“Kennedy, who has an admirable knowledge of every corner of Rome, has told me that at the beginning of the XIX Century the Villa Mattei was the property of Godoy. King Charles IV and his wife were in Rome, living in the Barberini Palace, and they spent their days in the seclusion of the Villa Mattei; and while the favourite and the Queen, who had now become a harpy, walked in those poetical avenues, bordered with box and laurel, the good Bourbon, now an old man, walked behind them, his forehead ornamented like a faun’s, enchanted to watch them; I don’t know whether he was playing the flute.
“Susanna’s friend laughed at the thought of the good Charles IV, with his waistcoat and his long coat, and his satyr’s excrescences, and his rural flute; but the allusion did not find favour with Susanna, whether because she thought of her husband’s infidelities, or because she considered, that if her father gets to be the shoe-king, she will then have a certain spiritual relationship to the Bourbons. In the Villa Mattei we saw an ediculo, which rises at the edge of a terrace, amidst climbing plants. There, as an inscription says, Saint Philip Neri talked to his disciples of things divine. From the terrace one can see the Baths of Caracalla, and part of the Roman Campagna behind them.
“We came out of the Villa Mattei and left the Piazza, della Navicella and came down through a place where there is a wall with arches, under which some beggars have built huts out of gasoline cans. There is an eating-place thereabouts called the Osteria di Porta Metronia.
“Susanna’s friend consulted her book, and the result was that we found we were in the Vale of Egeria.
“From there we came out by a narrow road running along a wall, not a very high one, over which green laurel branches projected. We saw an obelisk at the end of the road, and the entablature of Saint John the Lateran. The group of statues, reddish brown, silhouetted against the sky, made a very strange effect.
“We started to go down by the Via di San Sisto Vecchio, which also runs along by a wall. At the bottom of the slope there is a mill, with a deep race. Susanna’s friend said she would enjoy bathing there.
“We came out, at nightfall, almost opposite the Baths of Caracalla.
“‘They ought to knock these ruins down altogether,’ I said.
“‘Why so?’ asked Susanna.
“‘Because they appear to be standing here to demonstrate the uselessness of human energy.’ Susanna was very little interested as to whether human energy is useful or useless.