'I am not talking of faith. Am I a glorifier of religion? The old fables are exploded, but the human interest survives and multiplies. We live near all this great ferment, and do not see it. We have our being in the presence of a gigantic mystery working in darkness, yet we do not suspect its existence.'
Giustini ceased, again casting his eyes over the vast panorama of the city, which seemed drowned in the nebulous atmosphere of the sirocco. Sangiorgio listened in excitement, with a thrill of anxiety at his heart, as one might at the approach of danger, while Giustini continued:
'There is the Quirinal—the King, the Queen, the Court. Yes, down there, under that rosy light. Four balls, eight official receptions, forty gala dinners, twenty evenings at the theatre, four concerts, thirty inaugurations, four hundred presentations, diamonds at the throat, medals on the chest, plumes in the hat, naked shoulders, pâté de foie gras, quadrilles of honour—whoever thought it was anything else? But this beautiful Queen, who receives friend and foe, monarchist and republican, with the same cordiality, is also a woman who thinks, who feels, who knows, who listens. And this King, harassed by such a heavy burden, dutifully bound to perpetual obedience, is he not a man, has not he, too, a conscience, a mind, a will? And all these Court people, officers and secretaries, ladies-in-waiting and diplomats, major-domos and servants, do you think they do not worry, and struggle, and live? Do you suppose they do nothing but make bows? That they only know how to walk in front of the King in a room? Who can assert that? Do they not love and hate, and have furious passions and ambitions? Has not every one of those women a desire, some envy, bitter regrets?'
The ruthless man was running his fingers nervously along the top of the parapet, where he found a large piece of dried lime. He broke off little pieces, and flipped them over the green bank. Francesco Sangiorgio followed with utmost attention the action of those thin, brown hands, with their heavy, swelled veins.
'You cannot see that cauldron of Montecitorio,' resumed the Tuscan in a harder tone of voice; 'it is lost among the houses; we are lost in it—a furnace of waste-paper, in which one is gradually burnt up by a desiccating heat—the temperature of an incubator, which lulls to sleep all audacities and quickens all timidities, which ends in scorching terribly all the waverers, and which awakens a few pseudo-ideas in the cranium of idiots. All the inmates of that cardboard drum excite themselves to shrieking, or remain utterly dumb, because of a law, or a regulation, or a railway, or a bridge; they clamour for more laws, weighty and trivial, more railways of all kinds, more bridges everywhere; they want to become Ministers, wear uniforms, be deafened by the national anthem wherever they arrive in the country, have as natural enemies their early friends, be branded thieves in the newspapers, know their private letters are opened by a too officious secretary—and other delights of the same kind. Some poor wretches want to be Secretary-General! I was one of them. Oh, the frightful furnace, that shrivels men like dry beans, men inflamed by furious desires and consumed in the emptiness of those desires!'
The heavens, all white at their zenith, now assumed a delicate tint of gray on the circular hem of the horizon; like an ethereal veil the spirit of evening rose in the air above the city. Francesco Sangiorgio experienced a strange uneasiness; Tullio Giustini at that moment seemed to him more hideous than ever; as he laughed he displayed two rows of ugly yellow teeth.
'How quiet the city is!' he went on. 'It seems to be asleep, enjoying the Christmas festival. It seems to be, but is not. Up there, in the verdure of the Pincio and the Villa Medici, which extends down to the Via Babuino, the painters sing, laugh, discuss heresies as if they were theories of art, and produce pictures that seem great absurdities. But what do they care? To console themselves for their failure they have invented the word Philistine, which expresses their contempt for the public. In the whiteness over there, on the other side, are the new quarters. Have you ever been there? Seventy thousand people, in all sorts of employment, with their families, servants, dogs, and cats: a concourse of savages—unarmed, hungry savages—squatting up there, looking at Rome and hating it because they cannot understand it, and they find it exacting while their women make children and cook, women with pale faces, with flat breasts, and red hands. They have been celebrating Christmas in their prisons, venting their spleen against the Government, their servants, Rome, and the butcher, like real, miserable, stupid savages. And the Romans—the true Romans—of the Regola and the Popolo, of the Monti district and the Trevi district, who add the adjective Roman to their name like a title of nobility, who eat dumplings on Thursdays, tripe on Sundays, and lamb at all times, who like white wine and the fireworks at Sant' Angelo, who are proud of their March water, and calmly allow the beetles to swarm in their old houses, the sceptical, clever, impassive, and industrious Romans, who are good husbands and kind lovers, they certainly are not asleep. And the women, Roman or Neapolitan, Italian or foreign, who go for walks, stand at the window, argue, laugh, kiss when they love, and are kissed when loved, they are not asleep—no, the women never sleep, not even at night. Oh, Rome is so alert, though it seems stagnant; it is so great, so complicated, so delicate in its mechanism, so powerful on its steel springs, that when I bend over to look at it, from up here, it frightens me, like an infernal machine.'
In the spreading twilight Francesco Sangiorgio, deadly pale, bent down to look also, as though to discover the mysterious machinery of Rome.
'And what is the dream of those who come here?' continued Tullio Giustini, with a short, sardonic laugh. 'You believe that you are awaited with the amorous serenity of a great city, because you are young, and you have talents, and you wish to work, and not be unworthy of the noble city. I, too, came thus, and I thought the first Roman citizen must needs embrace me. Instead, after three or four years of fretting, of internal torments, and of huge delusions, I learned a few things: that I was too frank to succeed in politics, that I was too rough to please the women, that I was too sickly to do scientific work, that I was too brittle to succeed in diplomacy. This I learned, and from this, a fact as glaring as the sun, as terrible as truth itself—Rome gives herself up to no one!'
'And what must one do?' asked Francesco Sangiorgio, half trembling.