Italians like to write stories concerning historic incidents and to embellish them with a veneer of verisimilitude. They like particularly to give them a personal note, deprecatory or laudatory. When the Egyptian obelisk was being forced to a perpendicular position in the Piazza of St. Peter's, the crowd had been admonished under penalty of death to be silent. The stillness of the piazza, broken only by the creaking of the ropes, was suddenly torn asunder by a shout of "Wet the ropes." Thus the famous obelisk was preserved intact, and the man whose discernment had accomplished it, instead of having his head cut off, was allowed to furnish the palms for St. Peter's every Palm Sunday. Incidentally he was ennobled, and since that time his reward has been the family's chief asset. In the same way, one of the river gods of the fountain set up in the middle of the Piazza Navona seems to be drawing a mantle up over his head while the others, those of the Danube, the Ganges, and the Rio della Plata, are looking straight ahead. Bernini, who built the fountain, says that Nile was so shocked by the façade which Borromini, a contemporary architect, added to the Church of St. Agnes, which is immediately in front of it, that he had to veil his face.
The story of Pasquino is that he asked questions concerning the conduct of the reigning power, which, of course, in those days was the pope, and made reflections which Marforio, the river god which stood between the horse-tamers in the Piazza della Quirinale, answered. Pasquino, in short, became the organ of public opinion, and it was not subject to the censor, for the authors prudently kept out of sight. His most poisonous venom and destructive wrath were directed against popes and cardinals. If he said the things that he is alleged to have said about Alexander VI and Innocent XI (the holy man who started the Inquisition), it is easy to understand that one of their successors wished to throw him into the bottom of the Tiber, the resting-place of countless priceless objects of art for many centuries. As a matter of fact, however, the stories about Pasquino to be found in every guide-book are, like many other stories when run to earth, largely fiction.
Thirty years ago there was published in the Nuova Antologia an article by Domenico Gnoli which sets forth the real history of Pasquino. When Cardinal Carraffa went to live in the Braschi Palace he had the statue set up at one of the corners, and there it has since remained. In those days religious processions were as common as automobiles and bicycles are to-day. The priests in them often rested at this corner, and it became the custom to make up the statue to represent different personages, and the man who was intrusted with this task happened to be a professor in the adjacent university. He encouraged his boys to write epilogues, elegies, and epigrams which they pasted or stuck on the statue. At first these were purely literary efforts, juvenile flights to Parnassus, but later they took on a political and social flavor, while still later they became concerned with the doings of the Curia. These pasquinades have been collected in book form, and some of the volumes exist at the present time. The majority, however, have been lost—perished in flames, destroyed as having no value, or disappeared in other ways. Thus the statue was initiated as a news-bearer or organ of public opinion.
Immediately across the road from the statue there was a tailor or barber shop, and the name of the chief operator was Pasquino. It was in this shop that the messages stuck on the statue were collected, deciphered, and discussed, and when the witty tailor died they gave his name to the statue and thus immortality was thrust upon him. In reality, after the cessation of the publications, "Carmina quæ ad Pasquillum fuerunt posita in anno," and the murder of the professor who had encouraged his students to put forth their youthful efforts, men groaning under the oppression of their rulers, men big with ideas of what we now call liberty, men in whom the germs of freedom and equality had been implanted, saw a fairly safe way of getting their sentiments before the public, and they utilized Pasquino as a forum from which they could radiate their ideas and their sentiments. During the entire sixteenth century these men conveyed to the Borgias and to Julius II and Paul III and Innocent X and Innocent XI and Pius VI an expression of their feeling and conviction concerning their conduct, individually and collectively. Whether these contributions had anything to do with shaping public opinion and leading up to the great Reformation, it is impossible to say.
Whatever Pasquino accomplished or didn't accomplish seems not to concern him, for there he sits tranquilly upon six blocks of volcanic stone, indifferent to the passing show and to the transpirations of the world.
A few paces beyond the Palazzo Braschi I suddenly come upon one of the most attractive and alluring piazzas in Rome, the Piazza Navona, or, as it is sometimes called, the Circo Agonale. By its oblong form, its seductive symmetry, its elaborate decorations—three beautiful fountains, the central one surmounted by an Egyptian obelisk which once stood in the Circus of Maxentius; by its boundaries, which include the Palazzo Pamfili, the Church of S. Agnese, and the Church of S. Giacomo of the Spaniards, and innumerable small and large houses—it succeeds in conveying to the observer, who is susceptible to æsthetic impressions, sensations which are as purely pleasurable as anything can possibly be. Were it not for the distinctively Italian architecture one might easily imagine that he was in the centre of some provincial large city of France. It has, more than any other public square that I have ever been in, that quality which we speak of as foreign. No two buildings are alike, and, mean though many of them are, and especially toward the northern end, they blend in such a way as to produce a perfect harmony of color and architectural effect. In olden times they held races here, and I can imagine how marvellous a sight it must have been with the palaces and houses gayly decked with flags and drapery, rich rugs hanging from the window-sills, on which leaned beautiful ladies, frail and strong, attended solicitously, perhaps watchfully, by cavaliers and admirers, and the square below filled with the pleasure-loving crowd whose conduct betrayed nothing else save a desire to be amused and diverted. During the summer I often sat for a half-hour on my way home in this square, and, while watching the countless children from the surrounding tenements in those simple indulgences which they call play, tried to fancy some of the events that had taken place in the square and in the palaces and churches bordering it.
