"I quite forgot to ask Count Sempaly to get me an invitation to the international artists' festival!" she exclaimed, striking her forehead, and she promptly turned about, evidently intending to repair the omission; only Matuschowsky's decided interference preserved Sempaly from her return to the charge.
The scene is now the Pincio--between five and six in the afternoon, the hour when the band plays every day on the great terrace, while the crowd collects to watch the sun set behind St. Peter's. The reflection of the glow gilds the gravel, glints from the lace on the uniforms and the brass instruments, and throws golden sparks on the water in the wide basin behind the bandstand. The black shadows rapidly lengthen on the grass, and the palmettos, yuccas, and evergreen oaks stand out in rich, deep tones against the sky that fades from crimson to salmon and grey. A special set of visitors haunt the shady side of the Pincio; not the fashionable world: governesses and nurses with their charges, and priests--priests of every degree: the illustrious Monsignori with their finely chiselled features, their upright bearing and their elegant hands; monks, with their bearded faces comfortably framed in their cowls, and whole regiments of priestlings from the Seminaries in their uniforms of every hue; lank, lean figures, with sallow, unformed features.
Separated from these only by a leafy screen the beauty and fashion of Rome drive up and down--the residents in handsome private carriages, the foreigners in hired vehicles of varying degrees of respectability, or even in the humble, one-horse, hackney cab. The crowd grows denser every minute as the stream of Roman rank and wealth swells along the Via Borghese, across the Piazza del Popolo, and up the hill. On the top of the Pincio the carriages come to a stand-still; gentlemen on foot gather round them, bowing and smiling, the ladies talk across from one victoria to another--all sorts of trivial small-talk, unintelligible to the uninitiated. Up from the gardens which line the road from the Via Margutta, comes a fragrance of budding and growing spring; down below lies Rome, and lording it grandly over the labyrinthine mass of houses and ruins, solemn and severe, its crown touched by the last rays of the vanished sun, stands St Peter's.
Countess Ilsenbergh's carriage was drawn up side by side with that of Princess Vulpini; the newly-arrived party of the Jatinskys was divided between them; the countess mother reclining indolently with a gracious smile on her lips by the side of Countess Ilsenbergh, while the princess had undertaken to chaperon the young ladies. On the front seat, by his cousin Eugénie--Nini they called her--sat Sempaly. Siegburg was leaning over the carriage door, talking all sorts of nonsense, and relating all the gossip of Rome that was fit for maiden ears to the two new-comers; they, infinitely amused, laughed till their simple merriment infected even Sempaly, who had taken the seat coveted of all the golden youth of Rome--the seat next his beautiful cousin--in a very gloomy and taciturn humor.
Presently there was an evident sensation among the public; every one was looking in the same direction.
"What is happening?" asked Polyxena, the elder of the two Jatinska girls.
"It must be the Dorias' new drag, or the King," said Princess Vulpini, screwing up her short-sighted eyes. "No," said Siegburg, looking back, "neither. It is Baroness Wolnitzka!"
And in fact, Madame Sterzl's pretty landau, which she had placed at the disposal of her sister for the afternoon, was coming up the road, in it the Wolnitzkas, mother and daughter, both in their finest array. Slawa was leaning back, elegantly languid, while her mother stood up in the carriage and surveyed the world of Rome through an opera-glass. From time to time, either to rest, or because she suddenly lost her balance, she sat down; and then she filled up her time by examining every detail of the trimming and lining of the landau. It was this singular demeanor, combined with her very conspicuous person, that attracted so much attention to the Sterzls' vehicle--an attention which both mother and daughter, of course ascribed to Slawa's extraordinary resemblance to the Belvedere Apollo.
"Baroness Wolnitzka! the wonderful old woman we saw with you yesterday in the Piazza di Spagna?" cried Polyxena.