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+Project Gutenberg's The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Vol. 3, by Zola
+#25 in our series by Emile Zola
+
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+Title: The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Vol. 3
+
+Author: Emile Zola
+
+Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8723]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 5, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE CITIES: ROME, VOL. 3 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny [dagnypg@yahoo.com]
+and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
+
+
+
+
+                          THE THREE CITIES
+
+
+
+                               ROME
+
+
+
+                                BY
+
+                            EMILE ZOLA
+
+
+
+                TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY
+
+
+
+                              PART III
+
+
+
+VII
+
+On the following day as Pierre, after a long ramble, once more found
+himself in front of the Vatican, whither a harassing attraction ever led
+him, he again encountered Monsignor Nani. It was a Wednesday evening, and
+the Assessor of the Holy Office had just come from his weekly audience
+with the Pope, whom he had acquainted with the proceedings of the
+Congregation at its meeting that morning. "What a fortunate chance, my
+dear sir," said he; "I was thinking of you. Would you like to see his
+Holiness in public while you are waiting for a private audience?"
+
+Nani had put on his pleasant expression of smiling civility, beneath
+which one would barely detect the faint irony of a superior man who knew
+everything, prepared everything, and could do everything.
+
+"Why, yes, Monsignor," Pierre replied, somewhat astonished by the
+abruptness of the offer. "Anything of a nature to divert one's mind is
+welcome when one loses one's time in waiting."
+
+"No, no, you are not losing your time," replied the prelate. "You are
+looking round you, reflecting, and enlightening yourself. Well, this is
+the point. You are doubtless aware that the great international
+pilgrimage of the Peter's Pence Fund will arrive in Rome on Friday, and
+be received on Saturday by his Holiness. On Sunday, moreover, the Holy
+Father will celebrate mass at the Basilica. Well, I have a few cards
+left, and here are some very good places for both ceremonies." So saying
+he produced an elegant little pocketbook bearing a gilt monogram and
+handed Pierre two cards, one green and the other pink. "If you only knew
+how people fight for them," he resumed. "You remember that I told you of
+two French ladies who are consumed by a desire to see his Holiness. Well,
+I did not like to support their request for an audience in too pressing a
+way, and they have had to content themselves with cards like these. The
+fact is, the Holy Father is somewhat fatigued at the present time. I
+found him looking yellow and feverish just now. But he has so much
+courage; he nowadays only lives by force of soul." Then Nani's smile came
+back with its almost imperceptible touch of derision as he resumed:
+"Impatient ones ought to find a great example in him, my dear son. I
+heard that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had been unable to help you. But you
+must not be too much distressed on that account. This long delay is
+assuredly a grace of Providence in order that you may instruct yourself
+and come to understand certain things which you French priests do not,
+unfortunately, realise when you arrive in Rome. And perhaps it will
+prevent you from making certain mistakes. Come, calm yourself, and
+remember that the course of events is in the hands of God, who, in His
+sovereign wisdom, fixes the hour for all things."
+
+Thereupon Nani offered Pierre his plump, supple, shapely hand, a hand
+soft like a woman's but with the grasp of a vice. And afterwards he
+climbed into his carriage, which was waiting for him.
+
+It so happened that the letter which Pierre had received from Viscount
+Philibert de la Choue was a long cry of spite and despair in connection
+with the great international pilgrimage of the Peter's Pence Fund. The
+Viscount wrote from his bed, to which he was confined by a very severe
+attack of gout, and his grief at being unable to come to Rome was the
+greater as the President of the Committee, who would naturally present
+the pilgrims to the Pope, happened to be Baron de Fouras, one of his most
+bitter adversaries of the old conservative, Catholic party. M. de la
+Choue felt certain that the Baron would profit by his opportunity to win
+the Pope over to the theory of free corporations; whereas he, the
+Viscount, believed that the salvation of Catholicism and the world could
+only be worked by a system in which the corporations should be closed and
+obligatory. And so he urged Pierre to exert himself with such cardinals
+as were favourable, to secure an audience with the Holy Father whatever
+the obstacles, and to remain in Rome until he should have secured the
+Pontiff's approbation, which alone could decide the victory. The letter
+further mentioned that the pilgrimage would be made up of a number of
+groups headed by bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, and would
+comprise three thousand people from France, Belgium, Spain, Austria, and
+even Germany. Two thousand of these would come from France alone. An
+international committee had assembled in Paris to organise everything and
+select the pilgrims, which last had proved a delicate task, as a
+representative gathering had been desired, a commingling of members of
+the aristocracy, sisterhood of middle-class ladies, and associations of
+the working classes, among whom all social differences would be forgotten
+in the union of a common faith. And the Viscount added that the
+pilgrimage would bring the Pope a large sum of money, and had settled the
+date of its arrival in the Eternal City in such wise that it would figure
+as a solemn protest of the Catholic world against the festivities of
+September 20, by which the Quirinal had just celebrated the anniversary
+of the occupation of Rome.
+
+The reception of the pilgrimage being fixed for noon, Pierre in all
+simplicity thought that he would be sufficiently early if he reached St.
+Peter's at eleven. The function was to take place in the Hall of
+Beatifications, which is a large and handsome apartment over the portico,
+and has been arranged as a chapel since 1890. One of its windows opens on
+to the central balcony, whence the popes formerly blessed the people, the
+city, and the world. To reach the apartment you pass through two other
+halls of audience, the Sala Regia and Sala Ducale, and when Pierre wished
+to gain the place to which his green card entitled him he found both
+those rooms so extremely crowded that he could only elbow his way forward
+with the greatest difficulty. For an hour already the three or four
+thousand people assembled there had been stifling, full of growing
+emotion and feverishness. At last the young priest managed to reach the
+threshold of the third hall, but was so discouraged at sight of the
+extraordinary multitude of heads before him that he did not attempt to go
+any further.
+
+The apartment, which he could survey at a glance by rising on tip-toe,
+appeared to him to be very rich of aspect, with walls gilded and painted
+under a severe and lofty ceiling. On a low platform, where the altar
+usually stood, facing the entry, the pontifical throne had now been set:
+a large arm-chair upholstered in red velvet with glittering golden back
+and arms; whilst the hangings of the /baldacchino/, also of red velvet,
+fell behind and spread out on either side like a pair of huge purple
+wings. However, what more particularly interested Pierre was the wildly
+passionate concourse of people whose hearts he could almost hear beating
+and whose eyes sought to beguile their feverish impatience by
+contemplating and adoring the empty throne. As if it had been some golden
+monstrance which the Divinity in person would soon deign to occupy, that
+throne dazzled them, disturbed them, filled them all with devout rapture.
+Among the throng were workmen rigged out in their Sunday best, with clear
+childish eyes and rough ecstatic faces; ladies of the upper classes
+wearing black, as the regulations required, and looking intensely pale
+from the sacred awe which mingled with their excessive desire; and
+gentlemen in evening dress, who appeared quite glorious, inflated with
+the conviction that they were saving both the Church and the nations. One
+cluster of dress-coats assembled near the throne, was particularly
+noticeable; it comprised the members of the International Committee,
+headed by Baron de Fouras, a very tall, stout, fair man of fifty, who
+bestirred and exerted himself and issued orders like some commander on
+the morning of a decisive victory. Then, amidst the general mass of grey,
+neutral hue, there gleamed the violet silk of some bishop's cassock, for
+each pastor had desired to remain with his flock; whilst members of
+various religious orders, superiors in brown, black, and white habits,
+rose up above all others with lofty bearded or shaven heads. Right and
+left drooped banners which associations and congregations had brought to
+present to the Pope. And the sea of pilgrims ever waved and surged with a
+growing clamour: so much impatient love being exhaled by those perspiring
+faces, burning eyes, and hungry mouths that the atmosphere, reeking with
+the odour of the throng, seemed thickened and darkened.
+
+All at once, however, Pierre perceived Monsignor Nani standing near the
+throne and beckoning him to approach; and although the young priest
+replied by a modest gesture, implying that he preferred to remain where
+he was, the prelate insisted and even sent an usher to make way for him.
+Directly the usher had led him forward, Nani inquired: "Why did you not
+come to take your place? Your card entitled you to be here, on the left
+of the throne."
+
+"The truth is," answered the priest, "I did not like to disturb so many
+people. Besides, this is an undue honour for me."
+
+"No, no; I gave you that place in order that you should occupy it. I want
+you to be in the first rank, so that you may see everything of the
+ceremony."
+
+Pierre could not do otherwise than thank him. Then, on looking round, he
+saw that several cardinals and many other prelates were likewise waiting
+on either side of the throne. But it was in vain that he sought Cardinal
+Boccanera, who only came to St. Peter's and the Vatican on the days when
+his functions required his presence there. However, he recognised
+Cardinal Sanguinetti, who, broad and sturdy and red of face, was talking
+in a loud voice to Baron de Fouras. And Nani, with his obliging air,
+stepped up again to point out two other Eminences who were high and
+mighty personages--the Cardinal Vicar, a short, fat man, with a feverish
+countenance scorched by ambition, and the Cardinal Secretary, who was
+robust and bony, fashioned as with a hatchet, suggesting a romantic type
+of Sicilian bandit, who, to other courses, had preferred the discreet,
+smiling diplomacy of the Church. A few steps further on, and quite alone,
+the Grand Penitentiary, silent and seemingly suffering, showed his grey,
+lean, ascetic profile.
+
+Noon had struck. There was a false alert, a burst of emotion, which swept
+in like a wave from the other halls. But it was merely the ushers opening
+a passage for the /cortege/. Then, all at once, acclamations arose in the
+first hall, gathered volume, and drew nearer. This time it was the
+/cortege/ itself. First came a detachment of the Swiss Guard in undress,
+headed by a sergeant; then a party of chair-bearers in red; and next the
+domestic prelates, including the four /Camerieri segreti partecipanti/.
+And finally, between two rows of Noble Guards, in semi-gala uniforms,
+walked the Holy Father, alone, smiling a pale smile, and slowly blessing
+the pilgrims on either hand. In his wake the clamour which had risen in
+the other apartments swept into the Hall of Beatifications with the
+violence of delirious love; and, under his slender, white, benedictive
+hand, all those distracted creatures fell upon both knees, nought
+remaining but the prostration of a devout multitude, overwhelmed, as it
+were, by the apparition of its god.
+
+Quivering, carried away, Pierre had knelt like the others. Ah! that
+omnipotence, that irresistible contagion of faith, of the redoubtable
+current from the spheres beyond, increased tenfold by a /scenario/ and a
+pomp of sovereign grandeur! Profound silence fell when Leo XIII was
+seated on the throne surrounded by the cardinals and his court; and then
+the ceremony proceeded according to rite and usage. First a bishop spoke,
+kneeling and laying the homage of the faithful of all Christendom at his
+Holiness's feet. The President of the Committee, Baron de Fouras,
+followed, remaining erect whilst he read a long address in which he
+introduced the pilgrimage and explained its motive, investing it with all
+the gravity of a political and religious protest. This stout man had a
+shrill and piercing voice, and his words jarred like the grating of a
+gimlet as he proclaimed the grief of the Catholic world at the spoliation
+which the Holy See had endured for a quarter of a century, and the desire
+of all the nations there represented by the pilgrims to console the
+supreme and venerated Head of the Church by bringing him the offerings of
+rich and poor, even to the mites of the humblest, in order that the
+Papacy might retain the pride of independence and be able to treat its
+enemies with contempt. And he also spoke of France, deplored her errors,
+predicted her return to healthy traditions, and gave it to be understood
+that she remained in spite of everything the most opulent and generous of
+the Christian nations, the donor whose gold and presents flowed into Rome
+in a never ending stream. At last Leo XIII arose to reply to the bishop
+and the baron. His voice was full, with a strong nasal twang, and
+surprised one coming from a man so slight of build. In a few sentences he
+expressed his gratitude, saying how touched he was by the devotion of the
+nations to the Holy See. Although the times might be bad, the final
+triumph could not be delayed much longer. There were evident signs that
+mankind was returning to faith, and that iniquity would soon cease under
+the universal dominion of the Christ. As for France, was she not the
+eldest daughter of the Church, and had she not given too many proofs of
+her affection for the Holy See for the latter ever to cease loving her?
+Then, raising his arm, he bestowed on all the pilgrims present, on the
+societies and enterprises they represented, on their families and
+friends, on France, on all the nations of the Catholic world, his
+apostolic benediction, in gratitude for the precious help which they sent
+him. And whilst he was again seating himself applause burst forth,
+frantic salvoes of applause lasting for ten minutes and mingling with
+vivats and inarticulate cries--a passionate, tempestuous outburst, which
+made the very building shake.
+
+Amidst this blast of frantic adoration Pierre gazed at Leo XIII, now
+again motionless on his throne. With the papal cap on his head and the
+red cape edged with ermine about his shoulders, he retained in his long
+white cassock the rigid, sacerdotal attitude of an idol venerated by two
+hundred and fifty millions of Christians. Against the purple background
+of the hangings of the /baldacchino/, between the wing-like drapery on
+either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier of glory, he assumed real
+majesty of aspect. He was no longer the feeble old man with the slow,
+jerky walk and the slender, scraggy neck of a poor ailing bird. The
+simious ugliness of his face, the largeness of his nose, the long slit of
+his mouth, the hugeness of his ears, the conflicting jumble of his
+withered features disappeared. In that waxen countenance you only
+distinguished the admirable, dark, deep eyes, beaming with eternal youth,
+with extraordinary intelligence and penetration. And then there was a
+resolute bracing of his entire person, a consciousness of the eternity
+which he represented, a regal nobility, born of the very circumstance
+that he was now but a mere breath, a soul set in so pellucid a body of
+ivory that it became visible as though it were already freed from the
+bonds of earth. And Pierre realised what such a man--the Sovereign
+Pontiff, the king obeyed by two hundred and fifty millions of
+subjects--must be for the devout and dolent creatures who came to adore
+him from so far, and who fell at his feet awestruck by the splendour of
+the powers incarnate in him. Behind him, amidst the purple of the
+hangings, what a gleam was suddenly afforded of the spheres beyond, what
+an Infinite of ideality and blinding glory! So many centuries of history
+from the Apostle Peter downward, so much strength and genius, so many
+struggles and triumphs to be summed up in one being, the Elect, the
+Unique, the Superhuman! And what a miracle, incessantly renewed, was that
+of Heaven deigning to descend into human flesh, of the Deity fixing His
+abode in His chosen servant, whom He consecrated above and beyond all
+others, endowing him with all power and all science! What sacred
+perturbation, what emotion fraught with distracted love might one not
+feel at the thought of the Deity being ever there in the depths of that
+man's eyes, speaking with his voice and emanating from his hand each time
+that he raised it to bless! Could one imagine the exorbitant absoluteness
+of that sovereign who was infallible, who disposed of the totality of
+authority in this world and of salvation in the next! At all events, how
+well one understood that souls consumed by a craving for faith should fly
+towards him, that those who at last found the certainty they had so
+ardently sought should seek annihilation in him, the consolation of
+self-bestowal and disappearance within the Deity Himself.
+
+Meantime, the ceremony was drawing to an end; Baron de Fouras was now
+presenting the members of the committee and a few other persons of
+importance. There was a slow procession with trembling genuflections and
+much greedy kissing of the papal ring and slipper. Then the banners were
+offered, and Pierre felt a pang on seeing that the finest and richest of
+them was one of Lourdes, an offering no doubt from the Fathers of the
+Immaculate Conception. On one side of the white, gold-bordered silk Our
+Lady of Lourdes was painted, while on the other appeared a portrait of
+Leo XIII. Pierre saw the Pope smile at the presentment of himself, and
+was greatly grieved thereat, as though, indeed, his whole dream of an
+intellectual, evangelical Pope, disentangled from all low superstition,
+were crumbling away. And just then his eyes met those of Nani, who from
+the outset had been watching him with the inquisitive air of a man who is
+making an experiment.
+
+"That banner is superb, isn't it?" said Nani, drawing near. "How it must
+please his Holiness to be so nicely painted in company with so pretty a
+virgin." And as the young priest, turning pale, did not reply, the
+prelate added, with an air of devout enjoyment: "We are very fond of
+Lourdes in Rome; that story of Bernadette is so delightful."
+
+However, the scene which followed was so extraordinary that for a long
+time Pierre remained overcome by it. He had beheld never-to-be-forgotten
+idolatry at Lourdes, incidents of naive faith and frantic religious
+passion which yet made him quiver with alarm and grief. But the crowds
+rushing on the grotto, the sick dying of divine love before the Virgin's
+statue, the multitudes delirious with the contagion of the
+miraculous--nothing of all that gave an idea of the blast of madness
+which suddenly inflamed the pilgrims at the feet of the Pope. Some
+bishops, superiors of religious orders, and other delegates of various
+kinds had stepped forward to deposit near the throne the offerings which
+they brought from the whole Catholic world, the universal "collection" of
+St. Peter's Pence. It was the voluntary tribute of the nations to their
+sovereign: silver, gold, and bank notes in purses, bags, and cases.
+Ladies came and fell on their knees to offer silk and velvet alms-bags
+which they themselves had embroidered. Others had caused the note cases
+which they tendered to be adorned with the monogram of Leo XIII in
+diamonds. And at one moment the enthusiasm became so intense that several
+women stripped themselves of their adornments, flung their own purses on
+to the platform, and emptied their pockets even to the very coppers they
+had about them. One lady, tall and slender, very beautiful and very dark,
+wrenched her watch from about her neck, pulled off her rings, and threw
+everything upon the carpet. Had it been possible, they would have torn
+away their flesh to pluck out their love-burnt hearts and fling them
+likewise to the demi-god. They would even have flung themselves, have
+given themselves without reserve. It was a rain of presents, an explosion
+of the passion which impels one to strip oneself for the object of one's
+cult, happy at having nothing of one's own that shall not belong to him.
+And meantime the clamour grew, vivats and shrill cries of adoration arose
+amidst pushing and jostling of increased violence, one and all yielding
+to the irresistible desire to kiss the idol!
+
+But a signal was given, and Leo XIII made haste to quit the throne and
+take his place in the /cortege/ in order to return to his apartments. The
+Swiss Guards energetically thrust back the throng, seeking to open a way
+through the three halls. But at sight of his Holiness's departure a
+lamentation of despair arose and spread, as if heaven had suddenly closed
+again and shut out those who had not yet been able to approach. What a
+frightful disappointment--to have beheld the living manifestation of the
+Deity and to see it disappear before gaining salvation by just touching
+it! So terrible became the scramble, so extraordinary the confusion, that
+the Swiss Guards were swept away. And ladies were seen to dart after the
+Pope, to drag themselves on all fours over the marble slabs and kiss his
+footprints and lap up the dust of his steps! The tall dark lady suddenly
+fell at the edge of the platform, raised a loud shriek, and fainted; and
+two gentlemen of the committee had to hold her so that she might not do
+herself an injury in the convulsions of the hysterical fit which had come
+upon her. Another, a plump blonde, was wildly, desperately kissing one of
+the golden arms of the throne-chair, on which the old man's poor, bony
+elbow had just rested. And others, on seeing her, came to dispute
+possession, seized both arms, gilding and velvet, and pressed their
+mouths to wood-work or upholstery, their bodies meanwhile shaking with
+their sobs. Force had to be employed in order to drag them away.
+
+When it was all over Pierre went off, emerging as it were from a painful
+dream, sick at heart, and with his mind revolting. And again he
+encountered Nani's glance, which never left him. "It was a superb
+ceremony, was it not?" said the prelate. "It consoles one for many
+iniquities."
+
+"Yes, no doubt; but what idolatry!" the young priest murmured despite
+himself.
+
+Nani, however, merely smiled, as if he had not heard the last word. At
+that same moment the two French ladies whom he had provided with tickets
+came up to thank him, and. Pierre was surprised to recognise the mother
+and daughter whom he had met at the Catacombs. Charming, bright, and
+healthy as they were, their enthusiasm was only for the spectacle: they
+declared that they were well pleased at having seen it--that it was
+really astonishing, unique.
+
+As the crowd slowly withdrew Pierre all at once felt a tap on his
+shoulder, and, on turning his head, perceived Narcisse Habert, who also
+was very enthusiastic. "I made signs to you, my dear Abbe," said he, "but
+you didn't see me. Ah! how superb was the expression of that dark woman
+who fell rigid beside the platform with her arms outstretched. She
+reminded me of a masterpiece of one of the primitives, Cimabue, Giotto,
+or Fra Angelico. And the others, those who devoured the chair arms with
+their kisses, what suavity, beauty, and love! I never miss these
+ceremonies: there are always some fine scenes, perfect pictures, in which
+souls reveal themselves."
+
+The long stream of pilgrims slowly descended the stairs, and Pierre,
+followed by Nani and Narcisse, who had begun to chat, tried to bring the
+ideas which were tumultuously throbbing in his brain into something like
+order. There was certainly grandeur and beauty in that Pope who had shut
+himself up in his Vatican, and who, the more he became a purely moral,
+spiritual authority, freed from all terrestrial cares, had grown in the
+adoration and awe of mankind. Such a flight into the ideal deeply stirred
+Pierre, whose dream of rejuvenated Christianity rested on the idea of the
+supreme Head of the Church exercising only a purified, spiritual
+authority. He had just seen what an increase of majesty and power was in
+that way gained by the Supreme Pontiff of the spheres beyond, at whose
+feet the women fainted, and behind whom they beheld a vision of the
+Deity. But at the same moment the pecuniary side of the question had
+risen before him and spoilt his joy. If the enforced relinquishment of
+the temporal power had exalted the Pope by freeing him from the worries
+of a petty sovereignty which was ever threatened, the need of money still
+remained like a chain about his feet tying him to earth. As he could not
+accept the proffered subvention of the Italian Government,* there was
+certainly in the Peter's Pence a means of placing the Holy See above all
+material cares, provided, however, that this Peter's Pence were really
+the Catholic /sou/, the mite of each believer, levied on his daily income
+and sent direct to Rome. Such a voluntary tribute paid by the flock to
+its pastor would, moreover, suffice for the wants of the Church if each
+of the 250,000,000 of Catholics gave his or her /sou/ every week. In this
+wise the Pope, indebted to each and all of his children, would be
+indebted to none in particular. A /sou/ was so little and so easy to
+give, and there was also something so touching about the idea. But,
+unhappily, things were not worked in that way; the great majority of
+Catholics gave nothing whatever, while the rich ones sent large sums from
+motives of political passion; and a particular objection was that the
+gifts were centralised in the hands of certain bishops and religious
+orders, so that these became ostensibly the benefactors of the papacy,
+the indispensable cashiers from whom it drew the sinews of life. The
+lowly and humble whose mites filled the collection boxes were, so to say,
+suppressed, and the Pope became dependent on the intermediaries, and was
+compelled to act cautiously with them, listen to their remonstrances, and
+even at times obey their passions, lest the stream of gifts should
+suddenly dry up. And so, although he was disburdened of the dead weight
+of the temporal power, he was not free; but remained the tributary of his
+clergy, with interests and appetites around him which he must needs
+satisfy. And Pierre remembered the "Grotto of Lourdes" in the Vatican
+gardens, and the banner which he had just seen, and he knew that the
+Lourdes fathers levied 200,000 francs a year on their receipts to send
+them as a present to the Holy Father. Was not that the chief reason of
+their great power? He quivered, and suddenly became conscious that, do
+what he might, he would be defeated, and his book would be condemned.
+
+  * 110,000 pounds per annum. It has never been accepted, and the
+    accumulations lapse to the Government every five years, and
+    cannot afterwards be recovered.--Trans.
+
+At last, as he was coming out on to the Piazza of St. Peter's, he heard
+Narcisse asking Monsignor Nani: "Indeed! Do you really think that
+to-day's gifts exceeded that figure?"
+
+"Yes, more than three millions,* I'm convinced of it," the prelate
+replied.
+
+  * All the amounts given on this and the following pages are
+    calculated in francs. The reader will bear in mind that a
+    million francs is equivalent to 40,000 pounds.--Trans.
+
+For a moment the three men halted under the right-hand colonnade and
+gazed at the vast, sunlit piazza where the pilgrims were spreading out
+like little black specks hurrying hither and thither--an ant-hill, as it
+were, in revolution.
+
+Three millions! The words had rung in Pierre's ears. And, raising his
+head, he gazed at the Vatican, all golden in the sunlight against the
+expanse of blue sky, as if he wished to penetrate its walls and follow
+the steps of Leo XIII returning to his apartments. He pictured him laden
+with those millions, with his weak, slender arms pressed to his breast,
+carrying the silver, the gold, the bank notes, and even the jewels which
+the women had flung him. And almost unconsciously the young priest spoke
+aloud: "What will he do with those millions? Where is he taking them?"
+
+Narcisse and even Nani could not help being amused by this strangely
+expressed curiosity. It was the young /attache/ who replied. "Why, his
+Holiness is taking them to his room; or, at least, is having them carried
+there before him. Didn't you see two persons of his suite picking up
+everything and filling their pockets? And now his Holiness has shut
+himself up quite alone; and if you could see him you would find him
+counting and recounting his treasure with cheerful care, ranging the
+rolls of gold in good order, slipping the bank notes into envelopes in
+equal quantities, and then putting everything away in hiding-places which
+are only known to himself."
+
+While his companion was speaking Pierre again raised his eyes to the
+windows of the Pope's apartments, as if to follow the scene. Moreover,
+Narcisse gave further explanations, asserting that the money was put away
+in a certain article of furniture, standing against the right-hand wall
+in the Holy Father's bedroom. Some people, he added, also spoke of a
+writing table or secretaire with deep drawers; and others declared that
+the money slumbered in some big padlocked trunks stored away in the
+depths of the alcove, which was very roomy. Of course, on the left side
+of the passage leading to the Archives there was a large room occupied by
+a general cashier and a monumental safe; but the funds kept there were
+simply those of the Patrimony of St. Peter, the administrative receipts
+of Rome; whereas the Peter's Pence money, the voluntary donations of
+Christendom, remained in the hands of Leo XIII: he alone knew the exact
+amount of that fund, and lived alone with its millions, which he disposed
+of like an absolute master, rendering account to none. And such was his
+prudence that he never left his room when the servants cleaned and set it
+in order. At the utmost he would consent to remain on the threshold of
+the adjoining apartment in order to escape the dust. And whenever he
+meant to absent himself for a few hours, to go down into the gardens, for
+instance, he double-locked the doors and carried the keys away with him,
+never confiding them to another.
+
+At this point Narcisse paused and, turning to Nani, inquired: "Is not
+that so, Monsignor? These are things known to all Rome."
+
+The prelate, ever smiling and wagging his head without expressing either
+approval or disapproval, had begun to study on Pierre's face the effect
+of these curious stories. "No doubt, no doubt," he responded; "so many
+things are said! I know nothing myself, but you seem to be certain of it
+all, Monsieur Habert."
+
+"Oh!" resumed the other, "I don't accuse his Holiness of sordid avarice,
+such as is rumoured. Some fabulous stories are current, stories of
+coffers full of gold in which the Holy Father is said to plunge his hands
+for hours at a time; treasures which he has heaped up in corners for the
+sole pleasure of counting them over and over again. Nevertheless, one may
+well admit that his Holiness is somewhat fond of money for its own sake,
+for the pleasure of handling it and setting it in order when he happens
+to be alone--and after all that is a very excusable mania in an old man
+who has no other pastime. But I must add that he is yet fonder of money
+for the social power which it brings, the decisive help which it will
+give to the Holy See in the future, if the latter desires to triumph."
+
+These words evoked the lofty figure of a wise and prudent Pope, conscious
+of modern requirements, inclined to utilise the powers of the century in
+order to conquer it, and for this reason venturing on business and
+speculation. As it happened, the treasure bequeathed by Pius IX had
+nearly been lost in a financial disaster, but ever since that time Leo
+XIII had sought to repair the breach and make the treasure whole again,
+in order that he might leave it to his successor intact and even
+enlarged. Economical he certainly was, but he saved for the needs of the
+Church, which, as he knew, increased day by day; and money was absolutely
+necessary if Atheism was to be met and fought in the sphere of the
+schools, institutions, and associations of all sorts. Without money,
+indeed, the Church would become a vassal at the mercy of the civil
+powers, the Kingdom of Italy and other Catholic states; and so, although
+he liberally helped every enterprise which might contribute to the
+triumph of the Faith, Leo XIII had a contempt for all expenditure without
+an object, and treated himself and others with stern closeness.
+Personally, he had no needs. At the outset of his pontificate he had set
+his small private patrimony apart from the rich patrimony of St. Peter,
+refusing to take aught from the latter for the purpose of assisting his
+relatives. Never had pontiff displayed less nepotism: his three nephews
+and his two nieces had remained poor--in fact, in great pecuniary
+embarrassment. Still he listened neither to complaints nor accusations,
+but remained inflexible, proudly resolved to bequeath the sinews of life,
+the invincible weapon money, to the popes of future times, and therefore
+vigorously defending the millions of the Holy See against the desperate
+covetousness of one and all.
