V The Abbe Preciozi. The Big Birds in Rome
The next day Cæsar awoke at nine, jumped out of bed, and went to breakfast. Laura had left word that she would not eat at home. Cæsar took an umbrella and went out into the street. The weather was very dark but it held off from rain.
Cæsar took the Via Nazionale toward the centre of town. Among the crowd, some foreigners with red guide-books in their hands, were walking with long strides to see the sights of Rome, which the code of worldly snobbishness considers it indispensable to admire.
Cæsar had no settled goal. On a plan of the city, hung in a newspaper kiosk, he found the situation of the Piazza Esedra, the hotel and the adjacent streets, and continued slowly ahead.
“How many people there must be who are excited and have an irregular pulse on arriving for the first time in one of these historic towns,” thought Cæsar. “I, for my part, was in that situation the first time I clearly understood the mechanism of the London Exchange.”
Cæsar continued down the Via Nazionale and stopped in a small square with a little garden and a palm. Bounding the square on one side arose a greenish wall, and above this wall, which was adorned with statues, stretched a high garden with magnificent trees, and among them a great stone pine.
“A beautiful garden to walk in,” said Cæsar. “Perhaps it is an historic spot, perhaps it isn’t. I am very happy that I don’t know either its name or its history, if it really has one.” From the same point in the Via Nazionale, a street with flights of steps could be seen to the left, and below a white stone column.
“Nothing doing; I don’t know what that is either,” thought Cæsar; “the truth is that one is terribly ignorant. To make matters even, what a well of knowledge about questions of finance there is in my cranium!”
Cæsar continued on to the Piazza Venezia, contemplated the palace of the Austrian Embassy, yellow, battlemented; and stopped under a big white umbrella, stuck up to protect the switchman of the tramway.
“Here, at least, the weight of tradition or history is not noticeable. I don’t believe this canvas is a piece of Brutus’s tunic, or of Pompey’s campaign tent. I feel at home here; this canvas modernizes me.”
The square was very animated at that moment: groups of seminarians were passing in robes of black, red, blue, violet, and sashes of contrasting colours; monks of all sorts were crossing, smooth-shaven, bearded, in black, white, brown; foreign priests were conversing in groups, wearing little dishevelled hats adorned with a tassel; horrible nuns with moustaches and black moles, and sweet little white nuns, with a coquettish air.
The clerical fauna was admirably represented. A Capuchin friar, long-bearded and dirty, with the air of a footpad, and an umbrella by way of a blunderbuss or musket under his arm, was talking to a Sister of Charity.
“Undoubtedly religion is a very picturesque thing,” murmured Cæsar. “A spectacular impressario would not have the imagination to think out all these costumes.”
Cæsar took the Corso. Before he reached the Piazza Colonna it began to rain. The coachmen took out enormous umbrellas, all rolled up, opened them and stood them in iron supports, in such a way that the box-seat was as it were under a campaign tent.
Cæsar took refuge in the entrance to a bazaar. The rain began to assume the proportions of a downpour. An old friar, with a big beard, a white habit, and a hood, armed with an untamable umbrella, attempted to cross the square. The umbrella turned inside out in the gusts of wind, and his beard seemed to be trying to get away from his face.
“Pavero frate!” said one of the crowd, smiling.
A priest passed hidden under an umbrella. A tough among the refugees in the bazaar-doorway said that you couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a priest, and the cleric, who no doubt heard the remark, threw a severe and threatening look at the group.
It stopped raining, and Cæsar continued his walk along the Corso. He went a bit out of his way to throw a glance at the Piazza di Spagna. The great stairway in that square was shining, wet with the rain; a few seminarians in groups were going up the steps toward the Pincio.
Cæsar arrived at the Piazza del Popolo and stopped near some ragamuffins who were playing a game, throwing coins in the air. A tattered urchin had written with charcoal on a wall: “Viva Musolino!” and below that he was drawing a heart pierced by two daggers.
“Very good,” murmured Cæsar. “This youngster is like me: an advocate of action.”
It began to rain again; Cæsar decided to turn back. He took the same route and entered a café on the Corso for lunch. The afternoon turned out magnificent and Cæsar went wandering about at random.
