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.
The mere mention of these storied places will kindle in the reader's
fancy a fire which he will feel all the need of if ever he verifies my
account of them in touring Rome on so cold an afternoon as that of our
excursion. The wind rose with our ascent of every elevation, if it did
not fall with our return to a lower level; on the Janiculum it blew a
blizzard in which the incongruous ilexes and laurels bowed and writhed,
and some groups of almond-trees in their pale bloom on a distant upland
mocked us with a derisive image of spring. At the foot of the steps to
the Campidoglio, where some of our party dismounted to go up and view
the statue of Marcus Aurelius, it was so cold that nothing but the sense
of a strong common interest prevented those who remained from persuading
the chauffeur to go on without the sight-seers. But we forbore, both
because we knew we were then very near the end of our tour, and because
we felt it would have been cruel to abandon the lady who had got out of
the car only by turning herself sidewise and could not have made her way
home on foot without sufferings which would justly have brought us to
shame. Certain idle particulars will always cling to the memory which
lets so many ennobling facts slip from it; and I find myself helpless
against the recollection of this poor lady's wearing a thick
motoring-veil which no curiosity could pierce, but which, when she
lifted it, revealed a complexion of heated copper and a gray mustache
such as nature vouchsafes to few women.
The crowd, which thickened most in the Piazza di Venezia, had grown more
and more carnivalesque in attire and behavior. We had been obliged to
avoid the more densely peopled streets because, as our international
explained, if the car had slowed at any point the revellers would have
joined our excursion of their own initiative and accompanied us to the
end in overwhelming numbers. They wellnigh blocked the entrance of the
Corso when we got back to it, and the cafe where we had agreed to have
tea was so packed that our gay escapade began to look rather gloomy in
the retrospect. But suddenly a table was vacated; a waiter was caught,
in the vain attempt to ignore us, and given such a comprehensive order
that we could see respect kindling in his eyes, and before we could
reasonably have hoped it he spread before us tea and bread and butter
and tarts and little cakes, while scores of hungry spectators stood
round and flatteringly envied us. In this happy climax our adventure
showed as a royal progress throughout. We counted up the wonders of our
three hours' course in an absolutely novel light; and we said that
touring Rome was a thing not only not to be despised, but to be forever
proud of.
For myself, I decided that if I were some poor hurried fellow-countryman
of mine, doing Europe in a month and obliged to scamp Rome with a couple
of days, I would not fail to spend two of them in what I must always
think of as a triumphal chariot. I resolved to take the second
excursion, not the next day perhaps, but certainly the day after the
next, and complete the most compendious impression of ancient,
mediaeval, and modern Rome that one can have; but the firmest resolution
sometimes has not force to hold one to it. The second excursion remains
for a second sojourn, when perhaps I may be able to solve the question
whether I was moved by a fine instinct of proportion or by mere innate
meanness in giving our orator at parting just two francs in recognition
of his eloquence. No one else, indeed, gave him anything, and he seemed
rather surprised by my tempered munificence. It might have been
mystically adjusted to the number of languages he used in addressing us;
if he had held to three languages I might have made it three francs; but
now I shall never be certain till I take the second excursion with a
company which imperatively requires English as well as French and
German, and with no solitary in yellow gloves to whom all languages are
alike.
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