+
+"But, after all, what are the receipts and expenses of the Holy See?"
+inquired Pierre.
+
+In all haste Nani again made his amiable, evasive gesture. "Oh! I am
+altogether ignorant in such matters," he replied. "Ask Monsieur Habert,
+who is so well informed."
+
+"For my part," responded the /attache/, "I simply know what is known to
+all the embassies here, the matters which are the subject of common
+report. With respect to the receipts there is, first of all, the treasure
+left by Pius IX, some twenty millions, invested in various ways and
+formerly yielding about a million a year in interest. But, as I said
+before, a disaster happened, and there must then have been a falling off
+in the income. Still, nowadays it is reported that nearly all
+deficiencies have been made good. Well, besides the regular income from
+the invested money, a few hundred thousand francs are derived every year
+from chancellery dues, patents of nobility, and all sorts of little fees
+paid to the Congregations. However, as the annual expenses exceed seven
+millions, it has been necessary to find quite six millions every year;
+and certainly it is the Peter's Pence Fund that has supplied, not the six
+millions, perhaps, but three or four of them, and with these the Holy See
+has speculated in the hope of doubling them and making both ends meet. It
+would take me too long just now to relate the whole story of these
+speculations, the first huge gains, then the catastrophe which almost
+swept everything away, and finally the stubborn perseverance which is
+gradually supplying all deficiencies. However, if you are anxious on the
+subject, I will one day tell you all about it."
+
+Pierre had listened with deep interest. "Six millions--even four!" he
+exclaimed, "what does the Peter's Pence Fund bring in, then?"
+
+"Oh! I can only repeat that nobody has ever known the exact figures. In
+former times the Catholic Press published lists giving the amounts of
+different offerings, and in this way one could frame an approximate
+estimate. But the practice must have been considered unadvisable, for no
+documents nowadays appear, and it is absolutely impossible for people to
+form any real idea of what the Pope receives. He alone knows the correct
+amount, keeps the money, and disposes of it with absolute authority.
+Still I believe that in good years the offerings have amounted to between
+four and five millions. Originally France contributed one-half of the
+sum; but nowadays it certainly gives much less. Then come Belgium and
+Austria, England and Germany. As for Spain and Italy--oh! Italy--"
+
+Narcisse paused and smiled at Monsignor Nani, who was wagging his head
+with the air of a man delighted at learning some extremely curious things
+of which he had previously had no idea.
+
+"Oh, you may proceed, you may proceed, my dear son," said he.
+
+"Well, then, Italy scarcely distinguishes itself. If the Pope had to
+provide for his living out of the gifts of the Italian Catholics there
+would soon be a famine at the Vatican. Far from helping him, indeed, the
+Roman nobility has cost him dear; for one of the chief causes of his
+pecuniary losses was his folly in lending money to the princes who
+speculated. It is really only from France and England that rich people,
+noblemen and so forth, have sent royal gifts to the imprisoned and
+martyred Pontiff. Among others there was an English nobleman who came to
+Rome every year with a large offering, the outcome of a vow which he had
+made in the hope that Heaven would cure his unhappy idiot son. And, of
+course, I don't refer to the extraordinary harvest garnered during the
+sacerdotal and the episcopal jubilees--the forty millions which then fell
+at his Holiness's feet."
+
+"And the expenses?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Well, as I told you, they amount to about seven millions. We may reckon
+two of them for the pensions paid to former officials of the pontifical
+government who were unwilling to take service under Italy; but I must add
+that this source of expense is diminishing every year as people die off
+and their pensions become extinguished. Then, broadly speaking, we may
+put down one million for the Italian sees, another for the Secretariate
+and the Nunciatures, and another for the Vatican. In this last sum I
+include the expenses of the pontifical Court, the military establishment,
+the museums, and the repair of the palace and the Basilica. Well, we have
+reached five millions, and the two others may be set down for the various
+subsidised enterprises, the Propaganda, and particularly the schools,
+which Leo XIII, with great practical good sense, subsidises very
+handsomely, for he is well aware that the battle and the triumph be in
+that direction--among the children who will be men to-morrow, and who
+will then defend their mother the Church, provided that they have been
+inspired with horror for the abominable doctrines of the age."
+
+A spell of silence ensued, and the three men slowly paced the majestic
+colonnade. The swarming crowd had gradually disappeared, leaving the
+piazza empty, so that only the obelisk and the twin fountains now arose
+from the burning desert of symmetrical paving; whilst on the entablature
+of the porticus across the square a noble line of motionless statues
+stood out in the bright sunlight. And Pierre, with his eyes still raised
+to the Pope's windows, again fancied that he could see Leo XIII amidst
+all the streaming gold that had been spoken of, his whole, white, pure
+figure, his poor, waxen, transparent form steeped amidst those millions
+which he hid and counted and expended for the glory of God alone. "And
+so," murmured the young priest, "he has no anxiety, he is not in any
+pecuniary embarrassment."
+
+"Pecuniary embarrassment!" exclaimed Monsignor Nani, his patience so
+sorely tried by the remark that he could no longer retain his diplomatic
+reserve. "Oh! my dear son! Why, when Cardinal Mocenni, the treasurer,
+goes to his Holiness every month, his Holiness always gives him the sum
+he asks for; he would give it, and be able to give it, however large it
+might be! His Holiness has certainly had the wisdom to effect great
+economies; the Treasure of St. Peter is larger than ever. Pecuniary
+embarrassment, indeed! Why, if a misfortune should occur, and the
+Sovereign Pontiff were to make a direct appeal to all his children, the
+Catholics of the entire world, do you know that in that case a thousand
+millions would fall at his feet just like the gold and the jewels which
+you saw raining on the steps of his throne just now?" Then suddenly
+calming himself and recovering his pleasant smile, Nani added: "At least,
+that is what I sometimes hear said; for, personally, I know nothing,
+absolutely nothing; and it is fortunate that Monsieur Habert should have
+been here to give you information. Ah! Monsieur Habert, Monsieur Habert!
+Why, I fancied that you were always in the skies absorbed in your passion
+for art, and far removed from all base mundane interests! But you really
+understand these things like a banker or a notary. Nothing escapes you,
+nothing. It is wonderful."
+
+Narcisse must have felt the sting of the prelate's delicate sarcasm. At
+bottom, beneath this make-believe Florentine all-angelicalness, with long
+curly hair and mauve eyes which grew dim with rapture at sight of a
+Botticelli, there was a thoroughly practical, business-like young man,
+who took admirable care of his fortune and was even somewhat miserly.
+However, he contented himself with lowering his eyelids and assuming a
+languorous air. "Oh!" said he, "I'm all reverie; my soul is elsewhere."
+
+"At all events," resumed Nani, turning towards Pierre, "I am very glad
+that you were able to see such a beautiful spectacle. A few more such
+opportunities and you will understand things far better than you would
+from all the explanations in the world. Don't miss the grand ceremony at
+St. Peter's to-morrow. It will be magnificent, and will give you food for
+useful reflection; I'm sure of it. And now allow me to leave you,
+delighted at seeing you in such a fit frame of mind."
+
+Darting a last glance at Pierre, Nani seemed to have observed with
+pleasure the weariness and uncertainty which were paling his face. And
+when the prelate had gone off, and Narcisse also had taken leave with a
+gentle hand-shake, the young priest felt the ire of protest rising within
+him. What fit frame of mind did Nani mean? Did that man hope to weary him
+and drive him to despair by throwing him into collision with obstacles,
+so that he might afterwards overcome him with perfect ease? For the
+second time Pierre became suddenly and briefly conscious of the stealthy
+efforts which were being made to invest and crush him. But, believing as
+he did in his own strength of resistance, pride filled him with disdain.
+Again he swore that he would never yield, never withdraw his book, no
+matter what might happen. And then, before crossing the piazza, he once
+more raised his eyes to the windows of the Vatican, all his impressions
+crystallising in the thought of that much-needed money which like a last
+bond still attached the Pope to earth. Its chief evil doubtless lay in
+the manner in which it was provided; and if indeed the only question were
+to devise an improved method of collection, his dream of a pope who
+should be all soul, the bond of love, the spiritual leader of the world,
+would not be seriously affected. At this thought, Pierre felt comforted
+and was unwilling to look on things otherwise than hopefully, moved as he
+was by the extraordinary scene which he had just beheld, that feeble old
+man shining forth like the symbol of human deliverance, obeyed and
+venerated by the multitudes, and alone among all men endowed with the
+moral omnipotence that might at last set the reign of charity and peace
+on earth.
+
+For the ceremony on the following day, it was fortunate that Pierre held
+a private ticket which admitted him to a reserved gallery, for the
+scramble at the entrances to the Basilica proved terrible. The mass,
+which the Pope was to celebrate in person, was fixed for ten o'clock, but
+people began to pour into St. Peter's four hours earlier, as soon,
+indeed, as the gates had been thrown open. The three thousand members of
+the International Pilgrimage were increased tenfold by the arrival of all
+the tourists in Italy, who had hastened to Rome eager to witness one of
+those great pontifical functions which nowadays are so rare. Moreover,
+the devotees and partisans whom the Holy See numbered in Rome itself and
+in other great cities of the kingdom, helped to swell the throng, all
+alacrity at the prospect of a demonstration. Judging by the tickets
+distributed, there would be a concourse of 40,000 people. And, indeed, at
+nine o'clock, when Pierre crossed the piazza on his way to the Canons'
+Entrance in the Via Santa Marta, where the holders of pink tickets were
+admitted, he saw the portico of the facade still thronged with people who
+were but slowly gaining admittance, while several gentlemen in evening
+dress, members of some Catholic association, bestirred themselves to
+maintain order with the help of a detachment of Pontifical Guards.
+Nevertheless, violent quarrels broke out in the crowd, and blows were
+exchanged amidst the involuntary scramble. Some people were almost
+stifled, and two women were carried off half crushed to death.
+
+A disagreeable surprise met Pierre on his entry into the Basilica. The
+huge edifice was draped; coverings of old red damask with bands of gold
+swathed the columns and pilasters, seventy-five feet high; even the
+aisles were hung with the same old and faded silk; and the shrouding of
+those pompous marbles, of all the superb dazzling ornamentation of the
+church bespoke a very singular taste, a tawdry affectation of pomposity,
+extremely wretched in its effect. However, he was yet more amazed on
+seeing that even the statue of St. Peter was clad, costumed like a living
+pope in sumptuous pontifical vestments, with a tiara on its metal head.
+He had never imagined that people could garment statues either for their
+glory or for the pleasure of the eyes, and the result seemed to him
+disastrous.
+
+The Pope was to say mass at the papal altar of the Confession, the high
+altar which stands under the dome. On a platform at the entrance of the
+left-hand transept was the throne on which he would afterwards take his
+place. Then, on either side of the nave, tribunes had been erected for
+the choristers of the Sixtine Chapel, the Corps Diplomatique, the Knights
+of Malta, the Roman nobility, and other guests of various kinds. And,
+finally, in the centre, before the altar, there were three rows of
+benches covered with red rugs, the first for the cardinals and the other
+two for the bishops and the prelates of the pontifical court. All the
+rest of the congregation was to remain standing.
+
+Ah! that huge concert-audience, those thirty, forty thousand believers
+from here, there, and everywhere, inflamed with curiosity, passion, or
+faith, bestirring themselves, jostling one another, rising on tip-toe to
+see the better! The clamour of a human sea arose, the crowd was as gay
+and familiar as if it had found itself in some heavenly theatre where it
+was allowable for one to chat aloud and recreate oneself with the
+spectacle of religious pomp! At first Pierre was thunderstruck, he who
+only knew of nervous, silent kneeling in the depths of dim cathedrals,
+who was not accustomed to that religion of light, whose brilliancy
+transformed a religious celebration into a morning festivity. Around him,
+in the same tribune as himself, were gentlemen in dress-coats and ladies
+gowned in black, carrying glasses as in an opera-house. There were German
+and English women, and numerous Americans, all more or less charming,
+displaying the grace of thoughtless, chirruping birds. In the tribune of
+the Roman nobility on the left he recognised Benedetta and Donna
+Serafina, and there the simplicity of the regulation attire for ladies
+was relieved by large lace veils rivalling one another in richness and
+elegance. Then on the right was the tribune of the Knights of Malta,
+where the Grand Master stood amidst a group of commanders: while across
+the nave rose the diplomatic tribune where Pierre perceived the
+ambassadors of all the Catholic nations, resplendent in gala uniforms
+covered with gold lace. However, the young priest's eyes were ever
+returning to the crowd, the great surging throng in which the three
+thousand pilgrims were lost amidst the multitude of other spectators. And
+yet as the Basilica was so vast that it could easily contain eighty
+thousand people, it did not seem to be more than half full. People came
+and went along the aisles and took up favourable positions without
+impediment. Some could be seen gesticulating, and calls rang out above
+the ceaseless rumble of voices. From the lofty windows of plain white
+glass fell broad sheets of sunlight, which set a gory glow upon the faded
+damask hangings, and these cast a reflection as of fire upon all the
+tumultuous, feverish, impatient faces. The multitude of candles, and the
+seven-and-eighty lamps of the Confession paled to such a degree that they
+seemed but glimmering night-lights in the blinding radiance; and
+everything proclaimed the worldly gala of the imperial Deity of Roman
+pomp.
+
+All at once there came a premature shock of delight, a false alert. Cries
+burst forth and circulated through the crowd: "Eccolo! eccolo! Here he
+comes!" And then there was pushing and jostling, eddying which made the
+human sea whirl and surge, all craning their necks, raising themselves to
+their full height, darting forward in a frenzied desire to see the Holy
+Father and the /cortege/. But only a detachment of Noble Guards marched
+by and took up position right and left of the altar. A flattering murmur
+accompanied them, their fine impassive bearing with its exaggerated
+military stiffness, provoking the admiration of the throng. An American
+woman declared that they were superb-looking fellows; and a Roman lady
+gave an English friend some particulars about the select corps to which
+they belonged. Formerly, said she, young men of the aristocracy had
+greatly sought the honour of forming part of it, for the sake of wearing
+its rich uniform and caracoling in front of the ladies. But recruiting
+was now such a difficult matter that one had to content oneself with
+good-looking young men of doubtful or ruined nobility, whose only care
+was for the meagre "pay" which just enabled them to live.
+
+When another quarter of an hour of chatting and scrutinising had elapsed,
+the papal /cortege/ at last made its appearance, and no sooner was it
+seen than applause burst forth as in a theatre--furious applause it was
+which rose and rolled along under the vaulted ceilings, suggesting the
+acclamations which ring out when some popular, idolised actor makes his
+entry on the stage. As in a theatre, too, everything had been very
+skilfully contrived so as to produce all possible effect amidst the
+magnificent scenery of the Basilica. The /cortege/ was formed in the
+wings, that is in the Cappella della Pieta, the first chapel of the right
+aisle, and in order to reach it, the Holy Father, coming from his
+apartments by the way of the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, had been
+stealthily carried behind the hangings of the aisle which served the
+purpose of a drop-scene. Awaiting him in all readiness in the Cappella
+della Pieta were the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, the whole
+pontifical prelacy, hierarchically classified and grouped. And then, as
+at a signal from a ballet master, the /cortege/ made its entry, reaching
+the nave and ascending it in triumph from the closed Porta Santa to the
+altar of the Confession. On either hand were the rows of spectators whose
+applause at the sight of so much magnificence grew louder and louder as
+their delirious enthusiasm increased.
+
+It was the /cortege/ of the olden solemnities, the cross and sword, the
+Swiss Guard in full uniform, the valets in scarlet simars, the Knights of
+the Cape and the Sword in Renascence costumes, the Canons in rochets of
+lace, the superiors of the religious communities, the apostolic
+prothonotaries, the archbishops, and bishops, all the pontifical prelates
+in violet silk, the cardinals, each wearing the /cappa magna/ and draped
+in purple, walking solemnly two by two with long intervals between each
+pair. Finally, around his Holiness were grouped the officers of the
+military household, the chamber prelates, Monsignor the Majordomo,
+Monsignor the Grand Chamberlain, and all the other high dignitaries of
+the Vatican, with the Roman prince assistant of the throne, the
+traditional, symbolical defender of the Church. And on the /sedia
+gestatoria/, screened by the /flabelli/ with their lofty triumphal fans
+of feathers and carried on high by the bearers in red tunics broidered
+with silk, sat the Pope, clad in the sacred vestments which he had
+assumed in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, the amict, the alb, the
+stole, and the white chasuble and white mitre enriched with gold, two
+gifts of extraordinary sumptuousness that had come from France. And, as
+his Holiness drew near, all hands were raised and clapped yet more loudly
+amidst the waves of living sunlight which streamed from the lofty
+windows.
+
+Then a new and different impression of Leo XIII came to Pierre. The Pope,
+as he now beheld him, was no longer the familiar, tired, inquisitive old
+man, leaning on the arm of a talkative prelate as he strolled through the
+loveliest gardens in the world. He no longer recalled the Holy Father, in
+red cape and papal cap, giving a paternal welcome to a pilgrimage which
+brought him a fortune. He was here the Sovereign Pontiff, the
+all-powerful Master whom Christendom adored. His slim waxen form seemed
+to have stiffened within his white vestments, heavy with golden broidery,
+as in a reliquary of precious metal; and he retained a rigid, haughty,
+hieratic attitude, like that of some idol, gilded, withered for centuries
+past by the smoke of sacrifices. Amidst the mournful stiffness of his
+face only his eyes lived--eyes like black sparkling diamonds gazing afar,
+beyond earth, into the infinite. He gave not a glance to the crowd, he
+lowered his eyes neither to right nor to left, but remained soaring in
+the heavens, ignoring all that took place at his feet.
+
+And as that seemingly embalmed idol, deaf and blind, in spite of the
+brilliancy of his eyes, was carried through the frantic multitude which
+it appeared neither to hear nor to see, it assumed fearsome majesty,
+disquieting grandeur, all the rigidity of dogma, all the immobility of
+tradition exhumed with its /fascioe/ which alone kept it erect. Still
+Pierre fancied he could detect that the Pope was ill and weary, suffering
+from the attack of fever which Nani had spoken of when glorifying the
+courage of that old man of eighty-four, whom strength of soul alone now
+kept alive.
+
+The service began. Alighting from the /sedia gestatoria/ before the altar
+of the Confession, his Holiness slowly celebrated a low mass, assisted by
+four prelates and the pro-prefect of the ceremonies. When the time came
+for washing his fingers, Monsignor the Majordomo and Monsignor the Grand
+Chamberlain, accompanied by two cardinals, poured the water on his august
+hands; and shortly before the elevation of the host all the prelates of
+the pontifical court, each holding a lighted taper, came and knelt around
+the altar. There was a solemn moment, the forty thousand believers there
+assembled shuddered as if they could feel the terrible yet delicious
+blast of the invisible sweeping over them when during the elevation the
+silver clarions sounded the famous chorus of angels which invariably
+makes some women swoon. Almost immediately an aerial chant descended from
+the cupola, from a lofty gallery where one hundred and twenty choristers
+were concealed, and the enraptured multitude marvelled as though the
+angels had indeed responded to the clarion call. The voices descended,
+taking their flight under the vaulted ceilings with the airy sweetness of
+celestial harps; then in suave harmony they died away, reascended to the
+heavens as with a faint flapping of wings. And, after the mass, his
+Holiness, still standing at the altar, in person started the /Te Deum/,
+which the singers of the Sixtine Chapel and the other choristers took up,
+each party chanting a verse alternately. But soon the whole congregation
+joined them, forty thousand voices were raised, and a hymn of joy and
+glory spread through the vast nave with incomparable splendour of effect.
+And then the scene became one of extraordinary magnificence: there was
+Bernini's triumphal, flowery, gilded /baldacchino/, surrounded by the
+whole pontifical court with the lighted tapers showing like starry
+constellations, there was the Sovereign Pontiff in the centre, radiant
+like a planet in his gold-broidered chasuble, there were the benches
+crowded with cardinals in purple and archbishops and bishops in violet
+silk, there were the tribunes glittering with official finery, the gold
+lace of the diplomatists, the variegated uniforms of foreign officers,
+and then there was the throng flowing and eddying on all sides, rolling
+billows after billows of heads from the most distant depths of the
+Basilica. And the hugeness of the temple increased one's amazement; and
+even the glorious hymn which the multitude repeated became colossal,
+ascended like a tempest blast amidst the great marble tombs, the
+superhuman statues and gigantic pillars, till it reached the vast vaulted
+heavens of stone, and penetrated into the firmament of the cupola where
+the Infinite seemed to open resplendent with the gold-work of the
+mosaics.
+
+A long murmur of voices followed the /Te Deum/, whilst Leo XIII, after
+donning the tiara in lieu of the mitre, and exchanging the chasuble for
+the pontifical cope, went to occupy his throne on the platform at the
+entry of the left transept. He thence dominated the whole assembly,
+through which a quiver sped when after the prayers of the ritual, he once
+more rose erect. Beneath the symbolic, triple crown, in the golden
+sheathing of his cope, he seemed to have grown taller. Amidst sudden and
+profound silence, which only feverish heart-beats interrupted, he raised
+his arm with a very noble gesture and pronounced the papal benediction in
+a slow, loud, full voice, which seemed, as it were, the very voice of the
+Deity, so greatly did its power astonish one, coming from such waxen
+lips, from such a bloodless, lifeless frame. And the effect was
+prodigious: as soon as the /cortege/ reformed to return whence it had
+come, applause again burst forth, a frenzy of enthusiasm which the
+clapping of hands could no longer content. Acclamations resounded and
+gradually gained upon the whole multitude. They began among a group of
+ardent partisans stationed near the statue of St. Peter: /"Evviva il
+Papa-Re! evviva il Papa-Re/! Long live the Pope-King!" as the /cortege/
+went by the shout rushed along like leaping fire, inflaming heart after
+heart, and at last springing from every mouth in a thunderous protest
+against the theft of the states of the Church. All the faith, all the
+love of those believers, overexcited by the regal spectacle they had just
+beheld, returned once more to the dream, to the rageful desire that the
+Pope should be both King and Pontiff, master of men's bodies as he was of
+their souls--in one word, the absolute sovereign of the earth. Therein
+lay the only truth, the only happiness, the only salvation! Let all be
+given to him, both mankind and the world! "/Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il
+Papa-Re/! Long live the Pope-King!"
+
+Ah! that cry, that cry of war which had caused so many errors and so much
+bloodshed, that cry of self-abandonment and blindness which, realised,
+would have brought back the old ages of suffering, it shocked Pierre, and
+impelled him in all haste to quit the tribune where he was in order that
+he might escape the contagion of idolatry. And while the /cortege/ still
+went its way and the deafening clamour of the crowd continued, he for a
+moment followed the left aisle amidst the general scramble. This,
+however, made him despair of reaching the street, and anxious to escape
+the crush of the general departure, it occurred to him to profit by a
+door which he saw open and which led him into a vestibule, whence
+ascended the steps conducting to the dome. A sacristan standing in the
+doorway, both bewildered and delighted at the demonstration, looked at
+him for a moment, hesitating whether he should stop him or not. However,
+the sight of the young priest's cassock combined with his own emotion
+rendered the man tolerant. Pierre was allowed to pass, and at once began
+to climb the staircase as rapidly as he could, in order that he might
+flee farther and farther away, ascend higher and yet higher into peace
+and silence.
+
+And the silence suddenly became profound, the walls stifled the cry of
+the multitude. The staircase was easy and light, with broad paved steps
+turning within a sort of tower. When Pierre came out upon the roofs of
+nave and aisles, he was delighted to find himself in the bright sunlight
+and the pure keen air which blew there as in the open country. And it was
+with astonishment that he gazed upon the huge expanse of lead, zinc, and
+stone-work, a perfect aerial city living a life of its own under the blue
+sky. He saw cupolas, spires, terraces, even houses and gardens, houses
+bright with flowers, the residences of the workmen who live atop of the
+Basilica, which is ever and ever requiring repair. A little population
+here bestirs itself, labours, loves, eats, and sleeps. However, Pierre
+desired to approach the balustrade so as to get a near view of the
+colossal statues of the Saviour and the Apostles which surmount the
+facade on the side of the piazza. These giants, some nineteen feet in
+height, are constantly being mended; their arms, legs, and heads, into
+which the atmosphere is ever eating, nowadays only hold together by the
+help of cement, bars, and hooks. And having examined them, Pierre was
+leaning forward to glance at the Vatican's jumble of ruddy roofs, when it
+seemed to him that the shout from which he had fled was rising from the
+piazza, and thereupon, in all haste, he resumed his ascent within the
+pillar conducting to the dome. There was first a staircase, and then came
+some narrow, oblique passages, inclines intersected by a few steps,
+between the inner and outer walls of the cupola. Yielding to curiosity,
+Pierre pushed a door open, and suddenly found himself inside the Basilica
+again, at nearly 200 feet from the ground. A narrow gallery there ran
+round the dome just above the frieze, on which, in letters five feet
+high, appeared the famous inscription: /Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram
+oedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum.* And then,
+as Pierre leant over to gaze into the fearful cavity beneath him and the
+wide openings of nave, and aisles, and transepts, the cry, the delirious
+cry of the multitude, yet clamorously swarming below, struck him full in
+the face. He fled once more; but, higher up, yet a second time he pushed
+another door open and found another gallery, one perched above the
+windows, just where the splendid mosaics begin, and whence the crowd
+seemed to him lost in the depths of a dizzy abyss, altar and
+/baldacchino/ alike looking no larger than toys. And yet the cry of
+idolatry and warfare arose again, and smote him like the buffet of a
+tempest which gathers increase of strength the farther it rushes. So to
+escape it he had to climb higher still, even to the outer gallery which
+encircles the lantern, hovering in the very heavens.
+
+  * Thou art Peter (Petrus) and on that rock (Petram) will I build
+    my church, and to thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of
+    Heaven.
+
+How delightful was the relief which that bath of air and sunlight at
+first brought him! Above him now there only remained the ball of gilt
+copper into which emperors and queens have ascended, as is testified by
+the pompous inscriptions in the passages; a hollow ball it is, where the
+voice crashes like thunder, where all the sounds of space reverberate. As
+he emerged on the side of the apse, his eyes at first plunged into the
+papal gardens, whose clumps of trees seemed mere bushes almost level with
+the soil; and he could retrace his recent stroll among them, the broad
+/parterre/ looking like a faded Smyrna rug, the large wood showing the
+deep glaucous greenery of a stagnant pool. Then there were the kitchen
+garden and the vineyard easily identified and tended with care. The
+fountains, the observatory, the casino, where the Pope spent the hot days
+of summer, showed merely like little white spots in those undulating
+grounds, walled in like any other estate, but with the fearsome rampart
+of the fourth Leo, which yet retained its fortress-like aspect. However,
+Pierre took his way round the narrow gallery and abruptly found himself
+in front of Rome, a sudden and immense expanse, with the distant sea on
+the west, the uninterrupted mountain chains on the east and the south,
+the Roman Campagna stretching to the horizon like a bare and greenish
+desert, while the city, the Eternal City, was spread out at his feet.
+Never before had space impressed him so majestically. Rome was there, as
+a bird might see it, within the glance, as distinct as some geographical
+plan executed in relief. To think of it, such a past, such a history, so
+much grandeur, and Rome so dwarfed and contracted by distance! Houses as
+lilliputian and as pretty as toys; and the whole a mere mouldy speck upon
+the earth's face! What impassioned Pierre was that he could at a glance
+understand the divisions of Rome: the antique city yonder with the
+Capitol, the Forum, and the Palatine; the papal city in that Borgo which
+he overlooked, with St. Peter's and the Vatican gazing across the city of
+the middle ages--which was huddled together in the right angle described
+by the yellow Tiber--towards the modern city, the Quirinal of the Italian
+monarchy. And particularly did he remark the chalky girdle with which the
+new districts encompassed the ancient, central, sun-tanned quarters, thus
+symbolising an effort at rejuvenescence, the old heart but slowly mended,
+whereas the outlying limbs were renewed as if by miracle.
