It Had Always Seemed To Me That The Happy
Strangers Mounted On The Tiers Of Seats That Rise From Front
To back on
the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the
lowest place, on the
Life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a
bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh
impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not
the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. In Rome
I did not feel that the like reasons held; of all the unknown, I was one
of the most unknown; by me nobody would be put to the shame of
recognizing an acquaintance on the benches of the like chariot, or
forced to the cruelty of cutting him in my person. When once I had fully
realized this, it was only a question of the time when I should yield to
the temptation which renewed itself as often as I saw the stately
automobile passing through the storied streets, with its English legend
of "Touring Rome" inscribed on the back of the rear seat. There remained
the question whether I should go alone or whether I should ask the
countenance of friends in so bold an enterprise. When I suggested it to
some persons of the more courageous sex, they did not wait to be asked
to go with me; they instantly entreated to be allowed to go; they said
they had always wished to see Rome in that way; and we only waited to be
chosen by the raw and blustery afternoon which made us its own for the
occasion.
It was the eve of the last sad day of such shrunken and faded carnival
as is still left to Rome, and there were signs of it in the straggling
groups of children in holiday costume, and in here and there a pair of
young girls in a cab, safely masked against identification and venting,
in the sense of wild escape, the joyous spirits kept in restraint all
the rest of the year. Already in the Corso, where our touring-car waited
for us at the first corner, a great cafe was turning itself inside out
with a spread of chairs and tables over the sidewalk, which we found
thronged on our return with spectators far outnumbering the merrymakers
of the carnival. Our car was not nearly so packed, and when we mounted
to the benches we found that the last and highest of them was left to
the sole occupancy of a young man, well enough dressed (his yellow
gloves may have been more than well enough) and well-mannered enough,
who continued enigmatical to the last. There was a German couple and
there were some French-speaking people; the rest of us were bound in the
tie of our common English. The agent of the enterprise accompanied us,
an international of undetermined race, and beside the chauffeur sat the
middle-aged, anxious-looking Italian who presently arose when we made
our first stop in the Piazza Colonna and harangued us in three
languages - successively, of course - concerning the Column of Marcus
Aurelius. He did not use the megaphone of his American confrere; and
from the shudder which the first sound of his voice must have sent
through a less fastidious substance than mine I perceived that an
address by megaphone I could not have borne; to that extreme of excess
even my modernism could not go. As it was, there was an instant when I
could have wished to be on foot, or even in a cab, with a red Baedeker
in my hand; and yet, as the orator went on, I had to own that he was
giving me a better account of the column than I could have got for
myself out of the guide-book. He spoke first in French, with an Italian
accent and occasionally an Italian idiom; then he spoke in English, and
then in a German which suffered from his knowledge of English.
He sat down, looking rather spent with his effort, and on the way to our
next stop, at the Temple of Neptune, the agent examined us upon our
necessities in the article of language. He himself spoke such good
English that we could not do otherwise than declare that we could get on
perfectly with an address in French. The German pair, perhaps from
patriotic grudge, denied a working knowledge of the unfriendly tongue.
The solitary on the back seat, being asked in his turn, graciously
answered, "Toutes les langues me sont egales," and thereafter we
suffered with the orator only through French and German.
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.
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