THE CICERONE
At twilight he returned to his inn, changed, and went to the salon. Laura was conversing with a young abbé. “The Abbé Preciozi.... My brother Cæsar.”
The Abbé Preciozi was one of the household of Cardinal Fort, who had sent him to the hotel to act as cicerone to his nephew.
“Uncle has sent the abbé so that he can show you Rome.” “Oh, many thanks!” answered Cæsar. “I will make use of his knowledge; but I don’t want him to neglect his occupations or to put himself out on my account.” “No, no. I am at your disposition,” replied the abbé, “His Eminence has given me orders to wait on you, and it will not put me out in the least.”
“You will have dinner with us, Preciozi?” said Laura.
“Oh, Marchesa! Thank you so much!”
And the abbé bowed ceremoniously.
The three dined together, and afterwards went to the salon to chat. One of the San Martino young ladies played the viola and the other the piano, and people urged them to exhibit their skill.
The talkative Neapolitan turned over the pieces of music in the music-stand, and after discussing with the two contessinas, he placed on the rack the “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana.
The two sisters played, and the listeners made great eulogies about their ability.
Laura presented Cæsar and the Abbé Preciozi to the Countess Brenda and to a lady who had just arrived from Malta.
“Did you know Rome before?” the Countess asked Cæsar in French.
“No.”
“And how does it strike you?”
“My opinion is of no value,” said Cæsar. “I am not an artist. Imagine; my specialty is financial questions. Up to the present what has given me the greatest shock is to find that Rome has walls.”
“You didn’t know it?” asked Laura.
“No.”
“Dear child, I find that you are very ignorant.”
“What do you wish?” replied Cæsar in Spanish. “I am inclined to be ignorant of everything I don’t get anything out of.”
Cæsar spoke jokingly of a square like a hole in the ground, out of which rises a white column similar to the one in Paris in the Place Vendôme.
“What does he mean? Trajan’s column?” asked Preciozi. “It must be,” said Laura. “I have a brother who’s a barbarian. Weren’t you in the Forum, too?”
“Which is the Forum? An open space where there are a lot of stones?”
“Yes.”
“I passed by there; there were a good many tourists, crowds of young ladies peering intently into corners and a gentleman with a bag over his shoulder who was pointing out some columns with an umbrella. Afterwards I saw a ticket-window. ‘That doubtless means that one pays to get in,’ I said, and as the ground was covered with mud and I didn’t care to wet my feet, I asked a young rascal who was selling post-cards what that place was. I didn’t quite understand his explanation, which I am sure was very amusing. He confused Emperors with the Madonna and the saints. I gave the lad a lira and had some trouble in escaping from there, because he followed me around everywhere calling me Excellency.”
“I think Don Cæsar is making fun of us,” said Preciozi.
“No, no.”
“But really, how did Rome strike you, on the whole?” asked the abbe.
“Well, I find it like a mixture of a monumental great city and a provincial capital.”
“That is possible,” responded the abbe. “Undoubtedly the provincial city is more of a city than the big modern capitals, where there is nothing to see but fine hotels on one hand and horrible hovels on the other. If you came from America, like me, you would see how agreeable you would find the impression of a city that one gets here. To forget all the geometry, the streets laid out with a compass, the right angles....”
“Probably so.”
The abbe seemed to have an interest in gaining Cæsar’s friendship. Cæsar said to him that, if he wished, they could go to his room to chat and smoke. The abbe accepted with gusto, and Cæsar, being a suspicious person, wondered if the Cardinal might have sent the abbe to find out what sort of man he was. Then he considered that his ideas must be of no importance whatsoever to his uncle; but on the chance, he set himself to throwing the abbé off the scent, talking volubly and emitting contradictory opinions about everything.
After chattering a long while and devoting himself to free paradox, Cæsar thought that for the first session he had not done altogether badly. Preciozi took leave, promising to come back the next day.
“If he reports our conversation to my uncle, the man won’t know what to think of me,” reflected Cæsar, on going to bed. “It would not be too much to expect, if His Eminence became interested and sent to fetch me. But I don’t believe he will; my uncle cannot be intelligent enough to have the curiosity to know a man like me.”