+
+In that ardent noontide glow, however, Pierre no longer beheld the pure
+ethereal Rome which had met his eyes on the morning of his arrival in the
+delightfully soft radiance of the rising sun. That smiling, unobtrusive
+city, half veiled by golden mist, immersed as it were in some dream of
+childhood, now appeared to him flooded with a crude light, motionless,
+hard of outline and silent like death. The distance was as if devoured by
+too keen a flame, steeped in a luminous dust in which it crumbled. And
+against that blurred background the whole city showed with violent
+distinctness in great patches of light and shade, their tracery harshly
+conspicuous. One might have fancied oneself above some very ancient,
+abandoned stone quarry, which a few clumps of trees spotted with dark
+green. Of the ancient city one could see the sunburnt tower of the
+Capitol, the black cypresses of the Palatine, and the ruins of the palace
+of Septimius Severus, suggesting the white osseous carcase of some fossil
+monster, left there by a flood. In front, was enthroned the modern city
+with the long, renovated buildings of the Quirinal, whose yellow walls
+stood forth with wondrous crudity amidst the vigorous crests of the
+garden trees. And to right and left on the Viminal, beyond the palace,
+the new districts appeared like a city of chalk and plaster mottled by
+innumerable windows as with a thousand touches of black ink. Then here
+and there were the Pincio showing like a stagnant mere, the Villa Medici
+uprearing its campanili, the castle of Sant' Angelo brown like rust, the
+spire of Santa Maria Maggiore aglow like a burning taper, the three
+churches of the Aventine drowsy amidst verdure, the Palazzo Farnese with
+its summer-baked tiles showing like old gold, the domes of the Gesu, of
+Sant' Andrea della Valle, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and yet other
+domes and other domes, all in fusion, incandescent in the brazier of the
+heavens. And Pierre again felt a heart-pang in presence of that harsh,
+stern Rome, so different from the Rome of his dream, the Rome of
+rejuvenescence and hope, which he had fancied he had found on his first
+morning, but which had now faded away to give place to the immutable city
+of pride and domination, stubborn under the sun even unto death.
+
+And there on high, all alone with his thoughts, Pierre suddenly
+understood. It was as if a dart of flaming light fell on him in that
+free, unbounded expanse where he hovered. Had it come from the ceremony
+which he had just beheld, from the frantic cry of servitude still ringing
+in his ears? Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him,
+that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the
+dust of her tomb? He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors,
+and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he
+felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it
+must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this
+earth. A first reason of this lay in heredity, in the forces of history,
+the long line of the heirs of the Caesars, the popes, the great pontiffs,
+in whose veins the blood of Augustus, demanding the empire of the world,
+had never ceased to flow. Though they might reside in the Vatican they
+had come from the imperial abodes on the Palatine, from the palace of
+Septimius Severus, and throughout the centuries their policy had ever
+pursued the dream of Roman mastery, of all the nations vanquished,
+submissive, and obedient to Rome. If its sovereignty were not universal,
+extending alike over bodies and over souls, Catholicism would lose its
+/raison d'etre/; for the Church cannot recognise any empire or kingdom
+otherwise than politically--the emperors and the kings being purely and
+simply so many temporary delegates placed in charge of the nations
+pending the time when they shall be called upon to relinquish their
+trust. All the nations, all humanity, and the whole world belong to the
+Church to whom they have been given by God. And if real and effective
+possession is not hers to-day, this is only because she yields to force,
+compelled to face accomplished facts, but with the formal reserve that
+she is in presence of guilty usurpation, that her possessions are
+unjustly withheld from her, and that she awaits the realisation of the
+promises of the Christ, who, when the time shall be accomplished, will
+for ever restore to her both the earth and mankind. Such is the real
+future city which time is to bring: Catholic Rome, sovereign of the world
+once more. And Rome the city forms a substantial part of the dream, Rome
+whose eternity has been predicted, Rome whose soil has imparted to
+Catholicism the inextinguishable thirst of absolute power. And thus the
+destiny of the papacy is linked to that of Rome, to such a point indeed
+that a pope elsewhere than at Rome would no longer be a Catholic pope.
+The thought of all this frightened Pierre; a great shudder passed through
+him as he leant on the light iron balustrade, gazing down into the abyss
+where the stern mournful city was even now crumbling away under the
+fierce sun.
+
+There was, however, evidence of the facts which had dawned on him. If
+Pius IX and Leo XIII had resolved to imprison themselves in the Vatican,
+it was because necessity bound them to Rome. A pope is not free to leave
+the city, to be the head of the Church elsewhere; and in the same way a
+pope, however well he may understand the modern world, has not the right
+to relinquish the temporal power. This is an inalienable inheritance
+which he must defend, and it is moreover a question of life, peremptory,
+above discussion. And thus Leo XIII has retained the title of Master of
+the temporal dominions of the Church, and this he has done the more
+readily since as a cardinal--like all the members of the Sacred College
+when elected--he swore that he would maintain those dominions intact.
+Italy may hold Rome as her capital for another century or more, but the
+coming popes will never cease to protest and claim their kingdom. If ever
+an understanding should be arrived at, it must be based on the gift of a
+strip of territory. Formerly, when rumours of reconciliation were
+current, was it not said that the papacy exacted, as a formal condition,
+the possession of at least the Leonine City with the neutralisation of a
+road leading to the sea? Nothing is not enough, one cannot start from
+nothing to attain to everything, whereas that Civitas Leonina, that bit
+of a city, would already be a little royal ground, and it would then only
+be necessary to conquer the rest, first Rome, next Italy, then the
+neighbouring states, and at last the whole world. Never has the Church
+despaired, even when, beaten and despoiled, she seemed to be at the last
+gasp. Never will she abdicate, never will she renounce the promises of
+the Christ, for she believes in a boundless future and declares herself
+to be both indestructible and eternal. Grant her but a pebble on which to
+rest her head, and she will hope to possess, first the field in which
+that pebble lies, and then the empire in which the field is situated. If
+one pope cannot achieve the recovery of the inheritance, another pope,
+ten, twenty other popes will continue the work. The centuries do not
+count. And this explains why an old man of eighty-four has undertaken
+colossal enterprises whose achievement requires several lives, certain as
+he is that his successors will take his place, and that the work will
+ever and ever be carried forward and completed.
+
+As these thoughts coursed through his mind, Pierre, overlooking that
+ancient city of glory and domination, so stubbornly clinging to its
+purple, realised that he was an imbecile with his dream of a purely
+spiritual pope. The notion seemed to him so different from the reality,
+so out of place, that he experienced a sort of shame-fraught despair. The
+new pope, consonant to the teachings of the Gospel, such as a purely
+spiritual pope reigning over souls alone, would be, was virtually beyond
+the ken of a Roman prelate. At thought of that papal court congealed in
+ritual, pride, and authority, Pierre suddenly understood what horror and
+repugnance such a pastor would inspire. How great must be the
+astonishment and contempt of the papal prelates for that singular notion
+of the northern mind, a pope without dominions or subjects, military
+household or royal honours, a pope who would be, as it were, a spirit,
+exercising purely moral authority, dwelling in the depths of God's
+temple, and governing the world solely with gestures of benediction and
+deeds of kindliness and love! All that was but a misty Gothic invention
+for this Latin clergy, these priests of light and magnificence, who were
+certainly pious and even superstitious, but who left the Deity well
+sheltered within the tabernacle in order to govern in His name, according
+to what they considered the interests of Heaven. Thence it arose that
+they employed craft and artifice like mere politicians, and lived by dint
+of expedients amidst the great battle of human appetites, marching with
+the prudent, stealthy steps of diplomatists towards the final terrestrial
+victory of the Christ, who, in the person of the Pope, was one day to
+reign over all the nations. And how stupefied must a French prelate have
+been--a prelate like Monseigneur Bergerot, that apostle of renunciation
+and charity--when he lighted amidst that world of the Vatican! How
+difficult must it have been for him to understand and focus things, and
+afterwards how great his grief at finding himself unable to come to any
+agreement with those men without country, without fatherland, those
+"internationals," who were ever poring over the maps of both hemispheres,
+ever absorbed in schemes which were to bring them empire. Days and days
+were necessary, one needed to live in Rome, and he, Pierre himself, had
+only seen things clearly after a month's sojourn, whilst labouring under
+the violent shock of the royal pomp of St. Peter's, and standing face to
+face with the ancient city as it slumbered heavily in the sunlight and
+dreamt its dream of eternity.
+
+But on lowering his eyes to the piazza in front of the Basilica he
+perceived the multitude, the 40,000 believers streaming over the pavement
+like insects. And then he thought that he could hear the cry again
+rising: "/Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il Papa-Re/! Long live the
+Pope-King!" Whilst ascending those endless staircases a moment previously
+it had seemed to him as if the colossus of stone were quivering with the
+frantic shout raised beneath its ceilings. And now that he had climbed
+even into cloudland that shout apparently was traversing space. If the
+colossal pile beneath him still vibrated with it, was it not as with a
+last rise of sap within its ancient walls, a reinvigoration of that
+Catholic blood which formerly had demanded that the pile should be a
+stupendous one, the veritable king of temples, and which now was striving
+to reanimate it with the powerful breath of life, and this at the very
+hour when death was beginning to fall upon its over-vast, deserted nave
+and aisles? The crowd was still streaming forth, filling the piazza, and
+Pierre's heart was wrung by frightful anguish, for that throng with its
+shout had just swept his last hope away. On the previous afternoon, after
+the reception of the pilgrimage, he had yet been able to deceive himself
+by overlooking the necessity for money which bound the Pope to earth in
+order that he might see nought but the feeble old man, all spirituality,
+resplendent like the symbol of moral authority. But his faith in such a
+pastor of the Gospel, free from all considerations of earthly wealth, and
+king of none other than a heavenly kingdom, had fled. Not only did the
+Peter's Pence impose hard servitude upon Leo XIII but he was also the
+prisoner of papal tradition--the eternal King of Rome, riveted to the
+soil of Rome, unable either to quit the city or to renounce the temporal
+power. The fatal end would be collapse on the spot, the dome of St.
+Peter's falling even as the temple of Olympian Jupiter had fallen,
+Catholicism strewing the grass with its ruins whilst elsewhere schism
+burst forth: a new faith for the new nations. Of this Pierre had a
+grandiose and tragical vision: he beheld his dream destroyed, his book
+swept away amidst that cry which spread around him as if flying to the
+four corners of the Catholic world "/Evviva il Papa-Re! evviva il
+Papa-Re! Long live the Pope-King!" But even in that hour of the papacy's
+passing triumph he already felt that the giant of gold and marble on
+which he stood was oscillating, even as totter all old and rotten
+societies.
+
+At last he took his way down again, and a fresh shock of emotion came to
+him as he reached the roofs, that sunlit expanse of lead and zinc, large
+enough for the site of a town. Monsignor Nani was there, in company with
+the two French ladies, the mother and the daughter, both looking very
+happy and highly amused. No doubt the prelate had good-naturedly offered
+to conduct them to the dome. However, as soon as he recognised the young
+priest he went towards him: "Well, my dear son," he inquired, "are you
+pleased? Have you been impressed, edified?" As he spoke, his searching
+eyes dived into Pierre's soul, as if to ascertain the present result of
+his experiments. Then, satisfied with what he detected, he began to laugh
+softly: "Yes, yes, I see--come, you are a sensible fellow after all. I
+begin to think that the unfortunate affair which brought you here will
+have a happy ending."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+WHEN Pierre remained in the morning at the Boccanera mansion he often
+spent some hours in the little neglected garden which had formerly ended
+with a sort of colonnaded /loggia/, whence two flights of steps descended
+to the Tiber. This garden was a delightful, solitary nook, perfumed by
+the ripe fruit of the centenarian orange-trees, whose symmetrical lines
+were the only indication of the former pathways, now hidden beneath rank
+weeds. And Pierre also found there the acrid scent of the large
+box-shrubs growing in the old central fountain basin, which had been
+filled up with loose earth and rubbish.
+
+On those luminous October mornings, full of such tender and penetrating
+charm, the spot was one where all the joy of living might well be
+savoured, but Pierre brought thither his northern dreaminess, his concern
+for suffering, his steadfast feeling of compassion, which rendered yet
+sweeter the caress of the sunlight pervading that atmosphere of love. He
+seated himself against the right-hand wall on a fragment of a fallen
+column over which a huge laurel cast a deep-black shadow, fresh and
+aromatic. In the antique greenish sarcophagus beside him, on which fauns
+offered violence to nymphs, the streamlet of water trickling from the
+mask incrusted in the wall, set the unchanging music of its crystal note,
+whilst he read the newspapers and the letters which he received, all the
+communications of good Abbe Rose, who kept him informed of his mission
+among the wretched ones of gloomy Paris, now already steeped in fog and
+mud.
+
+One morning however, Pierre unexpectedly found Benedetta seated on the
+fallen column which he usually made his chair. She raised a light cry of
+surprise on seeing him, and for a moment remained embarrassed, for she
+had with her his book "New Rome," which she had read once already, but
+had then imperfectly understood. And overcoming her embarrassment she now
+hastened to detain him, making him sit down beside her, and frankly
+owning that she had come to the garden in order to be alone and apply
+herself to an attentive study of the book, in the same way as some
+ignorant school-girl. Then they began to chat like a pair of friends, and
+the young priest spent a delightful hour. Although Benedetta did not
+speak of herself, he realised that it was her grief alone which brought
+her nearer to him, as if indeed her own sufferings enlarged her heart and
+made her think of all who suffered in the world. Patrician as she was,
+regarding social hierarchy as a divine law, she had never previously
+thought of such things, and some pages of Pierre's book greatly
+astonished her. What! one ought to take interest in the lowly, realise
+that they had the same souls and the same griefs as oneself, and seek in
+brotherly or sisterly fashion to make them happy? She certainly sought to
+acquire such an interest, but with no great success, for she secretly
+feared that it might lead her into sin, as it could not be right to alter
+aught of the social system which had been established by God and
+consecrated by the Church. Charitable she undoubtedly was, wont to bestow
+small sums in alms, but she did not give her heart, she felt no true
+sympathy for the humble, belonging as she did to such a different race,
+which looked to a throne in heaven high above the seats of all the
+plebeian elect.
+
+She and Pierre, however, found themselves on other mornings side by side
+in the shade of the laurels near the trickling, singing water; and he,
+lacking occupation, weary of waiting for a solution which seemed to
+recede day by day, fervently strove to animate this young and beautiful
+woman with some of his own fraternal feelings. He was impassioned by the
+idea that he was catechising Italy herself, the queen of beauty, who was
+still slumbering in ignorance, but who would recover all her past glory
+if she were to awake to the new times with soul enlarged, swelling with
+pity for men and things. Reading good Abbe Rose's letters to Benedetta,
+he made her shudder at the frightful wail of wretchedness which ascends
+from all great cities. With such deep tenderness in her eyes, with the
+happiness of love reciprocated emanating from her whole being, why should
+she not recognise, even as he did, that the law of love was the sole
+means of saving suffering humanity, which, through hatred, incurred the
+danger of death? And to please him she did try to believe in democracy,
+in the fraternal remodelling of society, but among other nations
+only--not at Rome, for an involuntary, gentle laugh came to her lips
+whenever his words evoked the idea of the poor still remaining in the
+Trastevere district fraternising with those who yet dwelt in the old
+princely palaces. No, no, things had been as they were so long; they
+could not, must not, be altered! And so, after all, Pierre's pupil made
+little progress: she was, in reality, simply touched by the wealth of
+ardent love which the young priest had chastely transferred from one
+alone to the whole of human kind. And between him and her, as those
+sunlit October mornings went by, a tie of exquisite sweetness was formed;
+they came to love one another with deep, pure, fraternal affection,
+amidst the great glowing passion which consumed them both.
+
+Then, one day, Benedetta, her elbow resting on the sarcophagus, spoke of
+Dario, whose name she had hitherto refrained from mentioning. Ah! poor
+/amico/, how circumspect and repentant he had shown himself since that
+fit of brutal insanity! At first, to conceal his embarrassment, he had
+gone to spend three days at Naples, and it was said that La Tonietta, the
+sentimental /demi-mondaine/, had hastened to join him there, wildly in
+love with him. Since his return to the mansion he had avoided all private
+meetings with his cousin, and scarcely saw her except at the Monday
+receptions, when he wore a submissive air, and with his eyes silently
+entreated forgiveness.
+
+"Yesterday, however," continued Benedetta, "I met him on the staircase
+and gave him my hand. He understood that I was no longer angry with him
+and was very happy. What else could I have done? One must not be severe
+for ever. Besides, I do not want things to go too far between him and
+that woman. I want him to remember that I still love him, and am still
+waiting for him. Oh! he is mine, mine alone. But alas! I cannot say the
+word: our affairs are in such sorry plight."
+
+She paused, and two big tears welled into her eyes. The divorce
+proceedings to which she alluded had now come to a standstill, fresh
+obstacles ever arising to stay their course.
+
+Pierre was much moved by her tears, for she seldom wept. She herself
+sometimes confessed, with her calm smile, that she did not know how to
+weep. But now her heart was melting, and for a moment she remained
+overcome, leaning on the mossy, crumbling sarcophagus, whilst the clear
+water falling from the gaping mouth of the tragic mask still sounded its
+flutelike note. And a sudden thought of death came to the priest as he
+saw her, so young and so radiant with beauty, half fainting beside that
+marble resting-place where fauns were rushing upon nymphs in a frantic
+bacchanal which proclaimed the omnipotence of love--that omnipotence
+which the ancients were fond of symbolising on their tombs as a token of
+life's eternity. And meantime a faint, warm breeze passed through the
+sunlit, silent garden, wafting hither and thither the penetrating scent
+of box and orange.
+
+"One has so much strength when one loves," Pierre at last murmured.
+
+"Yes, yes, you are right," she replied, already smiling again. "I am
+childish. But it is the fault of your book. It is only when I suffer that
+I properly understand it. But all the same I am making progress, am I
+not? Since you desire it, let all the poor, all those who suffer, as I
+do, be my brothers and sisters."
+
+Then for a while they resumed their chat.
+
+On these occasions Benedetta was usually the first to return to the
+house, and Pierre would linger alone under the laurels, vaguely dreaming
+of sweet, sad things. Often did he think how hard life proved for poor
+creatures whose only thirst was for happiness!
+
+One Monday evening, at a quarter-past ten, only the young folks remained
+in Donna Serafina's reception-room. Monsignor Nani had merely put in an
+appearance that night, and Cardinal Sarno had just gone off.
+
+Even Donna Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have
+withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the
+chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting
+and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were
+Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit
+the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously,
+in the company of a very pretty girl.
+
+"Oh! don't deny it, my dear fellow," continued Narcisse, "for she was
+really superb. She was walking beside you, and you turned into a lane
+together--the Borgo Angelico, I think."
+
+Dario listened smiling, quite at his ease and incapable of denying his
+passionate predilection for beauty. "No doubt, no doubt; it was I, I
+don't deny it," he responded. "Only the inferences you draw are not
+correct." And turning towards Benedetta, who, without a thought of
+jealous anxiety, wore as gay a look as himself, as though delighted that
+he should have enjoyed that passing pleasure of the eyes, he went on: "It
+was the girl, you know, whom I found in tears six weeks ago. Yes, that
+bead-worker who was sobbing because the workshop was shut up, and who
+rushed along, all blushing, to conduct me to her parents when I offered
+her a bit of silver. Pierina her name is, as you, perhaps, remember."
+
+"Oh! yes, Pierina."
+
+"Well, since then I've met her in the street on four or five occasions.
+And, to tell the truth, she is so very beautiful that I've stopped and
+spoken to her. The other day, for instance, I walked with her as far as a
+manufacturer's. But she hasn't yet found any work, and she began to cry,
+and so, to console her a little, I kissed her. She was quite taken aback
+at it, but she seemed very well pleased."
+
+At this all the others began to laugh. But suddenly Celia desisted and
+said very gravely, "You know, Dario, she loves you; you must not be hard
+on her."
+
+Dario, no doubt, was of Celia's opinion, for he again looked at
+Benedetta, but with a gay toss of the head, as if to say that, although
+the girl might love him, he did not love her. A bead-worker indeed, a
+girl of the lowest classes, pooh! She might be a Venus, but she could be
+nothing to him. And he himself made merry over his romantic adventure,
+which Narcisse sought to arrange in a kind of antique sonnet: A beautiful
+bead-worker falling madly in love with a young prince, as fair as
+sunlight, who, touched by her misfortune, hands her a silver crown; then
+the beautiful bead-worker, quite overcome at finding him as charitable as
+handsome, dreaming of him incessantly, and following him everywhere,
+chained to his steps by a link of flame; and finally the beautiful
+bead-worker, who has refused the silver crown, so entreating the handsome
+prince with her soft, submissive eyes, that he at last deigns to grant
+her the alms of his heart. This pastime greatly amused Benedetta; but
+Celia, with her angelic face and the air of a little girl who ought to
+have been ignorant of everything, remained very grave and repeated sadly,
+"Dario, Dario, she loves you; you must not make her suffer."
+
+Then the Contessina, in her turn, was moved to pity. "And those poor
+folks are not happy!" said she.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the Prince, "it's misery beyond belief. On the day she
+took me to the Quartiere dei Prati* I was quite overcome; it was awful,
+astonishingly awful!"
+
+  * The district of the castle meadows--see /ante/ note.--Trans.
+
+"But I remember that we promised to go to see the poor people," resumed
+Benedetta, "and we have done wrong in delaying our visit so long. For
+your studies, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment, you greatly desired to accompany
+us and see the poor of Rome--was that not so?"
+
+As she spoke she raised her eyes to Pierre, who for a moment had been
+silent. He was much moved by her charitable thought, for he realised, by
+the faint quiver of her voice, that she desired to appear a docile pupil,
+progressing in affection for the lowly and the wretched. Moreover, his
+passion for his apostolate had at once returned to him. "Oh!" said he, "I
+shall not quit Rome without having seen those who suffer, those who lack
+work and bread. Therein lies the malady which affects every nation;
+salvation can only be attained by the healing of misery. When the roots
+of the tree cannot find sustenance the tree dies."
+
+"Well," resumed the Contessina, "we will fix an appointment at once; you
+shall come with us to the Quartiere dei Prati--Dario will take us there."
+
+At this the Prince, who had listened to the priest with an air of
+stupefaction, unable to understand the simile of the tree and its roots,
+began to protest distressfully, "No, no, cousin, take Monsieur l'Abbe for
+a stroll there if it amuses you. But I've been, and don't want to go
+back. Why, when I got home the last time I was so upset that I almost
+took to my bed. No, no; such abominations are too awful--it isn't
+possible."
+
+At this moment a voice, bitter with displeasure, arose from the chimney
+corner. Donna Serafina was emerging from her long silence. "Dario is
+quite right! Send your alms, my dear, and I will gladly add mine. There
+are other places where you might take Monsieur l'Abbe, and which it would
+be far more useful for him to see. With that idea of yours you would send
+him away with a nice recollection of our city."
+
+Roman pride rang out amidst the old lady's bad temper. Why, indeed, show
+one's sores to foreigners, whose visit is possibly prompted by hostile
+curiosity? One always ought to look beautiful; Rome should not be shown
+otherwise than in the garb of glory.
+
+Narcisse, however, had taken possession of Pierre. "It's true, my dear
+Abbe," said he; "I forgot to recommend that stroll to you. You really
+must visit the new district built over the castle meadows. It's typical,
+and sums up all the others. And you won't lose your time there, I'll
+warrant you, for nowhere can you learn more about the Rome of the present
+day. It's extraordinary, extraordinary!" Then, addressing Benedetta, he
+added, "Is it decided? Shall we say to-morrow morning? You'll find the
+Abbe and me over there, for I want to explain matters to him beforehand,
+in order that he may understand them. What do you say to ten o'clock?"
+
+Before answering him the Contessina turned towards her aunt and
+respectfully opposed her views. "But Monsieur l'Abbe, aunt, has met
+enough beggars in our streets already, so he may well see everything.
+Besides, judging by his book, he won't see worse things than he has seen
+in Paris. As he says in one passage, hunger is the same all the world
+over." Then, with her sensible air, she gently laid siege to Dario. "You
+know, Dario," said she, "you would please me very much by taking me
+there. We can go in the carriage and join these gentlemen. It will be a
+very pleasant outing for us. It is such a long time since we went out
+together."
+
+It was certainly that idea of going out with Dario, of having a pretext
+for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself
+realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a
+joke. "Ah! cousin," he said, "it will be your fault; I shall have the
+nightmare for a week. An excursion like that spoils all the enjoyment of
+life for days and days."
+
+The mere thought made him quiver with revolt. However, laughter again
+rang out around him, and, in spite of Donna Serafina's mute disapproval,
+the appointment was finally fixed for the following morning at ten
+o'clock. Celia as she went off expressed deep regret that she could not
+form one of the party; but, with the closed candour of a budding lily,
+she really took interest in Pierina alone. As she reached the ante-room
+she whispered in her friend's ear: "Take a good look at that beauty, my
+dear, so as to tell me whether she is so very beautiful--beautiful beyond
+compare."
+
+When Pierre met Narcisse near the Castle of Sant' Angelo on the morrow,
+at nine o'clock, he was surprised to find him again languid and
+enraptured, plunged anew in artistic enthusiasm. At first not a word was
+said of the excursion. Narcisse related that he had risen at sunrise in
+order that he might spend an hour before Bernini's "Santa Teresa." It
+seemed that when he did not see that statue for a week he suffered as
+acutely as if he were parted from some cherished mistress. And his
+adoration varied with the time of day, according to the light in which he
+beheld the figure: in the morning, when the pale glow of dawn steeped it
+in whiteness, he worshipped it with quite a mystical transport of the
+soul, whilst in the afternoon, when the glow of the declining sun's
+oblique rays seemed to permeate the marble, his passion became as fiery
+red as the blood of martyrs. "Ah! my friend," said he with a weary air
+whilst his dreamy eyes faded to mauve, "you have no idea how delightful
+and perturbing her awakening was this morning--how languorously she
+opened her eyes, like a pure, candid virgin, emerging from the embrace of
+the Divinity. One could die of rapture at the sight!"
+
+Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the
+voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of
+life: "We'll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the
+buildings yonder; and on our way I'll tell you what I know of the things
+we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those
+delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own,
+just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind
+is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took
+part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by
+it."
+
+Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing
+technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary
+adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome,
+should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last
+possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which
+the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to
+say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young
+nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern
+capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were
+sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of
+all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what
+abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the /Roma sporca/ which
+artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked
+even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used
+for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the
+princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect
+manure beds which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus vast municipal works
+were absolutely necessary, the question was one of health and life
+itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building
+houses for the newcomers, who would assuredly flock into the city. There
+had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment
+of the German empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of
+thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be
+doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for as the new centre of national life the
+city would necessarily attract all the /vis viva/ of the provinces. And
+at this thought pride stepped in: the fallen government of the Vatican
+must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendour she
+would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its
+thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the
+imperial or the papal city.
+
+True, during the early years some prudence was observed; wisely enough,
+houses were only built in proportion as they were required. The
+population had doubled at one bound, rising from two to four hundred
+thousand souls, thanks to the arrival of the little world of employees
+and officials of the public services--all those who live on the State or
+hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life
+whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of
+newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that
+the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid.
+And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was
+necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow's need by
+enlarging Rome on all sides. Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the
+second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of
+light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was
+neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of
+the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the
+work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of
+the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal,
+predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was
+completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies,
+those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away
+without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All
+at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had
+been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever
+arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A
+flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome,
+the noblest and easiest of preys. Those needy, famished mountaineers
+found spoils for every appetite in that voluptuous South where life is so
+benign, and the very delights of the climate helped to corrupt and hasten
+moral gangrene. At first, too; it was merely necessary to stoop; money
+was to be found by the shovelful among the rubbish of the first districts
+which were opened up. People who were clever enough to scent the course
+which the new thoroughfares would take and purchase buildings threatened
+with demolition increased their capital tenfold in a couple of years. And
+after that the contagion spread, infecting all classes--the princes,
+burgesses, petty proprietors, even the shop-keepers, bakers, grocers, and
+boot-makers; the delirium rising to such a pitch that a mere baker
+subsequently failed for forty-five millions.* Nothing, indeed, was left
+but rageful gambling, in which the stakes were millions, whilst the lands
+and the houses became mere fictions, mere pretexts for stock-exchange
+operations. And thus the old hereditary pride, which had dreamt of
+transforming Rome into the capital of the world, was heated to madness by
+the high fever of speculation--folks buying, and building, and selling
+without limit, without a pause, even as one might throw shares upon the
+market as fast and as long as presses can be found to print them.
+
+  * 1,800,000 pounds. See /ante/ note.--Trans.
+
+No other city in course of evolution has ever furnished such a spectacle.
