Part 10

“If the mice disturb you, why do you keep them? You have not the heart to kill them? Tell the janitor to put the traps in a pail of water; it will be over in a minute,” said the practical American girl.

“Drown them--my only companions? See--their beautiful little ears are veined like the petal of a flower, look at their bright eyes, their dear little feet.” He held the cage up to the light. “They know me, they depend upon me for their food!”

He took half a roll--J. says it was half of Galli’s own breakfast--from his pocket and began crumbling it into one of the traps.

“Show us what you have been painting lately, Signor Galli,” said the young lady. The old man moved his easel into the light.

“This is my latest picture.”

J. says that American girl showed real breeding; she neither laughed nor cried at the thing Galli uncovered. If it was not a picture it was the work of a man of rare imagination. The divine spark had kindled at a moment when no tools were at hand. His credit on that almost inexhaustible fund, the generosity of his brother artists, had long been overdrawn. His friends were tired of supplying canvas, paints, brushes. Galli lacking everything, possessed only of the idea, could not rest till it was expressed. He had cut off the tail of his gray flannel shirt, stretched it for a canvas, found a piece of old blue cardboard, pasted it on for the sky; he had dried lettuce leaves and applied them for the middle distance, and used for the detail of the foreground bits of dried water-melon rind and other such rubbish. The “picture” was a thing to draw tears from a stone!

The rumor of the invention in the petroleum boxes suggested to some of the younger artists a plan by which fresh interest might be aroused for Galli’s benefit. They asked him to prepare a lecture explaining the theory of his bridge. Tickets were sold and quite a large audience gathered at the Artists’ Club to hear him. When he appeared some of the more boisterous spirits began to guy him; this nettled the old fellow:

“You perhaps think this invention of mine an impossibility,” he began. “To show you how simple it is to get to America without going on one of those abominable steamers, I will explain to you how to get to the moon. You all know that the moon is _una femina_ (a female)? Well, all females are devoured by curiosity. Only let all the people upon the earth assemble together in one place, and the moon will observe that something out of the common is going on down here: she will approach nearer and nearer to see what it is all about, until she gets so near that all we shall have to do is to jump over on her and then she will not be able to get away.”

* * * * *

[Galli’s last commission was to decorate one of the cheap Roman cafés. Villegas says that it was a wonderful piece of work, full of power and originality. Not long after it was finished some smug swine of a painter (one of those poor craftsmen who have cheapened the name of Italian art) persuaded the proprietor to let him paint out Galli’s work and redecorate the café with his own vulgar trash. This broke the old man’s heart; soon after he was found dead in his studio lying between two chairs. It was inevitable that he should come to some such end, and a thousand times better for him to drop in harness than to wear out the years in idleness. Unlike my friend, the newsboy-rumseller-grandfather of princes, _his_ only joy was in labor, in striving to express to others the beauty that possessed his soul. Is it not by this sign that the elect are known?]

IX

BLACK MAGIC AND WHITE--WITCH’S NIGHT

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, March 16, 1899.

Letters from Maine and New Hampshire give accounts of dreadful freshets and blizzards. We read them with some surprise, and then go up to the terrace and pick our pansies and violets. We have some fine spirea and lilacs coming on fast! The wall flowers are already in bloom, and the roses make occasional little gifts, but it is far too early for these dear ones to give their perfect blossoms. Rose week--rose madness--in Rome comes at the end of April.

