is a great diversity of ethnic type in Italy,” he said to Laura. “That blond boy and the Misses San Martino are surely of Saxon origin; the waiter, on the other hand, swarthy like that, is a Berber.”
“Because the blond boy and the San Martines are from the North, and the waiter must be Neapolitan or Sicilian.
“Besides, there is still another type: shown by that dark young woman over there, with the melancholy air. She must be a Celtic type. What is obvious is that there is great liveliness in these people, great elegance in their movements. They are like actors giving a good performance.”
Cæsar’s observations were interrupted by the arrival of a dark, plump woman, who came in from the street, accompanied by her daughter, a blond girl, fat, smiling, and a bit timid.
This lady and Laura bowed with much ceremony.
“Who is she?” asked Cæsar in a low tone.
“It is the Countess Brenda,” said Laura.
“Another countess! But are all the women here countesses?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
At the other end of the dining-room a young Neapolitan with the expression of a Pulcinella and violent gestures, raised his sing-song voice, talking very loud and making everybody laugh.
After lunching, Cæsar went out to post some cards, and as it was raining buckets, he took refuge in the arcades of the Piazza Esedra.
When he was tired of walking he returned to the hotel, went to his room, turned on the light, and started to continue his unfinished perusal of Proudhon’s book on the speculator.
And while he read, there came from the salon the notes of a Tzigane waltz played on the piano.
ART, FOR DECEIVED HUSBANDS
Cæsar was writing something on the margin of a page when there came a knock at his door. “Come in,” said Cæsar.
It was Laura.
“Where are you keeping yourself?” she asked.
“Here I am, reading a little.”
“But my dear man, we are waiting for you.”
“What for?”
“The idea, what for? To talk.”
“I don’t feel like talking. I am very tired.”
“But, bambino; Benedetto. Are you going to live your life avoiding everybody?”
“No; I will come out tomorrow.”
“What do you want to do tonight?”
“Tonight! Nothing.”
“Don’t you want to go to the theatre?”
“No, no; I have a tremendously weak pulse, and a little fever. My hands are on fire at this moment.”
“What foolishness!”
“It’s true.”
“So then you won’t come out?”
“No.”
“All right. As you wish.”
“When the weather is good, I will go out.”
“Do you want me to fetch you a Baedeker?”
“No, I have no use for it.”
“Don’t you intend to look at the sights, either?”
“Yes, I will look willingly at what comes before my eyes; it wouldn’t please me if the same thing happened to me that took place in Florence.”
“What happened to you in Florence?”
“I lost my time lamentably, getting enthusiastic over Botticelli, Donatello, and a lot of other foolishness, and when I got back to London it cost me a good deal of work to succeed in forgetting those things and getting myself settled in my financial investigations again. So that now I have decided to see nothing except in leisure moments and without attaching any importance to all those fiddle-faddles.” “But what childishness! Is it going to distract you so much from your work, from that serious work you have in hand, to go and see a few pictures or some statues?”
“To see them, no, not exactly; but to occupy myself with them, yes. Art is a good thing for those who haven’t the strength to live, in realities. It is a good form of sport for old maids, for deceived husbands who need consolation, as hysterical persons need morphine....”
“And for strong people like you, what is there?” asked Laura, ironically.
“For strong people!... Action.”
“And you call lying in bed, reading, action?”
“Yes, when one reads with the intentions I read with.”
“And what are they? What is it you are plotting?”
“I will tell you.”
Laura saw that she could not convince her brother, and returned to the salon. A moment before dinner was announced Cæsar got dressed again in black, put on his patent-leather shoes, looked at himself offhandedly in the mirror, saw that he was all right, and joined his sister.
V. THE ABBE PRECIOZI. THE BIG BIRDS IN ROME
The next day Cæsar awoke at nine, jumped out of bed, and went to breakfast. Laura had left word that she would not eat at home. Cæsar took an umbrella and went out into the street. The weather was very dark but it held off from rain.
Cæsar took the Via Nazionale toward the centre of town. Among the crowd, some foreigners with red guide-books in their hands, were walking with long strides to see the sights of Rome, which the code of worldly snobbishness considers it indispensable to admire.
Cæsar had no settled goal. On a plan of the city, hung in a newspaper kiosk, he found the situation of the Piazza Esedra, the hotel and the adjacent streets, and continued slowly ahead.
“How many people there must be who are excited and have an irregular pulse on arriving for the first time in one of these historic towns,” thought Cæsar. “I, for my part, was in that situation the first time I clearly understood the mechanism of the London Exchange.”