+Nowadays, when one strives to penetrate things one is confounded. The
+population had increased to five hundred thousand, and then seemingly
+remained stationary; nevertheless, new districts continued to sprout up
+more thickly than ever. Yet what folly it was not to wait for a further
+influx of inhabitants! Why continue piling up accommodation for thousands
+of families whose advent was uncertain? The only excuse lay in having
+beforehand propounded the proposition that the third Rome, the triumphant
+capital of Italy, could not count less than a million souls, and in
+regarding that proposition as indisputable fact. The people had not come,
+but they surely would come: no patriot could doubt it without being
+guilty of treason. And so houses were built and built without a pause,
+for the half-million citizens who were coming. There was no anxiety as to
+the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be
+expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection
+with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished,
+pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and
+thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other
+companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more
+districts outside Rome--veritable little towns, of which there was no
+need whatever. Beyond the Porta San Giovanni and the Porta San Lorenzo,
+suburbs sprang up as by miracle. A town was sketched out over the vast
+estate of the Villa Ludovisi, from the Porta Pia to the Porta Salaria and
+even as far as Sant' Agnese. And then came an attempt to make quite a
+little city, with church, school, and market, arise all at once on the
+fields of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. And it was no question of small
+dwellings for labourers, modest flats for employees, and others of
+limited means; no, it was a question of colossal mansions three and four
+storeys high, displaying uniform and endless facades which made these new
+excentral quarters quite Babylonian, such districts, indeed, as only
+capitals endowed with intense life, like Paris and London, could contrive
+to populate. However, such were the monstrous products of pride and
+gambling; and what a page of history, what a bitter lesson now that Rome,
+financially ruined, is further disgraced by that hideous girdle of empty,
+and, for the most part, uncompleted carcases, whose ruins already strew
+the grassy streets!
+
+The fatal collapse, the disaster proved a frightful one. Narcisse
+explained its causes and recounted its phases so clearly that Pierre
+fully understood. Naturally enough, numerous financial companies had
+sprouted up: the Immobiliere, the Society d'Edilizia e Construzione, the
+Fondaria, the Tiberiana, and the Esquilino. Nearly all of them built,
+erected huge houses, entire streets of them, for purposes of sale; but
+they also gambled in land, selling plots at large profit to petty
+speculators, who also dreamt of making large profits amidst the
+continuous, fictitious rise brought about by the growing fever of
+agiotage. And the worst was that the petty speculators, the middle-class
+people, the inexperienced shop-keepers without capital, were crazy enough
+to build in their turn by borrowing of the banks or applying to the
+companies which had sold them the land for sufficient cash to enable them
+to complete their structures. As a general rule, to avoid the loss of
+everything, the companies were one day compelled to take back both land
+and buildings, incomplete though the latter might be, and from the
+congestion which resulted they were bound to perish. If the expected
+million of people had arrived to occupy the dwellings prepared for them
+the gains would have been fabulous, and in ten years Rome might have
+become one of the most flourishing capitals of the world. But the people
+did not come, and the dwellings remained empty. Moreover, the buildings
+erected by the companies were too large and costly for the average
+investor inclined to put his money into house property. Heredity had
+acted, the builders had planned things on too huge a scale, raising a
+series of magnificent piles whose purpose was to dwarf those of all other
+ages; but, as it happened, they were fated to remain lifeless and
+deserted, testifying with wondrous eloquence to the impotence of pride.
+
+So there was no private capital that dared or could take the place of
+that of the companies. Elsewhere, in Paris for instance, new districts
+have been erected and embellishments have been carried out with the
+capital of the country--the money saved by dint of thrift. But in Rome
+all was built on the credit system, either by means of bills of exchange
+at ninety days, or--and this was chiefly the case--by borrowing money
+abroad. The huge sum sunk in these enterprises is estimated at a
+milliard, four-fifths of which was French money. The bankers did
+everything; the French ones lent to the Italian bankers at 3 1/2 or 4 per
+cent.; and the Italian bankers accommodated the speculators, the Roman
+builders, at 6, 7, and even 8 per cent. And thus the disaster was great
+indeed when France, learning of Italy's alliance with Germany, withdrew
+her 800,000,000 francs in less than two years. The Italian banks were
+drained of their specie, and the land and building companies, being
+likewise compelled to reimburse their loans, were compelled to apply to
+the banks of issue, those privileged to issue notes. At the same time
+they intimidated the Government, threatening to stop all work and throw
+40,000 artisans and labourers starving on the pavement of Rome if it did
+not compel the banks of issue to lend them the five or six millions of
+paper which they needed. And this the Government at last did, appalled by
+the possibility of universal bankruptcy. Naturally, however, the five or
+six millions could not be paid back at maturity, as the newly built
+houses found neither purchasers nor tenants; and so the great fall began,
+and continued with a rush, heaping ruin upon ruin. The petty speculators
+fell on the builders, the builders on the land companies, the land
+companies on the banks of issue, and the latter on the public credit,
+ruining the nation. And that was how a mere municipal crisis became a
+frightful disaster: a whole milliard sunk to no purpose, Rome disfigured,
+littered with the ruins of the gaping and empty dwellings which had been
+prepared for the five or six hundred thousand inhabitants for whom the
+city yet waits in vain!
+
+Moreover, in the breeze of glory which swept by, the state itself took a
+colossal view of things. It was a question of at once making Italy
+triumphant and perfect, of accomplishing in five and twenty years what
+other nations have required centuries to effect. So there was feverish
+activity and a prodigious outlay on canals, ports, roads, railway lines,
+and improvements in all the great cities. Directly after the alliance
+with Germany, moreover, the military and naval estimates began to devour
+millions to no purpose. And the ever growing financial requirements were
+simply met by the issue of paper, by a fresh loan each succeeding year.
+In Rome alone, too, the building of the Ministry of War cost ten
+millions, that of the Ministry of Finances fifteen, whilst a hundred was
+spent on the yet unfinished quays, and two hundred and fifty were sunk on
+works of defence around the city. And all this was a flare of the old
+hereditary pride, springing from that soil whose sap can only blossom in
+extravagant projects; the determination to dazzle and conquer the world
+which comes as soon as one has climbed to the Capitol, even though one's
+feet rest amidst the accumulated dust of all the forms of human power
+which have there crumbled one above the other.
+
+"And, my dear friend," continued Narcisse, "if I could go into all the
+stories that are current, that are whispered here and there, you would be
+stupefied at the insanity which overcame the whole city amidst the
+terrible fever to which the gambling passion gave rise. Folks of small
+account, and fools and ignorant people were not the only ones to be
+ruined; nearly all the Roman nobles lost their ancient fortunes, their
+gold and their palaces and their galleries of masterpieces, which they
+owed to the munificence of the popes. The colossal wealth which it had
+taken centuries of nepotism to pile up in the hands of a few melted away
+like wax, in less than ten years, in the levelling fire of modern
+speculation." Then, forgetting that he was speaking to a priest, he went
+on to relate one of the whispered stories to which he had alluded:
+"There's our good friend Dario, Prince Boccanera, the last of the name,
+reduced to live on the crumbs which fall to him from his uncle the
+Cardinal, who has little beyond his stipend left him. Well, Dario would
+be a rich man had it not been for that extraordinary affair of the Villa
+Montefiori. You have heard of it, no doubt; how Prince Onofrio, Dario's
+father, speculated, sold the villa grounds for ten millions, then bought
+them back and built on them, and how, at last, not only the ten millions
+were lost, but also all that remained of the once colossal fortune of the
+Boccaneras. What you haven't been told, however, is the secret part which
+Count Prada--our Contessina's husband--played in the affair. He was the
+lover of Princess Boccanera, the beautiful Flavia Montefiori, who had
+brought the villa as dowry to the old Prince. She was a very fine woman,
+much younger than her husband, and it is positively said that it was
+through her that Prada mastered the Prince--for she held her old doting
+husband at arm's length whenever he hesitated to give a signature or go
+farther into the affair of which he scented the danger. And in all this
+Prada gained the millions which he now spends, while as for the beautiful
+Flavia, you are aware, no doubt, that she saved a little fortune from the
+wreck and bought herself a second and much younger husband, whom she
+turned into a Marquis Montefiori. In the whole affair the only victim is
+our good friend Dario, who is absolutely ruined, and wishes to marry his
+cousin, who is as poor as himself. It's true that she's determined to
+have him, and that it's impossible for him not to reciprocate her love.
+But for that he would have already married some American girl with a
+dowry of millions, like so many of the ruined princes, on the verge of
+starvation, have done; that is, unless the Cardinal and Donna Serafina
+had opposed such a match, which would not have been surprising, proud and
+stubborn as they are, anxious to preserve the purity of their old Roman
+blood. However, let us hope that Dario and the exquisite Benedetta will
+some day be happy together."
+
+Narcisse paused; but, after taking a few steps in silence, he added in a
+lower tone: "I've a relative who picked up nearly three millions in that
+Villa Montefiori affair. Ah! I regret that I wasn't here in those heroic
+days of speculation. It must have been very amusing; and what strokes
+there were for a man of self-possession to make!"
+
+However, all at once, as he raised his head, he saw before him the
+Quartiere dei Prati--the new district of the castle fields; and his face
+thereupon changed: he again became an artist, indignant with the modern
+abominations with which old Rome had been disfigured. His eyes paled, and
+a curl of his lips expressed the bitter disdain of a dreamer whose
+passion for the vanished centuries was sorely hurt: "Look, look at it
+all!" he exclaimed. "To think of it, in the city of Augustus, the city of
+Leo X, the city of eternal power and eternal beauty!"
+
+Pierre himself was thunderstruck. The meadows of the Castle of Sant'
+Angelo, dotted with a few poplar trees, had here formerly stretched
+alongside the Tiber as far as the first slopes of Monte Mario, thus
+supplying, to the satisfaction of artists, a foreground or greenery to
+the Borgo and the dome of St. Peter's. But now, amidst the white,
+leprous, overturned plain, there stood a town of huge, massive houses,
+cubes of stone-work, invariably the same, with broad streets intersecting
+one another at right angles. From end to end similar facades appeared,
+suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and
+painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised
+whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a
+wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and
+emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful
+abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep
+pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. There
+were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others
+which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which
+had been carried as high as was intended, and even roofed in, suggesting
+skeletons or empty cages. Then there were houses finished excepting that
+their walls had not been plastered, others which had been left without
+window frames, shutters, or doors; others, again, which had their doors
+and shutters, but were nailed up like coffins with not a soul inside
+them; and yet others which were partly, and in a few cases fully,
+inhabited--animated by the most unexpected of populations. And no words
+could describe the fearful mournfulness of that City of the Sleeping
+Beauty, hushed into mortal slumber before it had even lived, lying
+annihilated beneath the heavy sun pending an awakening which, likely
+enough, would never come.
+
+Following his companion, Pierre walked along the broad, deserted streets,
+where all was still as in a cemetery. Not a vehicle nor a pedestrian
+passed by. Some streets had no foot ways; weeds were covering the unpaved
+roads, turning them once more into fields; and yet there were temporary
+gas lamps, mere leaden pipes bound to poles, which had been there for
+years. To avoid payment of the door and window tax, the house owners had
+generally closed all apertures with planks; while some houses, of which
+little had been built, were surrounded by high palings for fear lest
+their cellars should become the dens of all the bandits of the district.
+But the most painful sight of all was that of the young ruins, the proud,
+lofty structures, which, although unfinished, were already cracking on
+all sides, and required the support of an intricate arrangement of
+timbers to prevent them from falling in dust upon the ground. A pang came
+to one's heart as though one was in a city which some scourge had
+depopulated--pestilence, war, or bombardment, of which these gaping
+carcases seem to retain the mark. Then at the thought that this was
+abortment, not death--that destruction would complete its work before the
+dreamt-of, vainly awaited denizens would bring life to the still-born
+houses, one's melancholy deepened to hopeless discouragement. And at each
+corner, moreover, there was the frightful irony of the magnificent marble
+slabs which bore the names of the streets, illustrious historical names,
+Gracchus, Scipio, Pliny, Pompey, Julius Caesar, blazing forth on those
+unfinished, crumbling walls like a buffet dealt by the Past to modern
+incompetency.
+
+Then Pierre was once more struck by this truth--that whosoever possesses
+Rome is consumed by the building frenzy, the passion for marble, the
+boastful desire to build and leave his monument of glory to future
+generations. After the Caesars and the Popes had come the Italian
+Government, which was no sooner master of the city than it wished to
+reconstruct it, make it more splendid, more huge than it had ever been
+before. It was the fatal suggestion of the soil itself--the blood of
+Augustus rushing to the brain of these last-comers and urging them to a
+mad desire to make the third Rome the queen of the earth. Thence had come
+all the vast schemes such as the cyclopean quays and the mere ministries
+struggling to outvie the Colosseum; and thence had come all the new
+districts of gigantic houses which had sprouted like towns around the
+ancient city. It was not only on the castle fields, but at the Porta San
+Giovanni, the Porta San Lorenzo, the Villa Ludovisi, and on the heights
+of the Viminal and the Esquiline that unfinished, empty districts were
+already crumbling amidst the weeds of their deserted streets. After two
+thousand years of prodigious fertility the soil really seemed to be
+exhausted. Even as in very old fruit gardens newly planted plum and
+cherry trees wither and die, so the new walls, no doubt, found no life in
+that old dust of Rome, impoverished by the immemorial growth of so many
+temples, circuses, arches, basilicas, and churches. And thus the modern
+houses, which men had sought to render fruitful, the useless, over-huge
+houses, swollen with hereditary ambition, had been unable to attain
+maturity, and remained there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land
+exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt
+arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in
+such present-day impotency--Rome, who had covered the world with
+indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she could only generate
+ruins.
+
+"Oh, they'll be finished some day!" said Pierre.
+
+Narcisse gazed at him in astonishment: "For whom?"
+
+That was the cruel question! Only by dint of patriotic enthusiasm on the
+morrow of the conquest had one been able to indulge in the hope of a
+mighty influx of population, and now singular blindness was needed for
+the belief that such an influx would ever take place. The past
+experiments seemed decisive; moreover, there was no reason why the
+population should double: Rome offered neither the attraction of pleasure
+nor that of gain to be amassed in commerce and industry for those she had
+not, nor of intensity of social and intellectual life, since of this she
+seemed no longer capable. In any case, years and years would be
+requisite. And, meantime, how could one people those houses which were
+finished; and for whom was one to finish those which had remained mere
+skeletons, falling to pieces under sun and rain? Must they all remain
+there indefinitely, some gaunt and open to every blast and others closed
+and silent like tombs, in the wretched hideousness of their inutility and
+abandonment? What a terrible proof of error they offered under the
+radiant sky! The new masters of Rome had made a bad start, and even if
+they now knew what they ought to have done would they have the courage to
+undo what they had done? Since the milliard sunk there seemed to be
+definitely lost and wasted, one actually hoped for the advent of a Nero,
+endowed with mighty, sovereign will, who would take torch and pick and
+burn and raze everything in the avenging name of reason and beauty.
+
+"Ah!" resumed Narcisse, "here are the Contessina and the Prince."
+
+Benedetta had told the coachman to pull up in one of the open spaces
+intersecting the deserted streets, and now along the broad, quiet, grassy
+road--well fitted for a lovers' stroll--she was approaching on Dario's
+arm, both of them delighted with their outing, and no longer thinking of
+the sad things which they had come to see. "What a nice day it is!" the
+Contessina gaily exclaimed as she reached Pierre and Narcisse. "How
+pleasant the sunshine is! It's quite a treat to be able to walk about a
+little as if one were in the country!"
+
+Dario was the first to cease smiling at the blue sky, all the delight of
+his stroll with his cousin on his arm suddenly departing. "My dear," said
+he, "we must go to see those people, since you are bent on it, though it
+will certainly spoil our day. But first I must take my bearings. I'm not
+particularly clever, you know, in finding my way in places where I don't
+care to go. Besides, this district is idiotic with all its dead streets
+and dead houses, and never a face or a shop to serve as a reminder. Still
+I think the place is over yonder. Follow me; at all events, we shall
+see."
+
+The four friends then wended their way towards the central part of the
+district, the part facing the Tiber, where a small nucleus of a
+population had collected. The landlords turned the few completed houses
+to the best advantage they could, letting the rooms at very low rentals,
+and waiting patiently enough for payment. Some needy employees, some
+poverty-stricken families--had thus installed themselves there, and in
+the long run contrived to pay a trifle for their accommodation. In
+consequence, however, of the demolition of the ancient Ghetto and the
+opening of the new streets by which air had been let into the Trastevere
+district, perfect hordes of tatterdemalions, famished and homeless, and
+almost without garments, had swooped upon the unfinished houses, filling
+them with wretchedness and vermin; and it had been necessary to tolerate
+this lawless occupation lest all the frightful misery should remain
+displayed in the public thoroughfares. And so it was to those frightful
+tenants that had fallen the huge four and five storeyed palaces, entered
+by monumental doorways flanked by lofty statues and having carved
+balconies upheld by caryatides all along their fronts. Each family had
+made its choice, often closing the frameless windows with boards and the
+gaping doorways with rags, and occupying now an entire princely flat and
+now a few small rooms, according to its taste. Horrid-looking linen hung
+drying from the carved balconies, foul stains already degraded the white
+walls, and from the magnificent porches, intended for sumptuous
+equipages, there poured a stream of filth which rotted in stagnant pools
+in the roads, where there was neither pavement nor footpath.
+
+On two occasions already Dario had caused his companions to retrace their
+steps. He was losing his way and becoming more and more gloomy. "I ought
+to have taken to the left," said he, "but how is one to know amidst such
+a set as that!"
+
+Parties of verminous children were now to be seen rolling in the dust;
+they were wondrously dirty, almost naked, with black skins and tangled
+locks as coarse as horsehair. There were also women in sordid skirts and
+with their loose jackets unhooked. Many stood talking together in yelping
+voices, whilst others, seated on old chairs with their hands on their
+knees, remained like that idle for hours. Not many men were met; but a
+few lay on the scorched grass, sleeping heavily in the sunlight. However,
+the stench was becoming unbearable--a stench of misery as when the human
+animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made
+worse by the smell from a small, improvised market--the emanations of the
+rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a
+few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished,
+covetous children.
+
+"Ah! well, my dear, I really don't know where it is," all at once
+exclaimed the Prince, addressing his cousin. "Be reasonable; we've surely
+seen enough; let's go back to the carriage."
+
+He was really suffering, and, as Benedetta had said, he did not know how
+to suffer. It seemed to him monstrous that one should sadden one's life
+by such an excursion as this. Life ought to be buoyant and benign under
+the clear sky, brightened by pleasant sights, by dance and song. And he,
+with his naive egotism, had a positive horror of ugliness, poverty, and
+suffering, the sight of which caused him both mental and physical pain.
+
+Benedetta shuddered even as he did, but in presence of Pierre she desired
+to be brave. Glancing at him, and seeing how deeply interested and
+compassionate he looked, she desired to persevere in her effort to
+sympathise with the humble and the wretched. "No, no, Dario, we must
+stay. These gentlemen wish to see everything--is it not so?"
+
+"Oh, the Rome of to-day is here," exclaimed Pierre; "this tells one more
+about it than all the promenades among the ruins and the monuments."
+
+"You exaggerate, my dear Abbe," declared Narcisse. "Still, I will admit
+that it is very interesting. Some of the old women are particularly
+expressive."
+
+At this moment Benedetta, seeing a superbly beautiful girl in front of
+her, could not restrain a cry of enraptured admiration: "/O che
+bellezza!"
+
+And then Dario, having recognised the girl, exclaimed with the same
+delight: "Why, it's La Pierina; she'll show us the way."
+
+The girl had been following the party for a moment already without daring
+to approach. Her eyes, glittering with the joy of a loving slave, had at
+first darted towards the Prince, and then had hastily scrutinised the
+Contessina--not, however, with any show of jealous anger, but with an
+expression of affectionate submission and resigned happiness at seeing
+that she also was very beautiful. And the girl fully answered to the
+Prince's description of her--tall, sturdy, with the bust of a goddess, a
+real antique, a Juno of twenty, her chin somewhat prominent, her mouth
+and nose perfect in contour, her eyes large and full like a heifer's, and
+her whole face quite dazzling--gilded, so to say, by a sunflash--beneath
+her casque of heavy jet-black hair.
+
+"So you will show us the way?" said Benedetta, familiar and smiling,
+already consoled for all the surrounding ugliness by the thought that
+there should be such beautiful creatures in the world.
+
+"Oh yes, signora, yes, at once!" And thereupon Pierina ran off before
+them, her feet in shoes which at any rate had no holes, whilst the old
+brown woollen dress which she wore appeared to have been recently washed
+and mended. One seemed to divine in her a certain coquettish care, a
+desire for cleanliness, which none of the others displayed; unless,
+indeed, it were simply that her great beauty lent radiance to her humble
+garments and made her appear a goddess.
+
+"/Che bellezza! the bellezza!/" the Contessina repeated without wearying.
+"That girl, Dario /mio/, is a real feast for the eyes!"
+
+"I knew she would please you," he quietly replied, flattered at having
+discovered such a beauty, and no longer talking of departure, since he
+could at last rest his eyes on something pleasant.
+
+Behind them came Pierre, likewise full of admiration, whilst Narcisse
+spoke to him of the scrupulosity of his own tastes, which were for the
+rare and the subtle. "She's beautiful, no doubt," said he; "but at bottom
+nothing can be more gross than the Roman style of beauty; there's no
+soul, none of the infinite in it. These girls simply have blood under
+their skins without ever a glimpse of heaven."
+
+Meantime Pierina had stopped, and with a wave of the hand directed
+attention to her mother, who sat on a broken box beside the lofty doorway
+of an unfinished mansion. She also must have once been very beautiful,
+but at forty she was already a wreck, with dim eyes, drawn mouth, black
+teeth, broadly wrinkled countenance, and huge fallen bosom. And she was
+also fearfully dirty, her grey wavy hair dishevelled and her skirt and
+jacket soiled and slit, revealing glimpses of grimy flesh. On her knees
+she held a sleeping infant, her last-born, at whom she gazed like one
+overwhelmed and courageless, like a beast of burden resigned to her fate.
+
+"/Bene, bene,/" said she, raising her head, "it's the gentleman who came
+to give me a crown because he saw you crying. And he's come back to see
+us with some friends. Well, well, there are some good hearts in the world
+after all."
+
+Then she related their story, but in a spiritless way, without seeking to
+move her visitors. She was called Giacinta, it appeared, and had married
+a mason, one Tomaso Gozzo, by whom she had had seven children, Pierina,
+then Tito, a big fellow of eighteen, then four more girls, each at an
+interval of two years, and finally the infant, a boy, whom she now had on
+her lap. They had long lived in the Trastevere district, in an old house
+which had lately been pulled down; and their existence seemed to have
+then been shattered, for since they had taken refuge in the Quartiere dei
+Prati the crisis in the building trade had reduced Tomaso and Tito to
+absolute idleness, and the bead factory where Pierina had earned as much
+as tenpence a day--just enough to prevent them from dying of hunger--had
+closed its doors. At present not one of them had any work; they lived
+purely by chance.
+
+"If you like to go up," the woman added, "you'll find Tomaso there with
+his brother Ambrogio, whom we've taken to live with us. They'll know
+better than I what to say to you. Tomaso is resting; but what else can he
+do? It's like Tito--he's dozing over there."
+
+So saying she pointed towards the dry grass amidst which lay a tall young
+fellow with a pronounced nose, hard mouth, and eyes as admirable as
+Pierina's. He had raised his head to glance suspiciously at the visitors,
+a fierce frown gathering on his forehead when he remarked how rapturously
+his sister contemplated the Prince. Then he let his head fall again, but
+kept his eyes open, watching the pair stealthily.
+
+"Take the lady and gentlemen upstairs, Pierina, since they would like to
+see the place," said the mother.
+
+Other women had now drawn near, shuffling along with bare feet in old
+shoes; bands of children, too, were swarming around; little girls but
+half clad, amongst whom, no doubt, were Giacinta's four. However, with
+their black eyes under their tangled mops they were all so much alike
+that only their mothers could identify them. And the whole resembled a
+teeming camp of misery pitched on that spot of majestic disaster, that
+street of palaces, unfinished yet already in ruins.
+
+With a soft, loving smile, Benedetta turned to her cousin. "Don't you
+come up," she gently said; "I don't desire your death, Dario /mio/. It
+was very good of you to come so far. Wait for me here in the pleasant
+sunshine: Monsieur l'Abbe and Monsieur Habert will go up with me."
+
+Dario began to laugh, and willingly acquiesced. Then lighting a
+cigarette, he walked slowly up and down, well pleased with the mildness
+of the atmosphere.
+
+La Pierina had already darted into the spacious porch whose lofty,
+vaulted ceiling was adorned with coffers displaying a rosaceous pattern.
+However, a veritable manure heap covered such marble slabs as had already
+been laid in the vestibule, whilst the steps of the monumental stone
+staircase with sculptured balustrade were already cracked and so grimy
+that they seemed almost black. On all sides appeared the greasy stains of
+hands; the walls, whilst awaiting the painter and gilder, had been
+smeared with repulsive filth.
+
+On reaching the spacious first-floor landing Pierina paused, and
+contented herself with calling through a gaping portal which lacked both
+door and framework: "Father, here's a lady and two gentlemen to see you."
+Then to the Contessina she added: "It's the third room at the end." And
+forthwith she herself rapidly descended the stairs, hastening back to her
+passion.
+
+Benedetta and her companions passed through two large rooms, bossy with
+plaster under foot and having frameless windows wide open upon space; and
+at last they reached a third room, where the whole Gozzo family had
+installed itself with the remnants it used as furniture. On the floor,
+where the bare iron girders showed, no boards having been laid down, were
+five or six leprous-looking palliasses. A long table, which was still
+strong, occupied the centre of the room, and here and there were a few
+old, damaged, straw-seated chairs mended with bits of rope. The great
+business had been to close two of the three windows with boards, whilst
+the third one and the door were screened with some old mattress ticking
+studded with stains and holes.
+
+Tomaso's face expressed the surprise of a man who is unaccustomed to
+visits of charity. Seated at the table, with his elbows resting on it and
+his chin supported by his hands, he was taking repose, as his wife
+Giacinta had said. He was a sturdy fellow of five and forty, bearded and
+long-haired; and, in spite of all his misery and idleness, his large face
+had remained as serene as that of a Roman senator. However, the sight of
+the two foreigners--for such he at once judged Pierre and Narcisse to be,
+made him rise to his feet with sudden distrust. But he smiled on
+recognising Benedetta, and as she began to speak of Dario, and to explain
+the charitable purpose of their visit, he interrupted her: "Yes, yes, I
+know, Contessina. Oh! I well know who you are, for in my father's time I
+once walled up a window at the Palazzo Boccanera."
+
+Then he complaisantly allowed himself to be questioned, telling Pierre,
+who was surprised, that although they were certainly not happy they would
+have found life tolerable had they been able to work two days a week. And
+one could divine that he was, at heart, fairly well content to go on
+short commons, provided that he could live as he listed without fatigue.
+His narrative and his manner suggested the familiar locksmith who, on
+being summoned by a traveller to open his trunk, the key of which was
+lost, sent word that he could not possibly disturb himself during the
+hour of the siesta. In short, there was no rent to pay, as there were
+plenty of empty mansions open to the poor, and a few coppers would have
+sufficed for food, easily contented and sober as one was.
+
+"But oh, sir," Tomaso continued, "things were ever so much better under
+the Pope. My father, a mason like myself, worked at the Vatican all his
+life, and even now, when I myself get a job or two, it's always there. We
+were spoilt, you see, by those ten years of busy work, when we never left
+our ladders and earned as much as we pleased. Of course, we fed ourselves
+better, and bought ourselves clothes, and took such pleasure as we cared
+for; so that it's all the harder nowadays to have to stint ourselves. But
+if you'd only come to see us in the Pope's time! No taxes, everything to
+be had for nothing, so to say--why, one merely had to let oneself live."
+
+At this moment a growl arose from one of the palliasses lying in the
+shade of the boarded windows, and the mason, in his slow, quiet way,
+resumed: "It's my brother Ambrogio, who isn't of my opinion.
+
+"He was with the Republicans in '49, when he was fourteen. But it doesn't
+matter; we took him with us when we heard that he was dying of hunger and
+sickness in a cellar."
+
+The visitors could not help quivering with pity. Ambrogio was the elder
+by some fifteen years; and now, though scarcely sixty, he was already a
+ruin, consumed by fever, his legs so wasted that he spent his days on his
+palliasse without ever going out. Shorter and slighter, but more
+turbulent than his brother, he had been a carpenter by trade. And,
+despite his physical decay, he retained an extraordinary head--the head
+of an apostle and martyr, at once noble and tragic in its expression, and
+encompassed by bristling snowy hair and beard.
+
+"The Pope," he growled; "I've never spoken badly of the Pope. Yet it's
+his fault if tyranny continues. He alone in '49 could have given us the
+Republic, and then we shouldn't have been as we are now."
+
+Ambrogio had known Mazzini, whose vague religiosity remained in him--the
+dream of a Republican pope at last establishing the reign of liberty and
+fraternity. But later on his passion for Garibaldi had disturbed these
+views, and led him to regard the papacy as worthless, incapable of
+achieving human freedom. And so, between the dream of his youth and the
+stern experience of his life, he now hardly knew in which direction the
+truth lay. Moreover, he had never acted save under the impulse of violent
+emotion, but contented himself with fine words--vague, indeterminate
+wishes.
