Wf-rMWtA^fi -t'lwwaMSSHWMiiwMwnmiMj V CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ..fJj'jNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRA ^1924 082 144 415 DATE DUE ''^C'ii -f - *''' ''**r^"5H ^^fff"***"^ •^^^a IMTTDI W -f^M "» i-trflfLU JRAR y ~ GAYLORD PRINTED IN U S A ITALIAN YESTERDAYS VOL. I 1 /) Imj Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924082144415 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS BY MRS. HUGH ERASER Author of " A Diplomatist's Wife in Japan," " A Diplomatist's Wife in Many Lands," " Reminiscences of a Diplomatist's Wife," etc. VOL. I NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY Copyright, 191 3, Bv DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY Published November, 1913 Sl'P / CONTENTS OF VOL. I CHAPTER I TAGE Impressions of Early Rome i Romance and Companionship of the Past — ^Rome the Supremely Beloved — Pictures and Legends of Her Origin — Migration of the Alban Shepherds — ^Romulus and Remus — Etruria's Civili- sation — Whole World Contributes to Rome's Growth — Brilliant Scenes in the Roman World — ^Rome's High Destiny — Numa Fompilius, the Law-giver — ^Egeria's Grotto — ^Love Story of Herodes Atticus and Annia Regilla — Early Christianity. CHAPTER II Reminiscences of Modern Rome i8 Rome's Seasons — Childhood Memories of a Roman Spring — My Birthday Festival — ^A Day in the Country — The Appian Way — Rome's Great Wall — ^An Adventure with the Campagna Steers — Campagna Sheep-Dogs — Early Morning Street Scenes — ^The Giardino Colonna — Secluded Italian Gardens — Inroads of Commercialism — Discovery of a Dream-Garden of the Renaissance — Song of the Nightingale in the Lost Italian Garden. CHAPTER III Last Days of the Apostles 34 St. Peter's First Visit to Rome — Wide Scope of His Work — Rome Destined to Become the Seat of Ecclesiastical Government — St. Peter's Early Converts — Persecution of the Jews — Life in the Catacombs — Simon Magus and St. Peter — Peter's Return to Rome — Nero's Slaughter of Christians — Peter's Vision — " Lord, Whither Goest Thou ? " — Preparation for Martyrdom — ^Last Epistle — St. Peter's Successor — Imprisonment of St. Peter and St. Paul — Scenes of Final Tragedy — Crucifixion of Peter — ^Paul Beheaded — Devotion of Their Followers. CHAPTER IV Roman Yesterdays 51 The Gods of the Roman World — Leaven of Christianity — Meas- ures of the Emperors Against the Christians— Nine General CONTENTS PAGE Persecutions — Mad Extremes of Heliogabalus — Rescue of the Bodies of the Apostles — Tragic History of the Appian Way — The Joys of Solitude — How Marion Crawford Became the Master of San Niccola — A Solitude of Relaxation and Quiet^A Secluded Garden on the River in Rome — The Contrasts of Life and the Happiness in Hoping — An Artists' Festival — How a Roman Emperor Looked. CHAPTER V A Feudal Villa 64 Ancient Beauty of Villa Borghese — A Sylvan Siesta — The Wood- land of the Borghese — The Heart of the Trees — The Borghese Anemone — Vintage Time in the Grape Countries — Tuscany, an Atmosphere of Purity and Calm — Bunches of Grapes Two Feet Long — Muscatels of Etruria — October Festivals at the Villa Borghese — Peasants of the Coast Towns — Picturesque Costume of the Albanese — Feast in the Private Garden — Fountains of Wine — Classic Chariot Races — The Passing of the Feudal System. CHAPTER VI A Church Pilgrimage 79 Church's Pilgrimage on the Feast of the Apostles — The Seven Commemorative Churches — The Byzantine Basilica of St. Paul — The Apostle's Tomb — Ostian Way, the Saddest of All Roads — The Tideless Sea — Call of the Unknown, Gorgeous East — Santa Pudentiana, the Site of St. Paul's First Abiding Place in Rome — Christianity in Early Rome — ^Priest Pastor's Story of the Pudens Family — Holy Relics — Story of the Crime of the Vico Scellerato — The Last of the Roman Kings. CHAPTER VII The Later Emperors 94 People and Scenes of the Corso — The Collegio Romano — Cardinal Merry del Val — Church of the Trinita dei Monti — ^A Picture of the Emperor Theodosius and His Son — The Other Boy Emperor, Gratian — The Usurper, Maximus — Nobility of Gratian — Finally Overcome by Treachery — Saint Ambrose — Fifth Day at St. Peter of the Chains— Two Christian Em- presses — The Miracle of the Chains — High Mass at San Pietro — Latter Days of the Pilgrimage — View from Janiculura Hill — Michelangelo and Vasari — Michelangelo's " Visiting Card." CHAPTER VIII The End of the Pilgrimage . 