The Colosseum looked rather theatrical in the glare of the red and green Bengal lights, and I think it lost a great deal of its dignity and grandeur by this cheap method of illumination.
I met there a Spanish gentleman whom I used to know in Paris years ago. He was at that time the Marquis de Lema, a middle-aged beau, who was always ready to fill any gap in society where a noble marquis was needed.
He began life, strange to say, as a journalist, and as such made himself so useful to the ex-King of Naples that the King, to reward him, hired the famous Farnesina Palace for ninety-nine years. Here the former Marquis, who is now Duke di Ripalda, lives very much aggrandized as a descendant of the Cid, glorying in his ancestorship.
He was very glad to see me again, he said, and to prove it came often to dine with us.
One day he asked Mrs. Lawrence, Miss Chapman, and myself to take tea with him in the romantic garden of the Farnesina. Mrs. Lawrence said it was like a dream, walking under the orange-trees and looking down on the old Tiber, which makes a sudden turn at the bottom of the broad terrace.
Her dream came suddenly to an end when she saw the stale cakes and the weak and watery tea and oily chocolate which, out of politeness, we felt obliged to swallow; and the nightmare set in when she saw his apartment on the first floor, furnished by himself with his own individual taste, which was simply awful. But who cares for the mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture covered with hideous modern blue brocade and the multicolored carpets in which his coat of arms were woven, when one can look at his Sodomas and Correggios and Raphaels? His coat of arms, which is a sword with "Si, si, no, no," is displayed everywhere throughout the palace.
The "cid-evant" Marquis told us that the Cid had given the sword to one of his ancestors, and remarked that it signified that his forefathers had very decided characters, and that it was either yes or no with them. I thought it might work the other way; it might just as well mean that the ancestors did not know their own minds, and that first it was yes and then it was no with them. The Duke, in a truly grandiose manner, lays no restriction on the public, but throws his whole palace open every first and fifteenth of the month, and allows people to roam at their pleasure through all the rooms; they can even sit on the blue brocade furniture if they like, and there is no officious guide ordering people about with their, "This way, Madame," or "Don't sit down," "Don't walk on the carpet," or "Don't spit on the floor."
On the ground floor are the celebrated frescoes of "Psyche," painted by Raphael, and in the large gallery there is a little design on the walls to which the Duke called our attention, saying it was Michelangelo's visiting-card, and told us that Michelangelo came one day, and, finding Raphael absent, took up his palette and painted this little picture, which still remains on the walls, framed and with a glass over it.
Mrs. Lawrence told us of a new acquaintance she had made, a Baron Montenaro, who said he was the last (the very last) of the Rienzis, a descendant of Cola di. The last tribune left! "Is it not romantic?" cried Mrs. Lawrence, and was all eyes and ears. But prosaic Duke di Ripalda said, "How can he say he is the last of the Rienzis, when he has a married brother who has prospects of a small tribune of his own?"
ROME, April, 1875.