So We Went, Such Of Us As Liked, To The Parapet
Overlooking The Piazza Del Popolo, And Commanding One Of Those Prospects
Of Rome Which Are Equally Incomparable From Every Elevation.
I, for my
part, made the dizzying circuit of the brief drive on foot in the dark
shadows of
The roofing ilexes (if they are ilexes), and then strolled
back and forth on the paths set thick with plinths bearing the heads of
the innumerable national great - the poets, historians, artists,
scientists, politicians, heroes - from the ancient Roman to the modern
Italian times. I particularly looked up the poets of the last hundred
years, because I had written about them in one of my many forgotten
books, till I fancied a growing consciousness in them at this encounter
with an admirer; they, at least, seemed to remember my book. Then I went
off to the cafe overlooking them in their different alleys, and had tea
next a man who was taking lemon instead of milk in his. Here I was beset
with an impassioned longing to know whether he was a Russian or
American, since the English always take milk in their tea, but I could
not ask, and when I had suffered my question as long as I could in his
presence I escaped from it, if you can call it escaping, to the more
poignant question of what it would be like to come, Sunday after Sunday,
to the Pincio, in the life-long voluntary exile of some Americans I
knew, who meant to spend the rest of their years under the spell of
Rome. I thought, upon the whole, that it would be a dull, sad fate, for
somehow we seem born in a certain country in order to die in it, and I
went home, to come again other Sundays to the Pincio, but not all the
Sundays I promised myself.
On one of these Sundays I found Roman boys playing an inscrutable game
among the busts of their storied compatriots, a sort of "I spy" or "Hide
and go whoop," counting who should be "It" in an Italian version of
"Oneary, ory, ickory, an," and then scattering in every direction behind
the plinths and bushes. They were not more molestive than boys always
are in a world which ought to be left entirely to old people, and I
could not see that they did any harm. But somebody must have done harm,
for not only was a bust here and there scribbled over in pencil, but the
bust of Machiavelli had its nose freshly broken off in a jagged fracture
that was very hurting to look at. This may have been done by some
mistaken moralist, who saw in the old republican adviser of princes that
enemy of mankind which he was once reputed to be. At any rate, I will
not attribute the mutilation to the boys of Rome, whom I saw at other
times foregoing so many opportunities of mischief in the Villa
Bor-ghese.
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