118 Final Function of the Pilgrimage — St. John Lateran — A Daring Climb— A Story of St. Francis of^ Assisi— Dante's Tribute — vi CONTENTS PAGE Rome's Ghetto — ^Yellow Banksia Roses — Fair on the Eve of the Feast of St. John the Baptist — Early Figs — St. Anthony and the Sucking Pig — ^Rome's Studios — A Picture of Hubert's — Hamon's Work. CHAPTER IX St. Cecilia 136 Persecution Result of Covetousness — Steady Growth of Chris- tianity — Story of Saint Cecilia — Dress of a Patrician Woman — A Roman Marriage — Cecilia's Consecration — ^Apparition of St. Paul — Cecilia's Guardian Angel — Conversion of Tvyo Roman Nobles — Slaughter of Christians — A Declaration of Faith — Condemnation of the Nobles. CHAPTER X Martyrdom of St. Cecilia 154 A Glorious Martyrdom — A Vision of Heaven — The Bodies of the Martyrs — Prefect Incensed Against St. Cecilia — Preparation for Death — Her Trial — Her Victory and Martyrdom — The Miracle of Her Three Days' Ministering — Pinal Honours — Martyrdom of St. Urban and His Companions — Cecilia's Place Among Martyrs — Her Tomb in the Catacombs — Pope Paschal's Vision of St. Cecilia — Cecilia's Restoration to Her Own Church — History of Her Church — The Second Finding of Her Body — Her Statue. CHAPTER XI The Church UNDER CoNSTANTiNE 181 Constantine's Edict — St. Sylvester, the Friend of Constantine — Refuge at Soracte — The Emperor's Vision — " In Hoc Vinces " — Constantine's Baptism — ^The Church Has Peace — Helena's Basilica — The Blessing of the Golden Rose — Origin of St. Peter's — ^The Obelisk from Heliopolis — ^Testimony of the Dust of the Martyrs — The Place of the Shock of Horses — ^The Beauty of St. Peter's — ^Pilgrims from Britain — Charlemagne, the Blessed. CHAPTER XII Story of Alaric 199 Pursuit of the Ideal — ^Alaric, the Friend of Theodosius — Theo- dosius' Dream — ^The Victory at the Birnbauraer Wald — De- fection of Alaric — Pictures of the Plundering of Rome— Marcella and Principia — St. Peter's Treasures — Plans Against Africa — Alaric's Death and Last Resting-place. vii CONTENTS FACE CHAPTER XIII The Sphinx of French History 212 The Battleground of Europe— The Riddle of " The Man in the Iron Mask"— Its True Story— Louis XIV's Ambition in Italy — ^Plot to Secure Casale — Character of Charles, Duke of Man- tua — Count Mattioli, His Favourite — Terms of the Transfer — Mission of the Count to Paris — Conclusion of the Treaty — Mattioli's Double Dealing — Ominous Delays — The. Storm Breaks. CHAPTER XIV [Truth of the Iron Mask 226 Mattioli's Betrayal of Louis XIV — Participation of Duke Charles — Louis' True Character Exhibited to World — Abduction of Mattioli — Imprisoned for Fifteen Years — Insanity — Story of the Mask — Mattioli's Disappearance No Mystery — Explanation of the Riddle— Mattioli's Hardships— His End. CHAPTER XV A " Cause Celebre " 236 The Defrene Case, a Drama of Crime and of Justice — ^The Marquis Defrene — Marie-Elizabeth du Tillay — Elopement — Bogus Marriage — Flight to England — Marriage Made Legal — The Marquis Tires of the Marriage State — Evil Plans — Marie-Elizabeth Forewarned — ^Adventures of Her Flight — The "Penitent" Defrene — Compromising Letters — The Vindication of Marie-Elizabeth — A Judicial Separation. CHAPTER XVI EUSTOCHIA 249 A Child of Sin — ^Born 1444 — Her Early Peculiarities — ^Physical Possession by Evil Spirits — Sent to a Convent — A Life of De- votion — Eustochia a Novitiate — A Supernatural Accident — Belief that She Was a Hypocrite — ^Resignation — The Evil Spirit in Possession — Frightful Torments — Evil Portents — A Sorceress? — Imprisonment — ^Persecutions by Invisible Powers — ^Regaining Good Esteem — ^A Nun — Her Sanctity and Constancy — Her Death and Burial. CHAPTER XVII A Sketch of Verona 270 Personality of Italian Towns — Verona — Its History — Early Years — ^Ezzelino da Romano, Unique in Cruelty — Wholesale viii CONTENTS FACE Execution and Imprisonment — ^Pope Alexander IV Assails the Monster — Ezzelino Wounded and Captured — Suicide — New Line of Despots — Cangrande della Scala — Dante and Petrarch — Further Lords of Verona — Later History — ^The Drei Kaiser Bund. CHAPTER XVIII The Bravi of Venice 288 Fascination of Venice's Criminal Administration — ^Lords of the Night — Secret Detectives — Degeneration of Republic — Hired Ruffians — Their Murderous Activities — An Escapade of Pesaro, Paragon of Bravi — Gambara, Last of the Despots — Open War Against Lavp and Order — Final Pardon. CHAPTER XIX Legendary Venice 298 Venice, Bride of the Sea — Its Glorious Children — ^Pledge of the Crown of Thorns — The Miracle of Saint Saba's Relics — Intel- lectual Humility and Faith — St. Mark, Patron of the Venetians — ^Theft of the Saint's Remains from Alexandria — ^Reception in Venice — Early History — Tales of Hardships — ^The Gate of the Damsels — Legends of the Saint. CHAPTER XX A Doge's Life 311 A Wicked