“Mr. Story says that when Othello was performed at Rome, he saw it with an Italian friend, who said afterwards, ‘Convengo che ci sono qualche belle concette in questa dramma, ma fare tanto disturbo per un fazzoletto non mi conviene.’
“Miss Hosmer told of a countryman who was asked what he thought of a train, for he had just seen one for the first time—seen it as it was entering a tunnel. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was just a black monster with a goggle eye, and when it saw me, it gave a horrible shriek and ran into its hole.’
“I should like you to have heard Miss Hosmer’s recollections of Kestner, whose name was so familiar to me in old Bunsen days. He died soon after she first came to Rome, but she recollects him as always wearing his old red studio cap. He knew he was dying, and when it was very near the end, he said to those who were with him, ‘Now, my dear friends, it is a very sad experience to see a person die: I must beg you to leave me: it is my great wish to be alone, and you may come back in two hours.’ They came back in two hours, and found him lying peacefully dead. That is a beautiful story, I think. It was Kestner who, priding himself very much on his good English, said to Lord Houghton, ‘Allow me to present to you my knee-pot (nipote).’
“Outside the charmed circle of Palazzo Barberini there is little now at Rome but the most inferior American society. ‘We must stop at Milan, you know, going back; there is a picture there by a man called Leonard Vinchey we must be sure to see,’ said a neighbour at the hotel luncheon. And, ‘Mr. Brown, sir, how’s Mrs. Brown’?—‘Well, she’s slim but round’ (meaning weak but about): this is the sort of thing one hears.
“In this hotel is the intelligent Indian Princess Tanjore, with whom I have spent several evenings very pleasantly. Her ‘lady’ is Miss Blyth, sister of the Bishop of Jerusalem, and authoress of that capital novel ‘Antoinette.’
“Dear old Miss Garden, whom you will remember hearing of as the kindest and most original of Scottish ladies, still lives at 64 Via Sistina. ‘How did you manage to boil the eggs so well, Maria, when you can’t tell the clock?’ said Miss Garden to her old donna, ‘for the eggs are just perfect.’—‘Why, I’ll tell you how it is,’ said Maria: ‘a lady I lived with showed me how to do it. I just put them into the water, and then I say thirty-three Credos, and then I know that they’re done.’
“With Miss Garden and Mrs. Ramsay I went one day to the curious little early christian cemetery of S. Generosa, a lovely spot, where marble slabs covering the graves of martyrs under Diocletian are still seen in a little hollow surrounded by wild roses and fenochii.
“My room in this hotel looks out on the Barberini gardens, and the splash of its fountain is an enjoyment. Its being lighted by electricity for the King’s visit the other day was a type of the times, rather a contrast to twenty years ago, when there were torches on every step of the great staircase to welcome even a cardinal, and when not only the staircase, but the whole street as far as S. Teresa, was hung with tapestries for the Prince’s funeral.
“On Ash-Wednesday I went, as I have always done here, to the ‘stations’ on the Aventine. It is still a thoroughly Roman scene. Before one reaches S. Sabina, one is assailed by the chorus of old lady beggars seated in a double avenue of armchairs leading up to the door, with ‘Datemi qualche cosa, signore, per l’amore della Madonna, datemi qual’co;’ and behind them kneel the old men—‘Poveri, poveretti cieci, signore,’ in brown gowns and with arms stretched out alla maniera di S. Francesco. Spread with box is the church itself, with its doors wide open to the cloistered porch and the sacred orange-tree[504] seen in the sunny garden beyond. The Abbot is standing there, and has his hand kissed by all the monks who arrive for the stations, till a cardinal appears, after which he takes the lower place and is quite deserted. Then we all hurry on to S. Alessio and its crypt, and then to the Priorato garden, where, by old custom, we look through the keyhole of the door, and see St. Peter’s down a beautiful avenue of bays.