"The likeness is extraordinary!" cried Vladimir ecstatically, and gazing alternately at the bust and at Slawa. "Oh, it is a gem, a masterpiece! you ought never to part with it."
"Well, but I must say I should very much like to go to Rome," sighed the baroness; but Slawa only bit her lips.
CHAPTER VIII.
"And what shall we do to-morrow?" Sempaly would ask Zinka almost every evening when he met her, fresh and smiling, at some party; he had made it his task to help her to find her lost Rome and devoted himself to it with praiseworthy diligence.
The disappointment that she had experienced in her expedition under the guidance of the botta driver to the ruins of the capital of the Caesars is a common enough phenomenon; it comes over almost everyone who sets out with his fancy crammed with the mystical cobwebs that recent literature has spun round the name of Rome, to see for the first time that dense mass of splendor and rubbish among the bare modern houses. And the disappointment is greatest in those who come from a long stay in Venice or Verona. Rome has none of the seductive charm of those North Italian cities. Its architecture is sombre and heavy, and the prevailing hues in winter are a sober grey and a dull bluish-green, more suggestive of a subtly toned tempera picture than of a glowing oil painting. It is vain to look for the sheen of the shimmering lagoons or the fantastic outline of the campaniles against the sky of Venice; for the half-ruined frescoes, or amber sunshine of Verona.
"After the cities of North Italy Rome has the effect of a severe choral by Handel after a nocturne by Chopin. The first impression is crushing," said Sempaly to Zinka; "but one wearies of the nocturne, and never of the choral."
To which Zinka replied: "But the choral is so drowned by trivial hurdy-gurdy tunes that I find it very difficult to follow." To which he laughed and said: "We will speak of that again in a fortnight."
By the end of the fortnight Zinka had thrown two soldi into the Fountain of Trevi to make sure that she should some day see Rome again, and in fanaticism for Rome she outdid even the fanatical General von Klinger. Sempaly had contributed mainly to her conversion. Nothing could be more amusing or more interesting than to explore every nook of the city of ruins under his escort. He was constantly remembering this or that wonderful thing that he must positively show to Zinka. An artistic bas-relief that had been built to some queer orange-colored house above a tobacconist's, or a heathen divinity which had had wings attached to its shoulders to qualify it for admission as an angel into a Christian church. He rode out with her into the Campagna, and pointed out all the most picturesque parts of the Trastevere, and he could find a ridiculous suggestion even in the most reverend things. The halls of the Vatican in which the liberal minded Vicars of Christ have granted a refuge to the pensioners of antiquity, he called the Poor-house of the gods; and always spoke of St. Peter's, which is commonly known as la Parocchia dei Forestieri, as the Papal Grand Hotel. There was not a fountain, a fragment of sculpture, or a picturesque heap of ruins of which he could not relate some history, comic or pathetic, or he invented one; but he never produced the impression that he was giving a lecture. He had in fact a particularly unpretending way of telling an appropriate and not too lengthy anecdote; he never handed it round on a waiter, as it were, for examination, but let it drop quietly out of his pocket. His knowledge of art was but shallow, but his feeling for it, like all his instincts, was amazingly keen. His information on all subjects was miscellaneous and slender, not an article of his intellectual wardrobe--as Charles Lamb has it--was whole; but he draped himself in the rags with audacious grace and made no attempt to hide the holes.
Truyn and his little daughter often joined them in these expeditions, and sometimes Cecil, but only when his mother did not choose to go out, and his demeanor on these occasions--'peripatetic æsthetics' he called their walks--was highly characteristic. He would walk by the side of his sister and Sempaly, or a few steps behind them, sunk in silence but always sharply observant. From time to time he would correct their cicerone in his dates, which Sempaly took with sublime indifference and for which--taking off his hat--he invariably thanked him with princely courtesy. Sterzl only sympathized with the classical style of the Renaissance; the real antiques which Zinka raved about he smiled at as caricatures; Guido on the other hand--for whom Sempaly had a weakness, as a Chopin among painters--Sterzl detested. He declared that the Beatrice Cenci had a cold wet bandage on her head, and that the picture was nothing more than a study apparently made from an idiot in a mad-house. When Zinka talked of her favorite antiques or other works in the mystical and sentimental slang of the clique, he laughed at her, but quite good-naturedly. He scorned all extravagance and raptures as cant and affectation. Still he was merciful to his sister, and when she turned from a Francia with tears in her eyes, or turned pale as she quoted Shelley, or spoke of Leonardo's Medusa in Florence, he did no more than shrug his shoulders and say: "Zinka, you are crazy," or gently pull her by the ear. Everything in Zinka was right, even her want of sound common sense.
The baroness had at last found a lodging, almost to her mind: a small palazzo in a side street, off the Corso, "furnished in atrocious taste, but otherwise very nice." The palazetto was in fact a gem in its way, with a simple and elegant stone front and a court surrounded by a colonnade with red camellia shrubs and a fountain in the midst. There were several much injured antique statues too, one of which was a famous and very beautiful Amazon at whose feet a rose-bush bloomed profusely. This Amazon struck Zinka as remarkably picturesque and she sketched her from every point of view without ever reading the warning in her sad face. Alas! Zinka had gazed at the sun and it had blinded her.