Part 15

He had come as he always does, the Saturday before Easter, to bless the house. Pompilia and Filomena had been on their marrow-bones for a week, rubbing, scrubbing, polishing, setting the house in order for the rite. On the kitchen dresser the prescribed food to be eaten on Easter Sunday was neatly arranged: eggs and _mortadella_ for breakfast; lamb, green peas, a certain broth made with lemon and eggs, served only on this day of the year, and the sweet dish already prepared,--what the Italians call _zuppa Inglese_, and we call Italian cream! In a vase were carefully preserved the blossoms of wall flowers, stocks, and violets, from the sepulchre of Holy Thursday at the church near by in the Piazza Scossa Cavalli; these, according to tradition, must deck our Easter dinner table. It was four o’clock when the _parroco_ reached our house. He was very smart in his neat beretta,--a high, square, black silk cap,--his best white linen cotta trimmed with handsome lace, freshly starched and ironed. It was “done up,” I’ll be bound, by that good brown mother of his. He was followed by an imp of a boy with the oddest snub nose, and hair growing almost down to his eyebrows, who made the responses and carried the silver holy-water vessel by a pair of enchanting wrought handles. We formed a procession, headed by the _parroco_ and the imp; next came the _padrona di casa_ (myself); behind me walked Pompilia the cook in the time-honored striped black silk which I had given to Nena, and she, “_per miseria_,” had sold to the cook; after her, Filomena, the prettiest girl in the Borgo, in her best blue frock and a rose in her hair; the procession was brought up in the rear by Nena,--the witch, the snuff-taker, the footman, the mainstay and comfort of the whole household. She had borrowed a clean apron, smoothed her rough, gray hair, and redeemed her coral beads and gold earrings from pawn at the Monte di Pieta. There were flowers everywhere in the house, the terrace had been rifled, roses, roses, roses, red, pink, saffron. In the very best vase were a single white rose from my mother’s favorite tree, the Catherine Cook, and one mammoth pink one from Captain Christy. We marched first to the salon, the most honorable room. The _parroco_ dipped a silver sprinkler in the lustral water, which he sprinkled in four directions, north, south, east, west, saying as he did so, “Bless, O Lord, this place, that in it may be health, chastity, victory, virtue, humility, goodness, sweetness, the fulness of law and thanksgiving, and may this blessing abide in this place and upon all those who dwell herein.”

Whether by chance or intention, a few drops fell upon a group of family portraits hanging on the wall. Our dear sunny chamber was next blessed, then the dining-room, the den, finally the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. In each room the prayer was repeated, the water sprinkled. The _parroco_ was in a hurry, he could not wait to taste a _gocciatino di vino_ or a bit of the _pizze_ Filomena’s mother had sent us from her home in Umbria,--there were many more houses to be blessed before nightfall. We went with him to the door, shook hands, slipping into his palm a small envelope--the imp carried openly the silver plate in which I dropped his share of the modest offering, then with hasty bows and smiles and “_buona pasqua_ (happy Easter)” the pair of them clattered down the long _travertina_ staircase, past the recumbent Etruscan ladies, with their button-like eyes, who guard our stair, leaving me to enjoy our clean, sweet-smelling house. On the terrace an hour later, drinking in the glory of the sunset, came an odd sense of the fitness and familiarity of it all. This blessing the house, the food, the penates, the tools, the effigies of ancestors is the Little Ambervalia Pater describes so deliciously in Marius, the Epicurean; there is, too, an echo in it of the Vestalia, the festival in honor of Vesta, held at the house of the Vestal Virgins on the 9th of June, “after which the temple was closed for five days for ceremonial cleansing!” At home, in God’s own country, the ceremony survives under the name of spring cleaning. It was a wonderful stormy sunset; St. Peter’s and the piazza seen in this ferment of light and shadow recalled a curious allegorical design of Bernini’s, in which the two curving wings of his colonnade are made to suggest the arms of Christ’s Vicar, spread out to enfold the world, Angelo’s dome being worked in as a sort of papal tiara floating over the whole.

XIII

THE QUEEN’S VISIT

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, Easter, 1900.

