“We can go no further on this road, Lady!” he said, pointing to the body of the murdered King.
“Drive on!” she commanded.
“I cannot—without crushing the King’s body,” he protested.
“Drive on!” she cried, frantic to reach her goal, and the trembling man obeyed. The wheels bit deep into the yet warm flesh, and dripped and spattered her father’s blood all along the road which the daughter followed to reach the stolen throne. And from that day on through all the ages the thoroughfare was called the Vico Scellerato—the atrocious road!
Tullia’s son grew up to be “False Sextus,” whose crime forced chaste Lucrece to take her own life. Then the people rose against the tyrants and drove them out, to die despised and in exile and never another “King” ruled in Rome till it opened its dishonoured gates to Victor Emmanuel in 1870.
CHAPTER VII THE LATER EMPERORS
People and Scenes of the Corso—The Collegio Romano—Cardinal Merry del Val—Church of the Trinità dei Monti—A Picture of the Emperor Theodosius and His Son—The Other Boy Emperor, Gratian—The Usurper, Maximus—Nobility of Gratian—Finally Overcome by Treachery—Saint Ambrose—Fifth Day at St. Peter of the Chains—Two Christian Empresses—The Miracle of the Chains—High Mass at San Pietro—Latter Days of the Pilgrimage—View from Janiculum Hill—Michelangelo and Vasari—Michelangelo’s “Visiting Card.”
The second day of July, if we follow out our proposed seven days’ pilgrimage, brings us to a spot in the Corso which so hums and stirs with modern life that it is difficult for the imagination to connect it with antiquity at all. Not that the Corso itself has the appearance of a modern street by any means. Narrow and anything but straight, with great palaces and mean buildings crowding promiscuously and set as close together as possible—princely houses flanked by humble shops—with cross streets debouching into it every few hundred yards, and pouring forth a stream of traffic, spreading away here and there as if pushed out by main force, but yielding as little as possible of the coveted sidewalks, it is the real artery of Rome, pulsing with the life of a people who, from the days of Julius Cæsar to our own, have carried on existence in the open air. There the lawyers discuss their cases, the politicians air their opinions; the young men, at a certain hour of the afternoon, stand in long lines, like troops on guard, on the outer edge of the sidewalk, to ogle and criticise the women who roll by in their carriages trying to look unconscious of the enfilade. But the morning is the Corso’s real prime, a midday of spring for choice, when, from a cloudless sky, the sun in his zenith rakes the long street from the Piazza di Venezia to the Popolo without leaving so much as an inch of shade as a refuge from his fierce rays, except where the shop-awnings extend a merciful protection to foot-passengers. The flower vendors are everywhere, offering whole baskets of lilacs—the fat Roman lilacs—carnations, and roses for a franc or two, and eagerly offering to carry the burden home for one on the spot. The great ladies, who would rather die than be seen in the Corso on foot in the afternoon, are racing about in twos and threes, dressed as simply as possible, it is true, but with the huge diamond earrings, from which they never part, focussing the sunbeams, while their high-voiced, intimate chatter and proud faces express their complete contempt for and ignoring of any human being outside their own aristocratic circle. This is the golden hour for the dressmakers and milliners and jewellers, and their faces are wreathed in smiles as they fly about to satisfy the wealthy customers who make the morning their own. Few foreigners are seen; they haunt the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti, the street of the jewellers, who work solely for them in Etruscan gold and cameos and mosaics, ornaments which no Roman would ever think of buying or wearing, though they are far more artistic than the Frenchified tiaras and rivières to be seen on the Corso.
A few minutes before noon the crowd thickens there near the Collegio Romano till it is hard to make one’s way through it; the buzz of talk ceases, men get out their watches, and hold them in their hands while all eyes are turned upward as if expecting the advent of some celestial apparition. Silence reigns for a minute or two; then it is rent by the thunderous boom of the midday gun at Sant’ Angelo, and the next instant a babel of deafening sound has broken over the city. Every Church bell in Rome is ringing madly. The crowd cries “Mezzo Giorno!” with one voice, the black cone has run up on the flagstaff of the College observatory, and the watches have been returned to their owners’ pockets. There is a kind of stampede to homes and restaurants for the midday meal, unless it is checked by the appearance of a squadron of dragoons clattering down the street like mounted suns, their helmets and breastplates shining intolerably bright, their big black horses pretending to paw and chafe in tune with the military band that follows them and which is filling the air with the joyous strains of a popular march that tries to outdo the pealing of the bells. Beside and behind the band comes every ragamuffin in Rome, marching delightedly, head in air, mouth open, and roaring out the tune; hunger and rags are forgotten for the moment and every beggar boy feels like a victorious general attending his own triumph.
Now the doors of the Collegio have opened to let out another great stream to join the throng—students of all classes and nationalities pour into the street. On certain days those of the Collegio di Propaganda Fide may be seen hurrying across the town to take their exercise in the suburbs. Here come Greeks and Copts, Bengalis and Chinese, crossing similar processions of fair-haired English and Germans, the latter picturesquely notable as they stride along, two by two, some forty of them perhaps, in the vivid scarlet cassock and hat which Gregory XVI imposed upon them to cure them of slipping unnoticed into a “birreria” for a glass of their national beverage, and which costume has caused the Romans to give them the nickname of “Gamberi”—Lobsters! They make a great contrast to the English-speaking students, Scotch, Irish, American, and English proper, who wear sombre black or dark purple; but the form of the uniform is always the same, a long cassock with St. Ignatius’ streamers reaching to the hem and flying from the shoulders at every touch of wind, every movement of the muscular young bodies. The whole is crowned by a wide, three-cornered hat, from under which the boyish faces look out roguishly enough on what the owners evidently consider a mighty pleasant world.