Son — Becomes Doge — His Marriage — ^Ambitions — Venice a Huge Conspiracy — The Palace Surrounded — His Fate — Venetian Ideals — Story of a Feud of the Tenth Century — Opened with an Assassination — Murderer Upheld by the Em- peror — Venice Attacked — A Civil War in Venice — Uprising of the Citizens — ^Another Doge — Building of St. Mark's — The Doge and the French Abbot — The Doge Become a Monk — ^A Story of Marion Crawford's. CHAPTER XXI " The Wedding of the Sea " 324 Origin — Venice's Growth — ^Treaties with the Emperor — Pietro Orseolo Annihilates the Pirates — Welcome on His Return — Story of Marco Polo — A Trader with the East — A Strange Journey — Bokhara — Capital of Kublai Khan — Impressed with Chris- tian Ideals — Return Journey — At Home in Venice — Failure of Plans to Convert the Tartars — ^Again in the Far East — Lost for Twenty-five Years — ^Return to Venice with Vast Wealth — A Gorgeous Banquet — Marco's Rehabilitation — ^Ruskin and the Church. ix CONTENTS PACE CHAPTER XXII War with Genoa 335 Supernatural Recovery of the Apostle's Body — Ruskin's Account , — Origin of the War — Early Life of Carlo Zeno — His Conquests — Governor of a Province in Greece — Return to Venice — ^Ad- ventures at Constantinople — Escape of Zeno — Tenedos Becomes Venetian — Attack of the Genoese — Their Repulse — Carlo's Popu- larity in Venice — Pisani's Career — Carlo Routs the Genoese — Peace — Carlo's Fame — His Visit to Jerusalem — ^Last Scuffle with the Genoese — ^Life in Venice. INTRODUCTION IT has not been easy to find a title for the collection of memories, personal and otherwise, which this book con- tains, but I hope that the reader will feel that in calling it " Italian Yesterdays," I have honestly tried to describe its contents. Recollections of my own experiences have found a place beside the stories and legends of saints and sinners long passed away from the land where they played their parts, — some virtuous, some infamous,' but all notable and worth remembering for the glory or the tragedy of their lives. I have sometimes thought that we modern people scarcely know how rich we are, how many and how choice the treasures that History has de- vised to us, and which, for the most part, lie unclaimed in her storehouses. And I have hoped, in opening some of them, to induce others to seek out for themselves and make their own some of the wonderful tales of love and valour which shine at us from the pages, not only of the old books, but from those which the writers of our own day have so wisely and lovingly compiled for us. In this connection I must acknowledge my own indebtedness es- pecially to Hodgkin, Dill, Montalembert, Dom Gue- ranger, Hazlitt, and Coletta, historians who, each from his own point of view, make the past really live before our eyes. For the incidents connected with Pius IX., no better book can be found than " Rome, its Ruler and its Insti- tutions," by J. Maguire. In regard to subjects outside the range of the writers I have mentioned, it is almost im- possible to give my references, as they cover many scat- xi INTRODUCTION tered records not easily accessible to the public; but the stories, strange as some of them appear, are all real ones, very carefully collated and verified. This seems the right place for the withdrawal of a statement printed in my last book, " Reminiscences of a Diplomatist's Wife "; and since the recantation removes a stain from a memory which I have already been forced to treat none too gently, I make it with great willingness. I said that Mr. Nathan, the Mayor of Rome, was the son of Mazzini. The statement has been sharply corrected, both by Mr. Nathan himself and by a well-known Eng- lish writer who was Mazzini's intimate friend. Misled by what I must call at least a widely accepted impression, I evidently fell into a grave error, for which I now wish to tender my apologies to the memory of the dead, and the expression of my sincere regret to the living, whose sus- ceptibilities I have wounded on this delicate point. Mary Crawford Fraser. October, /9/j. XU CHAPTER I IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME Romance and Companionship of the Past — Rome the Supremely Beloved — Pictures and Legends of Her Origin — Migration of the Alban Shep- herds — ^Romulus and Remus — Etruria's Civilisation — Whole World Contributes to Rome's Growth — Brilliant Scenes in the Roman World — Rome's High Destiny — Numa Pompilius, the Law-giver — Egeria's Grotto — Love Story of Herodes Atticus and Annia Regilla — Early Christianity. IT has always seemed to me that one of the most per- fect experiences within the grasp of mortals would be that