The strangest thing about life in Rome is that you not only do as the Romans do, but end by thinking as the Romans think, feeling as the Romans feel! Take, for example, the feeling most of the foreign residents have about the evil eye, the _malocchio_ or _jettatura_, as it is indifferently called. I never knew an Italian who did not hold to this superstition more or less. Americans who have lived long in Rome either reluctantly admit that “there does seem to be something in it,” or if they are Roman born, quietly accept it as one of those things in heaven and earth that philosophy fails to take account of. In some things the Italian is free from superstition compared with the Celt or the Scot: for instance, the fear of ghosts or spirits is so rare that I have never met with it; on the other hand, the belief in the value of dreams as guides to action is deep rooted and widespread. The dreambook in some families is hardly second in importance to the book of prayer. The Italian’s eminently practical nature makes him utilize his dreams in “playing the _lotto_,” as the buying of lottery tickets is called. To dream of certain things indicates that you will be lucky and should play. The choice of the number is the chief preoccupation of the hardened lottery player. It is decided by the oddest chance,--the number on a banknote which one has lost and found again, the number of a cab which has brought one home from some delightful festivity. The number must always be associated with something lucky. I remember in Venice once calling on a friend who lives in a noble old palace on the Canale Grande. The _pali_, the dark posts rising out of the green water for the mooring of gondolas, bear the heraldic colors of the owner of the palace, and the doge’s cap, showing that the family gave a doge to Venice. Stepping from my gondola to the water-worn marble stair, I was helped by one of the servants, an old man with the suave, sympathetic manners that make the Italians the best servants in the world. I put him down as a majordomo of the old school whom my friends probably had taken over with the palace, the library, and the historic murder that goes with them. I had brought some flowers, which he insisted upon carrying. He led the way across a square courtyard to an outer stairway with a wonderful carved marble balustrade, lions rampant at the top and bottom. Suddenly he stopped and whispered to me:

“Signora,--a thousand excuses for the liberty,--but will you have the inexpressible gentility to tell me your age?”

The question was so startling that he got the right answer before my inevitable counter-question, “Why do you wish to know?” which he pretended not to hear, drowned in a flood of gratitude.

“You have conferred an immense benefit on me. The signora is expecting you.”

He had my wrap off and the drawing-room door open in a twinkling. That was not fair play; he had his answer: I would have mine. I put my question to his mistress. She laughed indulgently.

“Beppino is up to his old tricks. I told him this morning I was expecting a lady he did not know; he was on the lookout for you. When a stranger comes to the house for the first time it is the greatest possible luck to play in the _lotto_ the figures which make up his age.”

Our servants all play regularly, sometimes winning small sums, always imagining that they will win the _quaterno_. The lottery and the _Monte di pietà_--somehow one associates them together--are now under government control, as they were formerly under the control of the Church. It is assumed as a foregone conclusion that men will gamble, that men will pawn their goods; therefore it is expedient that these inevitable concomitants of city life should be administered by the government, in order that the accruing profits should return to the people by helping to pay the expenses of their government. The lottery always appears to me like a tax offered to the citizens in the form of a gilded pill.

The _Monte di pietà_ seems to be a really beneficent institution; it is well administered, the percentage charged on the money loaned being as low as is practicable. Poor old Nena’s coral earrings and gold beads live there chronically, only appearing upon her small person periodically on “feast” days. Several times webs of fine linen, silverware, and other household furnishings have been offered me at so low a price by one of our clients (we use the old Roman term for the army of hangers-on which has grown up about us) that I feared to buy them lest I should be purchasing stolen goods. On investigation I found the woman’s business was to buy unredeemed pledges at the regular sales of the Monte, and to hawk them about to private customers. After that I had not the heart to buy anything she offered, it seemed like building our house of the driftwood of despair. The Monte is a huge gray palace occupying a whole square behind the Palazzo Santacroce. Over the main entrance hangs a life-sized crucifix. The institution was founded in the year 1539 and has been in operation ever since.

The evolution of Christian out of pagan Rome is not more interesting than the evolution still going on of Rome the modern capital out of that picturesque, mediæval Rome of the “forties,” which my mother has described to me so vividly that it is as if I myself had seen it.

Since we have been here, the old meek horse-cars have been taken off, and horrible “electrics” whiz by our door and stop at the corner of the Piazza of St. Peter’s. And--even worse, I am almost afraid to write it to you--we have a telephone!

