French gentleman, whose redingote, buttoned
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 41
closely up to his chin, threw vague but still
damaging suspicions on his supply of linen.
" Pardon, madame," said the decayed old
gentleman, lifting his threadbare silk hat by its
curled brim with indescribable grace as he ap-
proached, " is M. . . . within ? '
" I think not, but I will see."
" I am pained ' ' (Je suis d/sol/) " to give you
the trouble."
" It is no trouble, monsieur."
"Merci, madame."
The concierge disappeared. Presently she
returned, loaded to the muzzle with the infor-
mation that M. . . . was unfortunately not at
home.
" A thousand pardons, madame, but will you
have the amiability to give him this " (present-
ing a card that had seen better days) "as soon
as he returns ? '
"Certainly, monsieur."
" Madame, I am sensible of your kindness."
"Do not speak of it."
"Bonjour, madame."
"Bonjour, monsieur."
This poor gentleman's costume was very far
on its way to a paper-mill ; but adversity had
left his manners intact, and they were fit for
palaces.
A VISIT TO A CERTAIN OLD GENTLEMAN
I
IT was only after the gravest consideration
that we decided to visit a Certain Old Gentle-
man. There were so many points to be con-
sidered. It was by no means certain that a
Certain Old Gentleman wanted us to visit him.
Though we knew him, in a vague way, to be
sure through friends of ours who were friends
of his he did not know us at all. Then he
was, according to report, a very particular old
gentleman, standing squarely on his dignity,
and so hedged about by conventional ideas of
social etiquette, so difficult of approach, and so
nearly impossible to become acquainted with
when approached, that it was an audacious
thing seriously to contemplate dropping in on
him familiarly. What impelled us to wish to
do so ? Certainly we had no desire to pay
court to him. He had formerly occupied a
high official position, but now he was retired,
in a manner, into private life a sufficient rea-
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 43
son in itself why he should be let alone. In
brief, there were a hundred reasons why we
should not visit him, and there was not one
why we should. It was that that decided us,
I think.
It comes back to me like the reminiscence
of a dream, rather than as the memory of an
actual experience, that May afternoon when
the purpose first unfolded itself to us. We
were sitting in the fading glow of the day on
the last of the four marble steps which linked
our parlor to the fairylike garden of the Al-
bergo di Russia in the Via Babuino. Our
rooms were on the ground floor, and this gar-
den, shut in on three sides by the main build-
ing and the wings of the hotel, and closed at
the rear by the Pincian Hill, up which the gar-
den clambered halfway in three or four luxu-
riant terraces, seemed naturally to belong to
our suite of apartments. All night we could
hear the drip of the fountain among the cactus
leaves, and catch at intervals the fragrance of
orange-blooms, blown in at the one window we
dared leave open. It was here we took the
morning air a few minutes before breakfast ; it
was on these steps we smoked our cigar after
the wonders of the day were done. We had
the garden quite to ourselves, for the cautious
tourist had long since taken wing from Rome,
44 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
frightened by the early advance of summer.
The great caravansary was nearly empty.
Aside from the lizards, I do not recollect see-
ing any living creature in that garden during
our stay, except a little frowzy wad of a dog,
which dashed into our premises one morning,
and seizing on a large piece of sponge made
off with it up the Pincian Hill.- If that sponge
fell to the lot of some time-encrusted Roman-
ese, and Providence was merciful enough to
inspire him with a conception of its proper use,
it cannot be said of the little Skye-terrier that
he lived in vain.
If no other feet than ours invaded those
neatly gravelled walks, causing the shy, silvery
lizards to retreat swiftly to the borders of
the flower-beds or behind the corpulent green
tubs holding the fan-palms, we were keenly
conscious now and then of being overlooked.
On pleasant afternoons lines of carriages and
groups of gayly dressed persons went winding
up the steep road which, skirted with ilexes
and pines and mimosa bushes, leads to the
popular promenade of the Pincio. There, if
anywhere, you get a breath of fresh air in the
heated term, and always the most magnificent
view of the city and its environs. There, of
old, were the gardens of Lucullus ; there Mes-
salina, with sinful good taste, had her pleasure-
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 45
house, and held her Saturnalia ; and there, to-
day, the band of Victor Emmanuel plays twice
a week in the sunset, luring thither all the
sunny belles and beaux of Rome. Monte Pin-
cio, as I have said, sloped down on one side to
our garden. On the crest of the hill command-
ing our demesne was a low wall of masonry.
