Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

I was struggling with Italian, carrying on such conversation as I could with Serafino, and with Mrs. Winchell, who was growing proficient in the language.

Serafino was something past sixty. He had been with the Carbonari of 1820, and in the Italian revolution of 1830-31. He saw this suppressed. Then when the republican movements of 1848 shook Europe, he had participated in the third Italian revolution of that year; and again he had seen Italy put down, this time by the intervention of the French, whose Louis Napoleon sought by this action to win the friendship of the Catholic clergy in France. The hated Austrians now ruled Lombardy and Venice. In Rome, now that the Pope again had temporal, power, the political affairs of the city were in the hands of Cardinal Antonelli, who suppressed political agitation with great severity. It was not only an American audience before North Market Hall in Clark Street, Chicago, that denied the freedom of speech. Cardinals were up to the same thing, as well as mobs.

Serafino told me calmly, with occasional profanity, of the arrest of large numbers of Italians who belonged to the Unita Italiana at Naples, whose condemnation was speedily followed by hideous dungeons and atrocious cruelties. There was slavery in Italy too!

Italy was under the heel of Austria. Religious bigotry, more subtle and more powerful than the slavocracy of America, was crushing hope from the lives of the Italians, while Mazzini and Cavour battled like Titans against the powerful hierarchy of monarchy and Catholicism. There was little of the history of Italy, of ancient Rome, that was seemingly unknown to Serafino. He had read all his life; and he had been in the actual conflicts of awakening Italy. Now his head shook a little when his face reddened from suppressed wrath. He cursed quietly, but with a terrible energy. He was poor; but there was a refinement in his personal appearance. His worn shoes were always polished, his coat and trousers of many years service were always brushed. He would appear at the appointed hour, bright of eye, cleanly shaven, and always with wonderful suggestions for sightseeing for the afternoon. He lived somewhere near the Forum. Having never married he was continuing a friendship formed long ago with a woman who kept house for him and lived with him. As he was no longer fitted for a battle or strife he was now an adviser to younger men. He was no doubt suspected but he seemed to have no fear. As we went about among priests and soldiers he smiled and spoke to them.

He knew them of old and a certain security seemed to be his. His two interests were politics and art, but art had won him almost completely. What he knew of history and of art, his life-long residence in Rome made him the most interesting of couriers.

Our conversations widened and deepened day by day. Had he heard of Douglas? No. He had read Uncle Tom's Cabin. What did I know of Mrs. Stowe? I ran over the list of our notables. They meant nothing to him. State sovereignty, popular sovereignty, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromises of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska act were words without significance. But there was negro slavery. "How can that be in your country?" he asked, and laughed ironically. "If all men are created free and equal how about the negro?" he asked.

I went on to tell Serafino, that Thomas Jefferson, when drafting the Declaration of Independence, had condemned George III who had forbidden the American Colonies "to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce"; but that the clause was stricken out by South Carolina and Georgia. Therefore that the Declaration did not mean negroes when it said "all men." Serafino looked at me with quiet, comprehending eyes which said: "It's the same struggle of money and power everywhere." He added aloud: "Italy will never eat free bread and have enough of it until the Austrian is driven off our back. They make us work and take away our labor in taxes. We are negroes too."

He wanted to know something of Garrison, of whom he had heard. What was thought of Washington in America? But in the midst of these subjects he would stop to point to a broken column, a ruined temple; or he would turn suddenly into an old church to show me some beloved picture. After all, the old life of street brawls, debates, and dungeons had faded out of him with the dying of the rebellious fires of youth. There were only echoes of these thunderous events in his soul. His eye only brightened fully before a picture or a statue. His reverence arose only to some perfection of color or of form.

Once he took me by a quick turn, as if by impulse, into an old church. "There is a lovely Madonna here," he said. "Who painted it?" "Some pupil of Raphael's perhaps." Serafino removed his hat and stood reverently before this beautiful face, so human, so tender. "I have heard you say so much against the Church, the Papacy—I thought you were not in the Church," I said. "No, I am an atheist," replied Serafino. "But what has that to do with this? Look at those eyes, those lips. In '48, when my soul was torn, I used to come in here every day just for the consolation of that face. And now I come for the memory and the peace it brings me." Slow tears were on the lower lids of his eyes. With a rough hand he brushed them away, then asked me: "What do you think?" "I love that face," I replied. "I understand how you feel."

A friendship grew up between Serafino and me. He was not a perfunctory guide. He never grew tired. When five o'clock would come and the day was really ended I would say: "Well I must be back now. Little Reverdy is coming over for an early dinner." "Ah, but just this one picture," he would say, "it will only take a few minutes. I want you to see this. It is a great work and something may happen. I may forget to bring you again." Then we would walk in and out of the cold and gloom of the church after having stared the picture into vividness.