The profession of a beggar is by no means an unprofitable one. A great many drops finally make a stream. The cost of living is almost nothing to them, and they frequently lay up money enough to make themselves very comfortable in their old age. A Roman friend of mine, Conte C., speaking of them one day, told me this illustrative anecdote:—
"I had occasion," he said, "a few years ago, to reduce my family," (the servants are called, in Rome, the family,) "and having no need of the services of one under-servant, named Pietro, I dismissed him. About a year after, as I was returning to my house, after nightfall, I was solicited by a beggar, who whiningly asked me for charity. There was something in the voice which struck me as familiar, and, turning round to examine the man more closely, I found it was my old servant, Pietro. 'Is that you, Pietro?' I said; 'you begging here in the streets! what has brought you to this wretched trade?' He gave me, however, no very clear account of himself, but evidently desired to avoid me when he recognized who I was. But, shocked to find him in so pitiable a condition, I pressed my questions, and finally told him I could not bear to see any one who had been in my service reduced to beggary; and though I had no actual need of his services, yet, rather than see him thus, he might return to his old position as servant in my house, and be paid the same wages as he had before. He hesitated, was much embarrassed, and, after a pause, said,—'A thousand thanks, your Excellency, for your kindness; but I cannot accept your proposal, because, to tell you the truth, I make more money by this trade of begging.'"
But though the beggars often lay by considerable sums of money, so that they might, if they chose, live with a certain degree of comfort, yet they cannot leave off the habit of begging after having indulged it for many years. They get to be avaricious, and cannot bring their minds to spend the money they have. The other day, an old beggar, who used to frequent the steps of the Gesù, when about to die, ordered the hem of her garment to be ripped up, saying that there was money in it. In fact, about a thousand scudi were found there, three hundred of which she ordered to be laid out upon her funeral, and the remainder to be appropriated to masses for her soul. This was accordingly done, and her squalid life ended in a pompous procession to the grave.
The great holidays of the beggars are the country festas. Thronging out of the city, they spread along the highways, and drag, drive, roll, shuffle, hobble, as they can, towards the festive little town. Everywhere along the road they are to be met,—perched on a rock, seated on a bank, squatted beneath a wall or hedge, and screaming, with outstretched hand, from the moment a carriage comes in sight until it is utterly passed by. As one approaches the town where the festa is held, they grow thicker and thicker. They crop up along the road like toadstools. They hold up every hideous kind of withered arm, distorted leg, and unsightly stump. They glare at you out of horrible eyes, that look like cranberries. You are requested to look at horrors, all without a name, and too terrible to be seen. All their accomplishments are also brought out. They fall into improvised fits; they shake with sudden palsies; and all the while keep up a chorus, half whine, half scream, which suffers you to listen to nothing else. It is hopeless to attempt to buy them all off, for they are legion in number, and to pay one doubles the chorus of the others. The clever scamps, too, show the utmost skill in selecting their places of attack. Wherever there is a sudden rise in the road, or any obstacle which will reduce the gait of the horses to a walk, there is sure to be a beggar. But do not imagine that he relies on his own powers of scream and hideousness alone,—not he! He has a friend, an ambassador, to recommend him to your notice, and to expatiate on his misfortunes. Though he himself can scarcely move, his friend, who is often a little ragged boy or girl, light of weight and made for a chase, pursues the carriage and prolongs the whine, repeating, with a mechanical iteration, "Signore! Signore! datemi qualche cosa, Signore!" until his legs, breath, and resolution give out at last; or, what is still commoner, your patience is wearied out or your sympathy touched, and you are glad to purchase the blessing of silence for the small sum of a baiocco. When his whining fails, he tries to amuse you; and often resorts to the oddest freaks to attract your notice. Sometimes the little rascal flings himself heels over head into the dust, and executes somersets without number, as if they had some hidden influence on the sentiment of compassion. Then, running by the side of the carriage, he will play upon his lips with both hands, making a rattling noise, to excite your curiosity. If you laugh, you are lost, and he knows it.
As you reach the gates of the town, the row becomes furious. There are scores of beggars on either side the road, screaming in chorus. No matter how far the town be from the city, there is not a wretched, maimed cripple of your acquaintance, not one of the old stumps who have dodged you round a Roman corner, not a ragged baron who has levied toll for passage through the public squares, a privileged robber who has shut up for you a pleasant street or waylaid you at an interesting church, but he is sure to be there. How they got there is as inexplicable as how the apples got into the dumplings in Peter Pindar's poem. But at the first ring of a festa-bell, they start up from under ground, (those who are legless getting only half-way up,) like Roderick Dhu's men, and level their crutches at you as the others did their arrows. An English lady, a short time since, after wintering at Rome, went to take the baths at Siena in the summer. On going out for a walk, on the first morning after her arrival, whom should she meet but King Beppo, whom she had just left in Rome! He had come with the rest of the nobility for recreation and bathing, and of course had brought his profession with him.
Owing to a great variety of causes, the number of beggars in Rome is very large. They grow here as noxious weeds in a hot-bed. The government neither favors commerce nor stimulates industry. Its policy is averse to change of any kind, even though it be for the development of its own resources or of the energies of the people. The Church is Brahmanic, contemplating only its own navel. Its influence is specially restrictive in Rome, because it is also the State there. It restrains not only trade, but education; it conserves exploded ideas and usages; it prefers not to grow, and looks with abhorrence upon change.
Literature may be said to be dead in Rome. There is not only no free press there, but no press at all. The "Diario Romano" contains about as much news as the "Acta Diurna" of the ancient Romans, and perhaps less. I doubt whether at present such facts as those given by Petronius, in an extract from the latter, would now be permitted to be published. However, we know that Augustus prohibited the "Acta Diurna,"—and the "Diario Romano" exists still; so that some progress has been made. And it must be confessed that Tuscany is scarcely in advance of Rome in this respect; and Naples is behind both. Even the introduction of foreign works is so strictly watched and the censorship so severe, that few liberal books pass the cordon. The arguments in favor of a censorship are very plain, but not very conclusive. The more compressed the energies and desires of a people, the more danger of their bursting into revolution. There is no safety-valve to passions and desires like the utterance of them,—no better corrective to false ideas than the free expression of them. Freedom of thought can never be suppressed, and ideas kept too long pent up in the bosom, when heated by some sudden crisis of passion, will explode into license and fury. Let me put a column from Milton here into my own weak plaster; the words are well known, but cannot be too well known. "Though all the winds of doctrine," he says, "were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing." Here in Rome genius rots. The saddest words I almost ever heard were from a young Italian of ability and esprit.
"Why," said I, in conversation with him, one day, "do you not devote your talents to some worthy object, instead of frittering them away in dancing, chatting, fencing, and morning-calls?"
"What would you have me do?" he answered.
"Devote yourself to some course of study. Write something."