From time to time a killing Roman fop would
come and lean in an elegant attitude against
this wall, nursing himself on the ivory ball
of his cane, and staring unblushingly at the
blonde-haired lady sitting under her own hired
fig-tree in the hotel garden. What a fascinat-
ing creature he was, with his little black mus-
tache, almost as heavy as a pencil mark, his
olive skin, his wide, effeminate eyes, his slen-
der rattan figure, and his cameo sleeve-studs !
What a sad dog he was, to melt into those
languishing postures up there, and let loose
all those facile blandishments, careless of the
heart-break he must inevitably cause the sim-
ple American signora in the garden below!
We used to glance up at this gilded youth from
time to time, and it was a satisfaction to reflect
what an ineffable idiot he was, like all his kind
in every land under the sun.
This was our second sojourn in Rome, and
we had spent two industrious weeks, picking
up the threads of the Past, dropped tempora-
46 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
rily in April in order to run down and explore
Naples before Southern Italy became too hot
to hold us : two busy weeks, into which were
crowded visits to the Catacombs and the Baths
of Caracalla, and excursions on the Campagna
at this time of year a vast red sea of poppies
strewn with the wrecks of ancient tombs ; we
had humiliated our nostrils in strolling through
the Ghetto, and gladdened our eyes daily with
the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aure-
lius in the Piazza del Campidoglio ; we had
made a pilgrimage to the Abbey alle Tre Fon-
tane, and regarded with a proper sense of awe
the three fountains which had gushed forth at
the points where the head of the Apostle Paul
landed, in those three eccentric leaps it accom-
plished after his execution ; we had breathed
the musky air of Santa Maria Maggiore and
the Basilica San Paolo, and once, by chance, on
a minor fete day, lighted on a pretty pageant
in St. John Lateran ; we had looked our fill
of statuary and painting, and jasper and lapis-
lazuli ; we had burrowed under the Eternal
City in crypt and dungeon, and gazed down
upon it from the dizzy Lantern of St. Peter's.
The blighting summer was at hand ; the phan-
tasmal malaria was stalking the Campagna at
night : it was time to go. There was nothing
more to be done in Rome unless we did the
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 47
Roman fever nothing but that, indeed, if we
were not inclined to pay a visit to a Certain
Old Gentleman. This alternative appeared to
have so many advantages over the Roman
fever that it at once took the shape of an irre-
sistible temptation. At least it did to Madama
and me, but the other pilgrim of the party was
of a more reflective mind, and was disposed to
look at the question judicially. He was not
going to call on a Certain Old Gentleman as if
he were a frescoed panel in the Sistine Chapel ;
it was not fair to put a human being on the
same footing as a nameless heathen statue
dug out of the cinders of Pompeii ; the statue
could not complain, and would be quite in the
wrong if it did complain, at being treated as a
curiosity ; but the human being might, and had
a perfect right to protest. H 's objections
to the visit were so numerous and so warmly
put, that Madama and I were satisfied that he
had made up his mind to go.
"However, the gentleman is not averse to
receiving strangers, as I understand it," said
H , imperceptibly weakening.
"On the contrary," I said, "it is one of the
relaxations of his old age, and he is especially
hospitable to our countrymen. A great many
Americans "
"Then let us go, by all means," interrupted
48 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
Madama. "Among the Romans one should
do as Americans do."
"Only much better," I suggested. "I have
sometimes been not proud of my countrymen
on this side of the water. The Delaneys in the
Borghese Gallery, the other day! I almost
longed for the intervention of the Inquisition.
If it had been in Venice and in the fifteenth
century, I 'd have dropped an anonymous com-
munication into the letter-box of the Palace of
the Doges, and had the Council of Ten down
on Miss Fanny Delaney in no time."
"The chances are he is out of town," said
Madama, ignoring my vindictiveness.
" He has a summer residence near Albano,"
said H , " but he never goes there now ;
at least he has not occupied the villa for the
last few years ; in fact, not since 1870."
" Where does he pass his summers, then ? '
asked Madama.
"In Rome."
" How eccentric ! '
" I suppose he has his weak points, like the
rest of us," said H charitably.
" He ought to have his strong points, to en-
dure the summer in Rome, with the malaria,
and the sirocco, and the typhoon, and all the
dreadful things that befall."
