But if, some day, you should find my head crushed, examine carefully its fragments : there, in red ink will be engraved the proud name of Satan! Bend thy head, in reverence and bow to him—but do not do me the honor of accompanying my fragments to the scrap heap: one should never bow so respectfully to chains cast off!
March 9, 1914.
Rome, Villa Orsini.
Last night I had an important conversation with Thomas Magnus. When Maria had retired I began as usual to prepare to return home but Magnus detained me.
“Why go, Mr. Wondergood? Stay here for the night. Stay here and listen to the barking of Mars!”
For several days dense clouds had been gathering over Rome and a heavy rain had been beating down upon its walls and ruins. This morning I read in a newspaper a very portentous weather bulletin: cielo nuvolo il vento forte e mare molto agitato. Toward evening the threat turned into a storm and the enraged sea hurled across a range of ninety miles its moist odors upon the walls of Rome. And the real Roman sea, the billowy Campagna, sang forth with all the voices of the tempest, like the ocean, and at moments it seemed that its immovable hills, its ancient waves, long evaporated by the sun, had once more come to life and moved forward upon the city walls. Mad Mars, this creator of terror and tempest, flew like an arrow across its wide spaces, crushed the head of every blade of grass to the ground, sighed and panted and hurled heavy gusts of wind into the whining cypress trees. Occasionally he would seize and hurl the nearest objects he could lay his hands upon: the brick roofs of the houses shook beneath his blows and their stone walls roared as if inside the very stones the imprisoned wind was gasping and seeking an escape.
We listened to the storm all evening. Maria was calm but Magnus was visibly nervous, constantly rubbed his white hands and listened intently to the antics of the wind: to its murderous whistle, its roar and its signs, its laughter and its groans...the wild-haired artist was cunning enough to be slayer and victim, to strangle and to plead for mercy at one and the same time! If Magnus had the moving ears of an animal, they would have remained immovable. His thin nose trembled, his dim eyes grew dark, as if they reflected the shadows of the clouds, his thin lips were twisted into a quick and strange smile. I, too, was quite excited: it was the first time since I became human I had heard such a storm and it raised in me a white terror: almost with the horror of a child I avoided the windows, beyond which lay the night. Why does it not come here, I thought: can the window pane possibly keep it out if it should wish to break through?...
Some one knocked at the iron gates several times, the gates at which I and Toppi once knocked for admission.
“That is my chauffeur, who has come to fetch me,” said I: “we must admit him.”
Magnus glanced at me from the corner of his eye and remarked sadly:
“There is no road on that side of the house. There is nothing but field there. That is mad Mars who is begging for admittance.”