+
+"Brother Ambrogio," replied Tomaso, all tranquillity, "the Pope is the
+Pope, and wisdom lies in putting oneself on his side, because he will
+always be the Pope--that is to say, the stronger. For my part, if we had
+to vote to-morrow I'd vote for him."
+
+Calmed by the shrewd prudence characteristic of his race, the old
+carpenter made no haste to reply. At last he said, "Well, as for me,
+brother Tomaso, I should vote against him--always against him. And you
+know very well that we should have the majority. The Pope-king indeed!
+That's all over. The very Borgo would revolt. Still, I won't say that we
+oughtn't to come to an understanding with him, so that everybody's
+religion may be respected."
+
+Pierre listened, deeply interested, and at last ventured to ask: "Are
+there many socialists among the Roman working classes?"
+
+This time the answer came after a yet longer pause. "Socialists? Yes,
+there are some, no doubt, but much fewer than in other places. All those
+things are novelties which impatient fellows go in for without
+understanding much about them. We old men, we were for liberty; we don't
+believe in fire and massacre."
+
+Then, fearing to say too much in presence of that lady and those
+gentlemen, Ambrogio began to moan on his pallet, whilst the Contessina,
+somewhat upset by the smell of the place, took her departure, after
+telling the young priest that it would be best for them to leave their
+alms with the wife downstairs. Meantime Tomaso resumed his seat at the
+table, again letting his chin rest on his hands as he nodded to his
+visitors, no more impressed by their departure than he had been by their
+arrival: "To the pleasure of seeing you again, and am happy to have been
+able to oblige you."
+
+On the threshold, however, Narcisse's enthusiasm burst forth; he turned
+to cast a final admiring glance at old Ambrogio's head, "a perfect
+masterpiece," which he continued praising whilst he descended the stairs.
+
+Down below Giacinta was still sitting on the broken box with her infant
+across her lap, and a few steps away Pierina stood in front of Dario,
+watching him with an enchanted air whilst he finished his cigarette.
+Tito, lying low in the grass like an animal on the watch for prey, did
+not for a moment cease to gaze at them.
+
+"Ah, signora!" resumed the woman, in her resigned, doleful voice, "the
+place is hardly inhabitable, as you must have seen. The only good thing
+is that one gets plenty of room. But there are draughts enough to kill
+me, and I'm always so afraid of the children falling down some of the
+holes."
+
+Thereupon she related a story of a woman who had lost her life through
+mistaking a window for a door one evening and falling headlong into the
+street. Then, too, a little girl had broken both arms by tumbling from a
+staircase which had no banisters. And you could die there without anybody
+knowing how bad you were and coming to help you. Only the previous day
+the corpse of an old man had been found lying on the plaster in a lonely
+room. Starvation must have killed him quite a week previously, yet he
+would still have been stretched there if the odour of his remains had not
+attracted the attention of neighbours.
+
+"If one only had something to eat things wouldn't be so bad!" continued
+Giacinta. "But it's dreadful when there's a baby to suckle and one gets
+no food, for after a while one has no milk. This little fellow wants his
+titty and gets angry with me because I can't give him any. But it isn't
+my fault. He has sucked me till the blood came, and all I can do is to
+cry."
+
+As she spoke tears welled into her poor dim eyes. But all at once she
+flew into a tantrum with Tito, who was still wallowing in the grass like
+an animal instead of rising by way of civility towards those fine people,
+who would surely leave her some alms. "Eh! Tito, you lazy fellow, can't
+you get up when people come to see you?" she called.
+
+After some pretence of not hearing, the young fellow at last rose with an
+air of great ill-humour; and Pierre, feeling interested in him, tried to
+draw him out as he had done with the father and uncle upstairs. But Tito
+only returned curt answers, as if both bored and suspicious. Since there
+was no work to be had, said he, the only thing was to sleep. It was of no
+use to get angry; that wouldn't alter matters. So the best was to live as
+one could without increasing one's worry. As for socialists--well, yes,
+perhaps there were a few, but he didn't know any. And his weary,
+indifferent manner made it quite clear that, if his father was for the
+Pope and his uncle for the Republic, he himself was for nothing at all.
+In this Pierre divined the end of a nation, or rather the slumber of a
+nation in which democracy has not yet awakened. However, as the priest
+continued, asking Tito his age, what school he had attended, and in what
+district he had been born, the young man suddenly cut the questions short
+by pointing with one finger to his breast and saying gravely, "/Io son'
+Romano di Roma/."
+
+And, indeed, did not that answer everything? "I am a Roman of Rome."
+Pierre smiled sadly and spoke no further. Never had he more fully
+realised the pride of that race, the long-descending inheritance of glory
+which was so heavy to bear. The sovereign vanity of the Caesars lived
+anew in that degenerate young fellow who was scarcely able to read and
+write. Starveling though he was, he knew his city, and could
+instinctively have recounted the grand pages of its history. The names of
+the great emperors and great popes were familiar to him. And why should
+men toil and moil when they had been the masters of the world? Why not
+live nobly and idly in the most beautiful of cities, under the most
+beautiful of skies? "/Io son' Romano di Roma/!"
+
+Benedetta had slipped her alms into the mother's hand, and Pierre and
+Narcisse were following her example when Dario, who had already done so,
+thought of Pierina. He did not like to offer her money, but a pretty,
+fanciful idea occurred to him. Lightly touching his lips with his
+finger-tips, he said, with a faint laugh, "For beauty!"
+
+There was something really pretty and pleasing in the kiss thus wafted
+with a slightly mocking laugh by that familiar, good-natured young Prince
+who, as in some love story of the olden time, was touched by the
+beautiful bead-worker's mute adoration. Pierina flushed with pleasure,
+and, losing her head, darted upon Dario's hand and pressed her warm lips
+to it with unthinking impulsiveness, in which there was as much divine
+gratitude as tender passion. But Tito's eyes flashed with anger at the
+sight, and, brutally seizing his sister by the skirt, he threw her back,
+growling between his teeth, "None of that, you know, or I'll kill you,
+and him too!"
+
+It was high time for the visitors to depart, for other women, scenting
+the presence of money, were now coming forward with outstretched hands,
+or despatching tearful children in their stead. The whole wretched,
+abandoned district was in a flutter, a distressful wail ascended from
+those lifeless streets with high resounding names. But what was to be
+done? One could not give to all. So the only course lay in flight--amidst
+deep sadness as one realised how powerless was charity in presence of
+such appalling want.
+
+When Benedetta and Dario had reached their carriage they hastened to take
+their seats and nestle side by side, glad to escape from all such
+horrors. Still the Contessina was well pleased with her bravery in the
+presence of Pierre, whose hand she pressed with the emotion of a pupil
+touched by the master's lesson, after Narcisse had told her that he meant
+to take the young priest to lunch at the little restaurant on the Piazza
+of St. Peter's whence one obtained such an interesting view of the
+Vatican.
+
+"Try some of the light white wine of Genzano," said Dario, who had become
+quite gay again. "There's nothing better to drive away the blues."
+
+However, Pierre's curiosity was insatiable, and on the way he again
+questioned Narcisse about the people of modern Rome, their life, habits,
+and manners. There was little or no education, he learnt; no large
+manufactures and no export trade existed. The men carried on the few
+trades that were current, all consumption being virtually limited to the
+city itself. Among the women there were bead-workers and embroiderers;
+and the manufacture of religious articles, such as medals and chaplets,
+and of certain popular jewellery had always occupied a fair number of
+hands. But after marriage the women, invariably burdened with numerous
+offspring, attempted little beyond household work. Briefly, the
+population took life as it came, working just sufficiently to secure
+food, contenting itself with vegetables, pastes, and scraggy mutton,
+without thought of rebellion or ambition. The only vices were gambling
+and a partiality for the red and white wines of the Roman province--wines
+which excited to quarrel and murder, and on the evenings of feast days,
+when the taverns emptied, strewed the streets with groaning men, slashed
+and stabbed with knives. The girls, however, but seldom went wrong; one
+could count those who allowed themselves to be seduced; and this arose
+from the great union prevailing in each family, every member of which
+bowed submissively to the father's absolute authority. Moreover, the
+brothers watched over their sisters even as Tito did over Pierina,
+guarding them fiercely for the sake of the family honour. And amidst all
+this there was no real religion, but simply a childish idolatry, all
+hearts going forth to Madonna and the Saints, who alone were entreated
+and regarded as having being: for it never occurred to anybody to think
+of God.
+
+Thus the stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood.
+Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been
+encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When
+they were neither masons, nor carpenters, nor bakers, they were servants
+serving the priests, and more or less directly in the pay of the Vatican.
+Thence sprang the two antagonistic parties, on the one hand the more
+numerous party composed of the old Carbonari, Mazzinians, and
+Garibaldians, the /elite/ of the Trastevere; and on the other the
+"clients" of the Vatican, all who lived on or by the Church and regretted
+the Pope-King. But, after all, the antagonism was confined to opinions;
+there was no thought of making an effort or incurring a risk. For that,
+some sudden flare of passion, strong enough to overcome the sturdy
+calmness of the race, would have been needed. But what would have been
+the use of it? The wretchedness had lasted for so many centuries, the sky
+was so blue, the siesta preferable to aught else during the hot hours!
+And only one thing seemed positive--that the majority was certainly in
+favour of Rome remaining the capital of Italy. Indeed, rebellion had
+almost broken out in the Leonine City when the cession of the latter to
+the Holy See was rumoured. As for the increase of want and poverty, this
+was largely due to the circumstance that the Roman workman had really
+gained nothing by the many works carried on in his city during fifteen
+years. First of all, over 40,000 provincials, mostly from the North, more
+spirited and resistant than himself, and working at cheaper rates, had
+invaded Rome; and when he, the Roman, had secured his share of the
+labour, he had lived in better style, without thought of economy; so that
+after the crisis, when the 40,000 men from the provinces were sent home
+again, he had found himself once more in a dead city where trade was
+always slack. And thus he had relapsed into his antique indolence, at
+heart well pleased at no longer being hustled by press of work, and again
+accommodating himself as best he could to his old mistress, Want, empty
+in pocket yet always a /grand seigneur/.
+
+However, Pierre was struck by the great difference between the want and
+wretchedness of Rome and Paris. In Rome the destitution was certainly
+more complete, the food more loathsome, the dirt more repulsive. Yet at
+the same time the Roman poor retained more ease of manner and more real
+gaiety. The young priest thought of the fireless, breadless poor of
+Paris, shivering in their hovels at winter time; and suddenly he
+understood. The destitution of Rome did not know cold. What a sweet and
+eternal consolation; a sun for ever bright, a sky for ever blue and
+benign out of charity to the wretched! And what mattered the vileness of
+the dwelling if one could sleep under the sky, fanned by the warm breeze!
+What mattered even hunger if the family could await the windfall of
+chance in sunlit streets or on the scorched grass! The climate induced
+sobriety; there was no need of alcohol or red meat to enable one to face
+treacherous fogs. Blissful idleness smiled on the golden evenings,
+poverty became like the enjoyment of liberty in that delightful
+atmosphere where the happiness of living seemed to be all sufficient.
+Narcisse told Pierre that at Naples, in the narrow odoriferous streets of
+the port and Santa Lucia districts, the people spent virtually their
+whole lives out-of-doors, gay, childish, and ignorant, seeking nothing
+beyond the few pence that were needed to buy food. And it was certainly
+the climate which fostered the prolonged infancy of the nation, which
+explained why such a democracy did not awaken to social ambition and
+consciousness of itself. No doubt the poor of Naples and Rome suffered
+from want; but they did not know the rancour which cruel winter implants
+in men's hearts, the dark rancour which one feels on shivering with cold
+while rich people are warming themselves before blazing fires. They did
+not know the infuriated reveries in snow-swept hovels, when the guttering
+dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak
+justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save
+wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a
+warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers
+with the bitter cold--therein lies the excess of social injustice, the
+most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their
+sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, and swear to make those
+sufferings cease, even if in doing so they annihilate all olden society!
+
+And in that same clemency of the southern heavens Pierre also found an
+explanation of the life of St. Francis,* that divine mendicant of love
+who roamed the high roads extolling the charms of poverty. Doubtless he
+was an unconscious revolutionary, protesting against the overflowing
+luxury of the Roman court by his return to the love of the humble, the
+simplicity of the primitive Church. But such a revival of innocence and
+sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land. The
+enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight
+nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were
+needed to effect it. And yet how was it possible that a St. Francis,
+glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays
+so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and
+contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope? Is it
+because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the
+experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now
+beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism,
+whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in
+the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North,
+from the nations whose sunlight is so limited? Yes, doubtless all that
+has much to do with the change, and the success of St. Francis was in
+particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his
+lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad,
+during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an
+ardent need of love and compassion then consumed.
+
+  * St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of
+    mendicant friars.--Trans.
+
+While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St.
+Peter's, and they sat down at one of the little tables skirting the
+pavement outside the restaurant where they had lunched once before. The
+linen was none too clean, but the view was splendid. The Basilica rose up
+in front of them, and the Vatican on the right, above the majestic curve
+of the colonnade. Just as the waiter was bringing the /hors-d'oeuvre/,
+some /finocchio/* and anchovies, the young priest, who had fixed his eyes
+on the Vatican, raised an exclamation to attract Narcisse's attention:
+"Look, my friend, at that window, which I am told is the Holy Father's.
+Can't you distinguish a pale figure standing there, quite motionless?"
+
+  * Fennel-root, eaten raw, a favourite "appetiser" in Rome during
+    the spring and autumn.--Trans.
+
+The young man began to laugh. "Oh! well," said he, "it must be the Holy
+Father in person. You are so anxious to see him that your very anxiety
+conjures him into your presence."
+
+"But I assure you," repeated Pierre, "that he is over there behind the
+window-pane. There is a white figure looking this way."
+
+Narcisse, who was very hungry, began to eat whilst still indulging in
+banter. All at once, however, he exclaimed: "Well, my dear Abbe, as the
+Pope is looking at us, this is the moment to speak of him. I promised to
+tell you how he sunk several millions of St. Peter's Patrimony in the
+frightful financial crisis of which you have just seen the ruins; and,
+indeed, your visit to the new district of the castle fields would not be
+complete without this story by way of appendix."
+
+Thereupon, without losing a mouthful, Narcisse spoke at considerable
+length. At the death of Pius IX the Patrimony of St. Peter, it seemed,
+had exceeded twenty millions of francs. Cardinal Antonelli, who
+speculated, and whose ventures were usually successful, had for a long
+time left a part of this money with the Rothschilds and a part in the
+hands of different nuncios, who turned it to profit abroad. After
+Antonelli's death, however, his successor, Cardinal Simeoni, withdrew the
+money from the nuncios to invest it at Rome; and Leo XIII on his
+accession entrusted the administration of the Patrimony to a commission
+of cardinals, of which Monsignor Folchi was appointed secretary. This
+prelate, who for twelve years played such an important /role/, was the
+son of an employee of the Dataria, who, thanks to skilful financial
+operations, had left a fortune of a million francs. Monsignor Folchi
+inherited his father's cleverness, and revealed himself to be a financier
+of the first rank in such wise that the commission gradually relinquished
+its powers to him, letting him act exactly as he pleased and contenting
+itself with approving the reports which he laid before it at each
+meeting. The Patrimony, however, yielded scarcely more than a million
+francs per annum, and, as the expenditure amounted to seven millions, six
+had to be found. Accordingly, from that other source of income, the
+Peter's Pence, the Pope annually gave three million francs to Monsignor
+Folchi, who, by skilful speculations and investments, was able to double
+them every year, and thus provide for all disbursements without ever
+breaking into the capital of the Patrimony. In the earlier times he
+realised considerable profit by gambling in land in and about Rome. He
+took shares also in many new enterprises, speculated in mills, omnibuses,
+and water-services, without mentioning all the gambling in which he
+participated with the Banca di Roma, a Catholic institution. Wonderstruck
+by his skill, the Pope, who, on his own side, had hitherto speculated
+through the medium of a confidential employee named Sterbini, dismissed
+the latter, and entrusted Monsignor Folchi with the duty of turning his
+money to profit in the same way as he turned that of the Holy See. This
+was the climax of the prelate's favour, the apogee of his power. Bad days
+were dawning, things were tottering already, and the great collapse was
+soon to come, sudden and swift like lightning. One of Leo XIII's
+practices was to lend large sums to the Roman princes who, seized with
+the gambling frenzy, and mixed up in land and building speculations, were
+at a loss for money. To guarantee the Pope's advances they deposited
+shares with him, and thus, when the downfall came, he was left with heaps
+of worthless paper on his hands. Then another disastrous affair was an
+attempt to found a house of credit in Paris in view of working off the
+shares which could not be disposed of in Italy among the French
+aristocracy and religious people. To egg these on it was said that the
+Pope was interested in the venture; and the worst was that he dropped
+three millions of francs in it.* The situation then became the more
+critical as he had gradually risked all the money he disposed of in the
+terrible agiotage going on in Rome, tempted thereto by the prospect of
+huge profits and perhaps indulging in the hope that he might win back by
+money the city which had been torn from him by force. His own
+responsibility remained complete, for Monsignor Folchi never made an
+important venture without consulting him; and he must have been therefore
+the real artisan of the disaster, mastered by his passion for gain, his
+desire to endow the Church with a huge capital, that great source of
+power in modern times. As always happens, however, the prelate was the
+only victim. He had become imperious and difficult to deal with; and was
+no longer liked by the cardinals of the commission, who were merely
+called together to approve such transactions as he chose to entrust to
+them. So, when the crisis came, a plot was laid; the cardinals terrified
+the Pope by telling him of all the evil rumours which were current, and
+then forced Monsignor Folchi to render a full account of his
+speculations. The situation proved to be very bad; it was no longer
+possible to avoid heavy losses. And so Monsignor Folchi was disgraced,
+and since then has vainly solicited an audience of Leo XIII, who has
+always refused to receive him, as if determined to punish him for their
+common fault--that passion for lucre which blinded them both. Very pious
+and submissive, however, Monsignor Folchi has never complained, but has
+kept his secrets and bowed to fate. Nobody can say exactly how many
+millions the Patrimony of St. Peter lost when Rome was changed into a
+gambling-hell, but if some prelates only admit ten, others go as far as
+thirty. The probability is that the loss was about fifteen millions.**
+
+  * The allusion is evidently to the famous Union Generale, on
+    which the Pope bestowed his apostolic benediction, and with
+    which M. Zola deals at length in his novel /Money/. Certainly
+    a very brilliant idea was embodied in the Union Generale, that
+    of establishing a great international Catholic bank which
+    would destroy the Jewish financial autocracy throughout Europe,
+    and provide both the papacy and the Legitimist cause in several
+    countries with the sinews of war. But in the battle which
+    ensued the great Jew financial houses proved the stronger, and
+    the disaster which overtook the Catholic speculators was a
+    terrible one.--Trans.
+
+  ** That is 600,000 pounds.
+
+Whilst Narcisse was giving this account he and Pierre had despatched
+their cutlets and tomatoes, and the waiter was now serving them some
+fried chicken. "At the present time," said Narcisse by way of conclusion,
+"the gap has been filled up; I told you of the large sums yielded by the
+Peter's Pence Fund, the amount of which is only known by the Pope, who
+alone fixes its employment. And, by the way, he isn't cured of
+speculating: I know from a good source that he still gambles, though with
+more prudence. Moreover, his confidential assistant is still a prelate.
+And, when all is said, my dear Abbe, he's in the right: a man must belong
+to his times--dash it all!"
+
+Pierre had listened with growing surprise, in which terror and sadness
+mingled. Doubtless such things were natural, even legitimate; yet he, in
+his dream of a pastor of souls free from all terrestrial cares, had never
+imagined that they existed. What! the Pope--the spiritual father of the
+lowly and the suffering--had speculated in land and in stocks and shares!
+He had gambled, placed funds in the hands of Jew bankers, practised
+usury, extracted hard interest from money--he, the successor of the
+Apostle, the Pontiff of Christ, the representative of Jesus, of the
+Gospel, that divine friend of the poor! And, besides, what a painful
+contrast: so many millions stored away in those rooms of the Vatican, and
+so many millions working and fructifying, constantly being diverted from
+one speculation to another in order that they might yield the more gain;
+and then down below, near at hand, so much want and misery in those
+abominable unfinished buildings of the new districts, so many poor folks
+dying of hunger amidst filth, mothers without milk for their babes, men
+reduced to idleness by lack of work, old ones at the last gasp like
+beasts of burden who are pole-axed when they are of no more use! Ah! God
+of Charity, God of Love, was it possible! The Church doubtless had
+material wants; she could not live without money; prudence and policy had
+dictated the thought of gaining for her such a treasure as would enable
+her to fight her adversaries victoriously. But how grievously this
+wounded one's feelings, how it soiled the Church, how she descended from
+her divine throne to become nothing but a party, a vast international
+association organised for the purpose of conquering and possessing the
+world!
+
+And the more Pierre thought of the extraordinary adventure the greater
+was his astonishment. Could a more unexpected, startling drama be
+imagined? That Pope shutting himself up in his palace--a prison, no
+doubt, but one whose hundred windows overlooked immensity; that Pope who,
+at all hours of the day and night, in every season, could from his window
+see his capital, the city which had been stolen from him, and the
+restitution of which he never ceased to demand; that Pope who, day by
+day, beheld the changes effected in the city--the opening of new streets,
+the demolition of ancient districts, the sale of land, and the gradual
+erection of new buildings which ended by forming a white girdle around
+the old ruddy roofs; that Pope who, in presence of this daily spectacle,
+this building frenzy, which he could follow from morn till eve, was
+himself finally overcome by the gambling passion, and, secluded in his
+closed chamber, began to speculate on the embellishments of his old
+capital, seeking wealth in the spurt of work and trade brought about by
+that very Italian Government which he reproached with spoliation; and
+finally that Pope losing millions in a catastrophe which he ought to have
+desired, but had been unable to foresee! No, never had dethroned monarch
+yielded to a stranger idea, compromised himself in a more tragical
+venture, the result of which fell upon him like divine punishment. And it
+was no mere king who had done this, but the delegate of God, the man who,
+in the eyes of idolatrous Christendom, was the living manifestation of
+the Deity!
+
+Dessert had now been served--a goat's cheese and some fruit--and Narcisse
+was just finishing some grapes when, on raising his eyes, he in turn
+exclaimed: "Well, you are quite right, my dear Abbe, I myself can see a
+pale figure at the window of the Holy Father's room."
+
+Pierre, who scarcely took his eyes from the window, answered slowly:
+"Yes, yes, it went away, but has just come back, and stands there white
+and motionless."
+
+"Well, after all, what would you have the Pope do?" resumed Narcisse with
+his languid air. "He's like everybody else; he looks out of the window
+when he wants a little distraction, and certainly there's plenty for him
+to look at."
+
+The same idea had occurred to Pierre, and was filling him with emotion.
+People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy
+palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all
+Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself
+had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the /loggie/ of
+Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter's, and so he well knew what it was
+that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the
+Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven
+illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. His eyes
+ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in
+Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce
+in Gerusalemme, Sant' Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes
+of the Gesu of Sant' Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei
+Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make
+the city like a /campo santo/ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could
+moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive
+centuries--the Castle of Sant' Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was
+transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of
+the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the
+abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns,
+porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the
+sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo
+Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of facades and
+roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope
+was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle
+fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned
+by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view
+stretched over the ravaged valley at the foot of Monte Mario, where so
+many brick-works were established during the building frenzy. The green
+slopes are still ripped up, yellow trenches intersect them in all
+directions, and the closed works and factories have become wretched ruins
+with lofty, black, and smokeless chimneys. And at any other hour of the
+day Leo XIII could not approach his window without beholding the
+abandoned houses for which all those brick-fields had worked, those
+houses which had died before they even lived, and where there was now
+nought but the swarming misery of Rome, rotting there like some
+decomposition of olden society.
+
+However, Pierre more particularly thought of Leo XIII, forgetting the
+rest of the city to let his thoughts dwell on the Palatine, now bereft of
+its crown of palaces and rearing only its black cypresses towards the
+blue heavens. Doubtless in his mind he rebuilt the palaces of the
+Caesars, whilst before him rose great shadowy forms arrayed in purple,
+visions of his real ancestors, those emperors and Supreme Pontiffs who
+alone could tell him how one might reign over every nation and be the
+absolute master of the world. Then, however, his glances strayed to the
+Quirinal, and there he could contemplate the new and neighbouring
+royalty. How strange the meeting of those two palaces, the Quirinal and
+the Vatican, which rise up and gaze at one another across the Rome of the
+middle ages and the Renascence, whose roofs, baked and gilded by the
+burning sun, are jumbled in confusion alongside the Tiber. When the Pope
+and the King go to their windows they can with a mere opera-glass see
+each other quite distinctly. True, they are but specks in the boundless
+immensity, and what a gulf there is between them--how many centuries of
+history, how many generations that battled and suffered, how much
+departed greatness, and how much new seed for the mysterious future!
+Still, they can see one another, and they are yet waging the eternal
+fight, the fight as to which of them--the pontiff and shepherd of the
+soul or the monarch and master of the body--shall possess the people
+whose stream rolls beneath them, and in the result remain the absolute
+sovereign. And Pierre wondered also what might be the thoughts and dreams
+of Leo XIII behind those window-panes where he still fancied he could
+distinguish his pale, ghostly figure. On surveying new Rome, the ravaged
+olden districts and the new ones laid waste by the blast of disaster, the
+Pope must certainly rejoice at the colossal failure of the Italian
+Government. His city had been stolen from him; the newcomers had
+virtually declared that they would show him how a great capital was
+created, and their boast had ended in that catastrophe--a multitude of
+hideous and useless buildings which they did not even know how to finish!
+He, the Pope, could moreover only be delighted with the terrible worries
+into which the usurping /regime/ had fallen, the political crisis, and
+the financial crisis, the whole growing national unrest amidst which that
+/regime/ seemed likely to sink some day; and yet did not he himself
+possess a patriotic soul? was he not a loving son of that Italy whose
+genius and ancient ambition coursed in the blood of his veins? Ah! no,
+nothing against Italy; rather everything that would enable her to become
+once more the mistress of the world. And so, even amidst the joy of hope,
+he must have been grieved to see her thus ruined, threatened with
+bankruptcy, displaying like a sore that overturned, unfinished Rome which
+was a confession of her impotency. But, on the other hand, if the House
+of Savoy were to be swept away, would he not be there to take its place,
+and at last resume possession of his capital, which, from his window, for
+fifteen years past, he had beheld in the grip of masons and demolishers?
+And then he would again be the master and reign over the world, enthroned
+in the predestined city to which prophecy has ensured eternity and
+universal dominion.
+
+But the horizon spread out, and Pierre wondered what Leo XIII beheld
+beyond Rome, beyond the Campagna and the Sabine and Alban mountains. What
+had he seen for eighteen years past from that window whence he obtained
+his only view of the world? What echoes of modern society, its truths and
+certainties, had reached his ears? From the heights of the Viminal, where
+the railway terminus stands, the prolonged whistling of engines must have
+occasionally been carried towards him, suggesting our scientific
+civilisation, the nations brought nearer together, free humanity marching
+on towards the future. Did he himself ever dream of liberty when, on
+turning to the right, he pictured the sea over yonder, past the tombs of
+the Appian Way? Had he ever desired to go off, quit Rome and her
+traditions, and found the Papacy of the new democracies elsewhere? As he
+was said to possess so clear and penetrating a mind he ought to have
+understood and trembled at the far-away stir and noise that came from
+certain lands of battle, from those United States of America, for
+instance, where revolutionary bishops were conquering, winning over the
+people. Were they working for him or for themselves? If he could not
+follow them, if he remained stubborn within his Vatican, bound on every
+side by dogma and tradition, might not rupture some day become
+unavoidable? And, indeed, the fear of a blast of schism, coming from
+afar, must have filled him with growing anguish. It was assuredly on that
+account that he had practised the diplomacy of conciliation, seeking to
+unite in his hands all the scattered forces of the Church, overlooking
+the audacious proceedings of certain bishops as far as possible, and
+himself striving to gain the support of the people by putting himself on
+its side against the fallen monarchies. But would he ever go any farther?
+Shut up in that Vatican, behind that bronze portal, was he not bound to
+the strict formulas of Catholicism, chained to them by the force of
+centuries? There obstinacy was fated; it was impossible for him to resign
+himself to that which was his real and surpassing power, the purely
+spiritual power, the moral authority which brought mankind to his feet,
+made thousands of pilgrims kneel and women swoon. Departure from Rome and
+the renunciation of the temporal power would not displace the centre of
+the Catholic world, but would transform him, the head of the Catholic
+Church, into the head of something else. And how anxious must have been
+his thoughts if the evening breeze ever brought him a vague presentiment
+of that something else, a fear of the new religion which was yet dimly,
+confusedly dawning amidst the tramp of the nations on the march, and the
+sound of which must have reached him at one and the same time from every
+point of the compass.