" The typhoon, my dear "
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 49
Though the discussion did not end here that
May evening on the steps of the hotel garden,
it ends here in my record ; it being sufficient
for the reader to know that we then and there
resolved to undertake the visit in question. The
scribe of the party despatched a note to Signor
V expressing a desire to pay our respects
to his venerable friend before we left town, and
begging that an early day, if any, be appointed
for the interview. Signor V was an Ital-
ian acquaintance of ours who carried a diplo-
matic key that fitted almost any lock.
We breakfasted betimes, the next morning,
and sat lingering over our coffee, awaiting Sig-
nor V 's reply to our note. The reply had
so impressive an air of not coming that we fell
to planning an excursion to Tivoli, and had
ordered a carriage to that end, when Stefano
appeared, bearing an envelope on his silver-
plated waiter. (I think Stefano was born with
that waiter in his hand ; he never laid it down
for a moment ; if any duty obliged him to use
both hands, he clapped the waiter under his
arm or between his knees ; I used to fancy that
it was attached to his body by some mysterious,
invisible ligament, the severing of which would
have caused his instant dissolution.) Signor
V advised us that his venerable friend
would be gracious enough to receive us that
SO FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
very day at one half -hour after noon. In a post-
script the signor intimated that the gentlemen
would be expected to wear evening dress, mi-
nus gloves, and that it was imperative on the
part of Madama to be costumed completely in
black and to wear only a black veil on her hair.
Such was one of the whims of a Certain Old
Gentleman.
Here a dilemma arose. Among Madama's
wardrobe there was no costume of this lugu-
brious description. The nearest approach to it
was a statuesque black robe, elaborately looped
and covered with agreeable arabesques of tur-
quoise-blue silk. There was nothing to do but
to rip off these celestial trimmings, and they
were ripped off, though it went against the
woman-heart. Poor, vain little silk dress, that
had never been worn, what swift retribution
overtook you for being nothing but artistic, and
graceful, and lovely, and Parisian, which in-
cludes all blessed adjectives!
From the bottom of a trunk in which they
had lain since we left London, H and I ex-
humed our dress-coats. Though perfectly new
(like their amiable sister, the black silk gown),
they came out looking remarkably aged. They
had inexplicable bulges in the back, as if they
had been worn by somebody with six or eight
shoulder-blades, and were covered all over in
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 51
front with minute wrinkles, recalling the famous
portrait of the late Mr. Parr in his hundred and
fiftieth year. H and I got into our creased
elegance with not more intemperate comment
than might be pardoned, and repaired to the
parlor, where we found Madama arranging a
voluminous veil of inky crape over her hair, and
regarding herself in a full-length mirror with
gloomy satisfaction. The carriage was at the
porte cochere, and we departed, stealing silently
through the deserted hotel corridor, and look-
ing for all the world, I imagine, like a couple of
rascally undertakers making off with a nun.
ii
We had been so expeditious in our prepara-
tions that on seating ourselves in the carriage
we found much superfluous time on our hands ;
so we went around Robin Hood's barn to our
destination a delightful method in Rome
taking the Cenci Palace and the Hilda's Tower
of Hawthorne's romance in our impartial sweep,
and stopping at a shop in the Piazza di Spagna,
where Madama purchased an amber rosary for
only about three times as many lire as she
need have paid for it anywhere else on the
globe. If an Italian shopkeeper should be sub-
mitted to a chemical analysis, and his rascality
52 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
carefully separated from the other ingredients
and thrown away, there would be nothing left
of him. I think it is Dumas fils who remarks
that the ancients had but one god for shop-
keepers and thieves.
There were not many persons to be seen in
the streets. It was nearing the hour when
Rome keeps indoors and takes its ease ; be-
sides, it was out of season, as I have stated,
and the Gaul and the Briton, and the Ameri-
can savage with his bowie-knife and revolver,
had struck a trail northward. At the church
portals, to be sure, was the usual percentage
of distressing beggars the old hag out of
Macbeth, who insists on lifting the padded
leather door-screen for you, the one-eyed man,
the one-armed man, the one-legged man, and
other fragments. The poor you have always
with you, in Italy. They lash themselves,
metaphorically, to the spokes of your carriage-
wheel, and go round with you.