A telephone in the Eternal City! In the beginning I was as much shocked by the idea as you can be. The first conversation over the wire consoled me. Ice-chests, electric cars, and telephones only bring home more strongly the feeling that life in Rome is modern, mediæval, and pagan, all at the same time; it is all here in strata, like the rubbish Signor Boni is excavating from the Roman Forum. When you first come here you assume that you must burrow about in ruins and prowl in museums to get back to the days of Numa Pompilius or Mark Antony. It is not necessary; you only have to live, and the common happenings of daily life--yes, even the trolley car and your bicycle--carry you back in turn to the Dark Ages, to the early Christians, even to prehistoric Rome!

The day our telephone was installed I was called by the ding-a-ling of the bell, and “_centrale_” put me in communication, not only with our friend, Mrs. Z----, but with the Rome of Horace and the witch Canidia as well.

“Can you come to dinner next Monday?” Mrs. Z---- began.

“We will come with leaps and shrieks of joy.”

“Wait; do not accept till you hear who else is coming. We are giving the dinner in honor of M. de Gooch.”

“So much the better. We like to meet distinguished Frenchmen.”

“You are sure you do not mind meeting this particular Frenchman?”

“Why in the name of common sense should we mind?”

“Well, you know what they say about him?”

“Yes.”

“And you are not afraid? I am positively grateful to you. We are having the hardest time to fill the eight places at the table.”

“What particular variety of heathen are you inviting?”

“American.”

That afternoon we had a visit from an American gentleman, a friend of ours and of the Z----’s.

“Shall we meet next Monday at the Z----’s dinner?” I asked in the course of conversation.

“No, they were good enough to invite me, but I got out of it.”

I stared at him--he is one of the Z----’s greatest friends.

“Yes, the fact is I will not go where I have to meet that man.”

“You? _you_ believe that M. de Gooch has the evil eye?”

“It is all very well for you to look scornful! Just wait a little. I used to take your point of view, but so many uncomfortable things happened that I now avoid the man like the plague.”

“What sort of uncomfortable things?”

“We were once at a hotel in Naples. The first time that person--it is not well to mention his name--came into the dining-room, a waiter stumbled and dropped a tray full of valuable Venetian glass; every piece was smashed: the second time, the big chandelier fell down from the ceiling. That evening the proprietor begged this person to leave the hotel, said all the other guests would go if he did not, as it was evident he had the _malocchio_. _Basta!_ let us speak of other things.”

After the visitor left I went up to the terrace to feed the goldfish. Pompilia was on her knees digging around the roots of the big honeysuckle. I looked at Soracte, beloved of Horace. Soracte looked at me.

“Pompilia, do you know any one who has the _malocchio_?” She turned pale, scrambled to her feet, and made the sign against witchcraft with the first and fourth finger.

“_Signora mia, che pavra mi ha fatto_ (What a fright you gave me)!” She reflected a moment: “You remember the _carbonaro_ who used to bring the charcoal every Saturday? I told you he cheated us; you discharged him. It was not true, he gave good measure. I do not wish to harm him, but every time he came into the kitchen some _disgrazia_ happened. The soup was burned, the milk curdled, or the salt got into the ice-cream.”

“Do you believe the _carbonaro_ wished to injure us? Did he desire to bring misfortune?”

“It is his misfortune to bring misfortune,” Pompilia reluctantly explained; “one may even be sorry for him, but one spits as one passes him, and makes the _corni_ (horns) with the hand behind the back to avert the _jettatura_. _Ma, Signora mia, per carità, parliamo d’altre cose_ (For charity’s sake, let us talk of other things)! Observe this noble tulip, the first to bloom of those Hollandish bulbs we set out in the autumn.” She feels the flowers to be hers quite as much as ours, as indeed they are, she is so faithful in caring for them.

We put on all our war-paint for the Z----’s party; so did the other guests. It was one of the best dinners I have seen in Rome. Everybody seemed on their mettle to make it go off well. It was put through with unlimited conversational fireworks and champagne. De Gooch thawed out as I have never known him to do before; he is usually congealed by the chilly atmosphere which he, poor man, brings with him. I asked Mr. Z---- how he accounted for the evil stories. He said:

“Some enemy, who spreads the reports, takes this dreadful way to destroy him!”

The dinner was so merry that the coming of the coffee instead of being a relief was a surprise. M. de Gooch after a moment’s hesitation refused the cup offered him.

