“This once held the ashes of a soldier of the Pretorian Guard,” said Vera. She had given us the urn. “Do you suppose a pinch of his dust remains in it? There’s your freesia’s courage accounted for. I wonder what he was called. Herminius, Spurius Lartius? There was neither name nor date when I bought it; they must have been on the missing cover. What noble action!” Vera’s thumb followed, with the sculptor’s gesture, the lines of the Pretorian, modelled in low relief on the urn. He wears a mantle, helmet and greaves; his spear is raised against a crouching barbarian. “He must have been a fine man, our Pretorian, though this isn’t a portrait, only a type. Oh, how civilized those old Romans were! No ugly bones, no grinning skulls. The worn-out body to the clean flame, the handful of ashes to this graceful urn, that two thousand years after the Pretorian’s death serves as a flower pot.”
“I believe his name was Philippus,” I said, “and that he looked like our Philippus. The regiment has returned from Messina without him. I fear something has happened to our handsome soldier.”
“Hush!” cried Vera. “The earthquake was a month ago; it still is the only thing we talk or think about.”
“Some of our friends begin to forget. The mother of a pretty girl was grumbling today because the Queen says there shall be no court balls, no more dancing this season. She does not forget; no one who has seen Messina forgets!”
“Come, let us walk!” There was a touch of tramontana in the air, and we began to pace up and down the terrace, Romulus, Vera’s uncouth puppy, shambling at her heel. The bells of St. Peter’s were ringing the Ave Maria; from the Pincio came little gusts of music,—the band was playing Cavalleria Rusticana. At either end of the terrace we lingered to feast on the beauty of the view; to the east the white road climbs zigzag from the Piazza del Popolo to the Pincio, with its crown of dark cypresses and stone pines, its wonderful clipped ilex walk that leads to the Villa Medici, home of nightingale and rose. To the west we looked down to the yellow Tiber, angry and swollen, hurrying to the sea. The river was higher than I ever saw it; the driftwood, caught by the piers of the Ponte Margherita, reached half-way to the level of the bridge.
“A thousand apologies!” said a voice behind us; “is not this the tortoise of your Excellency? The German maid found it on the terrace of the Princess.”
It was Ignazio, holding between scornful thumb and finger that yellow mottled vagrant, Jeremy Bentham, who clawed the air furiously with his ridiculous short legs and snapped fiercely at Ignazio.
“You are aware the tortoise is ours; you yourself carved that date upon his shell. If you had stopped the hole in the wall this would not have happened.”
“Excellency” (Ignazio’s bill was paid that morning; he will call me “Excellency” till the next is due, then it will be “Signora”), “Excellency, this is the most obstinate of all animals, the slowest, the idlest, the most useless.” Ignazio dipped the tortoise in the fountain, then laid him on the parapet out of reach of Romulus, who was making frantic efforts to get at him.
“You yourself tell me he eats the slugs and snails that destroy our flowers!”