O
ON Christmas-Day, we went,viathe Coliseum, for a long drive in the Campagna. The black cross, at the foot of which many prayers have been said for many ages, has disappeared from the centre of the arena. It was necessary to take it down in the course of the excavations that have revealed the subterranean cells whose existence was unsuspected until lately. These are mere pits unroofed by the removal of the floor of the amphitheatre, and in winter are half-full of water left by the overflow of the Tiber and the autumnal rains. The abundant and varied Flora of the Coliseum, including more than three hundred different wild flowers and such affluence of foliage as might almost be catalogued in the terms used to describe the botanical lore of the philosopher-king of Israel: “Trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,”—all these have been swept away by the unsparing hand of Signore Rosa, the superintendent to whom the care of the ruins of the old city has been committed. To the artistic eye, the Coliseum and other structures have suffered irretrievable damage through the measures which, he asserts, are indispensable to their preservation. We who never saw the rich fringe of ilex and ivy that made “the outside wall with its top of gigantic stones, seemlike a mountain-barrier of bare rock, enclosing a green and varied valley,” forget to regret our loss in congratulating ourselves that filth has been cleared away with the evergreen draperies. Despite the pools of stagnant water now occupying half of the vast circle enclosed by the scraped and mended walls, the Coliseum is not one-tenth as dangerous to the health of him who whiles away a noontide hour there, or threads the corridors by moonlight as when it was far more picturesque.
The sunlight of this Christmas-Day lay peacefully upon and within the walls, as we walked around the circular arcades, and paused in the centre of the floor, looking up to the seats of honor—(the podium) reserved, on the day of dedication, for Titus, his family, the Senate, and the Vestal Virgins. When, according to Merrivale, “the capacity of the vast edifice was tested by the slaughter of five thousand animals in its circuit.”
The site was a drained lake in the gardens of Nero. His colossal statue used to stand upon the little pile of earth on the other side of the street. Twelve thousand captive Jews were overworked to their death in building the mighty monument to the destroyer of Jerusalem. After describing the dedicatory pageant and its items of battles between cranes and pigmies, and of gladiators with women, and a sea-fight for which the arena was converted into a mimic lake, the historian adds: “When all was over, Titus himself was seen to weep, perhaps from fatigue, possibly from vexation and disgust.”
If the last-named emotions had any share in the reactionary hysteria characterized as “effeminate” by his best friends, his successors did not profit by the lesson. Hadrian slaughtered, on a birth-day frolic in the Coliseum, one thousand wild beasts, not to mention less valuable human beings. The prudent Augustus forbade the entranceof the noble classes into the arena as combatants, and to avoid a hustle of death, decreed that not more than sixty pairs of gladiators should be engaged at one time in the fashionable butchery. Commodus had no such scruples on the subject of caste or humanity. His imperial form bound about with a lion’s skin, his locks bedusted with gold, he fought repeatedly upon the bloody sands, killing his man—he being both emperor and beast—in every encounter. Ignatius—reputed to have been one of the children blessed by Our Lord—uttered here his last confession of faith:
“I am as the grain of the field, and must be ground by the teeth of the lions, that I may become bread fit forHistable.”
The Christians sought the deserted Coliseum by stealth, that night, to gather the few bones the lions had left. Some of these, his friends, may have been among the one hundred and fifteen “obstinates” drawn up upon the earth scarcely dried from the blood of Ignatius, a line of steady targets for the arrows of skilled bowmen—a kind of archery practice in high favor with Roman clubs just then.
The life-blood that followed the arrow-thrust was a safe and rapid stream to float the soul into harbor. One hour of heaven were worth all the smiting, and thrusting, and tearing, andtheirshave been centuries of bliss. But our hearts ached with pain and sympathy inexpressible in the Coliseum, on that Christmas-Day. There is poetic beauty and profound spiritual significance in the churchly fable that Gregory the Great pressed fresh blood from a handful of earth taken from the floor of the amphitheatre.
“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall—And when Rome falls—the world!”
“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall—And when Rome falls—the world!”
“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall—
And when Rome falls—the world!”
Thus runs the ancient prophecy.
