Early that afternoon I made my way across the Tiber and through the narrow streets of the Borgo to the square before St. Peter’s. About the papal residence the carriages of le beau monde kept up continual procession. I threaded my way towards the entrance to the Vatican galleries, though with little hope that one who had been taken for a beggar in the miserable villages of the Apennines could get beyond the door. At the base of the stairway a Swiss guard, resplendent in that red and yellow uniform which Michael Angelo is accused of having perpetrated, raised his javelin and accosted me in German:—
“Sorry, Landsmann, but the galleries are just closing; it is one o’clock.”
Taking the speech as a polite way of saying that tramps were not admitted, I turned away. Another glance, however, showed that visitors really were leaving, and a “hist” from behind called me back. The guard, glancing around to see if he were observed by the other servants of the Holy Father, leaned on his lance and inquired in a low voice:—
“How’s business on the road these days?”
He had, it turned out, once been a penniless wanderer in nearly every corner of the continent. For some time we chatted in the jargon of “the road,” that language made up of a mixture of slang and gestures that one can learn only by tramping the highways of Europe. The guard smiled reminiscently at each mention of the rendezvous of vagrants to the north, and, having heard such bits of news from the field of action as I could give him, carefully outlined for me the various “grafts” of the Roman fraternity. A companion in office called to him from the top of the steps and he hurried away with the parting injunction:—
“Come to-morrow, mein Lieber, early, if you want to see the galleries.”
When I had inspected the interior of St. Peter’s I sought out the rendezvous to which the guard had directed me. A dozen birds of passage around the wine-tables greeted my entrance in several languages:—
“Ha! En voilà un de plus!”
“Woher, Landsmann? Was gibt’s neues?”
“Y que tal la carretera, hombre?”