Part 14

On Christmas Eve the pilgrims began to arrive in torrents, and have been pouring in and out of the city ever since. They will not be allowed to come in July and August--supposed to be the least healthy months. They have gathered from the uttermost parts of the earth hordes of strangers invading Rome as I believe it has not been invaded since the days of Attila and his Huns. From the terrace we see pilgrims from all the Catholic nations of the earth pass to bow the knee and drop the _obolo_ at the feet of the Prisoner of the Vatican. These vast pilgrimages, sometimes several thousand strong--are admirably managed. A dearth of cabs is the first sign we notice of their arrival. The piazza is deserted, not a cab in sight. A little later a procession of cabs, crowded with pilgrims (six to a carriage) and their belongings--the queerest boxes, bales, bundles begin to rattle across the piazza to the vast buildings in the rear of the Vatican where the pilgrims lodge. They usually stay three days; during that time they are received by the Pope, visit all the Basilicas, see the sights, and depart richer in experience and plenary indulgence, leaving the Pope, the shop keepers, hotel keepers, and cabmen richer in money. Each flood gilds (or silver plates) poor old Rome till it shines as it has not shone in years.

I did not suppose there were so many splendid costumes left in the world as have passed through the Piazza of St. Peter’s and under my eyes during these few months! Hungarians in tight-fitting black breeches, jackets trimmed with black astrakhan and long high boots. Herzegovinians with wonderful garments of white sheepskin, embroidered in red silk outlined designs (the woolly side of the sheepskin is worn next the person, the outside looks like parchment), fur-trimmed boots, hair cut square across the shoulders, faces of rapt devotion. The Poles were a superb group, the women wore costumes of striped vermilion and emerald green, the men, scarlet breeches, green jackets, and picturesque woollen caps. There were Cossacks from the river Don, with long, gray woollen caftans down to their heels, high pointed caps, and cartridge belts over their shoulders, they would be ugly customers to come up against on a less peaceful excursion. While driving, we passed one Don Cossack who reminded us so vividly of Taras Bulba, the hero of Gogol’s Iliad of the North, that we followed him for half an hour, as he stalked about the city, looking at the sights as if they were all perfectly familiar to him. He was a giant with a mane of bronzed hair, dark eyes, high cheek bones, and a look of indomitable power, of silent reserved strength, that made the careless casual passer-by seem an effete, over-civilized being. He wore jewel-handled daggers stuck in a waist belt, fastened with turquoises “as big as my two thumbs.” He must be “somebody” at home.

The other evening J. brought home the news that there were a lot of pilgrims lodged in the wing of the Palazzo Torlonia, opposite his studio. The next morning R. and I hurried over to the Borgo St. Angelo to see what was to be seen. The Palazzo Giraud Torlonia, which has a splendid front on the Borgo Nuovo, only a block away from the Rusticucci--has two long wings in the rear, with a courtyard between them, the entrance to both wings being on the Borgo St. Angelo, rather a squalid back street. The studio is a vast room as big as a church on the second floor. When my mother was in Rome, on her wedding journey, she danced in this room at one of the famous balls, given by old Torlonia, the banker prince, the founder of the family, and grandfather of the present incumbent, J.’s landlord. The studio--at the time J. took it the only available one in Rome large enough for his purpose--could only be had by hiring the whole wing, with its three stories, the right to _re-let_ being refused. This makes him master of all he surveys, as the grim, stone-paved courtyard, with its ever-flowing fountain fringed with maidenhair fern, goes with his wing.

I received a shock on entering the studio, and looking at the big picture for the first time in days. The little blindfold Love who led the procession of the centuries in The Flight of Time, has been painted out! He now exists only in my memory, and in the cartoon, a red chalk drawing hanging in our hall. Though the composition is better without him, it gave me a pang to find him gone. To console me, I found three portrait studies of the beautiful Lady K.

From the studio windows we could see into the vast high rooms of the opposite ell, which is hired for the pilgrims, when, as on this occasion, they cannot all be accommodated in the huge _lazzaretto_ the Pope built during the last cholera summer. That was in 1884. Naples was decimated by the disease; everybody believed that the cholera would come to Rome (everybody except J., who calmly passed the summer here). The Pope built the great _lazzaretto_ against the cholera’s coming; King Humbert, of the high courage, went to meet the cholera, went to pest-stricken Naples, walked through the hospital wards where the cholera patients lay, spoke comfortably to them, won new glory for the brave house of Savoy, a fresh hold on his people’s hearts. As the _lazzaretto_--it has never been used as such--was not big enough to hold the French pilgrimage, some of it spilled over into the empty wing of the Torlonia Giraud Palace, across the courtyard from the studio.

