The Reply Which Decided The Matter Launched Us Upon Yet Wider Conjecture
Regarding The Unknown:
Was he a retired courier, a concierge out of
place, a professor of languages on his holiday, or merely an amateur of
philological studies?
His declared proficiency was manifested in
unexpected measure as we drove away from the Temple of Neptune on
through the narrow street leading to it. Every motor has its peculiar
note, and our car had something like the scream of a wild animal in
pain, such as might have justly alarmed a stouter spirit than that of
the poor little cab-horse which we encountered at the corner of this
street. It reared, it plunged; when our chauffeur held us in it still
backed and filled so dangerously that the mother and children
overflowing the cab followed the example of the driver in spilling to
the ground. Then our good international, the agent, jumped down and,
mounting to the coachman's seat, took the reins and urged the horse
forward, while its driver pulled it by the bridle. All was of no effect
till the solitary of the back seat rose in his place and shouted to the
frightened creature in choice American: "What d' you mean, there? Come
on! Come on, you fool!" Then, as if it had been an "impenitent mule" in
some far-distant Far-Western incarnation, this Eoman cab-horse
recognized the voice of authority; it nerved itself against the
imaginary danger, and came steadily forward; our agent regained his
place, and we moved shriekingly on to the next object of interest. It
was not quite the note blown from level tubes of brass in the progress
of a conqueror, but we did not lack the cheers of a disinterested
populace, which at several points impartially applauded our orator's
French and German versions of his not always tacit Italian.
Our height above the cheers helped preserve us from the sense of
anything ironical in them, and there was an advantage in the outlook
from our elevation which the wayfarer in cab or on foot can only
imagine. No such wayfarer can realize the vast scope and compass of our
excursion, which was but one of two excursions made on alternate
afternoons by the Touring-Rome wagons. It included, perhaps not quite in
the following order, after the Temple of Neptune, such objects of prime
importance as the Palazzo Madama, where Catharine de' Medici once dwelt
and where the Italian Senate now holds its sessions; the Fountain of
Trevi, the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the new Palace of Justice and
the Cavour monument beyond the Tiber, the Castle of Sant' Angelo, the
Vatican and St. Peter's, the Janiculum and the Garibaldi monument on it,
and the stupendous prospect of the city from that supreme top, the
bridge that Horatius held in Macaulay's ballad, the island in the Tiber
formed after the expulsion of the Tarquins by the river sand and drift
catching on the seed-corn thrown into the stream from the fields
consecrated to Mars, the Temple of Fortune, the once-supposed House of
Eienzi, and the former Temple of Vesta; the Palatine Hill and the
Aventine Hill, the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, the Campidoglio, the
Theatre of Marcellus, the worst slum in Rome, where the worst boy in
Rome, flown with Carnival, will try to board your passing car; back to
Piazza Colonna through Piazza Monte Citerio, where the Italian House of
Deputies meets in the plain old palace of the same name.
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