Next day we visited the “Certosa,” a convent situated on a high mountain in the outskirts of Florence. The cloister opens hospitable doors to strangers. We were gallantly received by the monks, who live here a luxurious life. Each monk occupies an apartment of several rooms, with a patch of garden. A tall, stout monk, in flowing white robes, served as guide to us. He conducted us, clacking his sandals on the stone flags, along white bare corridors paved with marble, which echoed to our footsteps. We were taken into a large refectory resembling much more an elegant Parisian restaurant. Then we went to the dormitory where the monks sleep. When our guide ushered us into his bedroom, I stealthily touched his bed and found it far too soft for a recluse. Before leaving the cloister we bought a few bottles of the “certosa liqueur” fabricated by the monks, for which we had to pay a considerable tax before entering Florence. Feeling awfully hungry, we stopped half-way at an “Osteria” when passing through the little town of Galuppi. It was very cool and pleasant here after the dusty road, but our dinner had been uneatable: we had a dish of macaroni swimming in oil, and a fish fried also in oil. Ugh—the horror! Night was approaching and icy cold rain began to fall. We returned to Florence famished and chilled to the very bone. And our room at the hotel was so cold! You feel the cold much more abroad than in Russia, where the houses are much better heated. How I long for our warm Russian stoves!
Profiting by our stay in Florence, Sergy wanted me to be immortalised by brushes and chisels, on canvas and on marble. He ordered my portrait to be taken by Parrini, a well-known painter, and my bust by Romanelli, the famous sculptor, who took us to his “studio,” full of nymphs and cupids and limbs; a moving platform for the model occupied the middle of the room. I had to sit from nine o’clock in the morning until six in the evening, which was rather fatiguing. Whilst Parrini painted my portrait, his wife, Signora Adelgunda, a buxom, pleasant-faced lady, stood behind and generally approved, nodded her head and murmured, caressing her husband’s cheek, “Bene, bene, caro, Beppé.” Signora Adelgunda was also a painter, and had exhibited several times. She has watched for eight years the right to obtain the first place to copy Rafaele’s Madonna at the Pitti Galleries. Her picture had found its way into the Museum and was sold for the sum of two thousand francs. Parrini, during the sittings, told me little humorous things he could think of, trying to keep me amused. I laughed very much when he related to me that he had just received from America the photographs of a gentleman and his wife who wanted to have their portraits painted conformably to these photos, only the gentleman wished to be reproduced with less hair on his head and ten years more on his shoulders, whilst his spouse, on the contrary, wanted him to drop ten years of her age. Parrini related to me that when Mme. Lebrun, the celebrated lady-painter, in her old age, visited the Pitti Galleries and saw an oil painting of her, reproducing her young and beautiful, the poor woman had a fit of hysterics and nearly fainted away. Yes, certainly, it must not be pleasant to grow old, especially when one has been gifted by good looks. I felt very flattered when Parrini told me in his artistic language, that like Mme. Lebrun my face had warm and cold touches. Shall I ever fall into a swoon, if I ever reach old age, when looking at my portrait painted by Parrini, I wonder? The Parrinis have got a little son named Mario, a premature painter, who puts paint on the doors, walls and statues which adorn his father’s “studio.” He is a very lively and noisy little boy, who gives trouble and puts things out of place. His last exploit was to daub with red paint the statue of the daughter of Niobe, and to adorn her beautiful face with long black moustaches. Romanelli is over seventy years old but carries them lightly on his shoulders. He wears a red scarf round his throat, carpet slippers, and a black velvet “calotte” pushed off on the back of his bald head. At my first sitting I felt rather shy when the sculptor placed me in a seat standing on the turning pedestal, but at the second sitting it went off all right, I mounted bravely on my elevated throne. The bust of a young woman, made in clay, stood on my right hand and Romanelli modelled it here and there, according to my features, diminishing or adding small bits of clay. Sitting for my bust made me sleepy, and I waited impatiently when Romanelli, who was careful not to overtire me, would tell me to have a rest. Then I rose and went out into the garden, stiff with long sitting. I yawned and stretched my arms wearily and five minutes after I resumed my place on the “dais.” When the turn came for my neck to be modelled, Romanelli told me to unbutton the upper part of my bodice, which made me burn with shame. The old sculptor laughed and said that he had lost the number of all the necks, a great deal more low-bodied than mine, which had served for models to him during his long artistic life. My bust advanced rapidly and the likeness was perfect, but Sergy, who had only too flattering an opinion of me in every way, and was very hard to please according to what concerned my precious person, found that the head was not well put on, and the back not sufficiently straight, and when Romanelli agreeably to his demands, began to take off layers of clay from my bust’s back, Sergy turned away shuddering: it seemed to him as if I was being carved alive. Romanelli declared finally that the head had to be separated from the bust in order to place it more backwards; my husband would not consent to be present at this bloodless operation and carried me away promptly, when we returned an hour later, we found the head in its proper place again. My bust in clay was now completed and Romanelli promised to send to Moscow for Christmas my bust made in marble. The lump of clay representing the bust of a young woman, which Romanelli manipulated according to my features, is transformed now, for another sitting, into a bust of a wrinkled old man. My portrait will be ready for Christmas also.