“Buona Pasqua!” said Filomena, when we came into breakfast this morning. Her Easter offering lay on the table, two hard-boiled eggs in a little basket of twisted bread at each plate. Soon after, Pompilia brought her inevitable _regalo_, a pair of lilac tissue paper fans (she has a relative who works in the paper factory). As I passed the door Pompilia’s annual basket of flowers, sent by her cousins every Easter, was brought in. Ignazio, the gardener, met us on the terrace with a pot of the biggest violets I have ever seen.

“Only yourself, Signora, and the Princess Doria, in all Rome, have these magnificent violets, the last novelty from Londra. The Prince has just introduced them. His gardener is my friend; _così_ I am able to offer this _bel’ vasino di fiori_!”

A little later, Lorenzo, Villegas’ factotum, arrived with a basket of lemons from the Villino garden, covered with their own glossy green leaves and intoxicating blossoms; the petals are thick, pink outside, white inside, like orange flowers, only larger, and with a less cloying perfume.

We were up on the terrace in time to see the Host carried through the street; that was not allowed when we first came to live in the Borgo Nuovo. Little by little the old picturesque ceremonies of the Church are creeping back. It is a pretty sight. First march lovely little girls in white, scattering flowers; then come acolytes, deacons, young clerics--I am hazy about their titles--swinging censers, carrying the crucifix and banner; the arch-priest bearing the Sacrament in a golden monstrance, over which he holds protectingly the sides of his long, stiff, embroidered vestment, above his head a white and gold _baldacchino_ supported by four young priests. The whole procession, children, acolytes, priests, attendant women in black veils, went singing across the piazza of St. Peter’s and down our street under a rain of pink and green disks of tissue paper thrown from the windows in lieu of flowers. Across the street Giuseppe, the baker, in white cap and drawers, naked to the waist, stood at his shop door cooling his heated body. Behind him in the dark shop as the boy opened the oven door and fed the flame with armfuls of brushwood, we caught the roar and blaze of fagots in a fiery cavern.

Giuseppe, a radical (the _parroco_ says a Freemason, that means sure damnation) stood at his door as the procession passed and nodded to his little girl, the prettiest of the attendant cherubim, dropping rosebuds. It is pleasant to see one’s daughter chosen before others, and religion is an excellent thing in woman, according to Giuseppe’s philosophy. The crisp, appetizing smell of his hot bread suggested luncheon, which, in honor of the _festa_, was served on the terrace. The atmosphere has been ecstatically clear and golden all day, the view sublime, snow-clad peaks in the distance, the foreground purple, hazy, delicious. The bells of St. Peter’s (silent since Holy Thursday) have made constant music in the air. A fine day, with a trifle too much breeze for dignity; it blows the girls’ curls and draperies, even the scant skirts of the young priest pacing back and forth on the monastery terrace across the way, breviary in hand. He always ignores our presence, looks through us as if we were made of glass; but I catch him gazing with longing eyes at our roses and lilies that nod and gossip behind their screen of ivy; at the passion flowers and honeysuckles, haunts of the bee and butterfly. He knows as well as we do every stage of our roof garden’s history since that day six years ago when we potted the pink ivy geranium and the white carnation from the Campo di Fiori, the beginning of this earthly paradise. We have had a great deal of rain lately, which has been good for the yellow and orange-colored lichens that enamel the tiled roofs all about us, and alas! very good for slugs and snails. As to wall flowers, they simply ramp from every crack and cranny of the gorgeous _cinque cento_ cornice, with its sharp-cut egg and dart (symbols of life and death), fragments of which still cling to the inner walls of our courtyard. The wild flowers run riot over the Corridojo di Castello, the quaint old fortified passage leading from the Vatican to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The Corridojo, built of tufa stone, is two stories high; the upper story is open like a loggia, the lower closed, with little slits to let in the light. Just behind our Palazzo the Corridojo crosses a back street by an enchanting arch, with the arms of the Pope who built or restored it carved on a stone escutcheon. In the old days the passage was used in time of danger as an escape from the Vatican to the fortress of Sant’ Angelo; the Pope himself always kept the keys, according to Patsy, who dropped in for tea and _maritozzi_ and gave us a discourse on the subject.

“Who keeps the keys now?” I asked.