Ever since our second arrival in Rome the
population seemed to have been undergoing
a process of evaporation. From the carriage
window we now and then caught sight of a
sandalled monk flitting by in the shadow of a
tall building the sole human thing that ap-
pears to be in a hurry in this stagnant city.
His furtive air betrays his consciousness that
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 53
he is only tolerated where he once ruled nearly
supreme. It is an evil time for him ; his ten-
ure is brief. Now that the government has
unearthed him, he is fading out like a Pom-
peian fresco. As he glides by, there in the
shade, with the aspect of a man belated on
some errand of vital import, I have an idea he
is not going anywhere in particular. Before
these doleful days had befallen the Church of
Rome, every third figure you met was a gray-
cowled friar, or a white-robed Dominican, or a
shovel-hatted reverend father looking like a
sharp raven ; but they all are rare birds now,
and, for the most part, the few that are left
stick to their perches in the stricken, mouldy
old monasteries and convents, shedding their
feathers and wasting away hour by hour, the
last of the brood !
In the vicinity of Trajan's Column we en-
countered a bewildered-looking goatherd, who
had strayed in from the Campagna, perhaps
with some misty anticipation that the Emperor
Nero had a fresh lot of choice Christians to be
served up that day in the arena of the Coli-
seum. I wondered if this rustic wore those
pieces of hairy goatskin laced to his calves in
July and August. It threw one into a perspi-
ration to look at him. But I forgave him on
inspection, for with his pointed hat, through an
54 FROM PONKAPOG TO FESTH
aperture of which his hair had run to seed, and
his scarlet sash, and his many-colored tattered
habiliments, he was the only bit of picturesque
costume we saw in Rome. Picturesque cos-
tume is a thing of the past there, except those
fraudulent remains of it that hang about the
studios in the Via Margutta, or at the steps of
the Trinita de' Monti, on the shoulders of pro-
fessional models.
Even the Corso was nearly deserted and
quite dull this day, and it is scarcely gay when
it is thronged, as we saw it early in the spring.
Possibly it is lively during the Carnival. It
would need masking and music and illumina-
tion to lift its gloom, in spite of its thousand
balconies. The sense of antiquity and the
heavy, uncompromising architecture of Rome
oppress one painfully until one comes to love
her. My impression of Rome is something so
solid and tangible that I have felt at times as
if I could pack it in a box, like a bas-relief, or
a statue, or a segment of a column, and send
it home by the Cunard line. Compared with
the airiness and grace and color of other Con-
tinental cities, Rome is dull. The arcades of
Bologna and the dingy streets of Verona and
Padua are not duller.
If I linger by the way, and seem in no haste
to get to a Certain Old Gentleman, it is be-
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 55
cause the Roman atmosphere has in it some
medicinal property that induces reverie and
procrastination, and relaxes the sinews of effort.
I wonder where Caligula found the enterprise
to torture his victims, and Brutus the vivacity
to stab Caesar.
Our zigzag route brought us back to the
Piazza del Popolo, from which we turned into
the Via Ripetta on the left, and rattled over
the stone pavement past the Castle of St. An-
gelo, towards St. Peter's. It was not until the
horses slackened their speed, and finally stood
still in a spacious cortile at the foot of a wide
flight of stone steps, that our purpose dropped
a certain fantastic aspect it had worn, and be-
came a serious if not a solemn business. Not-
withstanding our deliberations over the matter
at the hotel, I think I had not fully realized
that in proposing to visit a Certain Old Gentle-
man we were proposing to visit the Pope of
Rome. 1 The proposition had seemed all along
like a piece of mild pleasantry, as if one should
say, " I think I '11 drop round on Titus Flavins
in the course of the forenoon," or "I Ve half a
mind to look in on Cicero and Pompey, and see
1 Since this chapter was written, Pius IX., Cardinal Anto-
nelli, and King Victor Emmanuel have laid down the burden
of life. These distinguished personages seem to have con-
spired to render my record obsolete.
56 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
how they feel this morning after their little dis-
sipation last night at the villa of Lucullus."
The Pope of Rome not the Pope regnant,
but the Pope of Rome in the abstract had
up to that hour presented himself to my men-
tal eye as an august spectacular figure-head,
belonging to no particular period, who might
turn out after all to be an ingenious historical
fiction perpetrated by the same humorist that
invented Pocahontas. The Pope of Rome !
he had been as vague to me as Adam and
as improbable as Noah.