Cæsar continued down the Via Nazionale and stopped in a small square with a little garden and a palm. Bounding the square on one side arose a greenish wall, and above this wall, which was adorned with statues, stretched a high garden with magnificent trees, and among them a great stone pine.
“A beautiful garden to walk in,” said Cæsar. “Perhaps it is an historic spot, perhaps it isn’t. I am very happy that I don’t know either its name or its history, if it really has one.” From the same point in the Via Nazionale, a street with flights of steps could be seen to the left, and below a white stone column.
“Nothing doing; I don’t know what that is either,” thought Cæsar; “the truth is that one is terribly ignorant. To make matters even, what a well of knowledge about questions of finance there is in my cranium!”
Cæsar continued on to the Piazza Venezia, contemplated the palace of the Austrian Embassy, yellow, battlemented; and stopped under a big white umbrella, stuck up to protect the switchman of the tramway.
“Here, at least, the weight of tradition or history is not noticeable. I don’t believe this canvas is a piece of Brutus’s tunic, or of Pompey’s campaign tent. I feel at home here; this canvas modernizes me.”
The square was very animated at that moment: groups of seminarians were passing in robes of black, red, blue, violet, and sashes of contrasting colours; monks of all sorts were crossing, smooth-shaven, bearded, in black, white, brown; foreign priests were conversing in groups, wearing little dishevelled hats adorned with a tassel; horrible nuns with moustaches and black moles, and sweet little white nuns, with a coquettish air.
The clerical fauna was admirably represented. A Capuchin friar, long-bearded and dirty, with the air of a footpad, and an umbrella by way of a blunderbuss or musket under his arm, was talking to a Sister of Charity.
“Undoubtedly religion is a very picturesque thing,” murmured Cæsar. “A spectacular impressario would not have the imagination to think out all these costumes.”
Cæsar took the Corso. Before he reached the Piazza Colonna it began to rain. The coachmen took out enormous umbrellas, all rolled up, opened them and stood them in iron supports, in such a way that the box-seat was as it were under a campaign tent.
Cæsar took refuge in the entrance to a bazaar. The rain began to assume the proportions of a downpour. An old friar, with a big beard, a white habit, and a hood, armed with an untamable umbrella, attempted to cross the square. The umbrella turned inside out in the gusts of wind, and his beard seemed to be trying to get away from his face.
“Pavero frate!” said one of the crowd, smiling.
A priest passed hidden under an umbrella. A tough among the refugees in the bazaar-doorway said that you couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a priest, and the cleric, who no doubt heard the remark, threw a severe and threatening look at the group.
It stopped raining, and Cæsar continued his walk along the Corso. He went a bit out of his way to throw a glance at the Piazza di Spagna. The great stairway in that square was shining, wet with the rain; a few seminarians in groups were going up the steps toward the Pincio.
Cæsar arrived at the Piazza del Popolo and stopped near some ragamuffins who were playing a game, throwing coins in the air. A tattered urchin had written with charcoal on a wall: “Viva Musolino!” and below that he was drawing a heart pierced by two daggers.
“Very good,” murmured Cæsar. “This youngster is like me: an advocate of action.”
It began to rain again; Cæsar decided to turn back. He took the same route and entered a café on the Corso for lunch. The afternoon turned out magnificent and Cæsar went wandering about at random.
THE CICERONE
At twilight he returned to his inn, changed, and went to the salon. Laura was conversing with a young abbé. “The Abbé Preciozi.... My brother Cæsar.”
The Abbé Preciozi was one of the household of Cardinal Fort, who had sent him to the hotel to act as cicerone to his nephew.
“Uncle has sent the abbé so that he can show you Rome.” “Oh, many thanks!” answered Cæsar. “I will make use of his knowledge; but I don’t want him to neglect his occupations or to put himself out on my account.” “No, no. I am at your disposition,” replied the abbé, “His Eminence has given me orders to wait on you, and it will not put me out in the least.”
“You will have dinner with us, Preciozi?” said Laura.
“Oh, Marchesa! Thank you so much!”
And the abbé bowed ceremoniously.
The three dined together, and afterwards went to the salon to chat. One of the San Martino young ladies played the viola and the other the piano, and people urged them to exhibit their skill.
The talkative Neapolitan turned over the pieces of music in the music-stand, and after discussing with the two contessinas, he placed on the rack the “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana.
The two sisters played, and the listeners made great eulogies about their ability.
Laura presented Cæsar and the Abbé Preciozi to the Countess Brenda and to a lady who had just arrived from Malta.