“_Chi lo sa?_ Since 1870 the Corridojo has been walled up. I once got a peep into it. ’T is going to wrack and ruin, which is a shame and disgrace.”

“Whose fault is it?”

“_Chi lo sa?_ Lay it to the municipality,--they deserve a few extra curses thrown in for luck, on account of the artificial rockwork with which they are defacing the Pincio and the Janiculum.”

“Perhaps the Corridojo is no-man’s-land, now that the Vatican belongs to the Pope and the fortress to the King?”

“_Chi lo sa?_” said Patsy again. “When the Italians came to Rome they meant to leave the Borgo under the temporal control of the papacy. Consequently at the first plebiscite (October 2, 1870) no urn was provided for the Borgo’s vote. You don’t suppose a fellow like that,” he pointed to the baker, “would let such a little thing keep him out of United Italy? The first returns of the day were brought in from this, the fourteenth, _rione_ (ward), by two strapping fellows, who marched up to the Capitol carrying between them a big urn with the votes from the Borgo. I have heard that your friend the baker’s father was one of them.”

“And this morning that man’s granddaughter walked in the procession of the Sacrament!”

“For the matter of that, here comes Prince Nero’s grandson wearing the King’s uniform. Both Blacks and Whites, _Dio grazie_, are fast fading into Grays.”

Beppino, very stiff in his military togs, was shown up on the terrace by Nena the shabby, who always manages to open the door to fashionable visitors.

“How do you like your service, Beppino? Your uniform is very becoming,” I began.

“I don’t like it at all! Fancy being obliged to clean one’s own horse, to polish one’s own boots--it’s not to be endured!”

It has to be endured; and, moreover, Beppino is enormously improved by his six months’ endurance of the obligatory military service. Those fiery brown eyes of his have grown serious.

“Is it true that you voted at the last election?” asked Patsy.

“It is true,” said Beppino.

“How did your grandfather take it?” Patsy persisted.

“I asked the Prince’s leave,” Beppino replied. “He said that for thirty years he had obeyed the Pope and abstained from voting, that he was too old to change his politics, but that I was free to do as I liked.”

“How do you account for such an extraordinary change of heart?”

“It’s all the Queen’s doing; she is so good; she is so clever. We Italians owe more to her than to any one alive to-day!”

Beppino is the son of the son of one of the stoutest pillars of the Church.

“_Avanti la caccia_ (On with the chase)!” Patsy and I had been snail hunting when Beppino came up.

“Here is a sharp stick; if you run it round under the edge of the flower-pot you will get them quicker. Snail, I condemn you to the parabolic death!” Beppino threw a large fat snail out over the terrace wall. “That’s the easiest way; it spares our feelings and gives the snail a chance for his life. He disappears in a parabolic curve; he may fall upon a passing load of hay and be carried away to batten upon other rose-leaves.”

Suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, there appeared upon the peaceful terrace the _parroco_, with two black-a-vised French priests, preceded and announced by Nena. The _parroco_ apologized; he said the gentlemen were anxious to see our view. The elder Frenchman never looked at the view at all, but examined the walls of the palace in a way I did not like. The _parroco_ is always a welcome, if scarcely an easy guest. I hated his friends; they glanced with so indifferent an eye at the flowers and seemed so much more interested in the chimneys that J. and Lorenzo had cleverly contrived to keep me warm. When at last the three black figures disappeared down the terrace stairs, we other three drew a long breath.

“Good riddance,” said Patsy.

“You have not seen the last of their cassocks nor them,” said Beppino (he had an English nurse and governess, and speaks rather better English than most people). “I believe they mean to buy the palazzo over your heads. When will your lease be up?”

“In September; but we have the right to renew.”

“No Roman lease holds in case of sale,” said Beppino. “You will find that clause in your contract. You will see I am right. Some time ago _Sua Santita_ requested such religious orders as had no house in Rome to establish one here. During the _Anno Santo_ many have acted on the hint and bought property in Rome. I heard my grandfather say there were some French monks looking out for a place near the Vatican. This is just the sort of thing that would suit them.”

Was not that a thunder clap? Characteristic too that Beppino, the astute Roman, should first suspect it. When J. came home from the studio and heard of the priests’ visit, he said: “Beppino is right; the Palazzo Rusticucci will be transformed into a monastery. They have already turned Mr. Vedder out of his studio after twenty years; we shall be the next to go.”