Plundering cardinals and thrifty popes had never heard the saying, or were strangely indifferent to the fate of their empire and globe for four hundred years of spoliation and desecration. Cardinal Farnese built his palace out of the marble casings. It is amazing even to those who have inspected the massive walls cemented by mortar as hard as the stones it binds together, that the four thousand men appointed to tear down and bear off in twelve hours the materials needed for the Farnese palace, did not demolish or impair the solidity of the whole structure. After abortive attempts on the part of sundry popes to utilize the building by turning the corridors into bazaars and establishing manufactories of woolen goods and saltpetre in the central space, the place was left to quiet decay and religious rites. Clement XI. consecrated it to the memory of the faithful disciples who perished there “for Christ’s sake.” Stations were appointed in the arcades, the black cross was set up and indulgences granted to all believers who would say a prayer at its foot for the rest of the martyrs’ souls. Masses were said every Friday afternoon, each station visited in turn with chant and prayer, and then a sermon preached by a Capuchin friar. Vines thickened and trees shot upward from tier and battlement, night-birds hooted in the upper shades, thieves and lazzaroni prowled below. Dirt and miasma marked the sacred precincts for their own. We can but be grateful that the march of improvement, begun when the Italian troops entered Rome in 1870 through the breach near the Porta Pia, has reached the Coliseum, cleansing and strengthening, although not beautifying it.
About midway between the Forum and Coliseum we had passed—as no Jew ever does—under the Arch of Titus. It spans the Via Sacra, leading right on from the southern gate of the city through the Forum to the Capitol.The pavement of huge square blocks of lava is the same on which rolled, joltingly in their springless chariots, the conquerors returning in triumph with such griefful captives in their train as are sculptured upon the inside of this arch. The Goths, the Middle Ages, and the Popes (or their nephews), dealt terrible blows at the procession of Jewish prisoners, bearing the seven-branched candlestick, the table of shew-bread, and the golden trumpets of the priests. Arms and legs are missing, and features sadly marred. But drooping heads and lax figures, and the less mutilated faces express the utter dejection, the proud but hopeless humiliation of the band who left their happier countrymen dead by famine, crucifixion, the sword and fire, in the ashes of their city.
A rod or two further, and we were in the Via Appia.
“In that vineyard,” said I, pointing to a rickety gate on our left, “are the remains of the Porta Capena, where the surviving Horatius met and killed his sister as she bewailed the death of her lover, the last of the Curatii. Her brother presented himself to her wearing the cloak she had embroidered for and given to her betrothed.”
“The whole story is a highly figurative history of a war between the Romans and Albans,” began Caput, mildly corrective. “The best authorities are agreed that Horatii and Curatii are alike mythical.”
I should have been vexed upon any other day. Had I not seen, beyond the fifth milestone on this very road, the tombs of the six combatants? Had not my girlish heart stood still with awe when Rachel, as Camille, fell dead upon the stage beneath the steel of her irate brother?
I did say—Ihope, temperately—“Cicero was welcomed at the Porta Capena, by the Senate and people, on his return from banishment, B. C. 57. That is, if there was ever such a man as Cicero!”
The Baths of Caracalla; the tombs of the Scipios; the Columbaria of the Freedmen of Augustus; the Catacombs of St. Sebastian and of St. Calixtus—are situate upon the Appian Way. Each should have its visit in turn. Any one of them was, in speculators’ slang, “too big a thing” for one Christmas forenoon. We were on pure pleasure bent—not in bondage to Baedeker. A quarter of a mile from the road, still to our left, the ground falls away into a cup-like basin, holding the Fountain of Egeria enshrined in a grove of dark ilex-trees. A couple of miles further, and we passed through the Gate of San Sebastian, supported by two towers in fair preservation. We were still within the corporate limits of Old Rome. At this gate welcoming processions from the city met those who returned to her in triumphal pomp, or guests, to whom the Senate decreed extraordinary honors. A little brook runs across the road at the bottom of the next hill, and, just beyond it, is the ruined tomb of the murdered Geta. At a fork in the highway near this is a dirty little church, set down so close to the road that the mud from passing wheels has spattered the front. Here, according to the legend, Peter, fleeing from Nero’s persecution, met his Lord with His face toward the city.
“Lord! whither goest Thou?” exclaimed the astonished apostle.
“I go to Rome to be again crucified!” answered the Master.
Peter, taking the vision as a token that he should not shrink from martyrdom, returned to Rome.
