Against these old walls and old traditions the immigrant tide has been beating for the last ten years, carrying away the grandee’s sons, numbers of whom are now digging coal in Pennsylvania, or waiting on table in some cheap restaurant in New York. Yet, whether he lives in a wretched boarding-house in a Pittsburg “Patch,” or accepts the modest tip his patrons give him, the son of a Ragusan grandee never forgets his nobility.
These immigrants, too, have gone home again, and make their presence felt, economically and socially. They have repaired the old palaces and brought money into circulation; but the old guslar, who stood on the corner of the Stradona and the Piazza, and whom I sought out after these ten years, had his story to tell.
“Yes, Signor, many have gone to America and have come back, and will go again; but, Signor, that must be a bad country, a wild country. They come home and walk carelessly up and down the Stradona, the finest street in the world, every house a palace—and they talk of it with disrespect!
“Why, Signor, they say that in America there are finer streets than this, and bigger houses, and they laugh at the Dogana, Signor—at the Dogana, where our Principes and our Consiglios made treaties with the great powers, where we received the ambassadors of the Sultan and of the Doges of Venice!
“Signor, they walk up and down the street with their heavy-soled shoes, talking loudly, and making such a noise that the grandees cannot take their siestas undisturbed.
“Yes, Signor, there are some of them here now. They came back a fortnight ago, a man and his two daughters. A good-for-nothing he is, Signor. Think of it! Ah, listen!” He paused abruptly. I listened. The sweet, harmonious quiet was rudely broken; the air, full of the fragrance of oleander blossoms, seemed suddenly vitiated; the Monte Sergio and the swaying palms beneath it, which made so marvellous a picture, seemed to drop with a crash out of their frame of sky and sea.
“Signor, listen!” And the old guslar trembled from anger and pain. It was the grinding of a phonograph which struck our ears. “Listen, Signor! That they bring out of America! Out of your barbaric country!”
True enough; they were the painfully familiar notes of “canned ragtime” at its worst.
“Signor, that man has come back with his two daughters. They can’t speak a word of their mother tongue; and oh, Signor! they walk up and down the Stradona without a duenna, they look boldly at the men, and they keep their jaws moving constantly, even when they do not speak.
“The father drinks, he drinks maraschino by the bottleful and he defiles the pavements of our ancient streets by his polluted spittle. You want to go to see him?” The guslar looked deeply hurt. He feared that the phonograph had lured me from him.