“We must help these poor people to help themselves,” said the Ambassador, sounding the key-note of the American relief work from first to last. Then very kindly he pointed out to me that my interest in an individual case made me lose sight of the fact that he must deal with the situation as a whole. The American funds must be distributed with method and exactness; the generous help our country was sending must be well spent; his work was to lay out the general scheme, the detail was for others; he had appointed an American Relief Committee; they had held their first meeting that morning.
I saw it all then in a flash, got a sense of some great plan maturing, and took my leave, mortified enough that I should have troubled the god-in-the-machine with a mere detail.
The next day, Sunday, was like a poem bound in blue and gold. I went up on the terrace to gather the last chrysanthemums that had escaped the frost, and to loosen the soil about the first hyacinth, whose close-furled pointed leaves pricked through the brown mould. Below the Tiber rolled, a tawny flood, under the arches of the Ponte Margherita. Across the river the angel of the Castel Sant’ Angelo lifted his bronze sword over the tomb of Hadrian, the dome of St. Peter’s showed like a pale blue bubble against the deeper blue of the sky; the bells of Rome rocked and pealed in their towers, calling the people to mass. From the barracks in the Prati di Castello the bugles sounded, and a regiment swung down the white road by the Tiber, past the statue of Ciceruácchio, and over the bridge to the gay music of the royal march. I was leaning over the parapet to watch the soldiers out of sight, when Agnese called me downstairs.
“A messenger from the Embassy, Signora, with a bundle so large we had to open both sides of the portone to let it pass!”
I hurried down in time to thank the good-natured giant for the gigantic parcel he had brought. Agnese cut the strings and handed me a card with a line in pencil signed Elizabeth Griscom.
“Signora, it is a cradle but of an unimaginable fineness! Observe the pillow case, it is of linen. This is a blanket for a queen’s son; and these garments, truly they are fit for a queen’s children, no less! They doubtless belonged to that small angel with the eyes of his beautiful mother, whom I saw when I took a letter to the Ambassadress? Consider, Signora, are these magnificences fitting for the infant of a plumber? Madonna mia! It is turning to their account this business of the earthquake! This dress, it is quite new; you yourself could wear it—the color would suit you, or we could have it dyed a dark purple.”
What the Ambassador could not do, the Ambassadress had done. Besides the dainty cradle, the blankets, jackets and other baby luxuries such as neither Lucia nor Agnese had ever dreamed of, there was a little knitted shawl for poor old Rosina, and good warm dresses for the plumber’s wife and mother. Agnese was right; the pretty baby finery belonged to the little son born to the Ambassador during his first months of office in Rome. There is a story that the King, on being told that Mrs. Griscom could not be present at some official reception on account of her baby, exclaimed in astonishment:
“I never before have heard of an Ambassadress with a baby!”
The time had come when the King, the colony, all concerned were thankful that the American Ambassador and Ambassadress were young people, with strong young nerves and generous young hearts.
“Send for Napoleone,” I cried to Agnese. Napoleone the cabman can only be reached through the connivance of a clerk of Fasani, the grocer in the Piazza de Spagna. Napoleone is very “black” and has the superior manners of the “clericals.”