The chapel—it is nothing more—of “Domine quo vadis” commemorates the interview. We stepped from the carriage upon the broken threshold, and tried the locked door. A priest as slovenly as the building unclosed it. Directly opposite the entrance is a plaster cast ofMichael Angelo’s statue of Our Saviour in the act of addressing Peter. The foot extended in the forward step has been almost kissed away by pilgrims. On the right wall is a fresh and flashy, yet graphic fresco of the Lord, walking swiftly toward Rome; upon the left kneels the conscience-smitten Peter. Between them, upon the floor, secured by a grating from the abrading homage of the vulgar, is a copy of the footprints left upon the rock at the spot where the meeting took place. The original is in the church of San Sebastiano. The marble is stained with yellowish blotches. The impression is coarsely cut; the conception is yet coarser. Two brawny, naked feet, enormous in size, plebeian in shape, are set squarely and straight, side by side, as no living man would stand of his own accord. The impudence of these priestly relics would be contemptible only, were the subjects less sacred. We turned away from the “fac-simile” in sad disgust. The legend had been a favorite with us both. We were sorry we had entered the mouldy little barn. The offer of the sacristan to sell us beads, medals, and photographs was in keeping with the rest of the show. We gave him a franc; plucked from the cracked door-stone a bit of pellitory—herba parietina, the sobriquet given to Trajan in derision of his habit of writing his name upon much which he had not built—and returned to our carriage.
The way is bordered, until one reaches the tomb of Cæcilia Metella by vineyard and meadow walls. Most of the stones used in building these were collected from the ancient pavement, or thedébrisof fortresses and tombs that encumbered this. Imbedded in the mortar, and often defaced by clots and daubs of it, put in beside common rubble-stones and sherds of tufa, are many sculptured fragments. Here, the corner of a richly-carved capital projects from the surface; there, a cluster of flowers, with aserpent stealing out of sight among the leaves. Now, a baby’s head laughs between lumps of travertine or granite; next comes a part of a gladiator’s arm, or the curve of a woman’s neck. The ivy is luxuriantly aggressive and of a species we had never seen elsewhere, gemmed with glossy, saffron-colored berries. “Wee, crimson-tippéd” daisies mingled with grass that is never sere. In March we found anemones of every hue; pink and white cyclamen; wild violets, at once diffusive and retentive of odor, embalming gloves, handkerchiefs, and the much-thumbed leaves of our guide-books; reddish-brown wall-flowers, and hosts of other “wild” blossoms on this road. The dwelling-houses we passed were rude, slight huts, hovels of reeds and straw, often reared upon the foundation of a tomb.
For this Way of Triumph was also the Street of Tombs. Sepulchres, or their ruins, are scattered on every side. We looked past them, where there occurred a break in the road-wall over the billowing Campagna, the arches of ancient and modern aqueducts dwindling into cobweb-lines in the hazy distance; above them at the Sabine and Alban hills, newly capped with snow, while Spring smiled warmly upon the plains at their base. We alighted at the best-known of these homes of the dead, not many of which hold the ashes that gave them names.
Hawthorne describes it in touches few and masterly. “It is built of great blocks of hewn stone on a vast square foundation of rough, agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the other ruinous tombs. But, whatever might be the cause, it is in a far better state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rise the battlements of a mediæval fortress, out of the midst of which grow trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman has become the dungeon-keep of a castle, and all the care that Cæcilia Metella’s husbandcould bestow to secure endless peace for her belovèd relics only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles long ages after her death.”
The powerful family of the Gaetani added the battlements that tooth the top of the enormous tower, when they made it their château and fortress in the thirteenth century. The ruins of their church are close to the walls. We paid a trifling fee for the privilege of entering the court-yard of the Tomb where there was nothing to see, and for peeping into the ruinous cellar, once the “cave” where “treasure lay, so locked, so hid”—the sarcophagus about which all these stone swathings were wound as layers of silk and wool about a costly jewel. The empty marble coffin is in a Roman museum. A public-spirited pope ripped off the sculptured casing of the exterior that he might build the Fountain of Trevi. It would be as futile to seek for this woman’s ashes as for those of Wickliffe after the Avon had carried them out to sea.