When R. and I arrived on the scene it was the hour of bedmaking. We could see the neat, light figures of the nuns (to whose care the entertainment of the pilgrims is entrusted) tucking in the sheets, smoothing out the pillows of the long lines of white cots that filled the rooms. On the sidewalk, outside the green door--all our doors in the Borgo seem to be green--sat a group of old men smoking the solemn, after-breakfast pipe. Feeling that we must see the pilgrims at nearer view, we went down to the street and out of our door just in time to meet a rosy young sister as she came out of the opposite door with a little old peasant woman, whose face was wrinkled and brown as an English walnut. The old peasant wore over a full white linen shirt a dark cloth jacket cut square at the bosom, with straps going over the shoulders. The double-breasted jacket was fastened with silver buttons and heavily embroidered in a charming pattern with variegated silks. On her head was a plain white cap of sheer muslin turned back over the ears, and hanging to the shoulders. Under the muslin cap was a sort of gilt skull-cap. She wore a heavy plaited skirt of dark blue broadcloth, sabots painted black, long earrings of filigree gold inset with seed pearls. Even beside the pure linen of the sister, she positively shone with cleanliness.

“Look well at that jacket,” I said to R., “did you ever see one like it before?”

“Why, it is _our_ Breton jacket!”

_You_ perhaps remember that at the old yellow house where R. lives there is a trunk full of “dressing up things,” the theatrical wardrobe of the children, largely made up of the old finery of three preceding generations!

“Did you ever see that cap before?” I asked R.

“Why it’s grandmama’s cap!”

“Long ago, when you were only a baby, grandmother and I passed a summer in Brittany. At Quimper, where we spent some happy weeks, a jacket like that was made for me, and we found the one and only model for grandmama’s cap.”

The little old peasant woman carried a large blue cotton umbrella, with time-yellowed ivory handle and points, a perfect ark, under which three even four generations might take refuge from a deluge. I looked at her so intently, with such a passion of longing memory, that she must have seen something more than common curiosity in my glance, for she gave me a second look less preoccupied, more gentle than the first, and then paused. I grasped the opportunity, and going up to her asked in French how things were at Quimper? She listened patiently, politely, understanding nothing of what I said till I pronounced the magic word “Quimper.” Then the old eyes grew keen and intent. She put out a hand and answered me in a flood of kindly Breton, whose sound only was familiar to me. For some minutes we stood there in the middle of the Borgo St. Angelo, shaking hands, looking intently at each other, first one, then the other repeating the word “Quimper!” To her it meant home; to me, the one thing dearer! Then with a last tightening of the hands we parted. We recognized other of the Breton costumes, from St.-Pol-de-Leon, Douarnenez, the Morbihan, we remembered having seen some of them at the great pardon of Ploërmel. The caps of Quimper are quite distinct from the caps of Quimperle, you understand, though the towns are not far apart!

That afternoon, with a roll of thunder drums and a flash of lightning, the deluge descended upon the Borgo. I rushed to the watch-tower--our upper terrace, to see the storm. From the four quarters of the sky the lightning swords smote at each other; from the soft white clouds above the Castle St. Angelo came rose-colored lightning with a growl; from a purple rack over St. Peter’s a piercing yellow zigzag, like a Saracen blade, followed by the crack of cannon. Veils of rain fell, mixed with the white spray of the fountains, and were driven in smoky sheets across the square. The piazza was alive with pilgrims coming away from St. Peter’s, where service was just over, the steps were black with people. The pilgrims scattered like leaves before the storm; the skirts of women and priests were blown about, like the bewitched draperies of the Bernini statues on the façade of the church. In the midst of the hurrying, scurrying crowd I made out the blue umbrella ark of Quimper, valiantly held up by a tall young peasant; my little old woman--perhaps his mother--paddled along on one side, a stout wench--perhaps his wife--on the other. The cabs were all snatched up in a moment. Down in the Borgo I could see the _gobbo_ waiting for me at our door. I had to keep a pressing engagement and dared not delay till the tempest passed, lest the _gobbo_ and his cab be ravished from my sight. As we rattled along the Borgo Nuovo, I recognized the _parroco_; he was without an umbrella and was getting soaked to the skin. As we would pass his door it seemed the part of friendship to give him a lift.

“Stop!” I cried to the _gobbo_; “the _parroco_ is going our way, we will take him home.”

“There is no use in stopping,” said the _gobbo_. I insisted. Sulky and grumbling he drew up just outside the hospital of the Santo Spirito. The water was rushing through the gutter like a small millstream.

“Jump in, _padre_, we will take you home.”

“No, no. Thank you--it is impossible!”

I persisted.