“I am rather proud of my coffee, change your mind and try a little,” said Mrs. Z----.

I was sitting on the other side of De Gooch, and heard him say in a low voice,--

“Are you sure of your cook?”

“Perfectly; he is a Piedmontese, he has been with us ten years, his coffee may be trusted.”

Do you know what that meant? It meant that De Gooch is afraid of being poisoned, that poison is most commonly administered in coffee or chocolate, _vide_ the Roman idiom, “_Ha bevuto una tazza di cioccolata_ (He has drunk a cup of chocolate).” I asked Mr. Z---- if he believed anybody wanted to murder De Gooch. He said:

“I do not believe him in more danger of poison than of a lightning stroke. It is not wonderful, however, that he thinks he is.”

“Is not the _malocchio_ very like the voodoo?” I asked.

“It is a horse of the same color. Both came out of darkest Africa, whose shadows fall across the broad earth.”

I take back every word I ever said against missionaries!

Poisoning, like other sins, has two degrees, the mortal and the venial. If M. de Gooch is in no danger from the mortal, we, according to Nena and Pompilia, were in danger of the venial not so long ago. During a short absence of Pompilia’s we had a foreign cook, and parted with her not on the best terms. The day after she left Pompilia returned, coming to me in the course of the morning with a long list of groceries; those staples, _farina_, _Parmegiano_, and _caffé_, headed the memorandum.

“But we cannot have used up five kilos of coffee. It is impossible that we are out of flour and Parmesan cheese; we bought them only three days ago.”

You see I am getting on, I now manage--though it is highly disapproved of by the powers that be--to lay in a few groceries, which I buy at the _Unione Militare_--government stores like the Army and Navy Stores in London.

“When I returned this morning, there was not a crumb in the house,” said Pompilia. Nena was appealed to.

“Nena, what about the _Parmegiano_, the _farina_, and the _caffé_ you bought the other day?”

“Signora, I was obliged to throw them all into the _immondezza_ (garbage).”

“But why?”

“Signora! I say nothing. That black Tedesca, when she left, did not wish us others well, nor even your signorial selves. I did what I did for the best.” She looked at Pompilia for confirmation. The cook shook her handsome head.

“With respect, Nena has done right. I would neither have served on your table, nor allowed another to touch any food that black German had in her hands. What bad thing may she not have mixed with it?”

I suppose I looked annoyed at the thought of the good food wasted; they both eyed me judicially, but firmly.

“Remember, Madama, that you commanded me three times before I would take that blessed order to the _Unione_,” Nena urged. “I myself knew it was a waste of money to buy those groceries when the German was leaving so soon. You asked me the first time Monday, on the stairs; I told you that the shop shut early on account of a _festa_; you asked me again Tuesday, upon the terrace (you were potting the large acanthus at the time) if I had been to the _Unione_; I told you that my rheumatism was too bad for me to walk so far. You told me for the third time Wednesday, in this very room, in the presence of the Tedesca, to buy those things! I ask you, was it possible for me to longer disobey, especially as the Tedesca heard you give the order?”

Nena is perfectly honest in deed, if not in word; I would trust her with uncounted money. This was no comedy, such as they often play for my benefit; I felt the reality of it.

“What sort of bad thing do you mean? Poison?” I blurted out with the coarse Anglo-Saxon instinct of calling a spade a spade. Such brusqueness hurts the subtler Latin nature. “Signora! I make no charges. I would not say poison, no, but something that might make one very ill for a day or for an hour; how do I know?”

They got away as soon as they could; we have not spoken of the matter since. The next time I was at the Vatican I dropped into the Sala Borgia, and took a good look at the charming portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, by Pinturicchio, filled with a realizing sense that the Rome of the Borgias was not so far away from my Rome as I had formerly supposed.