+
+At this precise moment, however, Pierre felt that the white and
+motionless shadow behind those windowpanes was held erect by pride, by
+the ever present conviction of victory. If man could not achieve it, a
+miracle would intervene. He, the Pope, was absolutely convinced that he
+or some successor would recover possession of Rome. Had not the Church
+all eternity before it? And, moreover, why should not the victor be
+himself? Could not God accomplish the impossible? Why, if it so pleased
+God, on the very morrow his city would be restored to him, in spite of
+all the objections of human reason, all the apparent logic of facts. Ah!
+how he would welcome the return of that prodigal daughter whose equivocal
+adventures he had ever watched with tears bedewing his paternal eyes! He
+would soon forget the excesses which he had beheld during eighteen years
+at all hours and in all seasons. Perhaps he dreamt of what he would do
+with those new districts with which the city had been soiled. Should they
+be razed, or left as evidence of the insanity of the usurpers? At all
+events, Rome would again become the august and lifeless city, disdainful
+of such vain matters as material cleanliness and comfort, and shining
+forth upon the world like a pure soul encompassed by the traditional
+glory of the centuries. And his dream continued, picturing the course
+which events would take on the very morrow, no doubt. Anything, even a
+republic was preferable to that House of Savoy. Why not a federal
+republic, reviving the old political divisions of Italy, restoring Rome
+to the Church, and choosing him, the Pope, as the natural protector of
+the country thus reorganised? But his eyes travelled beyond Rome and
+Italy, and his dream expanded, embracing republican France, Spain which
+might become republican again, Austria which would some day be won, and
+indeed all the Catholic nations welded into the United States of Europe,
+and fraternising in peace under his high presidency as Sovereign Pontiff.
+And then would follow the supreme triumph, all the other churches at last
+vanishing, and all the dissident communities coming to him as to the one
+and only pastor, who would reign in the name of Jesus over the universal
+democracy.
+
+However, whilst Pierre was immersed in this dream which he attributed to
+Leo XIII, he was all at once interrupted by Narcisse, who exclaimed: "Oh!
+my dear Abbe, just look at those statues on the colonnade." The young
+fellow had ordered a cup of coffee and was languidly smoking a cigar,
+deep once more in the subtle aesthetics which were his only
+preoccupation. "They are rosy, are they not?" he continued; "rosy, with a
+touch of mauve, as if the blue blood of angels circulated in their stone
+veins. It is the sun of Rome which gives them that supra-terrestrial
+life; for they live, my friend; I have seen them smile and hold out their
+arms to me during certain fine sunsets. Ah! Rome, marvellous, delicious
+Rome! One could live here as poor as Job, content with the very
+atmosphere, and in everlasting delight at breathing it!"
+
+This time Pierre could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse's language,
+for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen
+when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young
+priest's mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled
+his heart as for the last time all the want and suffering rose before
+him. Again he beheld the horrible filth which was tainting so many human
+beings, that shocking proof of the abominable social injustice which
+condemns the greater number to lead the joyless, breadless lives of
+accursed beasts. And as his glance returned yet once more to the window
+of the Vatican, and he fancied he could see a pale hand uplifted behind
+the glass panes, he thought of that papal benediction which Leo XIII gave
+from that height, over Rome, and over the plain and the hills, to the
+faithful of all Christendom. And that papal benediction suddenly seemed
+to him a mockery, destitute of all power, since throughout such a
+multitude of centuries it had not once been able to stay a single one of
+the sufferings of mankind, and could not even bring a little justice for
+those poor wretches who were agonising yonder beneath the very window.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THAT evening at dusk, as Benedetta had sent Pierre word that she desired
+to see him, he went down to her little /salon/, and there found her
+chatting with Celia.
+
+"I've seen your Pierina, you know," exclaimed the latter, just as the
+young priest came in. "And with Dario, too. Or rather, she must have been
+watching for him; he found her waiting in a path on the Pincio and smiled
+at her. I understood at once. What a beauty she is!"
+
+Benedetta smiled at her friend's enthusiasm; but her lips twitched
+somewhat painfully, for, however sensible she might be, this passion,
+which she realised to be so naive and so strong, was beginning to make
+her suffer. She certainly made allowances for Dario, but the girl was too
+much in love with him, and she feared the consequences. Even in turning
+the conversation she allowed the secret of her heart to escape her. "Pray
+sit down, Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, "we are talking scandal, you see.
+My poor Dario is accused of making love to every pretty woman in Rome.
+People say that it's he who gives La Tonietta those white roses which she
+has been exhibiting at the Corso every afternoon for a fortnight past."
+
+"That's certain, my dear," retorted Celia impetuously. "At first people
+were in doubt, and talked of little Pontecorvo and Lieutenant Moretta.
+But every one now knows that La Tonietta's caprice is Dario. Besides, he
+joined her in her box at the Costanzi the other evening."
+
+Pierre remembered that the young Prince had pointed out La Tonietta at
+the Pincio one afternoon. She was one of the few /demi-mondaines/ that
+the higher-class society of Rome took an interest in. For a month or so
+the rich Englishman to whom she owed her means had been absent,
+travelling.
+
+"Ah!" resumed Benedetta, whose budding jealousy was entirely confined to
+La Pierina, "so my poor Dario is ruining himself in white roses! Well, I
+shall have to twit him about it. But one or another of these beauties
+will end by robbing me of him if our affairs are not soon settled.
+Fortunately, I have had some better news. Yes, my suit is to be taken in
+hand again, and my aunt has gone out to-day on that very account."
+
+Then, as Victorine came in with a lamp, and Celia rose to depart,
+Benedetta turned towards Pierre, who also was rising from his chair:
+"Please stay," said she; "I wish to speak to you."
+
+However, Celia still lingered, interested by the mention of the divorce
+suit, and eager to know if the cousins would soon be able to marry. And
+at last throwing her arms round Benedetta, she kissed her passionately.
+"So you are hopeful, my dear," she exclaimed. "You think that the Holy
+Father will give you back your liberty? Oh! I am so pleased; it will be
+so nice for you to marry Dario! And I'm well pleased on my own account,
+for my father and mother are beginning to yield. Only yesterday I said to
+them with that quiet little air of mine, 'I want Attilio, and you must
+give him me.' And then my father flew into a furious passion and
+upbraided me, and shook his fist at me, saying that if he'd made my head
+as hard as his own he would know how to break it. My mother was there
+quite silent and vexed, and all at once he turned to her and said: 'Here,
+give her that Attilio she wants, and then perhaps we shall have some
+peace!' Oh yes! I'm well pleased, very well pleased indeed!"
+
+As she spoke her pure virginal face beamed with so much innocent,
+celestial joy that Pierre and Benedetta could not help laughing. And at
+last she went off attended by a maid who had waited for her in the first
+/salon/.
+
+When they were alone Benedetta made the priest sit down again: "I have
+been asked to give you some important advice, my friend," she said. "It
+seems that the news of your presence in Rome is spreading, and that bad
+reports of you are circulated. Your book is said to be a fierce appeal to
+schism, and you are spoken of as a mere ambitious, turbulent schismatic.
+After publishing your book in Paris you have come to Rome, it is said, to
+raise a fearful scandal over it in order to make it sell. Now, if you
+still desire to see his Holiness, so as to plead your cause before him,
+you are advised to make people forget you, to disappear altogether for a
+fortnight or three weeks."
+
+Pierre was stupefied. Why, they would end by maddening him with all the
+obstacles they raised to exhaust his patience; they would actually
+implant in him an idea of schism, of an avenging, liberating scandal! He
+wished to protest and refuse the advice, but all at once he made a
+gesture of weariness. What would be the good of it, especially with that
+young woman, who was certainly sincere and affectionate. "Who asked you
+to give me this advice?" he inquired. She did not answer, but smiled, and
+with sudden intuition he resumed: "It was Monsignor Nani, was it not?"
+
+Thereupon, still unwilling to give a direct reply, she began to praise
+the prelate. He had at last consented to guide her in her divorce affair;
+and Donna Serafina had gone to the Palace of the Inquisition that very
+afternoon in order to acquaint him with the result of certain steps she
+had taken. Father Lorenza, the confessor of both the Boccanera ladies,
+was to be present at the interview, for the idea of the divorce was in
+reality his own. He had urged the two women to it in his eagerness to
+sever the bond which the patriotic priest Pisoni had tied full of such
+fine illusions. Benedetta became quite animated as she explained the
+reasons of her hopefulness. "Monsignor Nani can do everything," she said,
+"and I am very happy that my affair should be in his hands. You must be
+reasonable also, my friend; do as you are requested. I'm sure you will
+some day be well pleased at having taken this advice."
+
+Pierre had bowed his head and remained thoughtful. There was nothing
+unpleasant in the idea of remaining for a few more weeks in Rome, where
+day by day his curiosity found so much fresh food. Of course, all these
+delays were calculated to discourage him and bend his will. Yet what did
+he fear, since he was still determined to relinquish nothing of his book,
+and to see the Holy Father for the sole purpose of proclaiming his new
+faith? Once more, in silence, he took that oath, then yielded to
+Benedetta's entreaties. And as he apologised for being a source of
+embarrassment in the house she exclaimed: "No, no, I am delighted to have
+you here. I fancy that your presence will bring us good fortune now that
+luck seems to be changing in our favour."
+
+It was then agreed that he would no longer prowl around St. Peter's and
+the Vatican, where his constant presence must have attracted attention.
+He even promised that he would virtually spend a week indoors, desirous
+as he was of reperusing certain books, certain pages of Rome's history.
+Then he went on chatting for a moment, lulled by the peacefulness which
+reigned around him, since the lamp had illumined the /salon/ with its
+sleepy radiance. Six o'clock had just struck, and outside all was dark.
+
+"Wasn't his Eminence indisposed to-day?" the young man asked.
+
+"Yes," replied the Contessina. "But we are not anxious: it is only a
+little fatigue. He sent Don Vigilio to tell me that he intended to shut
+himself up in his room and dictate some letters. So there can be nothing
+much the matter, you see."
+
+Silence fell again. For a while not a sound came from the deserted street
+or the old empty mansion, mute and dreamy like a tomb. But all at once
+the soft somnolence, instinct with all the sweetness of a dream of hope,
+was disturbed by a tempestuous entry, a whirl of skirts, a gasp of
+terror. It was Victorine, who had gone off after bringing the lamp, but
+now returned, scared and breathless: "Contessina! Contessina!"
+
+Benedetta had risen, suddenly quite white and cold, as at the advent of a
+blast of misfortune. "What, what is it? Why do you run and tremble?" she
+asked.
+
+"Dario, Monsieur Dario--down below. I went down to see if the lantern in
+the porch were alight, as it is so often forgotten. And in the dark, in
+the porch, I stumbled against Monsieur Dario. He is on the ground; he has
+a knife-thrust somewhere."
+
+A cry leapt from the /amorosa's/ heart: "Dead!"
+
+"No, no, wounded."
+
+But Benedetta did not hear; in a louder and louder voice she cried:
+"Dead! dead!"
+
+"No, no, I tell you, he spoke to me. And for Heaven's sake, be quiet. He
+silenced me because he did not want any one to know; he told me to come
+and fetch you--only you. However, as Monsieur l'Abbe is here, he had
+better help us. We shall be none too many."
+
+Pierre listened, also quite aghast. And when Victorine wished to take the
+lamp her trembling hand, with which she had no doubt felt the prostrate
+body, was seen to be quite bloody. The sight filled Benedetta with so
+much horror that she again began to moan wildly.
+
+"Be quiet, be quiet!" repeated Victorine. "We ought not to make any noise
+in going down. I shall take the lamp, because we must at all events be
+able to see. Now, quick, quick!"
+
+Across the porch, just at the entrance of the vestibule, Dario lay prone
+upon the slabs, as if, after being stabbed in the street, he had only had
+sufficient strength to take a few steps before falling. And he had just
+fainted, and lay there with his face very pale, his lips compressed, and
+his eyes closed. Benedetta, recovering the energy of her race amidst her
+excessive grief, no longer lamented or cried out, but gazed at him with
+wild, tearless, dilated eyes, as though unable to understand. The horror
+of it all was the suddenness and mysteriousness of the catastrophe, the
+why and wherefore of this murderous attempt amidst the silence of the old
+deserted palace, black with the shades of night. The wound had as yet
+bled but little, for only the Prince's clothes were stained.
+
+"Quick, quick!" repeated Victorine in an undertone after lowering the
+lamp and moving it around. "The porter isn't there--he's always at the
+carpenter's next door--and you see that he hasn't yet lighted the
+lantern. Still he may come back at any moment. So the Abbe and I will
+carry the Prince into his room at once." She alone retained her head,
+like a woman of well-balanced mind and quiet activity. The two others,
+whose stupor continued, listened to her and obeyed her with the docility
+of children. "Contessina," she continued, "you must light us. Here, take
+the lamp and lower it a little so that we may see the steps. You, Abbe,
+take the feet; I'll take hold of him under the armpits. And don't be
+alarmed, the poor dear fellow isn't heavy."
+
+Ah! that ascent of the monumental staircase with its low steps and its
+landings as spacious as guardrooms. They facilitated the cruel journey,
+but how lugubrious looked the little /cortege/ under the flickering
+glimmer of the lamp which Benedetta held with arm outstretched, stiffened
+by determination! And still not a sound came from the old lifeless
+dwelling, nothing but the silent crumbling of the walls, the slow decay
+which was making the ceilings crack. Victorine continued to whisper words
+of advice whilst Pierre, afraid of slipping on the shiny slabs, put forth
+an excess of strength which made his breath come short. Huge, wild
+shadows danced over the big expanse of bare wall up to the very vaults
+decorated with sunken panels. So endless seemed the ascent that at last a
+halt became necessary; but the slow march was soon resumed. Fortunately
+Dario's apartments--bed-chamber, dressing-room, and sitting-room--were on
+the first floor adjoining those of the Cardinal in the wing facing the
+Tiber; so, on reaching the landing, they only had to walk softly along
+the corridor, and at last, to their great relief, laid the wounded man
+upon his bed.
+
+Victorine vented her satisfaction in a light laugh. "That's done," said
+she; "put the lamp on that table, Contessina. I'm sure nobody heard us.
+It's lucky that Donna Serafina should have gone out, and that his
+Eminence should have shut himself up with Don Vigilio. I wrapped my skirt
+round Monsieur Dario's shoulders, you know, so I don't think any blood
+fell on the stairs. By and by, too, I'll go down with a sponge and wipe
+the slabs in the porch--" She stopped short, looked at Dario, and then
+quickly added: "He's breathing--now I'll leave you both to watch over him
+while I go for good Doctor Giordano, who saw you come into the world,
+Contessina. He's a man to be trusted."
+
+Alone with the unconscious sufferer in that dim chamber, which seemed to
+quiver with the frightful horror that filled their hearts, Benedetta and
+Pierre remained on either side of the bed, as yet unable to exchange a
+word. The young woman first opened her arms and wrung her hands whilst
+giving vent to a hollow moan, as if to relieve and exhale her grief; and
+then, leaning forward, she watched for some sign of life on that pale
+face whose eyes were closed. Dario was certainly breathing, but his
+respiration was slow and very faint, and some time went by before a touch
+of colour returned to his cheeks. At last, however, he opened his eyes,
+and then she at once took hold of his hand and pressed it, instilling
+into the pressure all the anguish of her heart. Great was her happiness
+on feeling that he feebly returned the clasp.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "you can see me and hear me, can't you? What has
+happened, good God?"
+
+He did not at first answer, being worried by the presence of Pierre. On
+recognising the young priest, however, he seemed content that he should
+be there, and then glanced apprehensively round the room to see if there
+were anybody else. And at last he murmured: "No one saw me, no one
+knows?"
+
+"No, no; be easy. We carried you up with Victorine without meeting a
+soul. Aunt has just gone out, uncle is shut up in his rooms."
+
+At this Dario seemed relieved, and he even smiled. "I don't want anybody
+to know, it is so stupid," he murmured.
+
+"But in God's name what has happened?" she again asked him.
+
+"Ah! I don't know, I don't know," was his response, as he lowered his
+eyelids with a weary air as if to escape the question. But he must have
+realised that it was best for him to confess some portion of the truth at
+once, for he resumed: "A man was hidden in the shadow of the porch--he
+must have been waiting for me. And so, when I came in, he dug his knife
+into my shoulder, there."
+
+Forthwith she again leant over him, quivering, and gazing into the depths
+of his eyes: "But who was the man, who was he?" she asked. Then, as he,
+in a yet more weary way, began to stammer that he didn't know, that the
+man had fled into the darkness before he could recognise him, she raised
+a terrible cry: "It was Prada! it was Prada, confess it, I know it
+already!" And, quite delirious, she went on: "I tell you that I know it!
+Ah! I would not be his, and he is determined that we shall never belong
+to one another. Rather than have that he will kill you on the day when I
+am free to be your wife! Oh! I know him well; I shall never, never be
+happy. Yes, I know it well, it was Prada, Prada!"
+
+But sudden energy upbuoyed the wounded man, and he loyally protested:
+"No, no, it was not Prada, nor was it any one working for him. That I
+swear to you. I did not recognise the man, but it wasn't Prada--no, no!"
+
+There was such a ring of truth in Dario's words that Benedetta must have
+been convinced by them. But terror once more overpowered her, for the
+hand she held was suddenly growing soft, moist, and powerless. Exhausted
+by his effort, Dario had fallen back, again fainting, his face quite
+white and his eyes closed. And it seemed to her that he was dying.
+Distracted by her anguish, she felt him with trembling, groping hands:
+"Look, look, Monsieur l'Abbe!" she exclaimed. "But he is dying, he is
+dying; he is already quite cold. Ah! God of heaven, he is dying!"
+
+Pierre, terribly upset by her cries, sought to reassure her, saying: "He
+spoke too much; he has lost consciousness, as he did before. But I assure
+you that I can feel his heart beating. Here, put your hand here,
+Contessina. For mercy's sake don't distress yourself like that; the
+doctor will soon be here, and everything will be all right."
+
+But she did not listen to him, and all at once he was lost in amazement,
+for she flung herself upon the body of the man she adored, caught it in a
+frantic embrace, bathed it with tears and covered it with kisses whilst
+stammering words of fire: "Ah! if I were to lose you, if I were to lose
+you! And to think that I repulsed you, that I would not accept happiness
+when it was yet possible! Yes, that idea of mine, that vow I made to the
+Madonna! Yet how could she be offended by our happiness? And then, and
+then, if she has deceived me, if she takes you from me, ah! then I can
+have but one regret--that I did not damn myself with you--yes, yes,
+damnation rather than that we should never, never be each other's!"
+
+Was this the woman who had shown herself so calm, so sensible, so patient
+the better to ensure her happiness? Pierre was terrified, and no longer
+recognised her. He had hitherto seen her so reserved, so modest, with a
+childish charm that seemed to come from her very nature! But under the
+threatening blow she feared, the terrible blood of the Boccaneras had
+awoke within her with a long heredity of violence, pride, frantic and
+exasperated longings. She wished for her share of life, her share of
+love! And she moaned and she clamoured, as if death, in taking her lover
+from her, were tearing away some of her own flesh.
+
+"Calm yourself, I entreat you, madame," repeated the priest. "He is
+alive, his heart beats. You are doing yourself great harm."
+
+But she wished to die with her lover: "O my darling! if you must go, take
+me, take me with you. I will lay myself on your heart, I will clasp you
+so tightly with my arms that they shall be joined to yours, and then we
+must needs be buried together. Yes, yes, we shall be dead, and we shall
+be wedded all the same--wedded in death! I promised that I would belong
+to none but you, and I will be yours in spite of everything, even in the
+grave. O my darling, open your eyes, open your mouth, kiss me if you
+don't want me to die as soon as you are dead!"
+
+A blaze of wild passion, full of blood and fire, had passed through that
+mournful chamber with old, sleepy walls. But tears were now overcoming
+Benedetta, and big gasping sobs at last threw her, blinded and
+strengthless, on the edge of the bed. And fortunately an end was put to
+the terrible scene by the arrival of the doctor whom Victorine had
+fetched.
+
+Doctor Giordano was a little old man of over sixty, with white curly
+hair, and fresh-looking, clean-shaven countenance. By long practice among
+Churchmen he had acquired the paternal appearance and manner of an
+amiable prelate. And he was said to be a very worthy man, tending the
+poor for nothing, and displaying ecclesiastical reserve and discretion in
+all delicate cases. For thirty years past the whole Boccanera family,
+children, women, and even the most eminent Cardinal himself, had in all
+cases of sickness been placed in the hands of this prudent practitioner.
+Lighted by Victorine and helped by Pierre, he undressed Dario, who was
+roused from his swoon by pain; and after examining the wound he declared
+with a smile that it was not at all dangerous. The young Prince would at
+the utmost have to spend three weeks in bed, and no complications were to
+be feared. Then, like all the doctors of Rome, enamoured of the fine
+thrusts and cuts which day by day they have to dress among chance
+patients of the lower classes, he complacently lingered over the wound,
+doubtless regarding it as a clever piece of work, for he ended by saying
+to the Prince in an undertone: "That's what we call a warning. The man
+didn't want to kill, the blow was dealt downwards so that the knife might
+slip through the flesh without touching the bone. Ah! a man really needs
+to be skilful to deal such a stab; it was very neatly done."
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured Dario, "he spared me; had he chosen he could have
+pierced me through."
+
+Benedetta did not hear. Since the doctor had declared the case to be free
+from danger, and had explained that the fainting fits were due to nervous
+shock, she had fallen in a chair, quite prostrated. Gradually, however,
+some gentle tears coursed from her eyes, bringing relief after her
+frightful despair, and then, rising to her feet, she came and kissed
+Dario with mute and passionate delight.
+
+"I say, my dear doctor," resumed the Prince, "it's useless for people to
+know of this. It's so ridiculous. Nobody has seen anything, it seems,
+excepting Monsieur l'Abbe, whom I ask to keep the matter secret. And in
+particular I don't want anybody to alarm the Cardinal or my aunt, or
+indeed any of our friends."
+
+Doctor Giordano indulged in one of his placid smiles. "/Bene, bene/,"
+said he, "that's natural; don't worry yourself. We will say that you have
+had a fall on the stairs and have dislocated your shoulder. And now that
+the wound is dressed you must try to sleep, and don't get feverish. I
+will come back to-morrow morning."
+
+That evening of excitement was followed by some very tranquil days, and a
+new life began for Pierre, who at first remained indoors, reading and
+writing, with no other recreation than that of spending his afternoons in
+Dario's room, where he was certain to find Benedetta. After a somewhat
+intense fever lasting for eight and forty hours, cure took its usual
+course, and the story of the dislocated shoulder was so generally
+believed, that the Cardinal insisted on Donna Serafina departing from her
+habits of strict economy, to have a second lantern lighted on the landing
+in order that no such accident might occur again. And then the monotonous
+peacefulness was only disturbed by a final incident, a threat of trouble,
+as it were, with which Pierre found himself mixed up one evening when he
+was lingering beside the convalescent patient.
+
+Benedetta had absented herself for a few minutes, and as Victorine, who
+had brought up some broth, was leaning towards the Prince to take the
+empty cup from him, she said in a low voice: "There's a girl, Monsieur,
+La Pierina, who comes here every day, crying and asking for news of you.
+I can't get rid of her, she's always prowling about the place, so I
+thought it best to tell you of it."
+
+Unintentionally, Pierre heard her and understood everything. Dario, who
+was looking at him, at once guessed his thoughts, and without answering
+Victorine exclaimed: "Yes, Abbe, it was that brute Tito! How idiotic,
+eh?" At the same time, although the young man protested that he had done
+nothing whatever for the girl's brother to give him such a "warning," he
+smiled in an embarrassed way, as if vexed and even somewhat ashamed of
+being mixed up in an affair of the kind. And he was evidently relieved
+when the priest promised that he would see the girl, should she come
+back, and make her understand that she ought to remain at home.
+
+"It was such a stupid affair!" the Prince repeated, with an exaggerated
+show of anger. "Such things are not of our times."
+
+But all at once he ceased speaking, for Benedetta entered the room. She
+sat down again beside her dear patient, and the sweet, peaceful evening
+then took its course in the old sleepy chamber, the old, lifeless palace,
+whence never a sound arose.
+
+When Pierre began to go out again he at first merely took a brief airing
+in the district. The Via Giulia interested him, for he knew how splendid
+it had been in the time of Julius II, who had dreamt of lining it with
+sumptuous palaces. Horse and foot races then took place there during the
+carnival, the Palazzo Farnese being the starting-point, and the Piazza of
+St. Peter's the goal. Pierre had also lately read that a French
+ambassador, D'Estree, Marquis de Coure, had resided at the Palazzo
+Sacchetti, and in 1638 had given some magnificent entertainments in
+honour of the birth of the Dauphin,* when on three successive days there
+had been racing from the Ponte Sisto to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini
+amidst an extraordinary display of sumptuosity: the street being strewn
+with flowers, and rich hangings adorning every window. On the second
+evening there had been fireworks on the Tiber, with a machine
+representing the ship Argo carrying Jason and his companions to the
+recovery of the Golden Fleece; and, on another occasion, the Farnese
+fountain, the Mascherone, had flowed with wine. Nowadays, however, all
+was changed. The street, bright with sunshine or steeped in shadow
+according to the hour, was ever silent and deserted. The heavy, ancient
+palatial houses, their old doors studded with plates and nails, their
+windows barred with huge iron gratings, always seemed to be asleep, whole
+storeys showing nothing but closed shutters as if to keep out the
+daylight for evermore. Now and again, when a door was open, you espied
+deep vaults, damp, cold courts, green with mildew, and encompassed by
+colonnades like cloisters. Then, in the outbuildings of the mansions, the
+low structures which had collected more particularly on the side of the
+Tiber, various small silent shops had installed themselves. There was a
+baker's, a tailor's, and a bookbinder's, some fruiterers' shops with a
+few tomatoes and salad plants set out on boards, and some wine-shops
+which claimed to sell the vintages of Frascati and Genzano, but whose
+customers seemed to be dead. Midway along the street was a modern prison,
+whose horrid yellow wall in no wise enlivened the scene, whilst,
+overhead, a flight of telegraph wires stretched from the arcades of the
+Farnese palace to the distant vista of trees beyond the river. With its
+infrequent traffic the street, even in the daytime, was like some
+sepulchral corridor where the past was crumbling into dust, and when
+night fell its desolation quite appalled Pierre. You did not meet a soul,
+you did not see a light in any window, and the glimmering gas lamps, few
+and far between, seemed powerless to pierce the gloom. On either hand the
+doors were barred and bolted, and not a sound, not a breath came from
+within. Even when, after a long interval, you passed a lighted wine-shop,
+behind whose panes of frosted glass a lamp gleamed dim and motionless,
+not an exclamation, not a suspicion of a laugh ever reached your ear.
+There was nothing alive save the two sentries placed outside the prison,
+one before the entrance and the other at the corner of the right-hand
+lane, and they remained erect and still, coagulated, as it were, in that
+dead street.
+
+  * Afterwards Louis XIV.--Trans.
+
+Pierre's interest, however, was not merely confined to the Via Giulia; it
+extended to the whole district, once so fine and fashionable, but now
+fallen into sad decay, far removed from modern life, and exhaling a faint
+musty odour of monasticism. Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where
+the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the
+lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts
+contrasted violently with the black sunken dwellings of the neighbouring
+lanes. In the evening the globes of the electric lamps on the Corso shone
+out with such dazzling whiteness that the gas lamps of the Via Giulia and
+other streets looked like smoky lanterns. There were several old and
+famous thoroughfares, the Via Banchi Vecchi, the Via del Pellegrino, the
+Via di Monserrato, and an infinity of cross-streets which intersected and
+connected the others, all going towards the Tiber, and for the most part
+so narrow that vehicles scarcely had room to pass. And each street had
+its church, a multitude of churches all more or less alike, highly
+decorated, gilded, and painted, and open only at service time when they
+were full of sunlight and incense. In the Via Giulia, in addition to San
+Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli
+Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the
+Dead, Santa Maria dell' Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower
+end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to
+dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the
+Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to
+search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna. One
+evening he was present at the funeral of two unknown men, whose bodies,
+after remaining unburied for quite a fortnight, had been discovered in a
+field near the Appian Way.
