“Dei Stati Uniti,” I replied. “But they told me you were an American, too.”
“Certainly I am an American!” he shouted, indignantly. “I come from Buenos Ayres.”
It had been my custom to ramble at random through the cities of Europe, visiting the points of special interest as I chanced upon them. The topography of Rome, however, is not of the simplest, and, having picked up a guidebook for a few soldi in a second-hand stall, I set out dutifully to follow its lead through the city. It was a work in Italian, published for the use of Roman Catholic pilgrims. For two days it led me a merry chase among the churches and chapels of Rome, calling attention here to the statue of a saint, the bronze foot of which had been kissed into a shapeless mass by devout pellegrini; there to a shrine in which was enclosed the second bone of the third finger of the right hand of some martyr or pope, or a splinter of the true cross that had miraculously found its way to Rome. But as I hurried from chapel to church and from church to chapel I became suspicious of the profound silence of the book’s author, a Father Guiseppe Somebody, on the subject of the monuments of ancient Rome. Having therein more interest than in martyrs’ bones and kissed statues, I sat down on the steps of the forty-ninth church, and turned over the leaves in search of reference to the old-time edifices. Page after page the nomenclature of churches and chapels continued, interspersed with descriptions of more finger-bones and splinters; but, up to the last leaf, not a word of ante-Christian Rome and its ruins. On the final page, in a footnote, the devout author expressed himself as follows:—
“There are in Rome, besides all the blessed relics and holy places we have pointed out to the pilgrim, certain ruins and monuments of the days previous to the coming of Our Holy Saviour. The Faithful, however, will take care not to defile themselves by visiting these remnants of unholy pagan and heathen Rome.”
I sold the “Pilgrims’ Guide” for the price of a bottle of wine and set out to explore the city after my own fashion.
Cæsar, for some reason, has not seen fit to inform posterity whether he patronized the “Colosseum Tonsorial Parlors,” or carried his own razor. If he sallied forth for his daily scrape, times were different then; for, had the conqueror of the Gauls had at hand such barbers as modern Rome harbors he would certainly have turned Vercingetorix over to their tender mercies instead of subjecting him to the mild punishment of an underground dungeon.
There was a shop not far from the wayfarers’ retreat in the Borgo. Recalling painful experiences elsewhere in the peninsula, I avoided it as long as possible, but there came a day when I must sneak inside and take a seat. That, to begin with, was a mere chair, a decidedly rickety one that squeaked and writhed under me as if afraid, like myself, of the scowling proprietor, who stropped his razor in the far corner. By and by he laid the weapon aside, and picking up a small milk-pan, retreated to the back of the room. The only mirror in the establishment being some five inches square, there was no means of knowing what game he indulged in during a prolonged absence.
I had all but fallen asleep, stretched like a suspension bridge between the chair and the wooden box that did duty as foot-rest, when the barber, approaching stealthily, slapped me suddenly and emphatically on the point of the chin with the brush of a defunct or bankrupt billposter. The blow was nothing compared with the temperature of the splash of lather that accompanied it. The cold chills set the ends of my toes tingling. There ensued a lathering of which no American so fortunate as to have spent all his days in the land of his first milk-bottle can form a conception. From ear to ear, from Adam’s apple well up my nostrils, that icy lather was slapped and rubbed in with the paste-brush and the rasp-like palm of the manipulator, until my first notion that this thorough soaping was to lighten the work with the razor was succeeded by the fear that my torturer had decided to dispense with that instrument entirely. When he had covered all my face but one eye, the barber laid aside his brush, strolled to the door, and stood with his arms akimbo, evidently to give his biceps time to recover from their strenuous exertions.
A fellow-townsman sauntered by, and the two fell into a discussion that involved, not the batting averages of the major league, but the advance of a half-cent a liter in the price of wine. The lye on my face began to draw and tingle, the chair groaned under me, and still the dispute raged at the door. Fortunately, the townsman was called away before it was settled. The barber gazed after his retreating form, hummed an opera air in sotto voce, and glanced at the sky for signs of a storm. Then he turned slowly around, stared frowningly at me for several moments in an effort to recall how a man all soaped and ready for the razor had gotten into his establishment, and, with a sigh of regret at the task before him, hunted up the razor, stropped it again as if it had lain unused for six months, and fell to. A hack at one side of my face razed at least a dozen hairs. The torturer changed his mind concerning the point of attack and transferred his efforts to the other side—with no gratifying success, however. He began once more, this time at the point of the chin, worked his way upward by a series of cuts and slashes, and, having removed from my face most of the skin, a fair share of the lather, and even some of the stubble, stepped back to survey his handiwork.
“Here, you’re not finished!” I cried, pointing to my upper lip.