“Did you know Rome before?” the Countess asked Cæsar in French.
“No.”
“And how does it strike you?”
“My opinion is of no value,” said Cæsar. “I am not an artist. Imagine; my specialty is financial questions. Up to the present what has given me the greatest shock is to find that Rome has walls.”
“You didn’t know it?” asked Laura.
“No.”
“Dear child, I find that you are very ignorant.”
“What do you wish?” replied Cæsar in Spanish. “I am inclined to be ignorant of everything I don’t get anything out of.”
Cæsar spoke jokingly of a square like a hole in the ground, out of which rises a white column similar to the one in Paris in the Place Vendôme.
“What does he mean? Trajan’s column?” asked Preciozi. “It must be,” said Laura. “I have a brother who’s a barbarian. Weren’t you in the Forum, too?”
“Which is the Forum? An open space where there are a lot of stones?”
“Yes.”
“I passed by there; there were a good many tourists, crowds of young ladies peering intently into corners and a gentleman with a bag over his shoulder who was pointing out some columns with an umbrella. Afterwards I saw a ticket-window. ‘That doubtless means that one pays to get in,’ I said, and as the ground was covered with mud and I didn’t care to wet my feet, I asked a young rascal who was selling post-cards what that place was. I didn’t quite understand his explanation, which I am sure was very amusing. He confused Emperors with the Madonna and the saints. I gave the lad a lira and had some trouble in escaping from there, because he followed me around everywhere calling me Excellency.”
“I think Don Cæsar is making fun of us,” said Preciozi.
“No, no.”
“But really, how did Rome strike you, on the whole?” asked the abbe.
“Well, I find it like a mixture of a monumental great city and a provincial capital.”
“That is possible,” responded the abbe. “Undoubtedly the provincial city is more of a city than the big modern capitals, where there is nothing to see but fine hotels on one hand and horrible hovels on the other. If you came from America, like me, you would see how agreeable you would find the impression of a city that one gets here. To forget all the geometry, the streets laid out with a compass, the right angles....”
“Probably so.”
The abbe seemed to have an interest in gaining Cæsar’s friendship. Cæsar said to him that, if he wished, they could go to his room to chat and smoke. The abbe accepted with gusto, and Cæsar, being a suspicious person, wondered if the Cardinal might have sent the abbe to find out what sort of man he was. Then he considered that his ideas must be of no importance whatsoever to his uncle; but on the chance, he set himself to throwing the abbé off the scent, talking volubly and emitting contradictory opinions about everything.
After chattering a long while and devoting himself to free paradox, Cæsar thought that for the first session he had not done altogether badly. Preciozi took leave, promising to come back the next day.
“If he reports our conversation to my uncle, the man won’t know what to think of me,” reflected Cæsar, on going to bed. “It would not be too much to expect, if His Eminence became interested and sent to fetch me. But I don’t believe he will; my uncle cannot be intelligent enough to have the curiosity to know a man like me.”
VI. THE LITTLE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE IN A ROMAN HOTEL. INTIMACIES
During some days the main interest of the people in the hotel was the growing intimacy established between the Marchesa Sciacca, who was the lady from Malta, and the Neapolitan with the Pulcinella air, Signor Carminatti.
The Maltese must have been haughty and exclusive, to judge from the queenly air she assumed. Only with the handsome Neapolitan did she behave amiably.
In the dining-room the Maltese sat with her two children, a boy and a girl, at the other end from where Cæsar and Laura were accustomed to sit. At her side, at a table close by, chattered and jested the diplomatic Carminatti.
The Marquis of Sciacca was ill with diabetes; he had come to Rome to take a treatment, and during these days he did not come to the dining-room.
The Marchesa was one of those mixed types, unharmonious, common among mongrel races. Her black hair shone like jet, her lips looked like an Egyptian’s, and her eyes of a very light blue showed off in a curious way in her bronzed face. She powdered her face, she painted her lips, she shaded her eyes with kohl. Her appearance was that of a proud, revengeful woman.
She ate with much nicety, opening her mouth so little that she could put no more than the tip of her spoon between her lips; with her children she talked English and Italian in equal perfection, and when she heard young Carminatti’s facetious remarks she laughed with marked impudence. Signer Carminatti was tall, with a black moustache, a hooked nose, well-formed languid eyes, lively and somewhat clownish gestures; he was at the same time sad and merry, melancholy and smiling, he changed his expression every moment. He was in the habit of appearing in the salon in a dinner-jacket, with a large flower in his button-hole and two or three fat diamonds on his chest. He would come along dragging his feet, would bow, make a joke, stand mournful; and this fluency of expression, and these gesticulations, gave him a manner halfway between woman and child.
