The conquest of Rome. Matilde Serao

to lovers, that everyone must read his sole passion in his face.

      * * * * *

      That day he would not set foot there, at Montecitorio; he would not on any account think of the Parliamentary world; he must see Rome, must find a lodging. He looked out of the window, intending to start after breakfast. He had been awakened early by a hubbub of voices and laughter in the adjoining room. A sonorous, virile, resounding voice, with a very pronounced Neapolitan accent, and speaking in pure Neapolitan dialect, broken by rude laughter, was loudly arguing and declaiming. Two visitors came, who were then followed by two others; then there was a string of friends, of petitioners, who implored, boasted their claims, repeated their requests over and over again in Neapolitan dialect and with an obstinate rhetorical verbosity, to all of which the Honourable Bulgaro, Deputy for Chiaia, the second Naples district, replied with vigorous objections. He could be heard through the dividing doors, and the Honourable Sangiorgio involuntarily listened.

      No, he could not, he really could not, said the Honourable Bulgaro. Was he, perchance, the Eternal Father, that he could grant everything to everybody? Let them leave him in peace, once and for all! And he walked up and down the room with the cumbrous stride of a large man, grown loutish in civil life after losing the agility of the handsome young officer, who, in his palmy days, had won many a fair creature's heart. But those who came with a purpose insisted, begged, explained their family history, related their troubles, everlastingly repeating it all, so that the Honourable Bulgaro, with his easy Neapolitan good-nature, yielded after being worn out, and said:

      'Very well! Very well! We'll see if something cannot be done!'

      They went away as well pleased as though they already had their desires, and the Honourable Bulgaro, left alone for a minute, puffed and swore:

      'Lord! Lord! what jabbering!'

      The Honourable Sangiorgio was ashamed of having overheard so much, and went down to breakfast in a very pensive mood. He armed himself with courage to resist the seductions of Montecitorio. He reflected that perhaps many deputies had arrived, since but three weeks were wanting before the opening of the forty-fourth legislature. And he was already giving way to curiosity, as a pretext for his weakness, when a carriage, which chanced to be slowly passing by on the flooded paving-stones, obstructed his view of the main porch. With a decided gesture he hailed the carriage and jumped in.

      'Where may it be your pleasure to go?' asked the coachman of his absent-minded patron, who had given him no directions.

      'To—St. Peter's—yes, take me to St. Peter's!' answered Francesco Sangiorgio.

      The drive was long. The three consecutive streets—Fontanella di Borghese, Monte Brianzo, Tordinona—were choked with vehicles and foot-passengers; they were narrow and tortuous, with those dingy stationery and second-hand iron shops, all dirty and dusty, with those narrow front-doors, with those squalid blind alleys. At Castel Sant' Angelo there was breathing-space, but along the turbid and almost stagnant yellow stream was a succession of brown hovels, of gray tenements, with thousands of tiny windows, with damp stains of green on them, as though a loathsome disease had discoloured them, with filthy mildewed foundations disclosed by low-water: that angle of the river, near Trastevere, was vile. In the Via Borgo the deep ecclesiastical quiet began, with the silent, grayish palaces, with the shops for sacred articles, statuettes, images, oleographs, rosaries, crucifixes, where the pompous legend stood forth: 'Objects of Art.'

      In the great deserted square before the church two fountains which were playing looked like white plumes, and the obelisk in the middle like a walking-stick, and round about the ground was lightly bedewed with spray from the fountains standing there in the silence of an untenanted place. The carriage turned the obelisk, and stopped at the grand stairway. The Honourable Sangiorgio surveyed the front of St. Peter's, and it seemed to him very small and squat.

      'Will you go into the church?' asked the coachman.

      'Yes,' said the deputy, shaking himself out of his fit of abstraction.