The dreary road-walls terminate here, but the survey of the tombs diverts the attention from the views of Campagna and mountains. They must have formed an almost continuous block of buildings for miles. The foundations may be traced still, and about these are remnants of the statues and symbolic ornaments that gave them individuality and beauty. The figure which occurred most frequently was that of a man in the dress of a Roman citizen, the arm laid over the breast to hold the toga in place and fold. Most of the heads were missing, and usually the legs, but the torso had always character, sometimes beauty, in it. There were hundreds of them here once, probably mounted sentinel-wise at the doors of the tombs, changeless effigies of men who had been, who were now a pinch of dust, preserved in a sealed urn for fear the wind might take them away.
There is a so-called “restored” tomb near the “fourth mile-stone.” A bas-relief, representing a murder, is let into a brick façade.
“The tomb of Seneca!” said ourcocchière, confidently.
“Dubious!” commented the genius of wary common sense upon the front seat. “If hewasput to death by Nero’s officers near the fourth mile-stone, is it probable that he was interred on the spot?”
The driver held to his assertion, and I got out to pick daisies and violets growing in the shelter of the ugly red-brick front—there was no back,—souvenirs that lie to-day, faded but fragrant, between the leaves of my Baedeker. Nearly opposite to the round heaps of turf-grown rubbish with solid basement walls, “supposed to be the tombs of the Horatii and Curatii,” across the road and a field, are the ruins of the Villa of Commodus. He wrested this pleasant country-seat from two brothers, who were the Naboths of the coveted possession. Conduits have been dug out from the ruins, stamped with their names, and convicting him mutely but surely of the theft charged upon him by contemporaries. He and his favorite Marcia were sojourning here when the house was “mobbed” by a deputation, several thousand in number, sent from Rome to call him to account for his misdeeds. He pacified them measurably by throwing from an upper window the head of Cleander, his obnoxious premier, and beating out the brains of that official’s child. The Emperor’s Coliseum practice made such an evening’s work a mere bagatelle.
Six miles from Rome is the Rotondo, believed to have been the family mausoleum of a poet-friend of Horace, Massala Corvinus. It is larger than the tomb of the “wealthiest Roman’s wife,” but not so well-preserved. A miserable wine-shop was in the court-yard, and we paid the mistress half-a-franc for permission to mount a flightof easy steps to the summit. Upon the flat roof, formed by the flooring of the upper story, the walls of which are half gone, olive-trees have taken root and overhang the sides. The eye swept the Campagna for miles, followed the Via Appia, stretched like a white ribbon between grassy slopes and sepulchre-ruins, back into Rome and onward to Albano. A faintly-tinged haze brought the mountains nearer, instead of hiding them—purpled the thymy dells between the swells of the far-reaching prairies. Flocks of sheep browsed upon these, attended by shepherds and dogs. A party of English riders cantered by from Rome, the blue habit and scarlet plume of the only lady equestrian made conspicuous by the white road and green banks. Near and far, the course of the ancient highway was defined by masses of masonry in ruins, some overgrown by herbs, vines, and even trees, but most of them naked to the sun and wind. These have not been the destroyers of the tombs. On the contrary, the uncovered foundations are hardened by the action of the elements, until bricks are as unyielding as solid marble and cement is like flint. Nature and neglect are co-workers, whose operations upon buildings raised by man, are far less to be feared in this than in Northern climates. The North, that let loose her brutish hordes upon a land so much fairer than their own that their dull eyes could not be tempted by her beauty except to wanton devastation. They were grown-up children who battered the choicest and most delicate objects for the pleasure of seeing and hearing the crash.
“Some day,” said Caput, wistful lights in the eyes that looked far away to where the road lost itself in the blue hills—“Some day, I mean to drive all the way to the Appii Forum, and follow St. Paul’s track back to the city.”
He brought out his pocket Testament, and, amid thebroken walls, the shadows of the olive-boughs flickering upon the page, we read how the Great Apostle longed to “see Rome,” yet knowing that bonds and imprisonment awaited him wherever he went—the Rome he was never to quit as a free man, and where he was to leave a multitude of witnesses to his fidelity and the living power of the Gospel, of which he was an ambassador in bonds. Thence we passed to the few words describing his journey and reception:
“We came the next day unto Puteoli, where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days. And so we went toward Rome. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. Whom, when Paul saw, he thankedGodand took courage.”
For some miles the Way has been cleared down to the ancient pavement. It was something to see the stones over which St. Paul had walked.
