The Monte di pietà seems to be a really beneficent institution; it is well administered, the percentage charged on the money loaned being as low as is practicable. Poor old Nena’s coral earrings and gold beads live there chronically, only appearing upon her small person periodically on “feast” days. Several times webs of fine linen, silverware, and other household furnishings have been offered me at so low a price by one of our clients (we use the old Roman term for the army of hangers-on which has grown up about us) that I feared to buy them lest I should be purchasing stolen goods. On investigation I found the woman’s business was to buy unredeemed pledges at the regular sales of the Monte, and to hawk them about to private customers. After that I had not the heart to buy anything she offered, it seemed like building our house of the driftwood of despair. The Monte is a huge gray palace occupying a whole square behind the Palazzo Santacroce. Over the main entrance hangs a life-sized crucifix. The institution was founded in the year 1539 and has been in operation ever since.
The evolution of Christian out of pagan Rome is not more interesting than the evolution still going on of Rome the modern capital out of that picturesque, mediæval Rome of the “forties,” which my mother has described to me so vividly that it is as if I myself had seen it.
Since we have been here, the old meek horse-cars have been taken off, and horrible “electrics” whiz by our door and stop at the corner of the Piazza of St. Peter’s. And—even worse, I am almost afraid to write it to you—we have a telephone!
A telephone in the Eternal City! In the beginning I was as much shocked by the idea as you can be. The first conversation over the wire consoled me. Ice-chests, electric cars, and telephones only bring home more strongly the feeling that life in Rome is modern, mediæval, and pagan, all at the same time; it is all here in strata, like the rubbish Signor Boni is excavating from the Roman Forum. When you first come here you assume that you must burrow about in ruins and prowl in museums to get back to the days of Numa Pompilius or Mark Antony. It is not necessary; you only have to live, and the common happenings of daily life—yes, even the trolley car and your bicycle—carry you back in turn to the Dark Ages, to the early Christians, even to prehistoric Rome!
The day our telephone was installed I was called by the ding-a-ling of the bell, and “centrale” put me in communication, not only with our friend, Mrs. Z——, but with the Rome of Horace and the witch Canidia as well.
“Can you come to dinner next Monday?” Mrs. Z—— began.
“We will come with leaps and shrieks of joy.”
“Wait; do not accept till you hear who else is coming. We are giving the dinner in honor of M. de Gooch.”
“So much the better. We like to meet distinguished Frenchmen.”
“You are sure you do not mind meeting this particular Frenchman?”