When going through the Vatican, I stopped to contemplate those staircases which one can ascend on mule-back, those sloping galleries folding one upon the other, adorned with master-pieces, along which the popes of old used to pass with all their pomp, those loggie decorated by so many immortal artists, admired by so many illustrious men, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Montaigne, Milton, Montesquieu, and queens and kings, mighty or fallen, and a whole people of pilgrims from the four quarters of the globe: all that now without movement or sound; a theatre whose deserted tiers, open to solitude alone, are scarce visited by a ray of the sun.
I had been advised to take a walk by moonlight: from the top of the Trinità-del-Monte, the distant buildings looked like a painter's sketches or like softened coast-lines seen from the deck of a ship at sea. The orb of night, that globe supposed to be an extinct world, turned its pale deserts above the deserts of Rome; it cast its light upon streets without inhabitants, closes, squares, gardens where none passed, monasteries where the voices of the cenobites were no longer heard, cloisters as mute and desolate as the porticoes of the Coliseum.
What happened, eighteen centuries ago, at this very hour and in this very spot? What men have here crossed the shadow of those obelisks, after that shadow had ceased to fall upon the sands of Egypt? Not only is Ancient Italy no more, but the Italy of the Middle Ages has disappeared. Nevertheless, traces of the two Italies still linger in the Eternal City: where modern Rome shows its St. Peter's and its master-pieces, ancient Rome boasts its Pantheon and its remains; where, on the one hand, the consuls walked down from the Capitol, on the other, the pontiffs issued from the Vatican. The Tiber separates the two glories: seated in the same dust, pagan Rome sinks deeper and deeper into its tombs, and Christian Rome glides slowly into its catacombs.
*
Cardinal Fesch had hired the Palazzo Lancelotti, not far from the Tiber: I have since seen the Principessa Lancelotti there, in 1828. The top floor of the palace was allotted to me; when I entered, so large a number of fleas hopped on to my legs that my white trousers were quite black with them. The Abbé de Bonnevie and I did the best we could to get our lodging washed down. I had a feeling as though I had returned to my kennel in the New Road; this memory of my poverty was not altogether unpleasant. Once settled in this diplomatic corner, I began to deliver pass-ports and to busy myself with functions of similar importance. My handwriting was an obstacle to my talents, and Cardinal Fesch shrugged his shoulders whenever he saw my signature. As I had almost nothing to do in my aerial chamber, I looked across the roofs at some washing-girls in a neighbouring house, who made signs to me; a future opera-singer, practising her voice, persecuted me with her everlasting solfeggio; I was happy when some funeral passed by for a change! From my lofty window I saw, in the abyss of the street below, the convoy of a young mother: she was carried, her face uncovered, between two files of white pilgrims; her new-born babe, dead too and crowned with flowers, lay at her feet.
My work at the embassy.
I committed a great mistake: I very innocently believed it my duty to call upon illustrious personages; I coolly went and paid the tribute of my respects to the ex-King of Sardinia[547]. This unusual proceeding caused a terrible hubbub; the diplomatists all drew themselves up.
"He is lost! he is lost!" whispered all the train-bearers and attachés, with the charitable pleasure which men take in the mishaps of any of their fellow-creatures. No diplomatic dunce but thought himself superior to me by the full height of his stupidity. Every one hoped for my fall, notwithstanding that I was nobody and counted as nobody; no matter, it was some one who fell, and that is always agreeable. I, in my simplicity, had no notion of my crime, nor, as ever since, would I have given a straw for any place whatever. Kings, to whom I was believed to attach so great an importance, had in my eyes only that of misfortune. My shocking blunders were reported from Rome to Paris: luckily I had to do with Bonaparte; what should have been my ruin saved me.
However, if at once and at the first leap to become First Secretary of Embassy under a prince of the Church, an uncle of Napoleon, seemed something, it was nevertheless as though I had been a copying-clerk in a prefect's office. In the contests that were at hand, I might have found work; but I was initiated into no mysteries. I was perfectly satisfied to be set to the litigious business of the chancellerie: but what was the use of wasting my time over details within the capacity of all the clerks?