CHAPTER XXXIV
ROME
We spent a week in visiting the city of the Cæsars, running through churches, art-galleries and other regulation sights, according to Baedecker, from morning till night. We followed our guide with uncomplaining stoicism from one Museum to another. I was not feeling altogether at my ease when visiting the catacombs, and wished myself anywhere else all the time. We had to come down slowly through dark stone passages with our folding lantern in which a reluctant wax-taper went out at regular intervals. We saw caverns containing skeletons which fell to dust when you touched them, and petrified corpses in coffins under a glass cover. Truly it was a ghastly sight! There are often crumbling stones too in the Catacombs, and you can easily find your death under them.
In the church of “Santa Croce” we saw the staircase (Scala Pia) brought forward from Jerusalem, reputed to have belonged to Pilate’s Palace, where they were trodden by Christ at the time of his trial. Pilgrims are permitted to ascend the steps on their knees only. Two smart ladies were toiling slowly up the long ladder, stopping at every step to arrange the folds of their skirts. Some peasant women, who had begun their ascent much later, soon overtook them. I am sure that they have more chance of getting to the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Pantheon, where the remains of King Vittorio Emmanuele repose, is the only ancient edifice in Rome, which is conserved perfectly intact. It has no ceiling, and the Roman sun and the Roman moon shine through the open roof. The sepulchre in which the body of Vittorio Emmanuele is laid is covered all over with garlands of flowers and is guarded by three veterans of the Italian army, who watch over a big book in which all those who wish to honour the memory of the “King Galantuomo” sign their names.
We had to cross the Tiber to arrive at the Vatican, where we found ourselves on Papal territory, which has a particular clerical aspect. The population is very poor here, a great part of their existence is spent in the open. There was a crowd of women, ragged and unkempt creatures, sitting in front of their houses in a bath of sunshine, bearing the pure classical Roman type. They were surrounded by a swarm of children with unwiped noses, who stared at us with their fingers in their mouths. I can’t make out how these matrons had the time to bring such a lot of children into the world. We met a number of prelates in the streets, and ladies in black dresses and long black veils, prescribed by etiquette for ladies going to an audience with the Pope, and wearing mourning in the memory of the abolished clerical potency. The Pope, deploring his decay, has shut himself up in the Vatican, vowing never to leave it until the King abdicates the throne. The doors of the Vatican are closed to all persons belonging to the Court of Italy, Baron Rosen, the Russian attaché, in the number.
There was much to see in the Vatican Palace. We went from room to room admiring the immortal masterpieces. In the “Sixtine Chapel” we saw the famous picture of the “Last Judgment” painted by Michael Angelo. We could hardly get away from the place. Then we stepped into a long gallery all lined with pictures on Scripture subjects, arranged like a museum and leading to the private apartments of the Pope. Groups of Papal guards, the last remains of the Papal power, in their picturesque uniforms, with striped yellow and black legs, were walking to and fro with a rifle on their shoulder. After leaving the Palace we strayed down the wide stairs into the beautifully kept gardens which surrounded it, and saw wild deer and pheasants walking about freely. The Pope feeds them himself every morning during the voluntary prisoner’s drive in the alleys of the Park. On leaving the Vatican Gardens the head-gardener presented me with a splendid bouquet.
On the great Square before the bronze gates of the Vatican, in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral, we saw the black statue of St. Peter, sitting in his stone chair under a golden baldaquin, holding in his hand the “Keys of Paradise.” Through the continual contact of worshippers lips, one of the Saint’s toes was almost completely worn out. After having admired the rich monuments of all the interred Popes, and the shrine containing St. Peter’s relics, we drove along the ancient “Latin Road” to Monte Palanchino, one of the most interesting reminiscences of past ages. A whole army of workmen, under the superintendence of a group of engineers and archeologists, continue to excavate making splendid discoveries. A whole street intact has recently been dug out. The pavements and houses with their mosaic floors are marvellously preserved. We stood on the roof of one of the newly excavated houses watching the workmen who were destroying—on the mountain side over us—a splendid villa which had belonged to Napoleon the Third, in order to continue to dig out the street under its foundation.