We took St. Peter’s in our drive home. When one is used to the immensity of its spaces, has accommodated his imagination comfortably to the aisle-vistas and the height of the ceilings, St. Peter’s is the most restful temple in Rome. The equable temperature—never cold in winter, never hot in summer; the solemn quiet of a vastness in which the footfalls upon the floor die away with out echo, and the sound of organ and chant from one of the many chapels only stirs a musical throb which never swells into reverberation; the subdued light—all contribute to the sense of grateful tranquillity that allures one to frequent visits and slow, musing promenades within the magnificent Basilica. Madame de Staël says in one line what others have failed to express in pages of labored rhetoric:
“L’Architecture de St. Pierre est une musique fixée.”
Listening with all our souls, we strolled up one side of the church past the bronze Image, in appearance more Fetish than saint. A statue of Jupiter was melted down to make it. The frown of the Thunderer still contracts the brows that seem to find the round of glory, spoked like a wheel, too heavy. The projecting toe, often renewed, bright as a new brass kettle from the attrition of kisses, rests upon a pedestal five feet, at least, from the floor. Men can conveniently touch it with their lips. Short women stand on tiptoe, and children are lifted to it. Each wipes it carefully before kissing, a ceremony made necessary by a popular trick of the Romangamins. They watch their chance to anoint the holy toe with damp red pepper, then hide behind a column to note the effect of the next osculation. At the Jubilee of Pius IX., June 16, 1871, they dressed the hideous black effigy in pontifical vestments, laced and embroidered to the last degree of gorgeousness, and fastened the cope of cloth-of-gold with a diamond brooch!
Thebaldacchino, or canopy, built above the high altar and overshadowing the tomb of St. Peter, is of gilded bronze that once covered the roof of the Pantheon,—another example of popely thrift. Beneath, yawns an open crypt, lined with precious marbles and gained by marble stairs. Upon the encompassing balustrade above is a circle of ever-burning golden lamps, eighty-six in number. Pius VI. (in marble by Canova) kneels forever, as he requested in his will, before the closed door of St. Peter’s tomb, below.
“I wish I could believe that Peter’s bones are there!” Caput broke a long thought-laden pause, given to silent gazing upon the kneeling form. “Roman Catholic historians say that an oratory was erected here above his remains, A.D. 90. The circus of Nero was hereabouts.The chapel was in honor of the thousands who died a martyr’s death in his reign, as well as to mark the spot of Peter’s burial. In the days of Constantine, a Basilica superseded the humble chapel, at which date St. Peter’s bones were encased in a bronze sarcophagus. Five hundred years afterward, the Saracens plundered the Basilica. Did they take Peter—if he were ever here—or in Rome at all? Or, did they spare his bones when they carried off the gilt-bronze coffin and inner casket of pure silver?”
Another silence.
“The Basilica and tomb were here when English Ethelwolf brought his boy Alfred to Rome,” I said aloud.
“But the Popes did their will upon it afterward. Pulled down and built up at the bidding of caprice and architects until not one of the original stones was left upon another. After two centuries of this sort of work—or play—the present church was planned and was one hundred and seventy-odd years in building. I hope Peter’s bones were cared for in the squabble. I should like to believe it!”
We looked for a long minute more at the praying pope.Hebelieved it so much as to desire to kneel there, with clasped hands and bowed head, awaiting through the coming cycles the opening of the sealèd door.
Wanderings in and out of stately chapels ensued, until we had enough of dead popes, marble and bronze.
The surname of Pope Pignatella, signifying “little cream-jug,” suggested to the sculptor the neat conceit of mingling sundry cream-pots with other ornaments of his tomb.
Gregory XIII., he of the Gregorian calendar, is an aged man, invoking the benediction of Heaven upon whomsoever it may concern, while Wisdom, as Minerva, and Faith hold a tablet inscribed—“Novi opera hujus et fidem.”
Urban VIII., the patron of Bernini, is almost forgivenby those who have sickened over the countless and cruel devices of hisprotégéwhen one beholds his master-piece of absurdity in his sovereign’s tomb. The pontiff, in the popular attitude of benediction, towers above the black marble coffin, in charge of Prudence and Justice,—the drapery of the latter evidently a decorous afterthought,—while a very airy gilded skeleton is writing, with adégagéair, the names and titles of Urban upon an obituary list. The Barberini bees crawl over the monument, as busily officious and in as bad taste as was Bernini himself.