      When he arrived at the threshold, he veered round and took a mechanical glance at the square. He had read that at that distance a man looked like an ant; but nobody appeared, and the huge, empty space, besprent with water under the gray sky, to his mind resembled the vast, naked Campagna. Inside the church he experienced no mysterious emotions: he was an indifferent as to religion, never speaking of it, discussing the Pope like an important political question, leaving religious faith and practice to women. The architecture of St. Peter's did not stir him. As he advanced he perceived that the church grew in size, but to him that deceptive harmony seemed purposeless, reprehensible. A few Germans were circulating, looking about with rather severe mien, as if their rigid Lutheranism disdained such Christian pomp. Not a chair, not a bench, not a priest, not a sacristan—the familiar spirit who extinguished the candles and replenished the holy water at the great pillars. The brown confessionals, on which might be read in gilt characters,'Pro Hispanica Lingua,' 'Pro Gallica Lingua,' 'Pro Germanica Lingua,' were empty. There was nothing to kneel on but the steps of the pulpit or of the main altar; else there was the cold pavement.

      Francesco Sangiorgio had no understanding for the monuments of the Popes: he examined them without appreciating either their beauty or their ugliness. His notions of art were vague and narrow. Canova's, with the sleeping lions, he thought mediocre; Rovere's Pope, all in bronze, he considered superb and handsome; Bernini's, with the figure of Death in gold, the drapery of red, veined marble, the Pope of white marble—this gave him no sensations, but was simply queer. He did not know whether the paintings over the altars were by great artists or not, whether they were copies or originals. He wandered about, killing time, as though performing a duty, abstracted and thinking of something else, not at all interested in that gigantic pile of stones, freezing and forsaken, where only a few shadows flitted. Finally, on the way out, the monument to the two last Stuarts impressed him as a poor thing.

      'Drive to the Coliseum,' he said resolutely to the coachman, throwing himself back into the cushions.

      The coachman, in order to prolong the drive, since he was engaged by the hour, and so as to avoid the streets by which they had come, and which were ugly enough, went through the old, dark streets of the Borgo Santo Spirito and the Governo Vecchio, where the real Roman population lives, loath to abandon the ancient quarters and the small houses crawling with beetles. The coachman made his horse go at the slow gait of a tired animal, having cleverly secured a stranger with no ideas. At the Foro Traiano he still further slackened the horse's pace, and Sangiorgio pretended to admire that broad expanse below the level of the ground, where the mutilated pillars serve for tree-trunks, that great burial-place for dead cats, that great dwelling-place for stray cats, whom the charitable servants of the Via Magnanapoli and Macel de' Corvi bring the remains of their dinner. He could not see the Campidoglio, nor the Arch of Septimius Severus, nor the Grecostasi, nor the Temple of Peace, nor the whole great Roman Forum; because of the perpetual demolitions he could not pass by there, nor could he go on the Palatine Hill. This the coachman explained as he followed the Via Tor de' Conti.

      And soon the carriage was under the Coliseum, without the visitor having seen it from afar on the road which he had to take thither. The Honourable Sangiorgio felt obliged to alight, and went in under the arched entrance, sinking into the muddy soil. A large pool of rain-water, bordered by verdant vegetation, lay near the doorway of the Flavian Amphitheatre. In the hollows of the white stones scattered here and there, in the fluting of the stairs, and even in the hand of a broken statue, there was rain-water. Francesco, marvelling at the immensity of the walls, looked for points of identification; where, then, was the imperial box, the gallery for the vestals, and that for the priests? He stood in the centre, but did not realize the nature of that subterraneous structure. Yes, the Coliseum was grand, but the dirty light of a rainy day partially dimmed its majesty, and showed its decay and all the wear and tear of time. The country outside was green with the rich growth of moist fields; but there was not the song of a bird, not the voice of a beast, not the voice of a man.

      Under an archway a municipal guard appeared; he was leisurely and apathetic, taking no notice of the visitor. The Honourable Sangiorgio conscientiously went the round of the circular corridor, which was rather dark. He thought perhaps this