It was dusk when our effects were collected, and they and ourselves jolting over miserable pavements toward our hotel in the guardianship of a friend who had kindly met us at the station. By the time we had reached the quarters he had engaged for us; had waited some minutes in a reception-room in the rez-de-chaussée that felt and smelt like a newly-dug grave; had ascended two flights of obdurate stone stairs, cruelly mortifying to feet cramped and tender with long sitting and the hot-water footstools of the railway carriage; had sat for half an hour, shawled and hatted, in chambers more raw and earthy of odor than had been the waiting-room, watching the contest betwixt flame and smoke in the disused chimneys, we discovered and admitted that we were tired to death. Furthermore, that the sensation of wishing oneself really and comfortably deceased, upon attaining this degree of physical depression, is the same in a city almost thirty centuries old, and in a hunter’s camp in the Adirondacks. Even Caput looked vexed, and wondered audibly and repeatedly why fires were not ready in rooms that were positively engaged and ordered to be made comfortable twenty-four hours ago; and the Invaluable, depositing Boy, swathed in railway rugs, upon one of the high, single beds, lest his feet should freeze upon “the murdersome cold floors,” “guessed these Eyetalians aren’t much, if any of fire-makers.” Thereupon, she went down upon her knees to coax into being the smothering blaze, dying upon a cold hearth under unskilfully-laid fuel. The carpet in the salon we had likewise bespoken was not put down until the afternoon of the following day. The fires in all the bed-rooms smoked. By eight o’clock we extinguished the last spark and went to bed. In time, we took these dampers and reactions as a part of a hard day’s work; gained faith in our ability to live until next morning. Being unseasoned at this period, the first night in Rome was torture while we endured it, humiliating in the retrospect.
It rained from dawn to sundown of the next day. Not with melancholy persistency, as in Florence, as if the weather were put out by contract and time no object, but in passionate, fitful showers, making rivers of the streets, separated by intervals of sobbing and moaning winds and angry spits of rain-drops. We stayed in-doors, and, under compulsion, rested. The fires burned better as the chimneys warmed to their work; we unpacked a trunk or two; wrote letters and watched, amused and curious, the proceedings of two men and two women who took eight hours to stretch and tack down the carpet in our salon. Each time one of us peeped, or sauntered in to note and report progress, all four of the work-people intermitted their ceaseless jargon to nod and smile, and say “Domane!” Young travelled in Italy before he wrote “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!”
Our morrow was brilliantly clear, and freshness like the dewy breath of early Spring was in the air. Our first visit was, of course, to our bankers, and while Caput went in to inquire for letters (and to learn, I may add, that the story of the thirteen American corpses was unsupported by the presence, then or during the entire season, of a single one), we lay back among the carriage-cushions, feeling that we drank in the sunshine at every pore—enjoying as children or Italians might the various and delightful features of the scene.
The sunlight—clarified of all vaporous grossness by the departed tempest—in color, the purest amber; in touch and play beneficent as fairy balm, was everywhere. Upon the worn stones paving the Piazza di Spagna, and upon the Bernini fountain (one of them), the Barcaccia, at the foot of the Spanish Steps,—a boat, commemorating the mimic naval battles held here by Domitian, when the Piazza was a theatre enclosing an artificial lake. Upon beggars lolling along the tawny-gray Steps, and contadini—boys, women, and girls—in fantastic costume, attitudinizing to catch the eye of a chance artist. Upon the column, with the Virgin’s statue on top, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and David at the base, rusty tears, from unsuspected iron veins, oozing out of the sides,—decreed by Pius IX. in honor of his pet dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Upon the big, dingy College of the Propaganda, founded in 1622, Barberini bees in bas-relief conspicuous among the architectural ornaments. More of Bernini’s work. Urban VIII., his patron, being a Barberini. Upon the Trinita di Monti at the top of the Spanish Staircase, where the nuns sing like imprisoned canaries—as sweetly and as monotonously—on Sabbath afternoons, and all the world goes to hear them. Upon the glittering windows of shops and hotels fronting the Piazza—the centre of English and American colonies in Rome. Upon the white teeth and brown faces of boys—some beautiful as cherubs—who held up great trays of violets for us to buy, and wedded forever our memories of the Piazza and this morning with violet scent. Upon the wrinkles and rags of old women—some hideous as hags—who piped entreaties that we would “per l’amore di Dio” make a selection from their stock of Venetian beads, Naples lava trinkets, and Sorrento wood-work. Upon the portly figure and bland countenance of Mr. Hooker, coming out to welcome us to the city which has given him a home for thirty years, and which he has made home-like to so many of his country-people. Lastly, and to our fancy most brightly, upon the faces of my Florence angel of mercy and her family party, alighting from their carriage at the door of the bank, and hurrying up to exchange greetings with us.
This was our real coming to Rome! Not the damp and despondency of the thirty-six hours lying just behind us; dreariness and doubts never renewed in the five fleet-footed months during which we lingered and lived within her storied gates.
CHAPTER XIV.
Pope, King, and Forum.
I WAS sorry to leave the hotel, the name of which I withhold for reasons that will be obvious presently. Not that it was in itself a pleasant caravansary, although eminently respectable, and much affected by Americans and English. Not that the rooms were ever warm, although we wasted our substance in fire-building; or that the one dish of meat at luncheon, or the principal dessert at dinner, always “went around.” We had hired a commodious and sunny “appartamento” of seven well-furnished rooms in Via San Sebastiano—a section of the Piazza di Spagna—and were anxious to begin housekeeping.