I can’t and won’t believe that this may be our last Easter here. Just as terrace and house have grown to fit us like soul and body, to be turned out into the bare, ugly world of hotels,--impossible!

The other day when I was at the studio J. told me that in consequence of the disappearance of ten francs he had finally decided to part with Pietro. He has often arrived at this decision before, but the creature, with a sort of uncanny second sight, always disarms him just in time by some act of faithfulness, some pretty attention; for Pietro is one of those Italians with a real genius for service. I happened to be at the studio when he applied to J. for the place and overheard their conversation.

“Signorino,” Pietro began, “you are my unique hope; do not abandon me, the poor _disgraziato_ you have befriended so long: I regard you as my father.” (Pietro is at least twenty years older than J.)

“Where have you been all this time?” J. asked.

“Signorino, it is necessary for me to tell you the truth, or some unsympathetic person might do so: I have been in prison, though I am quite innocent.”

“What were you charged with?”

“It was that affair with Fagiolo the model; you perhaps remember.”

“The time you bit Fagiolo in the leg and gave him such a _coltellata_ (stab) that he had to be sent to San Giacomo (the hospital)? I remember.”

“_La storia era molto esaggerata, però non potevo mai vedere quell’uomo_ (The story was much exaggerated, but I never could bear the sight of that man).”

J. remembered the affair, and thought Pietro had been rather hardly dealt with.

“Since I was discharged it is impossible to find employment; nobody wants a man, however innocent, who has been in prison.”

“Where is your wife?”

“_Aimé!_ was there ever so unfortunate a man? Zenobia, who, as you know, is a good seamstress and my sole means of support, broke her leg yesterday; this morning they carried her to the hospital of the Santo Spirito.”

J. engaged him on the spot, and Pietro has been in charge of the studio ever since. He has done very well; the only trouble has been that small sums of money, cigarettes, and boxes of matches are always disappearing. J. has spoken several times to Pietro about it. He always denies having taken anything. J. feels very half hearted about sending him away; he says that it will be impossible for the man to get another situation if he dismisses him for stealing. Besides, except for the pilfering, Pietro is the very man for the place; he takes good care of the studio, knows all about cleaning palettes and washing brushes, keeps the courtyard neat and full of such growing things as can exist with the little sun that penetrates to it, and is devoted to J.’s happy family, which just now consists of Checca, the lame jackdaw, bought from some boys in the street who were tormenting her, a pair of ducks, a stray black dog, and the prettiest maltese kitten you ever saw.

The jackdaw, a most diverting bird, is as curious as a coon. The other day she flew up on the easel from behind and pecked a hole in the picture on which J. was working. She put her closed bill through the canvas, then opened it wide, which made a straight up and down tear, to which the creature put her ridiculous eye and peeped through to see what J. was doing.

“Do you really think Pietro is the thief?” I asked. “It would be too suicidal in him to throw away his last chance!”

“Just what Pietro says,” answered J., “but who else can it be? There is a Yale lock to the door with two keys; I keep one, Pietro the other.”

While we were talking about him, Pietro came in to move an old stove which had stood in the corner of the studio all winter without being lighted. J. is sending it with other household stuff to the auction room. As Pietro moved the stove its door swung open and out rolled a quantity of cigarettes, matches, silver and copper coin, paint rags, orange peel, and among the rubbish a brand new ten-franc note.

“Caw, Caw!” screamed Checca, flapping across the floor and scolding at Pietro.

“_Ah! Madonna dei setti dolori!_” Pietro, swearing horribly, fell upon his knees, clasped his hands, invoked every holy thing he knew.

“_Santa Maria, eccomi vindicato! Ah ladrone! Ah birborne_ (Behold me vindicated. O thief! O villain)!”

“Caw, Caw!” screamed Checca, pecking at Pietro’s legs. He was at first ready to wring her neck; then he grew lachrymose and tender.

“_Ah! Ah! Pietro sfortunato! Guardi, Signora mia_, was I not born unlucky? First I am sent to prison on the false oath of a rascally man. _Adesso, anche la gazza m’inganna, mi perseguita_, (Now even the jackdaw deceives me, persecutes me)!”