“Drive on!” he cried impatiently to the _gobbo_. To me more gently, “It would not do for me to be seen driving with a lady.”

As the _gobbo_ whipped up the old white horse, a crowded carriage containing four women and two foreign-looking priests passed us. I looked back at the _parroco_; he shrugged his shoulders, his lips formed the words, “What can you expect? They are French!”

“What did I tell you, _Signora mia_?” murmured the _gobbo_. “It would have been a scandal for the poor _parroco_ to be seen driving with you!”

Wasn’t that slap at the French nice? The _parroco_ served his two years in the army when he was young; he is a good Italian, a son of the soil, a son of the Church. The passions of his race are strong in him, and in spite of his cassock he hates a Frenchman!

Coming home late that evening we found behind our door a small wallet lined with coarse red morocco. It contained nothing but memoranda of modest expenditures:

Cab, one franc.

Candles, six sous.

Tobacco, fifty centimes.

Rosary of amethyst beads (for Berthe), four francs.

Souvenirs of Rome, seven francs, etc.

Crabbedly written on the flyleaf was the address of a priest of Vaucluse. _Vaucluse!_ Isn’t that a name to conjure with? We read the poor priest’s case as easily as his simple record of expenses. No people are quite so attentive to the pilgrims as the “light-fingered gentry.” The thief who stole the pocket-book, after taking out whatever of value it contained, threw it into our doorway to be rid of it. J. has sent it by post to the priest at Vaucluse; it will at least help him to make up his accounts.

“Souvenirs,” always a staple of Roman trade, are more in evidence in the shop windows than ever. The French pilgrims buy a great many souvenirs. We saw our old friend from Quimper in a shop in the Borgo. To get another look at her, and to show her to Patsy, who was with me, we went in and looked at souvenirs. Besides the “articles of religion” there were semi-religious articles; spoons, pens, pins, a thousand useless nothings bearing the triple crown, the keys of Peter, the sacred initials. The shop-keeper laid a tray full before Patsy, who turned them over indifferently. “Fancy keeping stamps in this,” he held up a box with the white dove of the _Spirito Santo_ inlaid upon the cover, “or cutting _Punch_ with that!” he displayed a paper knife with the figure of the Lamb. “I say, you know, the common use the shop-keepers put these sacred symbols to is more than I can stand!”

The shop-keeper thought he understood; we caught his whisper to his wife, “They are not Christians, they are Saracens!” to us he said, “Have patience, sir, here is your affair!”

He opened a drawer under the counter. It contained the same souvenirs, the same boxes, spoons, pens, paper-knives, what-nots, with Mahomedan symbols, instead of Christian--the crescent, the star, the scimitar, the monogram of the prophet.

“No, not quite our affair,” said Patsy. “We are not Mahomedans.”

The shop in which we were chaffering is in the very shadow of Peter’s dome; the bells in the clock tower were ringing the _Ave_.

The cry is, Still they come! Pilgrims, pilgrims, pilgrims. By just sitting tight on our terrace and using our eyes, the uttermost parts of Christendom have been brought to us. Sardinians, for instance. When Patsy came back from his moufflon hunting trip in Sardinia, and talked familiarly about “Sards,” we were devoured with curiosity to see them for ourselves. A week after, the “Sards” arrived in force. They are more like Corsicans, or even Spaniards, than like Italians; they have grave, dark, impassive faces, and an expression of sombre reserve. The men’s dress is in keeping with their character; a black woollen, knitted bonnet, like a sailor’s cap, hangs on one side to the shoulder, close-fitting jacket, leggings, and sash, all black. Their coarse homespun linen shirts, made very full in the bosom and sleeves, and worn without starch, are a great improvement on the dreadful stiff, white armor in which our men encase themselves for their sins! The “Sards’” only ornaments were silver buckles worn at the knees and on the shoes.

One morning J., who had started early for the studio, came back to tell me that a group of Filipinos had just gone over to St. Peter’s.

“How do you know they are Filipinos?”

“I don’t _know_; they look like two Filipino art students who used to be in Rome. One of them was named Luna. He was the best draughtsman in the studio; he beat everybody at drawing; seemed to have a dash of the Japanese dexterity.”

“Was he any relation to General Luna?”

“Only his brother,” said J. Now that is Rome, and that is J.!

I hurried over to St. Peter’s and caught up with the Filipinos before they had made the third chapel of prayer. They are small, swarthy men; their faces show a strange mingling of races, something of the Malay, he Mongol, the Latin, with a fourth element I did not recognize,--rather deadly looking folk, I thought, but very devout in their behavior at church.

