Loitering in Pleasant Paths

by Marion Harland

	Puer Decessit Nomine Dulcis’us	Qui vixit Annos V Mensis VI

Above Benjamin Franklin’s baby-daughter, buried beside him in the almost forgotten corner of an intra-mural graveyard, we can, with pains, read—“The dearest child that ever was.” We thought of it and of another “child” whose brief, beautiful life is summed up in words as apt and almost as few:—

“The sweetest soul

That ever looked with human eyes.”

O, holy Nature! the throbbing, piercèd heart of parenthood! the same in the breast of the mother who laid her boy to sleep, until the morning, in the starless night of the Catacombs, as within the Rachel who weeps to-day beside the coffin of her first, or latest-born!

We had seen the wall in Nero’s barracks from which the famous “Graffito Blasphemo” was taken, about ten years before. To behold the sketch itself was one of our errands to this Museum. It is a square of cement, of adamantine hardness, in a black frame, and hangs in a conspicuous position at the end of the principal corridor. The story, as gathered from the caricature and the place in which it was discovered, is probably something like this:—A party of Nero’s soldiery, gathered in a stall or barrack belonging to the Imperial household, amused themselves by ridiculing one of their number who had been converted to Christianity. Paul was, about that time, dwelling in his own hired house in Rome, or as a prisoner awaiting trial or execution. A part of the richly-sculptured marble bar indicating the Tribune in the Basilica Jovis, before which he was tried, is still standing, not a bow-shot from where the lounging guards made a jest of their comrade’s new faith. One of them drew, with the point of his sword, or other sharp instrument, upon the plastered wall, a rough caricature, representing a man with the head of an ass, hanging upon a cross. His hands are bound to the transverse arms, his feet rest upon a shorter cross-piece fastened to the upright beam. From this position, the head looks down upon a small figure below, who raises his hand in a gesture of adoration more intelligible to the pagan of that date than to us. A jumble of Greek and Latin characters, crowded between and under the figures, points the ribald satire, “Alexamenos adores his God.” Nero went to his account. The very site of his Golden House is a matter of dispute among archæologists who have bared the foundations of the palace of the Cæsars. But after eighteen hundred years, when the rubbish was dug out from the soldiers’ quarters, there appeared the blasphemer’s sketch, as distinct as if drawn at last week’s debauch.

From the observatory of the Collegio Romano a signal is given daily, at twelve o’clock, for the firing of the noon cannon from the Castle of San Angelo. As we entered the Piazza di Spagna on our return, the dull boom shook the air. The streets were full of people, the day being a fine one in early Spring, and, as happens every day in the year, every man, from the cocchière upon his box, to the élégant strolling along the shady side of the square to digest his eleven o’clock breakfast, looked at his watch. Not that the Romans are a punctual people, or moderately industrious. “The man who makes haste, dies early,” is one of their mottoes. “Dolce far niente” belongs to them by virtue of tongue and practice. “Lazzaroni” should be spelled with one z, and include, according to the sense thus conveyed to English ears, tens of thousands besides professional beggars.

There is no pleasanter place in which to be lazy than in this bewitching old city. Our own life there was an idyl, rounded and pure, such as does not come twice to the same mortal. The climate, they would have had us believe was the bane of confiding strangers, was to us all blessedness. Not one of us was ill for a day while we resided in the cozy “appartamento” in Via San Sebastiano; nor was there a death, that winter, among American visitors and residents in Rome. For myself, the soft air was curative to the sore lungs; a delicious sedative that quieted the nerves and brought the boon, long and vainly sought—Sleep! My cough left me within a month, not to return while we remained in Italy. We made the natural mistake of tarrying too late in the Spring, unwilling to leave scenes so fair, fraught with such food for Memory and for Imagination. After mid-April, the noon-day heat was debilitating, and I suffered appreciable diminution of vigor.

I do not apologize for these personal details. Knowing how eagerly invalids, and those who have invalid friends, crave information respecting the means that have restored health to others, I write frankly of my own experience in quest of the lost treasure. It would be strange if I could think of Rome and our home there without felt and uttered gratitude. Convalescence was, with me, less a rally of energies to battle with disease and weakness, than a gradual return, by ways of pleasantness and paths of peace, to physical tranquillity, and through rest, to strength. I hardly comprehended, for awhile, that I was really getting better; that I might be well again in time. I only knew that to breathe was no longer pain, nor to live labor that taxed the powers of body and spirit to the utmost. There was so much to draw me away from the contemplation of my own griefs and ailments that I could have supposed the new existence a delusion, my amendment a trick of fancy. I forgot to think of and watch myself. I had all winter but one return—and that a slight one, induced by unusual exertion—of the hæmorrhages that had alarmed us, from time to time, for two years preceding our departure from America. The angel of healing had touched me, and I knew it not.

One morning I had gone, as was my custom, to a window in the salon, so soon as I left my bed-chamber; thrown it open and leaned upon the balcony-railing to taste the freshness of the new day. We clung to our pillows, as a family rule, until the sonorous cry of the vendor of a morning journal arose to our drowsy ears.