But there stood Signor V at the carriage-
step, waiting to conduct us into the Vatican,
and there, on either side of the portals at the
head of the massive staircase, lounged two of
the papal guard in that jack-of -diamonds cos-
tume which Michelangelo designed for them
in the way of a practical joke, I fancy. They
held halberds in their hands, these mediaeval
gentlemen, and it was a mercy they did n't
chop us to pieces as we passed between them.
What an absurd uniform for a man-at-arms of
the nineteenth century ! These fellows, clad
in rainbow, suggested a pair of harlequins out
of a Christmas pantomime. Farther on we
came to more stone staircase, and more stupid
papal guard with melodramatic battle-axes, and
were finally ushered into a vast, high-studded
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 57
chamber at the end of a much-stuccoed corri-
dor.
Coming as we did out of the blinding sun-
shine, this chamber seemed to us at first but a
gloomy cavern. It was so poorly lighted by
numerous large windows on the western side
that several seconds elapsed before we could
see anything distinctly. One or two additional
windows would have made it quite dark. At the
end of the apartment, near the door at which
we had entered, was a dais with three tawdry
rococo gilt armchairs, having for background an
enormous painting of the Virgin, but by what
master I was unable to make out. The drape-
ries of the room were of some heavy dark stuff,
a green rep, if I remember, and the floor was
covered with a thick carpet through which the
solid stone flagging beneath repelled the pres-
sure of your foot. There was a singular ab-
sence of color everywhere, of that mosaic work
and Renaissance gilding with which the eyes
soon become good friends in Italy. The fres-
coes of the ceiling, if there were any frescoes,
were in some shy neutral tint, and did not in-
troduce themselves to us. On the right, at the
other extremity of the room, was a double door,
which led, as we were correct in supposing, to
the private apartments of the Pope.
Presently our eyes grew reconciled to the
$8 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
semi-twilight, which seemed to have been trans-
ported hither with a faint spicy odor of incense
from some ancient basilica a proper enough
light for an audience-chamber in the Vatican.
Fixed against the wall on either side, and ex-
tending nearly the entire length of the room,
was a broad settee, the greater part of which
was already occupied when we entered. For-
merly women were not allowed a public audi-
ence with the Pope. Madame Junot, in giving
in her Me"moires an account of her interview
with Pius VII., says : " Whenever a woman is
presented to the Pope, it must be so managed
as to have the appearance of accident. Wo-
men are not admitted into the Vatican, but his
Holiness permits them to be presented to him
in the Sistine Chapel, or in his promenades.
But the meeting must always appear to be the
effect of chance." I do not know when this
custom fell into desuetude ; possibly long before
the reign of Pius IX. The majority of the
persons now present were women.
Signer V stationed himself at our side,
and began a conversation with H on the
troubles that had overtaken and the perils that
still menaced the True Church. The disinte-
gration of nunneries and monasteries and the
closing up of religious houses had been fraught
with much individual suffering. Hundreds of
FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH 59
simple, learned men had been suddenly thrust
out into a world of which they had no know-
ledge and where they were as helpless as so
many infants. In some instances the govern-
ment had laid hands on strictly private proper-
ties, on funds contributed by private persons to
establish asylums for women of noble birth in
reduced circumstances portionless daughters
and cousins desirous of leading a life of pious
meditation and seclusion. Many of these in-
stitutions possessed enormous revenues, and
were strong temptations to the Italian govern-
ment, whose money-chest gave out a patheti-
cally hollow sound when tapped against in
1870. One does not need to be a Catholic to
perceive the injustice of this kind of seizure;
one's sympathy may go forth with the unhoused
nuns : as to the monks it does not hurt any
man to earn his own living. The right and
the necessity to work ought to be regarded as
a direct blessing from God by men who, for
these many centuries, have had their stomachs
"with good capon lined," chiefly at the expense
of the poor.
Conversation had become general ; every one
spoke in a subdued tone, and a bee-like hum
rose and fell on the air. With the exception of
a neat little body, with her husband, at our
right, the thirty or forty persons present were
60 FROM PONKAPOG TO PESTH
either French, German, English, Russian, or
Italian.
I remarked to Signor V on the absence
of the American element, and attributed it to
the lateness of the season.
"That does not wholly explain it," said Sig-
nor V . " There were numberless applica-