When he grew petulant, especially, he seemed like a woman. “Macché!” he would say continually, with an acrid voice and the disgusted air of an hysterical dame.
In spite of his frequent petulant fits, he was the person most esteemed by the ladies of the hotel, both young and married.
“He is the darling of the ladies,” the Countess Brenda said of him, mockingly.
Laura had not the least use for him.
“I know that type by heart,” she asserted with disdain.
During lunch and dinner Signor Carminatti did not leave off talking for a moment with the Maltese. The Marchesa Sciacca’s children often wanted to tell their mother something; but she hushed them so as to be able to hear the bright sayings of the handsome Neapolitan.
The San Martino young ladies and the Countess Brenda’s daughter kept trying to find a way to steal Carminatti for their group; but he always went back to the Maltese, doubtless because her conversation was more diverting and spicy.
THE CONTESSINA BRENDA
The Countess Brenda’s daughter, Beatrice Brenda, in spite of her pea-hen air, was always endeavouring to stir up the Neapolitan and to start a conversation with him; but Carminatti in his light-hearted way would reply with a jest or a fatuous remark and betake himself again to the Marchesa Sciacca, who would make her disturbing children hush because they often prevented her from catching what the Neapolitan was saying.
She was not to be despised, not by a long shot, was Signorina Bice, not in any respect; besides being very rich, she was a beautiful girl and promised to be more beautiful; she had the type of Titian’s women, an opaline white skin, as though made of mother-of-pearl, plump milky arms, and dark eyes. The one thing lacking in her was expression.
She used frequently to go about in the company of an aristocratic old maid, very ugly, with red hair and a face like a horse, but very distinguished, who ate at the next table to Laura and Cæsar.
One day Carminatti brought another Neapolitan home to dinner with him, a fat grotesque person, whom he instigated to emit a series of improprieties about women and matrimony. Hearing the scandalous sallies of the rustic, the ladies said, with an amiable smile:
“He is a benedetto.”
The Contessina Brenda, fascinated by the Neapolitan, went to the Marchesa Sciacca’s table. As she passed, Carminatti arose with his napkin in one hand, and gesticulating with the other, said:
“Contessina. Allow me to present to you Signor Cappagutti, a merchant from Naples.”
Signor Cappagutti remained leaning back tranquilly in his chair, and the Contessina burst out laughing and began to move her arms as if somebody had put a horse-fly on her skirt. Then she raised her hand to her face, to hide her laughter, and suddenly sat down.
DANCING
As it rained a great deal the majority of the guests preferred not to go out. In the evenings they had dances. Cæsar did not appear at the first one; but his sister told him he ought to go. Cæsar was at the second dance, so as not to seem too much of an ogre. As he had no intention of dancing, he installed himself in a corner; and while the dance went on he kept talking with the Countesses Brenda and San Martino.
Various young men had arrived in the room. They exhibited that Southern vivacity which is a trifle tiresome to the onlooker, and they all listened to themselves while they spoke. The Neapolitan and two or three of his friends were introduced to Cæsar; but they showed him a certain rather ostentatious and impertinent coolness.
Signor Carminatti exchanged a few words with the Countess Brenda, and purposely acted as if he did not notice Cæsar’s presence.
The Neapolitan’s chatter did not irritate Cæsar in the slightest, and as he had no intention of being his rival, he listened to him quite entertained.
Cæsar noted that the San Martino ladies and some friends of theirs had a predilection for types like Carminatti, swarthy, prattling, and boastful South Italians.
The ladies showed an affectionate familiarity with the girls; they caressed them and kissed them effusively.
YOU ARE AN INQUISITOR
Laura, who was dancing with an officer, approached her brother, who was wedged into a corner, behind two rows of chairs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, stopping and informing her partner that she was going to sit down a moment.
“Nothing,” answered Cæsar, “I am waiting for this waltz to finish, so that I can get away.”
“You are not enjoying yourself?”
“Pish!”
“Nevertheless, there are amusing things about it.”
“Ah, surely. Do you know what happened to me with the Countess Brenda?”
“What did happen?”
“When she came in and gave me her hand, she said: ‘How hot your hands are; mine are frozen.’ And she held my hands between hers. That was comical.”
“Comical! Why?”
“How do I know?”