Plumped down on his knees there in the middle of the studio, poor Pietro began to cry like a baby. It ended in his getting the ten-franc note as a _mancia_, and Checca’s being so stuffed with good things that she is in a state of coma and on the verge of apoplexy. Truth really is stranger than fiction. I never before had much faith in the Jackdaw of Rheims.

June 10, 1900.

As we sat at dinner last night a messenger from the Casa Reale was announced. J. went out to receive him in person. He had brought a letter from a great personage at court to say that the Queen would come to the studio the next day to see J.’s decoration for the Boston Public Library. That was rather short notice for such an honor, but we did all we could to make the old barrack of a studio fit to receive the dear and lovely lady. We were up at dawn. Pietro had already turned the hose on the brick paved floors and stone steps. The first thing in the morning we were warned by the police that no one, not even our servants, must know of the visit beforehand, so we gave it out that Lord Curry, the British Ambassador, was coming to the studio, which was quite true. J. had called up the Embassy, and Lord Curry had promised, by telephone, to be on hand.

We telephoned the Signora Villegas asking if she could spare Lorenzo, who turned up at eleven with, I should think, every flower the Villino garden contained. The bouquet for the Queen I made myself of flowers from the terrace, gardenias, passion flowers, and maidenhair fern. We sent over to the studio from the house the fine old Portuguese leather armchair in which my mother sat to Villegas for her portraits some rugs, and the gold screens Isabel and Larz brought us from Japan.

You never saw a more squalid street than the Borgo Sant’ Angelo. I very much doubt if the Queen had ever entered so queer a door as the little antique green studio door with the modern Yale lock. The studio is up two long flights of stairs, with an iron railing, quite like a prison stair. If we had been given longer notice we could have done more to make things presentable; but that was a mere detail. The main thing was that the afternoon was fine, the light perfect. The days here are so much longer than at home that the hour named, six o’clock, was the very best in the twenty-four to see the pictures. We had never really believed that the Queen would come to the studio, though we had heard of her interest in seeing the work. There is a sort of tradition that the royal family very rarely come over to the Borgo, out of regard for the feelings of the Pope. During the day one and another secret service man in plain clothes arrived in the Borgo on their bicycles, and lounged about the street corners or in the cafés. At five several _guardie_ in uniform arrived. We went over to the studio at half-past five in order to be in time to receive Lord Curry. J. went by the Borgo Nuovo and stopped at the front of the Palazzo Giraud Torlonia (the studio, you remember, is in the rear of the palace, with an entrance on the back street, Borgo Sant’ Angelo) to ask the proud young porter of the Torlonia to open the studio door, and generally stand by us. The Haywards, who live on the _piano nobile_, are the swells of the Borgo; they pay the proud young porter his wages, and they are in close relation with the Vatican. Fortunately they were out of town and never knew that we borrowed their porter to open the door to the Queen.

“The _Ambasciatore Inglese_ and other _personnaggi_ of importance are to visit my studio presently; do me the favor to open the door for them,” said J.

“_Volontiere, Signore mio, un momento_; I will change my coat and be with you instantly!”

The nearest way from the front of the Torlonia to the back is by the Vicolo dell’ Erba, a narrow little alley which runs beside the palace. We never use it--’t is so evil smelling, badly paved, and generally poverty stricken--unless we are in a great hurry. J. being pressed for time naturally took the _vicolo_. He happened to be wearing a red cravat,--in Italy, especially in Rome, supposed to be the badge of the anarchists and avoided by the Romans, and, one would fancy, by the anarchists accordingly. Of course all the _guardie_ of our quarter know the _pittore Inglese_ by sight, but the extra ones detailed for the day did not. Hurrying through the _vicolo_, J. ran round the corner into the Borgo Sant’ Angelo, and into the arms of one of these extraneous _guardie_, ordered to be on the lookout for suspicious characters. His eye caught the red cravat.

“_Scusi, Signore_; where might you be going in such a hurry?”

“I am going to No. 125, Borgo Sant’ Angelo.”

“You have business of importance there, or you would not be in so much haste?”

“Yes; I am late for an appointment.”

“With whom?”

“That is a private matter and one which does not concern----”