+
+However, Pierre's favourite promenade soon became the new quay of the
+Tiber beyond the Palazzo Boccanera. He had merely to take the narrow lane
+skirting the mansion to reach a spot where he found much food for
+reflection. Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be
+quite abandoned. There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken
+fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around. To such a height had it
+been necessary to carry the quay walls--designed to protect the city from
+floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past--that the
+old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to
+which pleasure boats had once been moored, now lay in a hollow,
+threatened with annihilation whenever the works should be finished. But
+nothing had yet been levelled; the soil, brought thither for making up
+the bank, lay as it had fallen from the carts, and on all sides were pits
+and mounds interspersed with the abandoned building materials. Wretched
+urchins came to play there, workmen without work slept in the sunshine,
+and women after washing ragged linen spread it out to dry upon the
+stones. Nevertheless the spot proved a happy, peaceful refuge for Pierre,
+one fruitful in inexhaustible reveries when for hours at a time he
+lingered gazing at the river, the quays, and the city, stretching in
+front of him and on either hand.
+
+At eight in the morning the sun already gilded the vast opening. On
+turning to the left he perceived the roofs of the Trastevere, of a misty,
+bluish grey against the dazzling sky. Then, just beyond the apse of San
+Giovanni, on the right, the river curved, and on its other bank the
+poplars of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito formed a green curtain, while
+the castle of Sant' Angelo showed brightly in the distance. But Pierre's
+eyes dwelt more particularly on the bank just in front of him, for there
+he found some lingering vestiges of old Rome. On that side indeed between
+the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Sant' Angelo, the quays, which were to
+imprison the river within high, white, fortress-like walls, had not yet
+been raised, and the bank with its remnants of the old papal city
+conjured up an extraordinary vision of the middle ages. The houses,
+descending to the river brink, were cracked, scorched, rusted by
+innumerable burning summers, like so many antique bronzes. Down below
+there were black vaults into which the water flowed, piles upholding
+walls, and fragments of Roman stone-work plunging into the river bed;
+then, rising from the shore, came steep, broken stairways, green with
+moisture, tiers of terraces, storeys with tiny windows pierced here and
+their in hap-hazard fashion, houses perched atop of other houses, and the
+whole jumbled together with a fantastic commingling of balconies and
+wooden galleries, footbridges spanning courtyards, clumps of trees
+growing apparently on the very roofs, and attics rising from amidst pinky
+tiles. The contents of a drain fell noisily into the river from a worn
+and soiled gorge of stone; and wherever the houses stood back and the
+bank appeared, it was covered with wild vegetation, weeds, shrubs, and
+mantling ivy, which trailed like a kingly robe of state. And in the glory
+of the sun the wretchedness and dirt vanished, the crooked, jumbled
+houses seemed to be of gold, draped with the purple of the red petticoats
+and the dazzling white of the shifts which hung drying from their
+windows; while higher still, above the district, the Janiculum rose into
+all the luminary's dazzlement, uprearing the slender profile of Sant'
+Onofrio amidst cypresses and pines.
+
+Leaning on the parapet of the quay wall, Pierre sadly gazed at the Tiber
+for hours at a time. Nothing could convey an idea of the weariness of
+those old waters, the mournful slowness of their flow along that
+Babylonian trench where they were confined within huge, bare, livid
+prison-like walls. In the sunlight their yellowness was gilded, and the
+faint quiver of the current brought ripples of green and blue; but as
+soon as the shade spread over it the stream became opaque like mud, so
+turbid in its venerable old age that it no longer even gave back a
+reflection of the houses lining it. And how desolate was its abandonment,
+what a stream of silence and solitude it was! After the winter rains it
+might roll furiously and threateningly, but during the long months of
+bright weather it traversed Rome without a sound, and Pierre could remain
+there all day long without seeing either a skiff or a sail. The two or
+three little steam-boats which arrived from the coast, the few tartanes
+which brought wine from Sicily, never came higher than the Aventine,
+beyond which there was only a watery desert in which here and there, at
+long intervals, a motionless angler let his line dangle. All that Pierre
+ever saw in the way of shipping was a sort of ancient, covered pinnace, a
+rotting Noah's ark, moored on the right beside the old bank, and he
+fancied that it might be used as a washhouse, though on no occasion did
+he see any one in it. And on a neck of mud there also lay a stranded boat
+with one side broken in, a lamentable symbol of the impossibility and the
+relinquishment of navigation. Ah! that decay of the river, that decay of
+father Tiber, as dead as the famous ruins whose dust he is weary of
+laving! And what an evocation! all the centuries of history, so many
+things, so many men, that those yellow waters have reflected till, full
+of lassitude and disgust, they have grown heavy, silent and deserted,
+longing only for annihilation.
+
+One morning on the river bank Pierre found La Pierina standing behind an
+abandoned tool-shed. With her neck extended, she was looking fixedly at
+the window of Dario's room, at the corner of the quay and the lane.
+Doubtless she had been frightened by Victorine's severe reception, and
+had not dared to return to the mansion; but some servant, possibly, had
+told her which was the young Prince's window, and so she now came to this
+spot, where without wearying she waited for a glimpse of the man she
+loved, for some sign of life and salvation, the mere hope of which made
+her heart leap. Deeply touched by the way in which she hid herself, all
+humility and quivering with adoration, the priest approached her, and
+instead of scolding her and driving her away as he had been asked to do,
+spoke to her in a gentle, cheerful manner, asking her for news of her
+people as though nothing had happened, and at last contriving to mention
+Dario's name in order that she might understand that he would be up and
+about again within a fortnight. On perceiving Pierre, La Pierina had
+started with timidity and distrust as if anxious to flee; but when she
+understood him, tears of happiness gushed from her eyes, and with a
+bright smile she kissed her hand to him, calling: "/Grazie, grazie/,
+thanks, thanks!" And thereupon she darted away, and he never saw her
+again.
+
+On another morning at an early hour, as Pierre was going to say mass at
+Santa Brigida on the Piazza Farnese, he was surprised to meet Benedetta
+coming out of the church and carrying a small phial of oil. She evinced
+no embarrassment, but frankly told him that every two or three days she
+went thither to obtain from the beadle a few drops of the oil used for
+the lamp that burnt before an antique wooden statue of the Madonna, in
+which she had perfect confidence. She even confessed that she had never
+had confidence in any other Madonna, having never obtained anything from
+any other, though she had prayed to several of high repute, Madonnas of
+marble and even of silver. And so her heart was full of ardent devotion
+for the holy image which refused her nothing. And she declared in all
+simplicity, as though the matter were quite natural and above discussion,
+that the few drops of oil which she applied, morning and evening, to
+Dario's wound, were alone working his cure, so speedy a cure as to be
+quite miraculous. Pierre, fairly aghast, distressed indeed to find such
+childish, superstitious notions in one so full of sense and grace and
+passion, did not even venture to smile.
+
+In the evenings, when he came back from his strolls and spent an hour or
+so in Dario's room, he would for a time divert the patient by relating
+what he had done and seen and thought of during the day. And when he
+again ventured to stray beyond the district, and became enamoured of the
+lovely gardens of Rome, which he visited as soon as they opened in the
+morning in order that he might be virtually alone, he delighted the young
+prince and Benedetta with his enthusiasm, his rapturous passion for the
+splendid trees, the plashing water, and the spreading terraces whence the
+views were so sublime. It was not the most extensive of these gardens
+which the more deeply impressed his heart. In the grounds of the Villa
+Borghese, the little Roman Bois de Boulogne, there were certainly some
+majestic clumps of greenery, some regal avenues where carriages took a
+turn in the afternoon before the obligatory drive to the Pincio; but
+Pierre was more touched by the reserved garden of the villa--that villa
+dazzling with marble and now containing one of the finest museums in the
+world. There was a simple lawn of fine grass with a vast central basin
+surmounted by a figure of Venus, nude and white; and antique fragments,
+vases, statues, columns, and /sarcophagi/ were ranged symmetrically all
+around the deserted, sunlit yet melancholy, sward. On returning on one
+occasion to the Pincio Pierre spent a delightful morning there,
+penetrated by the charm of this little nook with its scanty evergreens,
+and its admirable vista of all Rome and St. Peter's rising up afar off in
+the soft limpid radiance. At the Villa Albani and the Villa Pamphili he
+again came upon superb parasol pines, tall, stately, and graceful, and
+powerful elm-trees with twisted limbs and dusky foliage. In the Pamphili
+grounds, the elm-trees steeped the paths in a delicious half-light, the
+lake with its weeping willows and tufts of reeds had a dreamy aspect,
+while down below the /parterre/ displayed a fantastic floral mosaic
+bright with the various hues of flowers and foliage. That which most
+particularly struck Pierre, however, in this, the noblest, most spacious,
+and most carefully tended garden of Rome, was the novel and unexpected
+view that he suddenly obtained of St. Peter's, whilst skirting a low
+wall: a view whose symbolism for ever clung to him. Rome had completely
+vanished, and between the slopes of Monte Mario and another wooded height
+which hid the city, there only appeared the colossal dome which seemed to
+be poised on an infinity of scattered blocks, now white, now red. These
+were the houses of the Borgo, the jumbled piles of the Vatican and the
+Basilica which the huge dome surmounted and annihilated, showing greyly
+blue in the light blue of the heavens, whilst far away stretched a
+delicate, boundless vista of the Campagna, likewise of a bluish tint.
+
+It was, however, more particularly in the less sumptuous gardens, those
+of a more homely grace, that Pierre realised that even things have souls.
+Ah! that Villa Mattei on one side of the Coelius with its terraced
+grounds, its sloping alleys edged with laurel, aloe, and spindle tree,
+its box-plants forming arbours, its oranges, its roses, and its
+fountains! Pierre spent some delicious hours there, and only found a
+similar charm on visiting the Aventine, where three churches are
+embowered in verdure. The little garden of Santa Sabina, the birthplace
+of the Dominican order, is closed on all sides and affords no view: it
+slumbers in quiescence, warm and perfumed by its orange-trees, amongst
+which that planted by St. Dominic stands huge and gnarled but still laden
+with ripe fruit. At the adjoining Priorato, however, the garden, perched
+high above the Tiber, overlooks a vast expanse, with the river and the
+buildings on either bank as far as the summit of the Janiculum. And in
+these gardens of Rome Pierre ever found the same clipped box-shrubs, the
+same eucalypti with white trunks and pale leaves long like hair, the same
+ilex-trees squat and dusky, the same giant pines, the same black
+cypresses, the same marbles whitening amidst tufts of roses, and the same
+fountains gurgling under mantling ivy. Never did he enjoy more gentle,
+sorrow-tinged delight than at the Villa of Pope Julius, where all the
+life of a gay and sensual period is suggested by the semi-circular
+porticus opening on the gardens, a porticus decorated with paintings,
+golden trellis-work laden with flowers, amidst which flutter flights of
+smiling Cupids. Then, on the evening when he returned from the Farnesina,
+he declared that he had brought all the dead soul of ancient Rome away
+with him, and it was not the paintings executed after Raffaelle's designs
+that had touched him, it was rather the pretty hall on the river side
+decorated in soft blue and pink and lilac, with an art devoid of genius
+yet so charming and so Roman; and in particular it was the abandoned
+garden once stretching down to the Tiber, and now shut off from it by the
+new quay, and presenting an aspect of woeful desolation, ravaged, bossy
+and weedy like a cemetery, albeit the golden fruit of orange and citron
+tree still ripened there.
+
+And for the last time a shock came to Pierre's heart on the lovely
+evening when he visited the Villa Medici. There he was on French soil.*
+And again what a marvellous garden he found with box-plants, and pines,
+and avenues full of magnificence and charm! What a refuge for antique
+reverie was that wood of ilex-trees, so old and so sombre, where the sun
+in declining cast fiery gleams of red gold amidst the sheeny bronze of
+the foliage. You ascend by endless steps, and from the crowning belvedere
+on high you embrace all Rome at a glance as though by opening your arms
+you could seize it in its entirety. From the villa's dining-room,
+decorated with portraits of all the artists who have successfully
+sojourned there, and from the spacious peaceful library one beholds the
+same splendid, broad, all-conquering panorama, a panorama of unlimited
+ambition, whose infinite ought to set in the hearts of the young men
+dwelling there a determination to subjugate the world. Pierre, who came
+thither opposed to the principle of the "Prix de Rome," that traditional,
+uniform education so dangerous for originality, was for a moment charmed
+by the warm peacefulness, the limpid solitude of the garden, and the
+sublime horizon where the wings of genius seemed to flutter. Ah! how
+delightful, to be only twenty and to live for three years amidst such
+infinite sweetness, encompassed by the finest works of man; to say to
+oneself that one is as yet too young to produce, and to reflect, and
+seek, and learn how to enjoy, suffer, and love! But Pierre afterwards
+reflected that this was not a fit task for youth, and that to appreciate
+the divine enjoyment of such a retreat, all art and blue sky, ripe age
+was needed, age with victories already gained and weariness following
+upon the accomplishment of work. He chatted with some of the young
+pensioners, and remarked that if those who were inclined to dreaminess
+and contemplation, like those who could merely claim mediocrity,
+accommodated themselves to this life cloistered in the art of the past,
+on the other hand artists of active bent and personal temperament pined
+with impatience, their eyes ever turned towards Paris, their souls eager
+to plunge into the furnace of battle and production.
+
+  * Here is the French Academy, where winners of the "Prix de
+    Rome" in painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving, and
+    music are maintained by the French Government for three
+    years. The creation dates from Louis XIV.--Trans.
+
+All those gardens of which Pierre spoke to Dario and Benedetta with so
+much rapture, awoke within them the memory of the garden of the Villa
+Montefiori, now a waste, but once so green, planted with the finest
+orange-trees of Rome, a grove of centenarian orange-trees where they had
+learnt to love one another. And the memory of their early love brought
+thoughts of their present situation and their future prospects. To these
+the conversation always reverted, and evening after evening Pierre
+witnessed their delight, and heard them talk of coming happiness like
+lovers transported to the seventh heaven. The suit for the dissolution of
+Benedetta's marriage was now assuming a more and more favourable aspect.
+Guided by a powerful hand, Donna Serafina was apparently acting very
+vigorously, for almost every day she had some further good news to
+report. She was indeed anxious to finish the affair both for the
+continuity and for the honour of the name, for on the one hand Dario
+refused to marry any one but his cousin, and on the other this marriage
+would explain everything and put an end to an intolerable situation. The
+scandalous rumours which circulated both in the white and the black world
+quite incensed her, and a victory was the more necessary as Leo XIII,
+already so aged, might be snatched away at any moment, and in the
+Conclave which would follow she desired that her brother's name should
+shine forth with untarnished, sovereign radiance. Never had the secret
+ambition of her life, the hope that her race might give a third pope to
+the Church, filled her with so much passion. It was as if she therein
+sought a consolation for the harsh abandonment of Advocate Morano.
+Invariably clad in sombre garb, ever active and slim, so tightly laced
+that from behind one might have taken her for a young girl, she was so to
+say the black soul of that old palace; and Pierre, who met her
+everywhere, prowling and inspecting like a careful house-keeper, and
+jealously watching over her brother the Cardinal, bowed to her in
+silence, chilled to the heart by the stern look of her withered wrinkled
+face in which was set the large, opiniative nose of her family. However
+she barely returned his bows, for she still disdained that paltry foreign
+priest, and only tolerated him in order to please Monsignor Nani and
+Viscount Philibert de la Choue.
+
+A witness every evening of the anxious delight and impatience of
+Benedetta and Dario, Pierre by degrees became almost as impassioned as
+themselves, as desirous for an early solution. Benedetta's suit was about
+to come before the Congregation of the Council once more. Monsignor
+Palma, the defender of the marriage, had demanded a supplementary inquiry
+after the favourable decision arrived at in the first instance by a bare
+majority of one vote--a majority which the Pope would certainly not have
+thought sufficient had he been asked for his ratification. So the
+question now was to gain votes among the ten cardinals who formed the
+Congregation, to persuade and convince them, and if possible ensure an
+almost unanimous pronouncement. The task was arduous, for, instead of
+facilitating matters, Benedetta's relationship to Cardinal Boccanera
+raised many difficulties, owing to the intriguing spirit rife at the
+Vatican, the spite of rivals who, by perpetuating the scandal, hoped to
+destroy Boccanera's chance of ever attaining to the papacy. Every
+afternoon, however, Donna Serafina devoted herself to the task of winning
+votes under the direction of her confessor, Father Lorenza, whom she saw
+daily at the Collegio Germanico, now the last refuge of the Jesuits in
+Rome, for they have ceased to be masters of the Gesu. The chief hope of
+success lay in Prada's formal declaration that he would not put in an
+appearance. The whole affair wearied and irritated him; the imputations
+levelled against him as a man, seemed to him supremely odious and
+ridiculous; and he no longer even took the trouble to reply to the
+assignations which were sent to him. He acted indeed as if he had never
+been married, though deep in his heart the wound dealt to his passion and
+his pride still lingered, bleeding afresh whenever one or another of the
+scandalous rumours in circulation reached his ears. However, as their
+adversary desisted from all action, one can understand that the hopes of
+Benedetta and Dario increased, the more so as hardly an evening passed
+without Donna Serafina telling them that she believed she had gained the
+support of another cardinal.
+
+But the man who terrified them all was Monsignor Palma, whom the
+Congregation had appointed to defend the sacred ties of matrimony. His
+rights and privileges were almost unlimited, he could appeal yet again,
+and in any case would make the affair drag on as long as it pleased him.
+His first report, in reply to Morano's memoir, had been a terrible blow,
+and it was now said that a second one which he was preparing would prove
+yet more pitiless, establishing as a fundamental principle of the Church
+that it could not annul a marriage whose nonconsummation was purely and
+simply due to the action of the wife in refusing obedience to her
+husband. In presence of such energy and logic, it was unlikely that the
+cardinals, even if sympathetic, would dare to advise the Holy Father to
+dissolve the marriage. And so discouragement was once more overcoming
+Benedetta when Donna Serafina, on returning from a visit to Monsignor
+Nani, calmed her somewhat by telling her that a mutual friend had
+undertaken to deal with Monsignor Palma. However, said she, even if they
+succeeded, it would doubtless cost them a large sum.
+
+Monsignor Palma, a theologist expert in all canonical affairs, and a
+perfectly honest man in pecuniary matters, had met with a great
+misfortune in his life. He had a niece, a poor and lovely girl, for whom,
+unhappily, in his declining years he conceived an insensate passion, with
+the result that to avoid a scandal he was compelled to marry her to a
+rascal who now preyed upon her and even beat her. And the prelate was now
+passing through a fearful crisis, weary of reducing himself to beggary,
+and indeed no longer having the money necessary to extricate his nephew
+by marriage from a very nasty predicament, the result of cheating at
+cards. So the idea was to save the young man by a considerable pecuniary
+payment, and then to procure him employment without asking aught of his
+uncle, who, as if offering complicity, came in tears one evening, when
+night had fallen, to thank Donna Serafina for her exceeding goodness.
+
+Pierre was with Dario that evening when Benedetta entered the room,
+laughing and joyfully clapping her bands. "It's done, it's done!" she
+said, "he has just left aunt, and vowed eternal gratitude to her. He will
+now be obliged to show himself amiable."
+
+However Dario distrustfully inquired: "But was he made to sign anything,
+did he enter into a formal engagement?"
+
+"Oh! no; how could one do that? It's such a delicate matter," replied
+Benedetta. "But people say that he is a very honest man." Nevertheless,
+in spite of these words, she herself became uneasy. What if Monsignor
+Palma should remain incorruptible in spite of the great service which had
+been rendered him? Thenceforth this idea haunted them, and their suspense
+began once more.
+
+Dario, eager to divert his mind, was imprudent enough to get up before he
+was perfectly cured, and, his wound reopening, he was obliged to take to
+his bed again for a few days. Every evening, as previously, Pierre strove
+to enliven him with an account of his strolls. The young priest was now
+getting bolder, rambling in turn through all the districts of Rome, and
+discovering the many "classical" curiosities catalogued in the
+guide-books. One evening he spoke with a kind of affection of the
+principal squares of the city which he had first thought commonplace, but
+which now seemed to him very varied, each with original features of its
+own. There was the noble Piazza del Popolo of such monumental symmetry
+and so full of sunlight; there was the Piazza di Spagna, the lively
+meeting-place of foreigners, with its double flight of a hundred and
+thirty steps gilded by the sun; there was the vast Piazza Colonna, always
+swarming with people, and the most Italian of all the Roman squares from
+the presence of the idle, careless crowd which ever lounged round the
+column of Marcus Aurelius as if waiting for fortune to fall from heaven;
+there was also the long and regular Piazza Navona, deserted since the
+market was no longer held there, and retaining a melancholy recollection
+of its former bustling life; and there was the Campo dei Fiori, which was
+invaded each morning by the tumultuous fruit and vegetable markets, quite
+a plantation of huge umbrellas sheltering heaps of tomatoes, pimentoes,
+and grapes amidst a noisy stream of dealers and housewives. Pierre's
+great surprise, however, was the Piazza del Campidoglio--the "Square of
+the Capitol"--which to him suggested a summit, an open spot overlooking
+the city and the world, but which he found to be small and square, and on
+three sides enclosed by palaces, whilst on the fourth side the view was
+of little extent.* There are no passers-by there; visitors usually come
+up by a flight of steps bordered by a few palm-trees, only foreigners
+making use of the winding carriage-ascent. The vehicles wait, and the
+tourists loiter for a while with their eyes raised to the admirable
+equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, in antique bronze, which occupies
+the centre of the piazza. Towards four o'clock, when the sun gilds the
+left-hand palace, and the slender statues of its entablature show vividly
+against the blue sky, you might think yourself in some warm cosy square
+of a little provincial town, what with the women of the neighbourhood who
+sit knitting under the arcade, and the bands of ragged urchins who
+disport themselves on all sides like school-boys in a playground.
+
+  * The Piazza del Campidoglio is really a depression between the
+    Capitolium proper and the northern height called the Arx. It is
+    supposed to have been the exact site of Romulus's traditional
+    Asylum.--Trans.
+
+Then, on another evening Pierre told Benedetta and Dario of his
+admiration for the Roman fountains, for in no other city of the world
+does water flow so abundantly and magnificently in fountains of bronze
+and marble, from the boat-shaped Fontana della Barcaccia on the Piazza di
+Spagna, the Triton on the Piazza Barberini, and the Tortoises which give
+their name to the Piazza delle Tartarughe, to the three fountains of the
+Piazza Navona where Bernini's vast central composition of rock and
+river-gods rises so triumphantly, and to the colossal and pompous
+fountain of Trevi, where King Neptune stands on high attended by lofty
+figures of Health and Fruitfulness. And on yet another evening Pierre
+came home quite pleased, relating that he had at last discovered why it
+was that the old streets around the Capitol and along the Tiber seemed to
+him so strange: it was because they had no footways, and pedestrians,
+instead of skirting the walls, invariably took the middle of the road,
+leisurely wending their way among the vehicles. Pierre was very fond of
+those old districts with their winding lanes, their tiny squares so
+irregular in shape, and their huge square mansions swamped by a
+multitudinous jumble of little houses. He found a charm, too, in the
+district of the Esquiline, where, besides innumerable flights of
+ascending steps, each of grey pebbles edged with white stone, there were
+sudden sinuous slopes, tiers of terraces, seminaries and convents,
+lifeless, with their windows ever closed, and lofty, blank walls above
+which a superb palm-tree would now and again soar into the spotless blue
+of the sky. And on yet another evening, having strolled into the Campagna
+beside the Tiber and above the Ponte Molle, he came back full of
+enthusiasm for a form of classical art which hitherto he had scarcely
+appreciated. Along the river bank, however, he had found the very scenery
+that Poussin so faithfully depicted: the sluggish, yellow stream fringed
+with reeds; low riven cliffs, whose chalky whiteness showed against the
+ruddy background of a far-stretching, undulating plain, bounded by blue
+hills; a few spare trees with a ruined porticus opening on to space atop
+of the bank, and a line of pale-hued sheep descending to drink, whilst
+the shepherd, with an elbow resting on the trunk of an ilex-tree, stood
+looking on. It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of
+nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but
+ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching
+along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of
+the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of
+Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the
+world.
+
+One day when Pierre came back from seeing the great modern cemetery, the
+Campo Verano, he found Celia, as well as Benedetta, by the side of
+Dario's bed. "What, Monsieur l'Abbe!" exclaimed the little Princess when
+she learnt where he had been; "it amuses you to visit the dead?"
+
+"Oh those Frenchmen," remarked Dario, to whom the mere idea of a cemetery
+was repulsive; "those Frenchmen seem to take a pleasure in making their
+lives wretched with their partiality for gloomy scenes."
+
+"But there is no escaping the reality of death," gently replied Pierre;
+"the best course is to look it in the face."
+
+This made the Prince quite angry. "Reality, reality," said he, "when
+reality isn't pleasant I don't look at it; I try never to think of it
+even."
+
+In spite of this rejoinder, Pierre, with his smiling, placid air, went on
+enumerating the things which had struck him: first, the admirable manner
+in which the cemetery was kept, then the festive appearance which it
+derived from the bright autumn sun, and the wonderful profusion in which
+marble was lavished in slabs, statues, and chapels. The ancient atavism
+had surely been at work, the sumptuous mausoleums of the Appian Way had
+here sprung up afresh, making death a pretext for the display of pomp and
+pride. In the upper part of the cemetery the Roman nobility had a
+district of its own, crowded with veritable temples, colossal statues,
+groups of several figures; and if at times the taste shown in these
+monuments was deplorable, it was none the less certain that millions had
+been expended on them. One charming feature of the place, said Pierre,
+was that the marbles, standing among yews and cypresses were remarkably
+well preserved, white and spotless; for, if the summer sun slowly gilded
+them, there were none of those stains of moss and rain which impart an
+aspect of melancholy decay to the statues of northern climes.
+
+Touched by the discomfort of Dario, Benedetta, hitherto silent, ended by
+interrupting Pierre. "And was the hunt interesting?" she asked, turning
+to Celia.
+
+The little Princess had been taken by her mother to see a fox-hunt, and
+had been speaking of it when the priest entered the room.
+
+"Yes, it was very interesting, my dear," she replied; "the meet was at
+noon near the tomb of Caecilia Metella, where a buffet had been arranged
+under a tent. And there was such a number of people--the foreign colony,
+the young men of the embassies, and some officers, not to mention
+ourselves--all the men in scarlet and a great many ladies in habits. The
+'throw-off' was at one o'clock, and the gallop lasted more than two hours
+and a half, so that the fox had a very long run. I wasn't able to follow,
+but all the same I saw some extraordinary things--a great wall which the
+whole hunt had to leap, and then ditches and hedges--a mad race indeed in
+the rear of the hounds. There were two accidents, but nothing serious;
+one gentleman, who was unseated, sprained his wrist badly, and another
+broke his leg."*
+
+  * The Roman Hunt, which counts about one hundred subscribers,
+    has flourished since 1840. There is a kennel of English
+    hounds, an English huntsman and whip, and a stable of
+    English hunters.--Trans.
+
+Dario had listened to Celia with passionate interest, for fox-hunting is
+one of the great pleasures of Rome, and the Campagna, flat and yet
+bristling with obstacles, is certainly well adapted to the sport. "Ah!"
+said the young Prince in a despairing tone, "how idiotic it is to be
+riveted to this room! I shall end by dying of /ennui/!"
+
+Benedetta contented herself with smiling; neither reproach nor expression
+of sadness came from her at this candid display of egotism. Her own
+happiness at having him all to herself in the room where she nursed him
+was great indeed; still her love, at once full of youth and good sense,
+included a maternal element, and she well understood that he hardly
+amused himself, deprived as he was of his customary pleasures and severed
+from his friends, few of whom he was willing to receive, for he feared
+that they might think the story of the dislocated shoulder suspicious. Of
+course there were no more /fetes/, no more evenings at the theatre, no
+more flirtations. But above everything else Dario missed the Corso, and
+suffered despairingly at no longer seeing or learning anything by
+watching the procession of Roman society from four to five each
+afternoon. Accordingly, as soon as an intimate called, there were endless
+questions: Had the visitor seen so and so? Had such a one reappeared? How
+had a certain friend's love affair ended? Was any new adventure setting
+the city agog? And so forth; all the petty frivolities, nine days'
+wonders, and puerile intrigues in which the young Prince had hitherto
+expended his manly energy.
+
+After a pause Celia, who was fond of coming to him with innocent gossip,
+fixed her candid eyes on him--the fathomless eyes of an enigmatical
+virgin, and resumed: "How long it takes to set a shoulder right!"
+
+Had she, child as she was, with love her only business, divined the
+truth? Dario in his embarrassment glanced at Benedetta, who still smiled.
+However, the little Princess was already darting to another subject: "Ah!
+you know, Dario, at the Corso yesterday I saw a lady--" Then she stopped
+short, surprised and embarrassed that these words should have escaped
+her. However, in all bravery she resumed like one who had been a friend
+since childhood, sharing many a little love secret: "Yes, a very pretty
+person whom you know. Well, she had a bouquet of white roses with her all
+the same."