“It is comical to you, because you see only evil motives. She held your hand. Who knows what she may be after? Who knows if she wants to get something out of you? She has an income of eighty or ninety thousand lire, perhaps she wants to borrow money from you.”
“No, I know she doesn’t.”
“Then, what are you afraid of?”
“Afraid! Afraid of nothing! Only it surprised me.”
“That’s because you look at everything with the eye of an inquisitor. One must be suspicious: be always on one’s guard, always on the watch. It’s the attitude of a savage.”
“I don’t deny it. I have no desire to be civilized like these people. But what does come to me is that the husband of our illustrious and wealthy friend wears in his breast that porte-bonheur, which I believe is called horns.”
“Of course; and you haven’t discovered that his family is a family of assassins? How Spanish! What a savage Spaniard I have for a brother!”
Cæsar burst into laughter, and taking advantage of the moment when everybody was going to the buffet, left the room. In the corridor, one of the San Martino girls, the more sweet and angelic of the two, was in a corner with one of the dancers, and there was a sound like a kiss.
The little blonde made an exclamation of fright; Cæsar behaved as if he had noticed nothing and kept on his way.
“The devil!” exclaimed Cæsar, “that angelic little princess hides in corners with one of these briganti. And their mother has the face to say that they don’t know how to bait a hook! I don’t know what more she could wish. Although it is possible that this is the educational scheme of the future for marriageable girls.”
In the entrance-hall of the hotel were the Marchesa Sciacca’s two children, attended by a sleeping maid; the little girl, seated on a sofa, was watching her brother, who walked from one side to the other with a roll of paper in his hand. In the entrance hall, opposite the hotel door, there was a bulletin, which was changed every day, to announce the different performances that were to be given that night at the theatres of Rome.
The small boy walked back and forth in front of the poster, and addressing himself to a public consisting of the sleeping maid and the little girl, cried:
“Step up, gentlemen! Step up! Now is the time. We are about to perform La Geisha, the magnificent English operetta. Walk right in! Walk right in!”
While the mother was dancing with the Neapolitan in the ball-room, the children were amusing themselves thus alone.
“The truth is that our civilization is an absurdity. Even the children go mad,” thought Cæsar, and took refuge in his room.
During the whole night he heard from his bed the notes of the waltzes and two-steps, and dancers’ laughter and shouts and shuffling feet.
THEY ARE JUST CHILDREN
The next day, Laura, before going out to make a call, appeared at lunch-time most elegantly dressed, with a gown and a hat from Paris, in which she was truly most charming.
She had a great success: the San Martinos, the Countess Brenda, the other ladies congratulated her. The hat, above all, seemed ideal to them.
Carminatti was in raptures.
“E bello, bellissimo,” he said, with great enthusiasm, and all the ladies agreed that it was bellissimo, lengthening the “s” and nodding their heads with a gesture of admiration.
“And you don’t say anything to me, bambino?” Laura inquired of Cæsar.
“I say you are all right.”
“And nothing more?”
“If you want me to pay you a compliment, I will tell you that you are pretty enough to make incest legitimate.” “What a barbarian!” murmured Laura, half laughing, half blushing.
“What has he been saying to you?” two or three people inquired.
Laura translated his words into Italian, and Carminatti found them admirable.
“Very appropriate! Very witty!” he exclaimed, laughing, and gave Cæsar a friendly slap on the shoulder.
The Marchesa Sciacca looked at Laura several times with reflective glances and a rancorous smile.
“The truth is that these Southern people are just children,” thought Cæsar, mockingly. “What an inveterate preoccupation they have in the beautiful.”
The Neapolitan was one of those most preoccupied with esthetics.
Cæsar had a room opposite Signor Carminatti’s, and the first few days he had thought it was a woman’s room. Toilet flasks, sprays, boxes of powder; the room looked like a perfumery shop.
“It is curious,” Cæsar used to think, “how these people from famous historic towns can combine powder and the maffia, opoponax and daggers.”
Almost every night after dinner there was an improvised dance in the salon. Somebody played the languorous waltzes of the Tzigane orchestras on the piano. The Maltese and Carminatti used to sing romantic songs, of the kind whose words and music seem to be always the same, and in which there invariably is question of panting, refulgent, love, and other suggestive words.
One Sunday evening, when it was raining, Cæsar stayed in the hotel.
In the salon Carminatti was doing sleight-of-hand to entertain the ladies. Afterwards the Neapolitan was seen pursuing the Marchesa Sciacca and the two San Martino girls in the corridors. They shrieked shrilly when he grabbed them around the waist. The devil of a Neapolitan was an expert at sleight-of-hand.