It is hard for us to realize the deadly significance to an Italian of the suggestion that one may have the evil eye. I was walking one day with a young American girl to whom I had been unfolding some of the tragedies I have known connected with the superstition. She took it all lightly and joyously, after the manner of her kind; and later during our walk, when a saucy, tormenting beggar pursued us, she made the sign of the _corni_ as I had described it to her, shaking the hand slightly, with the first and fourth finger extended. Then the beggar became convulsed with anger and seemed almost beside herself, shrieking out such a torrent of abuse that we were glad to jump into a cab and fly from the wrath to come. The poor creature was not to be blamed: she knew that once the shadow of suspicion falls, it means social excommunication, banishment outside the pale of whatever society one belongs to--a thing, like illness or death, as much to be dreaded by the pauper as by the Pope. Many people, by the way, believed that Pius IX had the evil eye, and made the sign of the _corni_ behind hat or fan as they received his benediction in front of St. Peter’s. The Romans generally are not supposed to be as superstitious as the Neapolitans. In Naples most people wear, as a charm, a little hand of gold, coral, or mother of pearl, with the fingers in the attitude to avert evil. Even the horses wear horns upon their harnesses! Some of our Roman friends are not without faith in the efficacy of horns. One day, when my painter had occasion to go behind the big canvases in his studio, he found that an artist who had dropped in during his absence had drawn horns with a bit of charcoal all over the backs of his pictures. Later, when the work was finished and the Queen came to the studio to see it, the friend claimed some of the credit for the royal visit.

“You owe all your luck to my horns,” he said, half in fun, half in earnest.

June 24, 1899.

Last night was St. John’s eve. I gave Pompilia and Filomena a holiday, meaning to take the opportunity to get rid, with Nena’s aid, of some of the year’s accumulation of worn-out kitchen utensils. Pompilia is very obstinate about giving up such things; she must have had

a rag-and-bottle man for an ancestor. Nena, who sells every conceivable bit of trash I give her, aids and abets me in these acts of insubordination. She was not in her usual spirits. I heard her scolding the little Jew boy who brought home an old terra-cotta cinerary urn we had bought in the morning from his mother Sora Giulia.

“What dirty _robaccia_ do you bring into this clean house?” she demanded in her gruff sailor’s voice.

“_Cosa ne so io?_ the signori bought it to-day. I heard my father say it once contained the ashes of a soldier of the Pretorian guard.”

“What guard?”

“Of the old time, a hundred years ago, maybe; they were like the _carabinieri_.”

Nena took the urn, grumbling under her breath, “_Li mortacci tuoi_ (Your miserable dead)!”

“_Hein?_ what did you say?”

“_Va a mori ammazzato_ (Go and die killed)!” She slammed the door upon him.

A minute later she brought the urn into the den and put it carefully down on the table where I was writing. “That rascally boy of Sora Giulia’s brought this home.”

“You formerly were friendly with Sora Giulia.”

She wiped her eyes with a little red wrinkled hand that trembled; something troubled her seriously.

“What has happened? tell me frankly.”

She began to cry openly: “_Miché_ (the cat) has been gone three days; he will never return. I shall not again see that dear animal!”

“_Miché_ will come back; perhaps he has had a fight, as he did once before.”

“No, no, Signora! then he was only absent one night, after the manner of cats. No, _era troppo bello, era troppo bello_ (he was too beautiful),” she wailed. I suppose I looked as puzzled as I felt, for she broke into impassioned explanations. “He was too beautiful, he was fat and tender as well; _quelli maladetti Ebrei_ (those cursed Jews) have killed him to make one of their accursed feasts; they have doubtless already eaten him; _povera bestia, era troppo bello_!”

To console her I proposed that we get to work on the business before us. In a closet on the stairs, of which Nena has a duplicate key, Pompilia had locked up empty green wicker _ricotta_ baskets, marmalade bottles, petroleum cans, a pair of discarded brooms, and other such rubbish.

“Can you sell the petroleum cans?”

“_Ma certo_, I get a _paulo_ (ten cents apiece) for them. The poor use them for flower pots and for many other things.”

“And these old brooms, can you get anything for them?”

“The brooms I shall not sell. It would offend the _scoparo_, who is my friend and has a family to support; but as we happen to be in need of them, I will, with your permission, take these brooms home.”