When royalty comes to the Vatican there is a deal of pother. The morning of the King of Siam’s visit to the Pope, we were waked at dawn by the carts fetching the royal yellow sand, and the men spreading it thick over the streets where the wheels of royalty were to pass. The King, whom we saw perfectly, is a fierce-looking little fellow; he was dressed in quite the most lovely uniform I have ever seen; white broadcloth, embroidered in gold. Do you suppose their good clothes are any mitigation to the _ennui_ of sovereigns? I should think they might be.

Easter Sunday, 1900.

We thought we had seen Rome crowded before, but we had not! During the past week, the crowds have been almost inconceivable. By Wednesday all the bathrooms at the Grand Hotel that could be spared had been turned into bedrooms. Last night a pair of travellers slept in the red plush cushioned elevator, and two in the big comfortable hotel omnibus. Cabs are a rare commodity--even the _gobbo_ has deserted us and hired himself out by the week to the pilgrims. The electric cars (did I tell you they had put these pests in under our very windows?) are so jammed that we go for the most part “shanks’ mare.” Many of our friends have let their apartments, and gone away for the rest of the season. We could have got a good price for ours; but in spite of the undeniable inconvenience (the cost of provisions has almost doubled), we would not have missed the experience. The city has been a Babel of foreign tongues, a kaleidescope of foreign faces and costumes. One tastes life as from a goblet filled and brimming over with sparkling, heady wine. That old gogpate, Z----, has let his villa, carriage, servants, even his precious Antonio, the best cook in Rome. He said to J., “I cannot afford to stay in Rome when the price of _filet_ has doubled and I can get my whole year’s rent by letting the villa for three months.”

“We cannot afford _not_ to stay in Rome when it is so interesting,” said J. There you have the two ways of looking at life--the Philistine’s and the artist’s!

We have taken part in a canonization--there remained but that--of all the ceremonials on “that stage of the Church” incomparably the most sumptuous we have seen. When I heard that the new saint’s name was La Salle, stirred by memories of Parkman’s “Discovery of the Great West,” I insisted upon having tickets to one of the private tribunes. I confess it was a disappointment to find that we were making a saint of the wrong Lasalle, _not_ our own René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, but another doubtless excellent person described as “a distinguished educator priest.” You have heard about so many ceremonies that I will only speak of the _river_ of bishops! I did not suppose there were so many bishops in the world. They passed down the vast church in a line of seething white and gold, stretching from the entrance down the nave to the very chair of Peter behind the high altar. Every bishop carried a tall white wax torch, whose yellow flame lighted up his white and gold vestments, his gold-tipped mitre and crozier. I shall never forget that dazzling splendor! I have seen so many of these great pageants that I am rather _blasée_ about them, but those gorgeous bishops in their immaculate white and gold robes outshone even the arrogant vermilion cardinals, the purple canons with their gray fur capes--even that man of ivory and iron, Leo XIII., carried aloft in the Sedia Gestatoria, on the shoulders of six crimson lackeys, the triple crown blazing on his head.

On the 31st of May I happened in to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, a dear church, built on the ruins of an ancient temple of Minerva. Fra Angelico is buried here (how can his native Fiesole spare his bones)? There is an ancient Greek sarcophagus, with Hercules taming the Nemean lion in relief; there is a picture of Torquemada, the terrible confessor of Isabella; there is an adorable flower-bespattered tomb carved by that sweetest of statuaries, Mino da Fiesole, and a hundred other “features”! In the piazza outside stands an engaging marble elephant, with the smallest of Egyptian obelisks on his back; altogether the place is a good example of what one is forever harking back to,--Rome’s golden blending of things Greek, Egyptian, classic, pagan, early Christian, renaissance, and rococo!

In the pulpit who should be thundering away, whacking the dusty crimson cushions till the beautiful old carved pulpit shook, but our friend the _parroco_! He seemed so much in earnest that I paid two cents for a chair and sat down to listen to him. His subject was the erudition of Mary, “the most learned woman,” he said, “who has ever lived. Her knowledge of languages--she spoke at least twenty--proves this. She is known to have talked with Moabites, Samaritans, Egyptians, and other persons, to the number of twenty different nationalities.” The hypothesis that some of these persons may have spoken Aramaic, Mary’s own language, was not admitted by the preacher.

Coming out after church, I overheard one well-dressed _contadina--senza cappello_ (without a hat), a social grade is marked by the wearing of a hat--say to another peasant woman,--

“My son has preached a new sermon on the Madonna on each of the thirty-one days of her month. He has done well.” I thought he had!

It was the _parroco’s_ mother. She had the same soft dark eyes, the same mouth, the same smile--the mother for whose sake, as he himself told us, he became a priest. “_Poverella_,” he said, “it was her wish; I am all that she has; how could I disappoint her? and she believes that one day I shall receive the cardinal’s hat!”