Pius VII., the prisoner-Pope of Napoleon I., is there—a mild old man, looking as if he had suffered and forgiven much—sitting dreamily, or drowsily, in a chair, and kept in countenance by Courage and Faith.
Innocent VIII. sleeps, like a tired man, upon his sarcophagus, while his animated Double is enthroned above it, one hand, of course, extended in blessing, the other holding a copy of the sacred lance that pierced the Saviour’s side, presented to him by Bajazet, and by the pope to St. Peter’s.
More interesting to us than these and the tiresome array of the many other pontifical and prelatical personages, was the arch near the front door of the Basilica, which covers the remains of the last of the Stuarts. Canova carved the memorial-stone of James III. (the Pretender), his sons, Charles Edward (the Young Pretender), and Henry, who,—with desperate fidelity worthy of a better cause, wearied out by the successive failures and misfortunes of his race,—gave himself wholly to the Church, devotion to which had cost his father independence, happiness, and England. Henry Stuart died, as we read here, Cardinal York. Marie Clementine Sobieski, wife of James III., named upon the tablet, “Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland,” who never set foot within the British Empire,—completesthe family group. It is said the expenses of these testimonials were defrayed by the then reigning House of Hanover. It could well afford to do it.
In a chapel at the left of the entrance is a mammoth font of dark-red porphyry which has a remarkable—I can hardly say, in view of cognate facts—a singular history. It is the inverted cover of Hadrian’s sarcophagus. Having rested within its depths longer than his life had entitled him to do, this Emperor was ejected and Otho III. took his place. In due season, a pope of a pious and practical turn of mind ousted Otho, and transferred the lid of the coffin to its present place. The bronze fir-cone from the top of the mausoleum of Hadrian, now the Castle of San Angelo, is a prominent ornament in the gardens of the Vatican. Near it are two bronze peacocks, the birds of Juno, from the porch of the same edifice.
“Entirely and throughout consistent,” said Caput, caustically.
“I beg your pardon! Did you address me, sir?” asked a startled voice.
The Traveling American was upon us. Pater Familias, moreover, to the sanguine young people who had attacked systematically, Baedeker, Murray and Forbes in hand—the opposite chapel, the gem of which is Michael Angelo’sPietà—the Dead Christ upon his mother’s knees. We recognized our interlocutor. A very worthy gentleman, an enterprising and opulent citizen of the New World, whom we had met, last week, in thesalonof a friend. He was making, he had informed a listening circle, “the grand European tour for the third time, now, for educational purposes, having brought his boys and girls along. A thing few of our country-people have money and brains to undertake!”
“I was saying”—explained Caput, “that the Popeshave done more toward the destruction of the monuments of pagan Rome than barbarians and centuries combined. I lose patience and temper when I see what they have ‘consecrated’ to the use of their Church. Vandalism is an insipid word to employ in this connection.”
Pater Familias put out one foot; lifted a hortatory hand.
“I have learned to cast such considerations behind me, sir! Anachronisms do not trouble me. Nor solecisms, except in artistic execution. I travel with a purpose—that of self-improvement and the foundation, in the bosoms of my family, of true principles of art, the cultivation of the instinct of the beautiful in their souls and in mine. Despising the statistical, and, to a certain degree, the historical, as things of slight moment, I rise into the region of the purely æsthetic. For example:” The hortatory hand pointed to the opposite arch, within which is a gorgeous modern copy, in mosaic, of Raphael’s “Transfiguration.” “For example, pointing to that inimitable masterpiece, I say to my children—‘Do not examine into the ingredients of the pigments staining the canvas, nor criticise, anatomically, the structure of the figures. But catch, if you can, the spirit and tone of the whole composition. Behold, recognize, and make your own the very soul and mood, the inspiration ofMichael Angelo!’”
Caput drew out his watch.
“Do you know, my dear,” he said, plaintively, “that it is an hour past our luncheon-time?”
At the bottom of the gentle incline leading from the church-door into the wide Piazza di San Piétro, we stopped for breath and composure.
