II
Irene’s first impression on arriving in Rome was one of disappointment. Her imagination was impregnated with visions of the Roman Forum, of proud Romans in togas, of fighting gladiators, of the splendour of the Emperors and the dazzling luxury of the papal court. What wonder, then, if she almost resented the many-storied houses, the shops, the tramways, and the prosaic crowd in its ugly, contemporary attire?
Her disappointment, however, was only transitory, and in spite of her depressed and gloomy state of mind, the magic charm of Rome soon won the day over her low spirits. It is always, indeed, difficult for a northerner to resist the sparkling and effervescent sense of gaiety which awakens in his heart under the rays of the southern sun.
At first, only the mediæval portion of the town absorbed and attracted Irene. She spent days in wandering through labyrinths of narrow, dirty, unpaved streets, where people, horses, donkeys, tramways, and bicycles moved along, an apparently inextricable mass, in the uneven roadway. She felt sad and sick at heart at sight of the miserable dwellings—rather hovels than houses—in which, till the present day, the poor of Rome find shelter. What a contrast between these wretched abodes and the magnificence of the neighbouring Palazzos, with their splendid courtyards and marble colonnades enclosing little gardens overgrown with palms and orange-trees! Even the luxury of the Palazzos, however, depressed Irene. Her mind wandered back to the Middle Ages, and it seemed to her that she had found the key to all the cruelty and injustice of those dark, bygone days. How could kindness and honour and mercy flourish in such gloomy palaces, in such dismal narrow alleys where God’s sunlight never penetrated? No wonder, indeed, if humanity, having at last thrown off the mediæval régime, hastened, immediately after the French Revolution, to escape from these labyrinths of dark and crooked alleys, and invented a new type of towns, whose streets were broad and flooded with sunshine.
The only bright spots that relieved, to Irene, the gloom of mediæval Rome, were the Piazzas, with their gorgeous fountains. Here was the best place for observing the Roman crowd, a crowd always interesting and characteristic, even though robbed, in these days, of its picturesque national costume.
There is a woman, hatless and coatless, in spite of the cold winter’s day, sitting by the fountain with a child in her arms, drawing water and finishing her bambino’s toilet in the open air. Opposite her, on the doorstep of someone’s house, a young carpenter is resting, having left the new table he was carrying to a customer in the middle of the road, in everyone’s way. The slight frown on his pink, dirty face distinctly says: “Gone are the good old times! Where are the bandits that used to hide among the ruins of the Campagna, and receive with open arms fellows like me, who love a gay, careless life, and have no mission for hard work?”
His brothers in spirit, healthy, happy, lazy, young scamps, are loitering about the Piazza, with boxes of cheap mosaic trinkets, smiling caressingly at passing Englishwomen, and saucily offering them their goods: “Des mosaïques, madame? Très jolies et pas chères!” There is a passing vetturino (cabman) raising his finger, and gazing fixedly at the forestiere (foreigner), implying with look and gesture an obliging readiness to drive him to the end of the earth. Leaning against a column, there stands the plague of contemporary Rome: a middle-aged guide, with the face of a benevolent old father who has had no luck in life. He is muffled up in a brightly coloured scarf, and with a massive walking-stick in his hand, he lingers beside a historical monument and awaits his victim, the next unsuspecting and simple passing tourist. He stares gloomily at a crowd of shrieking street urchins, who have just emerged from a neighbouring alley. They are supposed to be selling newspapers, but actually they are eternally fighting, rolling in the dust, throwing about and soiling the newly printed journals. They are dispersed and driven away with a stick by a tall, bent old man, picturesquely draped in an enormous grey cloth cloak with a fur collar. This garment the old man has dragged as a remembrance from the shoulders of a late faithful lodger, recently deceased at an extreme old age. The inconsolable landlord is going to a festa, one of those solemn Masses, with a Cardinal officiating, which are celebrated almost every day in one or other of Rome’s innumerable churches. Behind his indescribably dirty ear, that has never been washed since his birth, he has tucked a red carnation, as a sign of respect to the saint whose memory he is going to honour.
Suddenly, a group of wandering musicians show themselves on the Piazza. One plays the violin, another blows a trumpet, while a third, in a broken top-hat and a rusty overcoat, sings canzonettas, and dances. Immediately, a crowd collects. At all the open windows appear signoras with black eyes and raven tresses, pushing away with their hands the rags hung out to dry. They are all laughing and screaming and chattering, they are all happy. This is still the same pleasure-loving ancient-Roman crowd, living more in the street than at home, and revelling in anything in the nature of a pageant. Arrange a gladiator’s fight to-morrow in the Colosseum, and they will all rush to the spot, and applaud the victor as passionately as ever did their ancestors.