“For thy sake,” I used to say to him, “for thy sake I will be what I ought to be; because I love thee, O brilliant flower of my race; because I desire to place all my pride in obeying thy law, O master. Thou didst bear within thyself strength sufficient to subjugate the earth, but thy royal destiny was not to be fulfilled in the age wherein thou didst first appear. In that age thou wast but the herald and forerunner of thyself, for thou wast destined to reappear higher up thy ancient stem in the maturity of future ages, on the threshold of a world not explored by the warriors, but promised by the wise men: to reappear as the messenger, the interpreter, and the lord of a new life. Therefore didst thou suddenly disappear like a demi-god by the banks of a swollen river, amid the roar of battle and storm, just as the sun was entering the sign of the Lion. Death did not cut off thy great promise, but fate willed to alter its marvellous fulfilment. Thy virtue, which could not then be manifested to the earth by triumphant actions, must necessarily revive some day in thy still surviving lineage. And may it be to-morrow! May thy equal be begotten by me! I invoke and await and prepare the renewal of thy genius with unfailing faith, the while adoring thy living image, O conqueror and sage, thou who didst lay the blade of thy beautiful naked sword as a mark in the books of wisdom.”
Thus I used to address him. And under his glance and inspired by him, not only were my actual energies multiplied, but my task lay clear before me in definite outlines. “Thou, therefore, shalt labour to carry out thy own destiny and that of thy race. Thou shalt have before thy eyes at the same time the premeditated plan of thy existence and the vision of an existence superior to thine own. Thou shalt live in the idea that each life being the sumtotal of past lives is the condition of future lives. Thou shalt not, therefore, look upon thyself only as the beginning, aim, and end of thy own destiny, but thou shalt feel the whole value and the whole weight of the inheritance received from thy ancestors, which thou must transmit to thy descendant countersigned with the stamp of thy most vigorous characteristics. Let the supreme conception of thy dignity be founded on the certainty, so sure in thee, that thou art the preserving link of a multifold energy which to-morrow, or after the lapse of a century, or at some indefinite time, may reassert itself in a sublime manifestation. But hope that it may be to-morrow! Triple, therefore, is thy task, for thou dost possess the gift of poetry, and must study to acquire the science of words. Triple is thy task:—by direct methods to conduct thy being to attain the perfect integrity of the Latin type; to concentrate the purest essence of thy spirit, and to reproduce in a single and supreme work of art thy deepest vision of the universe; to preserve the ideal riches of thy race and thine own individual conquests in a son, who, under paternal instruction, shall recognise and co-ordinate them in himself, and shall thus feel worthy of aspiring to the realisation of ever higher possibilities.”
Then, with the tables of my laws thus clearly set before me, there came over me not only the sadness of doubt, but an anxiety akin to fear—a new and horrible anxiety. “If some blind, unforeseen violence from exterior forces were to shake, or deform, or crush my work! If I should have to bend and submit to some brutal injury of chance. If one of those destructive gusts which burst suddenly out of the darkness should cause the fall of my edifice before its completion.” This fear came over me during a strange hour of agitation and depression, and I felt my faith failing me. But soon after I felt ashamed when my monitor said to me: “Judging from the quality of thy thoughts, thou seemest to me like one contaminated by the crowd, or in the power of a woman. See, even passing through the crowd which was gazing at thee has lessened thee in thine own eyes. Seest thou not that those men who frequent it become unfruitful as mules? The gaze of the crowd is worse than a splash of mud; the breath of it is poisonous. Go afar off while the sewer discharges itself. Go afar off and ponder on that which thou hast gathered up. Thy hour will come. What fearest thou? Of what worth would be all this discipline, did it not make thee stronger than circumstances? Even by this it is sometimes possible to create by force of will. Therefore go afar off while the sewer discharges itself. Delay not; let not thyself be contaminated by the crowd, or fall into the power of a woman. It is true thou wilt have to form an alliance in order to accomplish one part of the task thou hast assigned to thyself. But better is it for thee to wait and remain alone; better even to slay thy hope than to submit body and spirit to unworthy fetters. If the thing loved is contemptible, the lover is contemptible. Thou must never forget this saying of thy Leonardo, that, like Castruccio, thou mayest always be able proudly to reply: 'I have chosen her; she did not choose me.’”
Justly did this admonition come to me at that time. And without delay I made ready to depart from the tainted city.
It was a time when the active zeal of destroyers and builders was raging feverishly over the soil of Rome. With the clouds of dust a species of madness for lucre seemed to spread like a poisonous whirlwind, taking hold not only of the men of the labouring classes, the familiar spirits of lime and bricks, but also of the proudest heirs of papal families, who till then had looked scornfully at all intruders from the windows of travertine palaces, which stood obdurately firm under the crust of ages. One by one these magnificent families—founded, carried on, strengthened by nepotism and civil wars—sank lower, slid down into the new mire, went under and disappeared. Famous fortunes accumulated by centuries of successful rapine and Mæcenatic luxury were exposed to the risks of the Stock Exchange.
The laurels and roses of the Villa Sciarra, whose praises had been sung by the nightingales for such a long succession of nights, were being cut down to the ground, or survived in a humble position inside the gates of little gardens surrounding new villas built for grocers. The gigantic Ludovisi cypresses, those of the Aurora, the very same which had once spread the solemnity of their ancient mystery over the Olympian head of Goethe, lay on the ground (I see them always in imagination as my eyes saw them one November afternoon) side by side in a row, with the smoke from their naked roots rising up to the pale heaven above, with their black roots all laid bare, and seeming still to hold prisoner within their vast intricacies the phantom of omnipotent life. And those lordly meadows all round, where only one spring ago violets more numerous than the blades of grass were springing up for the last time, were now ghastly with white lime-pits, red heaps of bricks, the creaking of cart-wheels loaded with stones; while the shouts of the master builders alternated with the hoarse cries of the carters, and the brutal work which was to occupy places so long sacred to Beauty and Visions went on rapidly.
It seemed as though a blast of barbarism were blowing over Rome, and threatening to tear away that radiant crown of patrician villas, incomparable in the world of memories and poetry. The menace of the barbarians hung over the very box-trees of the Villa Albani, though they had seemed as immortal as the Caryatids and the solitude.
The contagion was spreading rapidly everywhere. In the midst of the incessant current of business, of the ferocious fury of appetites and passions, of the disordered and exclusive exercise of utilitarian activity, all sense of decorum had been lost, all respect for the Past laid aside. The battle for gain was being fought with unbridled, implacable violence. The arms used were the pickaxe, the trowel, and bad faith. And from week to week, with almost chimerical rapidity, enormous empty cages, pierced with rectangular holes, their artificial cornices coated with shameful stucco, were rising on foundations filled with heaps of ruins. A species of huge whitish tumour was rising out of the side of the ancient city and sucking away its life.
And then day after day at sunset—as the quarrelsome bands of workmen were dispersing to fill the taverns of the Via Salaria and Via Nomentana—down the princely avenues of the Villa Borghese they drove in shining carriages, these new favourites of fortune, the stamp of whose ignoble origin neither hairdresser, nor tailor, nor bootmaker had been able to remove. One saw them passing to and fro, to the resounding trot of their bay or their black horses, easily recognisable by the insolent awkwardness of their attitudes, the embarrassed look of their rapacious hands imprisoned in gloves always either too large or too small for them. And they seemed to be saying: “We are the new masters of Rome. Bow down to us!”