Caput grew serious in turning to survey the façade of the Basilica, with the guard of saints and their Master upon the balustrade; the Dome, light in semblance as the cloudsswimming in summer languor above it, strong as Soracte; the sweep of the colonnades to the right and left, “with the holy ones walking upon their roofs;” the Obelisk of Heliopolis in the centre of the Court and its flashing fountains—the heaven of rich, tender blue—
“That man has crossed the ocean three times to behold all this!” he said. “He can bring his rabble of children to see it with him. While men who could enter the arcana of whose mysteries he prattles; to whom the life he is leading would be like a walk through Paradise—are tied down to desk and drugs and country parishes! That these things exist is a tough problem!”
We told the story, leaving the pathetic enigma out of sight, over our Christmas-dinner, that evening. My Florentine angel of mercy, her brothers and sister, were our guests. Mince and pumpkin pies were not to be thought of, much less obtained here. But our Italian cook had under my eye, stuffed and roasted a turkey, the best we could buy in the poultry-shop just around the corner from the Pantheon. I did not spoil my friends’ appetites by describing the manner of its “taking-off” which may, however, interest poultry-fanciers. I wanted a larger bird than any displayed by the turkey-vender, and he bade me return in fifteen minutes, when he would have just what I desired.
We gave half an hour to a ramble around the square surrounding the Pantheon, the most nearly perfect pagan building in Rome. Urban VIII. abstracted nearly five hundred thousand pounds of gilt bronze from portico and dome, to be wrought into the twisted columns of St. Peter’s baldacchino, and into cannon for the defence of that refuge for scared and hunted popes—the Castle of San Angelo. In recompense for the liberty he had taken with the Temple of all the Gods, he added, by the hand of hisobsequious architect, the comical little towers like mustard-pots, known to the people as the “asses’ ears of Bernini.” Another pope, one of the Benedicts, offered no apology in word or deed, for pulling off the rare old marbles facing the inner side of the dome, and using them for the adornment of churches and palaces.
But to our turkey! The merchant had him well in hand when we got back. He had tied a stout twine tightly around the creature’s neck, and while it died by slow strangulation, held it fast between his knees and stripped off the feathers from the palpitating body. All our fowls came to us with this twine necklace knotted about the gullet, and all had a trick of shrinking unaccountably in cooking.
“He is a-swellin’ wisibly before my eyes!” quoted Caput from the elder Weller, as we gazed, horror-stricken, upon the operation.
The merchant laughed—the sweet, childish laugh of the Italian of whatever rank, that showed his snowy teeth and brought sparkle to his black eyes.
“Altro?” he said. “Buono? Bon?Signora like ’im mooch?”
I tried not to remember how little Ihadliked it when my guests praised the brown, fat bird.
Canned cranberries and tomatoes we had purchased from Brown, the polite English grocer in Via della Croce, who makes a specialty of “American goods.” Nazzari, the Incomparable (in Rome), furnished the dessert. Soup, fish, and some of the vegetables were essentially Italian, and none the worse on that account.
There was a strange commingling and struggle of pain and pleasure in that “make-believe” Christmas-at-home in a foreign land. It was a new and fantastically-wrought link in a golden chain that ran back until lost in themisty brightness of infancy. We gathered about our parlor-fire, for which we had, with some difficulty, procured a Yule-log of respectable dimensions; talked of loved and distant ones and other days; said, with heart and tongue, “Heaven bless the country we love the best, and the friends who, to-night, remember us as we think of them!” We told funny stories, all we could remember, in which the Average Briton and Traveling American figured conspicuously. We laughed amiably at each other’s jokes. We planned days and weeks of sight-seeing and excursions, waxed enthusiastic over the wealth of Roman ruins, and declared ourselves more than satisfied with the experiment of trans-ocean travel.
We were, or should be, on the morrow.
Now, between the eyes of our spirit and the storied riches of this sunbright elysium, the Italia of kings, consuls, emperors, and popes, glided visions of ice-bound rivers and snow-clad hills—of red firesides and jocund frolic, and clan-gatherings, from near and from far—of Christmas stockings, and Christmas trees, and Christmas greetings—of ringing skates, making resonant moonlit nights, and the tintinnabulations of sleigh-bells—of silent grave-yards, where the snow was lying spotless and smooth.
Beneath laugh and jest, and graver talk of visions fulfilled, and projects for future enjoyment—underlying all these was a slow-heaving main, hardly repressed—an indefinable, yet exquisite, heart-ache very far down.