+
+At this Benedetta indulged in a burst of frank merriment, and Dario,
+still looking at her, also laughed. She had twitted him during the early
+days because no young woman ever sent to make inquiries about him. For
+his part, he was not displeased with the rupture, for the continuance of
+the connection might have proved embarrassing; and so, although his
+vanity may have been slightly hurt, the news that he was already replaced
+in La Tonietta's affections was welcome rather than otherwise. "Ah!" he
+contented himself with saying, "the absent are always in the wrong."
+
+"The man one loves is never absent," declared Celia with her grave,
+candid air.
+
+However, Benedetta had stepped up to the bed to raise the young man's
+pillows: "Never mind, Dario /mio/," said she, "all those things are over;
+I mean to keep you, and you will only have me to love."
+
+He gave her a passionate glance and kissed her hair. She spoke the truth:
+he had never loved any one but her, and she was not mistaken in her
+anticipation of keeping him always to herself alone, as soon as they
+should be wedded. To her great delight, since she had been nursing him he
+had become quite childish again, such as he had been when she had learnt
+to love him under the orange-trees of the Villa Montefiori. He retained a
+sort of puerility, doubtless the outcome of impoverished blood, that
+return to childhood which one remarks amongst very ancient races; and he
+toyed on his bed with pictures, gazed for hours at photographs, which
+made him laugh. Moreover, his inability to endure suffering had yet
+increased; he wished Benedetta to be gay and sing, and amused her with
+his petty egotism which led him to dream of a life of continual joy with
+her. Ah! how pleasant it would be to live together and for ever in the
+sunlight, to do nothing and care for nothing, and even if the world
+should crumble somewhere to heed it not!
+
+"One thing which greatly pleases me," suddenly said the young Prince, "is
+that Monsieur l'Abbe has ended by falling in love with Rome."
+
+Pierre admitted it with a good grace.
+
+"We told you so," remarked Benedetta. "A great deal of time is needed for
+one to understand and love Rome. If you had only stayed here for a
+fortnight you would have gone off with a deplorable idea of us, but now
+that you have been here for two full months we are quite at ease, for you
+will never think of us without affection."
+
+She looked exceedingly charming as she spoke these words, and Pierre
+again bowed. However, he had already given thought to the phenomenon, and
+fancied he could explain it. When a stranger comes to Rome he brings with
+him a Rome of his own, a Rome such as he dreams of, so ennobled by
+imagination that the real Rome proves a terrible disenchantment. And so
+it is necessary to wait for habituation, for the mediocrity of the
+reality to soften, and for the imagination to have time to kindle again,
+and only behold things such as they are athwart the prodigious splendour
+of the past.
+
+However, Celia had risen and was taking leave. "Good-bye, dear," she
+said; "I hope the wedding will soon take place. You know, Dario, that I
+mean to be betrothed before the end of the month. Oh yes, I intend to
+make my father give a grand entertainment. And how nice it would be if
+the two weddings could take place at the same time!"
+
+Two days later, after a long ramble through the Trastevere district,
+followed by a visit to the Palazzo Farnese, Pierre felt that he could at
+last understand the terrible, melancholy truth about Rome. He had several
+times already strolled through the Trastevere, attracted towards its
+wretched denizens by his compassion for all who suffered. Ah! that
+quagmire of wretchedness and ignorance! He knew of abominable nooks in
+the faubourgs of Paris, frightful "rents" and "courts" where people
+rotted in heaps, but there was nothing in France to equal the listless,
+filthy stagnation of the Trastevere. On the brightest days a dank gloom
+chilled the sinuous, cellar-like lanes, and the smell of rotting
+vegetables, rank oil, and human animality brought on fits of nausea.
+Jumbled together in a confusion which artists of romantic turn would
+admire, the antique, irregular houses had black, gaping entrances diving
+below ground, outdoor stairways conducting to upper floors, and wooden
+balconies which only a miracle upheld. There were crumbling fronts,
+shored up with beams; sordid lodgings whose filth and bareness could be
+seen through shattered windows; and numerous petty shops, all the
+open-air cook-stalls of a lazy race which never lighted a fire at home:
+you saw frying-shops with heaps of polenta, and fish swimming in stinking
+oil, and dealers in cooked vegetables displaying huge turnips, celery,
+cauliflowers, and spinach, all cold and sticky. The butcher's meat was
+black and clumsily cut up; the necks of the animals bristled with bloody
+clots, as though the heads had simply been torn away. The baker's loaves,
+piled on planks, looked like little round paving stones; at the beggarly
+greengrocers' merely a few pimentoes and fir-apples were shown under the
+strings of dry tomatoes which festooned the doorways; and the only shops
+which were at all attractive were those of the pork butchers with their
+salted provisions and their cheese, whose pungent smell slightly
+attenuated the pestilential reek of the gutters. Lottery offices,
+displaying lists of winning numbers, alternated with wine-shops, of which
+latter there was a fresh one every thirty yards with large inscriptions
+setting forth that the best wines of Genzano, Marino, and Frascati were
+to be found within. And the whole district teemed with ragged, grimy
+denizens, children half naked and devoured by vermin, bare-headed,
+gesticulating and shouting women, whose skirts were stiff with grease,
+old men who remained motionless on benches amidst swarms of hungry flies;
+idleness and agitation appearing on all sides, whilst cobblers sat on the
+sidewalks quietly plying their trade, and little donkeys pulled carts
+hither and thither, and men drove turkeys along, whip in hand, and hands
+of beggars rushed upon the few anxious tourists who had timorously
+ventured into the district. At the door of a little tailor's shop an old
+house-pail dangled full of earth, in which a succulent plant was
+flowering. And from every window and balcony, as from the many cords
+which stretched across the street from house to house, all the household
+washing hung like bunting, nameless drooping rags, the symbolical banners
+of abominable misery.
+
+Pierre's fraternal, soul filled with pity at the sight. Ah! yes, it was
+necessary to demolish all those pestilential districts where the populace
+had wallowed for centuries as in a poisonous gaol! He was for demolition
+and sanitary improvement, even if old Rome were killed and artists
+scandalised. Doubtless the Trastevere was already greatly changed,
+pierced with several new thoroughfares which let the sun stream in. And
+amidst the /abattis/ of rubbish and the spacious clearings, where nothing
+new had yet been erected, the remaining portions of the old district
+seemed even blacker and more loathsome. Some day, no doubt, it would all
+be rebuilt, but how interesting was this phase of the city's evolution:
+old Rome expiring and new Rome just dawning amidst countless
+difficulties! To appreciate the change it was necessary to have known the
+filthy Rome of the past, swamped by sewage in every form. The recently
+levelled Ghetto had, over a course of centuries, so rotted the soil on
+which it stood that an awful pestilential odour yet arose from its bare
+site. It was only fitting that it should long remain waste, so that it
+might dry and become purified in the sun. In all the districts on either
+side of the Tiber where extensive improvements have been undertaken you
+find the same scenes. You follow some narrow, damp, evil-smelling street
+with black house-fronts and overhanging roofs, and suddenly come upon a
+clearing as in a forest of ancient leprous hovels. There are squares,
+broad footways; lofty white carved buildings yet in the rough, littered
+with rubbish and fenced off. On every side you find as it were a huge
+building yard, which the financial crisis perpetuates; the city of
+to-morrow arrested in its growth, stranded there in its monstrous,
+precocious, surprising infancy. Nevertheless, therein lies good and
+healthful work, such as was and is absolutely necessary if Rome is to
+become a great modern city, instead of being left to rot, to dwindle into
+a mere ancient curiosity, a museum show-piece.
+
+That day, as Pierre went from the Trastevere to the Palazzo Farnese,
+where he was expected, he chose a roundabout route, following the Via di
+Pettinari and the Via dei Giubbonari, the former so dark and narrow with
+a great hospital wall on one side and a row of wretched houses on the
+other, and the latter animated by a constant stream of people and
+enlivened by the jewellers' windows, full of big gold chains, and the
+displays of the drapers' shops, where stuffs hung in bright red, blue,
+green, and yellow lengths. And the popular district through which he had
+roamed and the trading district which he was now crossing reminded him of
+the castle fields with their mass of workpeople reduced to mendicity by
+lack of employment and forced to camp in the superb, unfinished,
+abandoned mansions. Ah! the poor, sad people, who were yet so childish,
+kept in the ignorance and credulity of a savage race by centuries of
+theocracy, so habituated to mental night and bodily suffering that even
+to-day they remained apart from the social awakening, simply desirous of
+enjoying their pride, indolence, and sunlight in peace! They seemed both
+blind and deaf in their decadence, and whilst Rome was being overturned
+they continued to lead the stagnant life of former times, realising
+nought but the worries of the improvements, the demolition of the old
+favourite districts, the consequent change in habits, and the rise in the
+cost of food, as if indeed they would rather have gone without light,
+cleanliness, and health, since these could only be secured by a great
+financial and labour crisis. And yet, at bottom, it was solely for the
+people, the populace, that Rome was being cleansed and rebuilt with the
+idea of making it a great modern capital, for democracy lies at the end
+of these present day transformations; it is the people who will inherit
+the cities whence dirt and disease are being expelled, and where the law
+of labour will end by prevailing and killing want. And so, though one may
+curse the dusting and repairing of the ruins and the stripping of all the
+wild flora from the Colosseum, though one may wax indignant at sight of
+the hideous fortress like ramparts which imprison the Tiber, and bewail
+the old romantic banks with their greenery and their antique dwellings
+dipping into the stream, one must at the same time acknowledge that life
+springs from death, and that to-morrow must perforce blossom in the dust
+of the past.
+
+While thinking of all these things Pierre had reached the deserted,
+stern-looking Piazza Farnese, and for a moment he looked up at the bare
+monumental facade of the heavy square Palazzo, its lofty entrance where
+hung the tricolour, its rows of windows and its famous cornice sculptured
+with such marvellous art. Then he went in. A friend of Narcisse Habert,
+one of the /attaches/ of the embassy to the King of Italy, was waiting
+for him, having offered to show him over the huge pile, the finest palace
+in Rome, which France had leased as a lodging for her ambassador.* Ah!
+that colossal, sumptuous, deadly dwelling, with its vast court whose
+porticus is so dark and damp, its giant staircase with low steps, its
+endless corridors, its immense galleries and halls. All was sovereign
+pomp blended with death. An icy, penetrating chill fell from the walls.
+With a discreet smile the /attache/ owned that the embassy was frozen in
+winter and baked in summer. The only part of the building which was at
+all lively and pleasant was the first storey, overlooking the Tiber,
+which the ambassador himself occupied. From the gallery there, containing
+the famous frescoes of Annibale Caracci, one can see the Janiculum, the
+Corsini gardens, and the Acqua Paola above San Pietro in Montorio. Then,
+after a vast drawing-room comes the study, peaceful and pleasant, and
+enlivened by sunshine. But the dining-room, the bed-chambers, and other
+apartments occupied by the /personnel/ look out on to the mournful gloom
+of a side street. All these vast rooms, twenty and four-and-twenty feet
+high, have admirable carved or painted ceilings, bare walls, a few of
+them decorated with frescoes, and incongruous furniture, superb pier
+tables mingling with modern /bric-a-brac/. And things become abominable
+when you enter the gala reception-rooms overlooking the piazza, for there
+you no longer find an article of furniture, no longer a hanging, nothing
+but disaster, a series of magnificent deserted halls given over to rats
+and spiders. The embassy occupies but one of them, where it heaps up its
+dusty archives. Near by is a huge hall occupying the height of two
+floors, and thus sixty feet in elevation. Reserved by the owner of the
+palace, the ex-King of Naples, it has become a mere lumber-room where
+/maquettes/, unfinished statues, and a very fine sarcophagus are stowed
+away amidst all kinds of remnants. And this is but a part of the palace.
+The ground floor is altogether uninhabited; the French "Ecole de Rome"
+occupies a corner of the second floor; while the embassy huddles in
+chilly fashion in the most habitable corner of the first floor, compelled
+to abandon everything else and lock the doors to spare itself the useless
+trouble of sweeping. No doubt it is grand to live in the Palazzo Farnese,
+built by Pope Paul III and for more than a century inhabited by
+cardinals; but how cruel the discomfort and how frightful the melancholy
+of this huge ruin, three-fourths of whose rooms are dead, useless,
+impossible, cut off from life. And the evenings, oh! the evenings, when
+porch, court, stairs, and corridors are invaded by dense gloom, against
+which a few smoky gas lamps struggle in vain, when a long, long journey
+lies before one through the lugubrious desert of stone, before one
+reaches the ambassador's warm and cheerful drawing-room!
+
+  * The French have two embassies at Rome: one at the Palazzo
+    Farnese, to the Italian Court, and the other at the Palazzo
+    Rospigliosi, to the Vatican.--Trans.
+
+Pierre came away quite aghast. And, as he walked along, the many other
+grand palaces which he had seen during his strolls rose before him, one
+and all of them stripped of their splendour, shorn of their princely
+establishments, let out in uncomfortable flats! What could be done with
+those grandiose galleries and halls now that no fortune could defray the
+cost of the pompous life for which they had been built, or even feed the
+retinue needed to keep them up? Few indeed were the nobles who, like
+Prince Aldobrandini, with his numerous progeny, still occupied their
+entire mansions. Almost all of them let the antique dwellings of their
+forefathers to companies or individual tenants, reserving only a storey,
+and at times a mere lodging in some dark corner, for themselves. The
+Palazzo Chigi was let: the ground floor to bankers and the first floor to
+the Austrian ambassador, while the Prince and his family divided the
+second floor with a cardinal. The Palazzo Sciarra was let: the first
+floor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second to a senator,
+while the Prince and his mother merely occupied the ground floor. The
+Palazzo Barberini was let: its ground floor, first floor, and second
+floor to various families, whilst the Prince found a refuge on the third
+floor in the rooms which had been occupied by his ancestors' lackeys. The
+Palazzo Borghese was let: the ground floor to a dealer in antiquities,
+the first floor to a Lodge of Freemasons, and the rest to various
+households, whilst the Prince only retained the use of a small suite of
+apartments. And the Palazzo Odescalchi, the Palazzo Colonna, the Palazzo
+Doria were let: their Princes reduced to the position of needy landlords
+eager to derive as much profit as possible from their property in order
+to make both ends meet. A blast of ruin was sweeping over the Roman
+patriziato, the greatest fortunes had crumbled in the financial crisis,
+very few remained wealthy, and what a wealth it was, stagnant and dead,
+which neither commerce nor industry could renew. The numerous princes who
+had tried speculation were stripped of their fortunes. The others,
+terrified, called upon to pay enormous taxes, amounting to nearly
+one-third of their incomes, could henceforth only wait and behold their
+last stagnant millions dwindle away till they were exhausted or
+distributed according to the succession laws. Such wealth as remained to
+these nobles must perish, for, like everything else, wealth perishes when
+it lacks a soil in which it may fructify. In all this there was solely a
+question of time: eventual ruin was a foregone and irremediable
+conclusion, of absolute, historical certainty. Those who resigned
+themselves to the course of letting their deserted mansions still
+struggled for life, seeking to accommodate themselves to present-day
+exigencies; whilst death already dwelt among the others, those stubborn,
+proud ones who immured themselves in the tombs of their race, like that
+appalling Palazzo Boccanera, which was falling into dust amidst such
+chilly gloom and silence, the latter only broken at long intervals when
+the Cardinal's old coach rumbled over the grassy court.
+
+The point which most struck Pierre, however, was that his visits to the
+Trastevere and the Palazzo Farnese shed light one on the other, and led
+him to a conclusion which had never previously seemed so manifest. As yet
+no "people," and soon no aristocracy. He had found the people so
+wretched, ignorant, and resigned in its long infancy induced by historic
+and climatic causes that many years of instruction and culture were
+necessary for it to become a strong, healthy, and laborious democracy,
+conscious of both its rights and its duties. As for the aristocracy, it
+was dwindling to death in its crumbling palaces, no longer aught than a
+finished, degenerate race, with such an admixture also of American,
+Austrian, Polish, and Spanish blood that pure Roman blood became a rare
+exception; and, moreover, it had ceased to belong either to sword or
+gown, unwilling to serve constitutional Italy and forsaking the Sacred
+College, where only /parvenus/ now donned the purple. And between the
+lowly and the aristocracy there was as yet no firmly seated middle class,
+with the vigour of fresh sap and sufficient knowledge, and good sense to
+act as the transitional educator of the nation. The middle class was made
+up in part of the old servants and clients of the princes, the farmers
+who rented their lands, the stewards, notaries, and solicitors who
+managed their fortunes; in part, too, of all the employees, the
+functionaries of every rank and class, the deputies and senators, whom
+the new Government had brought from the provinces; and, in particular, of
+the voracious hawks who had swooped down upon Rome, the Pradas, the men
+of prey from all parts of the kingdom, who with beak and talon devoured
+both people and aristocracy. For whom, then, had one laboured? For whom
+had those gigantic works of new Rome been undertaken? A shudder of fear
+sped by, a crack as of doom was heard, arousing pitiful disquietude in
+every fraternal heart. Yes, a threat of doom and annihilation: as yet no
+people, soon no aristocracy, and only a ravenous middle class, quarrying,
+vulture-like, among the ruins.
+
+On the evening of that day, when all was dark, Pierre went to spend an
+hour on the river quay beyond the Boccanera mansion. He was very fond of
+meditating on that deserted spot in spite of the warnings of Victorine,
+who asserted that it was not safe. And, indeed, on such inky nights as
+that one, no cutthroat place ever presented a more tragic aspect. Not a
+soul, not a passer-by; a dense gloom, a void in front and on either hand.
+At a corner of the mansion, now steeped in darkness, there was a gas lamp
+which stood in a hollow since the river margin had been banked up, and
+this lamp cast an uncertain glimmer upon the quay, level with the
+latter's bossy soil. Thus long vague shadows stretched from the various
+materials, piles of bricks and piles of stone, which were strewn around.
+On the right a few lights shone upon the bridge near San Giovanni and in
+the windows of the hospital of the Santo Spirito. On the left, amidst the
+dim recession of the river, the distant districts were blotted out. Then
+yonder, across the stream, was the Trastevere, the houses on the bank
+looking like vague, pale phantoms, with infrequent window-panes showing a
+blurred yellow glimmer, whilst on high only a dark band shadowed the
+Janiculum, near whose summit the lamps of some promenade scintillated
+like a triangle of stars. But it was the Tiber which impassioned Pierre;
+such was its melancholy majesty during those nocturnal hours. Leaning
+over the parapet, he watched it gliding between the new walls, which
+looked like those of some black and monstrous prison built for a giant.
+So long as lights gleamed in the windows of the houses opposite he saw
+the sluggish water flow by, showing slow, moire-like ripples there where
+the quivering reflections endowed it with a mysterious life. And he often
+mused on the river's famous past and evoked the legends which assert that
+fabulous wealth lies buried in its muddy bed. At each fresh invasion of
+the barbarians, and particularly when Rome was sacked, the treasures of
+palaces and temples are said to have been cast into the water to prevent
+them from falling into the hands of the conquerors. Might not those
+golden bars trembling yonder in the glaucous stream be the branches of
+the famous candelabrum which Titus brought from Jerusalem? Might not
+those pale patches whose shape remained uncertain amidst the frequent
+eddies indicate the white marble of statues and columns? And those deep
+moires glittering with little flamelets, were they not promiscuous heaps
+of precious metal, cups, vases, ornaments enriched with gems? What a
+dream was that of the swarming riches espied athwart the old river's
+bosom, of the hidden life of the treasures which were said to have
+slumbered there for centuries; and what a hope for the nation's pride and
+enrichment centred in the miraculous finds which might be made in the
+Tiber if one could some day dry it up and search its bed, as had already
+been suggested! Therein, perchance, lay Rome's new fortune.
+
+However, on that black night, whilst Pierre leant over the parapet, it
+was stern reality alone which occupied his mind. He was still pursuing
+the train of thought suggested by his visits to the Trastevere and the
+Farnese palace, and in presence of that lifeless water was coming to the
+conclusion that the selection of Rome for transformation into a modern
+capital was the great misfortune to which the sufferings of young Italy
+were due. He knew right well that the selection had been inevitable: Rome
+being the queen of glory, the antique ruler of the world to whom eternity
+had been promised, and without whom the national unity had always seemed
+an impossibility. And so the problem was a terrible one, since without
+Rome Italy could not exist, and with Rome it seemed difficult for it to
+exist. Ah! that dead river, how it symbolised disaster! Not a boat upon
+its surface, not a quiver of the commercial and industrial activity of
+those waters which bear life to the very hearts of great modern cities!
+There had been fine schemes, no doubt--Rome a seaport, gigantic works,
+canalisation to enable vessels of heavy tonnage to come up to the
+Aventine; but these were mere delusions; the authorities would scarcely
+be able to clear the river mouth, which deposits were continually
+choking. And there was that other cause of mortal languishment, the
+Campagna--the desert of death which the dead river crossed and which
+girdled Rome with sterility. There was talk of draining and planting it;
+much futile discussion on the question whether it had been fertile in the
+days of the old Romans; and even a few experiments were made; but, all
+the same, Rome remained in the midst of a vast cemetery like a city of
+other times, for ever separated from the modern world by that /lande/ or
+moor where the dust of centuries had accumulated. The geographical
+considerations which once gave the city the empire of the world no longer
+exist. The centre of civilisation has been displaced. The basin of the
+Mediterranean has been divided among powerful nations. In Italy all roads
+now lead to Milan, the city of industry and commerce, and Rome is but a
+town of passage. And so the most valiant efforts have failed to rouse it
+from its invincible slumber. The capital which the newcomers sought to
+improvise with such extreme haste has remained unfinished, and has almost
+ruined the nation. The Government, legislators, and functionaries only
+camp there, fleeing directly the warm weather sets in so as to escape the
+pernicious climate. The hotels and shops even put up their shutters, and
+the streets and promenades become deserts, the city having failed to
+acquire any life of its own, and relapsing into death as soon as the
+artificial life instilled into it is withdrawn. So all remains in
+suspense in this purely decorative capital, where only a fresh growth of
+men and money can finish and people the huge useless piles of the new
+districts. If it be true that to-morrow always blooms in the dust of the
+past, one ought to force oneself to hope; but Pierre asked himself if the
+soil were not exhausted, and since mere buildings could no longer grow on
+it, if it were not for ever drained of the sap which makes a race
+healthy, a nation powerful.
+
+As the night advanced the lights in the houses of the Trastevere went out
+one by one: yet Pierre for a long time lingered on the quay, leaning over
+the blackened river and yielding to hopelessness. There was now no
+distance to the gloom; all had become dense; no longer did any
+reflections set a moire-like, golden quiver in the water, or reveal
+beneath its mystery-concealing current a fantastic, dancing vision of
+fabulous wealth. Gone was the legend, gone the seven-branched golden
+candelabrum, gone the golden vases, gone the golden jewellery, the whole
+dream of antique treasure that had vanished into night, even like the
+antique glory of Rome. Not a glimmer, nothing but slumber, disturbed
+solely by the heavy fall of sewage from the drain on the right-hand,
+which could not be seen. The very water had disappeared, and Pierre no
+longer espied its leaden flow through the darkness, no longer had any
+perception of the sluggish senility, the long-dating weariness, the
+intense sadness of that ancient and glorious Tiber, whose waters now
+rolled nought but death. Only the vast, opulent sky, the eternal, pompous
+sky displayed the dazzling life of its milliards of planets above that
+river of darkness, bearing away the ruins of wellnigh three thousand
+years.
+
+Before returning to his own chamber that evening Pierre entered Dario's
+room, and found Victorine there preparing things for the night. And as
+soon as she heard where he had been she raised her voice in protest:
+"What! you have again been to the quay at this time of night, Monsieur
+l'Abbe? You want to get a good knife thrust yourself, it seems. Well, for
+my part, I certainly wouldn't take the air at such a late hour in this
+dangerous city." Then, with her wonted familiarity, she turned and spoke
+to the Prince, who was lying back in an arm-chair and smiling: "That
+girl, La Pierina," she said, "hasn't been back here, but all the same
+I've lately seen her prowling about among the building materials."
+
+Dario raised his hand to silence her, and, addressing Pierre, exclaimed:
+"But you spoke to her, didn't you? It's becoming idiotic! Just fancy that
+brute Tito coming back to dig his knife into my other shoulder--"
+
+All at once he paused, for he had just perceived Benedetta standing there
+and listening to him; she had slipped into the room a moment previously
+in order to wish him good-night. At sight of her his embarrassment was
+great indeed; he wished to speak, explain his words, and swear that he
+was wholly innocent in the affair. But she, with a smiling face,
+contented herself with saying, "I knew all about it, Dario /mio/. I am
+not so foolish as not to have thought it all over and understood the
+truth. If I ceased questioning you it was because I knew, and loved you
+all the same."
+
+The young woman looked very happy as she spoke, and for this she had good
+cause, for that very evening she had learnt that Monsignor Palma had
+shown himself grateful for the service rendered to his nephew by laying a
+fresh and favourable memoir on the marriage affair before the
+Congregation of the Council. He had been unwilling to recall his previous
+opinions so far as to range himself completely on the Contessina's side,
+but the certificates of two doctors whom she had recently seen had
+enabled him to conclude that her own declarations were accurate. And
+gliding over the question of wifely obedience, on which he had previously
+laid stress, he had skilfully set forth the reasons which made a
+dissolution of the marriage desirable. No hope of reconciliation could be
+entertained, so it was certain that both parties were constantly exposed
+to temptation and sin. He discreetly alluded to the fact that the husband
+had already succumbed to this danger, and praised the wife's lofty
+morality and piety, all the virtues which she displayed, and which
+guaranteed her veracity. Then, without formulating any conclusion of his
+own, he left the decision to the wisdom of the Congregation. And as he
+virtually repeated Advocate Morano's arguments, and Prada stubbornly
+refused to enter an appearance, it now seemed certain that the
+Congregation would by a great majority pronounce itself in favour of
+dissolution, a result which would enable the Holy Father to act
+benevolently.
+
+"Ah! Dario /mio/!" said Benedetta, "we are at the end of our worries. But
+what a lot of money, what a lot of money it all costs! Aunt says that
+they will scarcely leave us water to drink."
+
+So speaking she laughed with the happy heedlessness of an impassioned
+/amorosa/. It was not that the jurisdiction of the Congregations was in
+itself ruinous; indeed, in principle, it was gratuitous. Still there were
+a multitude of petty expenses, payments to subaltern employees, payments
+for medical consultations and certificates, copies of documents, and the
+memoirs and addresses of counsel. And although the votes of the cardinals
+were certainly not bought direct, some of them ended by costing
+considerable sums, for it often became necessary to win over dependants,
+to induce quite a little world to bring influence to bear upon their
+Eminences; without mentioning that large pecuniary gifts, when made with
+tact, have a decisive effect in clearing away the greatest difficulties
+in that sphere of the Vatican. And, briefly, Monsignor Palma's nephew by
+marriage had cost the Boccaneras a large sum.
+
+"But it doesn't matter, does it, Dario /mio/?" continued Benedetta.
+"Since you are now cured, they must make haste to give us permission to
+marry. That's all we ask of them. And if they want more, well, I'll give
+them my pearls, which will be all I shall have left me."
+
+He also laughed, for money had never held any place in his life. He had
+never had it at his pleasure, and simply hoped that he would always live
+with his uncle the cardinal, who would certainly not leave him and his
+young wife in the streets. Ruined as the family was, one or two hundred
+thousand francs represented nothing to his mind, and he had heard that
+certain dissolutions of marriage had cost as much as half a million. So,
+by way of response, he could only find a jest: "Give them my ring as
+well," said he; "give them everything, my dear, and we shall still be
+happy in this old palace even if we have to sell the furniture!"
+
+His words filled her with enthusiasm; she took his head between both
+hands and kissed him madly on the eyes in an extraordinary transport of
+passion. Then, suddenly turning to Pierre, she said: "Oh! excuse me,
+Monsieur l'Abbe. I was forgetting that I have a commission for you. Yes,
+Monsignor Nani, who brought us that good news, bade me tell you that you
+are making people forget you too much, and that you ought to set to work
+to defend your book."
+
+The priest listened in astonishment; then replied: "But it was he who
+advised me to disappear."
+
+"No doubt--only it seems that the time has now come for you to see people
+and plead your cause. And Monsignor Nani has been able to learn that the
+reporter appointed to examine your book is Monsignor Fornaro, who lives
+on the Piazza Navona."
+
+Pierre's stupefaction was increasing, for a reporter's name is never
+divulged, but kept quite secret, in order to ensure a free exercise of
+judgment. Was a new phase of his sojourn in Rome about to begin then? His
+mind was all wonderment. However, he simply answered: "Very good, I will
+set to work and see everybody."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome,
+Vol. 3, by Emile Zola
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE CITIES: ROME, VOL. 3 ***
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