It was in the Pamfili Palace, built by Innocent X in 1650 for his predatory and dissolute sister-in-law, Olympia Malacchimi, that the fortunes of the Pamfili family began. Here she sold bishoprics and beneficences, and here she externalized that conduct which brought infamy on her name. What a story an account of the intimate doings of that family would make! Their palace in the Corso is one of the most beautiful Renaissance residences in the world, and their villa on the Janiculum is an approximation to a rural paradise. All that is left of the family is a faded, sad, suggestible, middle-aged princess, whose English appearance and manner betray a lifelong habit of emotional suppression, and one son who is eking out his miserable days in the mountains of Switzerland.
Immediately adjacent to the palace is the Church of St. Agnes, built about the same time and on the spot where the girl whose name it commemorates was supposed to have had miraculous delivery from humiliations and outrages similar to those to which the Belgian nuns were subjected by the Germans. I say "Germans" advisedly, for I am unable to understand why any one should think for a moment that the term "Hun," so widely applied to them, carries with it any such obloquy or opprobrium as the simple name "German." I venture to say that in years to come, when any one wishes to describe abominations, cruelties, savageries for which no name is adequate, he will use the term "Germanic." Then even the most inexperienced in crime and sin will get a glimmering of what is meant.
It is related that when Agnes was about fourteen years old she was taken to a lupanalia and there, bereft of all her clothing, became the target of the word and the conduct of a group of lubricitous monsters. Overwhelmed with shame, her head fell upon her chest and she prayed. Immediately her hair took on such miraculous growth that it concealed her nakedness. But there were other more startling experiences in store for her. For her rebelliousness and general contumacy she was condemned to be burned alive. When the flames were about to devour her they suddenly became possessed of a dual quality, one radiating refreshment upon her, the other destruction upon her executioners. The lady had many other experiences which have long since been denied her sex, but it is popularly believed that she devotes much attention in her heavenly home to seeing that maidens who request her in a proper frame of mind and body, which for the latter is twenty-four hours' abstinence from everything but pure spring water, are provided with husbands. It would be trivial of me to add that she probably is overworked these days when so many prospective husbands are at the front, but I have no real information on the matter, and I sincerely hope that the nubile Italians have no serious difficulty in finding spouses.
From here my route is to the Corso, which at this early hour is nearly deserted. There are many streets that I may take: one that leads to the Pantheon; another that goes past the Palazzo Madama and other interesting public and private buildings. As a rule I take the latter, for it leads me to the Via Condotti, which ends in the Piazza di Spagna. Before the war this piazza was the rendezvous of American tourists. The vendors of objects of art and of Roman pearls, the antiquarian who had his wares fabricated around the corner or in the Trastevere, the dealer in genuine Raphaels and Tintorettos, the rapacious dealers in old books are all there, but most of them are on their knees in their shops with half-closed shutters, praying for the war to end so that the gullible rich Americans may come again. Their prayers are heard and their supplications will soon be answered. Meanwhile I cast a glance at the wretched monument erected a half-century ago to commemorate the promulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, look lovingly at the semi-sunken boat-shaped fountain just in front of the steps, and begin slowly to mount the most impressive steps in Rome, which seem to lead up like heavenly stairs to the massive, double-belfried Church of Trinità dei Monti, with the graceful Egyptian obelisk in front of it. Nowadays the steps are not so picturesque as I have often seen them in peace time, when lovely artists' models, picturesque loafers and the exponents of the dolce far niente collected on the steps and made, in conjunction with the flowers and plants that were exhibited there for sale, an almost unique picture. It is now deserted save for some hazardous Greek or Italian who attempts to eke out a living by disposing of flowers that have been camouflaged to look fresh. Nevertheless the staircase and its environment make an appeal which repeated visits serve only to increase. From the top of it, in the little square in front of the church, one gets an attractive, though limited, view of the city and of Monte Mario, but it is a view that convinces him that he is in a city quite unlike any other in the world.