of a child brought up in seclusion by an adored parent, only known to its heart and mind as such — and to find, on reaching maturity and coming out into the world, that the beloved one was the ruler of a mighty empire, venerated and feared by millions of men. How that knowledge would transfigure and ennoble the memo- ries of childhood, of the protecting companionship be- stowed, the being rocked to sleep in those strong arms, of the sunny play-hours of childhood's day watched by those wise and loving eyes! All this was Rome to me, through many a long year before the doors were opened and the glory of her was made known to my mind. Then the old indulgent com- radeship, accessible to every mood of youthful joy and sorrow, became tinged with awe and yet was doubly cher- ished; it grew a thousand times more precious, yet, like some holy relic that one wraps in silk and gold, had to be enshrined with other sacrednesses in the sanctuaries of memory. One was no longer Rome's careless child, ITALIAN YESTERDAYS to whom all her yesterdays were playthings of equal value with her wild flowers of to-day. She called — and there was no disobeying the new command. The nursery door was closed forever, and one took one's place silently and gladly in the last, lowest rank of her subjects and soldiers. From that moment one began to learn, weakly and Im- perfectly, it Is true. At first the greatness of the new knowledge overwhelmed one. I remember writing to the great French Prelate who received me Into the Church, that I felt like a beggar suddenly admitted into the palace of his King, dazzled with the warmth and splendour, yet utterly ignorant of which way to turn or how to comport himself in those august surroundings. I fancy others have experienced the like bewilderment, and happy they, if they fell Into such wise and loving hands as those which were held out to me and finally helped me to fix on a study which, far from making the most serious of all subjects dry and unattractive, enriched it with the warm- est touches of human feeling — the holy glory of the true romance. Such study, such reading. Is really within reach of all In these days of almost universal translation and simplifi- cation; but so many know nothing of how to obtain the right books — so many, indeed, are utterly unconscious that there is anything to know beyond the few distorted facts doled out in non-Catholic schools, that even the most unassuming effort to share these riches with them may be useful and welcome. Modern life is apt to be a dry, unflowery affair, but that is because our own lazi- ness of mind permits it to become so. If we choose to take the past, it is ours; and I defy any one to claim his inheritance therein and not find a heart-warming IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME thought, a refreshment and a fragrance for every mo- ment of solitude, a chapter of high romance for every day of the long, working year ! A romance must be a love story, and of all the love stories of time, that of Rome is the most marvellous. Certain girl children, we are told, were born so beautiful that, like Helen of Troy, Lucrezia Borgia — and she whose soul was of equal loveliness with what the chronicler calls " the supreme and royal beauty " of her body, Saint Radegonde, Queen of France, they were pas- sionately loved, passionately defended, passionately sung, from the hour of their birth. And Rome, from the hour when the first hut was built on the right bank of the yet nameless river, when the stones of her first low wall wrote her name on that predestined soil, has been loved with a personal passion that has not its like in the world's history. So, we know, she will be loved to the end. The very hatreds that have attacked her, the cataclysms that have exhausted themselves in attempts to annihilate her, the cupidity and treachery that have bargained for her whom no price can buy, no hand of man can hold, all testify to the desire of the nations to call her theirs. Above and beyond the clamours of earth, she pursues her im- mortal destiny, " mother of all earth's orphans " as Byron called her, the nurse of every noble and humble soul, the home and property of the poorest, most ignorant Catho- lic — but no man's henchwoman, no King's chattel; now as in the past, and till earth's last sunrise, the true mis- tress of the world. Could she be less, marked at her birth for empire, first of nations and then of souls ? What has not been brought to her by tribute humanity since nature bore her in flame and upheaval, cradled her in sunshine and nurtured her 3 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS with balm ? Looking at her to-day and remembering her past, what wonderful pictures are unrolled before our eyes 1 Let us go back to the first of which history speaks, and call up the time when the nameless river flowed past the yet nameless hills that were to become the judgment seats of the world. Standing on the outer rim of the Pincian terrace, watching the primrose die to grey after a sunset in spring, I have gazed over towards St. Peter's and tried to see the land as it looked to Rome's builders, the shepherds who fled hither from their ruined homes in the Alban Hills and halted on the southern side of the yellow river, unbridged and unnamed as yet. For it was surely the river that stayed their panic flight only eighteen miles from where the twin volcanoes had vomited fire from the craters that are now the limpid lakes of Nemi and Albano. Though near, the spot seemed safe for the first night. Doubtless they told each other that the next day they would find a ford and travel twice as far again to the low, dark line of the Cimmerian Hills to the northward. But here, at any rate, was herbage and water for the sheep and kine they had saved, and unbroken solitude, where, under the rough skin canopy spread from bough to bough, the women — the few who had found strength to travel — could nurse their babies and sleep for one night unmolested by hostile tribes. So they rested, the younger men keeping watch by the two or three campfires built to scare away the wolves and foxes. And the morning came, a morning of March, with a leap of the sun from behind the Sabine ramparts, and the dew pearled on oak and wild olive branch overhead, on moss and fern beneath, with the little wild almond trees on the slopes across the river snowy with newly burst 4 IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME blossoms, while the first lark soared up towards the sun- shot blue in an ecstasy of song, and the swallows, just back from the shores of Africa, wheeled lower and lower and darted upward again, with angry cries, when they found their last year's home invaded by men and beasts. They made friends with men's dwellings later, and, for- getting the crannies of the woodlands, have built in the eaves of palaces for many a century now, but I take it that in swallow sagas those first traditions have been winged down and are still twittered about, with due respect, when the patriarchs hold their sky conclaves in the autumn and the spring, and drill the fledglings for three weeks before the great semestral migration. From where the tired shepherds had halted on the high land to the southeast of the river, the empty cradle of unborn Rome would look very fair in the clear spring morning, and but short debate must have decided, for those men of few words, that here the gods meant them to stay. So here, as we can still trace, Romulus, the wolf's nursling, marked (after enquiring of the wise men of Etruria as to the commands of the gods concerning the foundation of a city) the lines for his wall, ploughing, as the legend says, with white Campagna steers, on his chosen hill the Palatine, where the new altar, raised over a pit in which the first-fruits of the year and a handful of soil from each man's former home had been buried, already sent up clouds of incense into the sweet spring air on that memorable 2ist of April, 754 B.C. And Remus, his twin, wolf-nursed like him, was angry that his own hill, the Aventine, had not been awarded the honours, mocked at his brother's commands, and sprang across the mystic furrow, to be instantly slain by Celer, Romulus' faithful henchman, thus conferring the baptism 5 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS of human blood which almost till our own times was pre- scribed by necromancers as the only means of rendering great strongholds stable and impregnable. It is strange to find that from the very birthday of Rome she knew how to levy tribute of the higher kind from other nations. When the frightened Alban shep- herds, mostly men little regarded heretofore in the rich city of Alba Longa, spread their skin tents and then threw up their windowless cane huts on the banks of the Tiber, Etruria, a few score of miles to the north, possessed a written language, learned hierophants, bold and scien- tific architects, full-grown arts of surpassing beauty, mar- ble amphitheatres, great cities supplied with indefectible streams of pure water, and a costly and complicated sys- tem of drainage. Rome sends humble enquiries to Etruria, beseeching to be taught how to address and pro- pitiate the great gods. Etruria gladly condescends to reply, and in a given time, though not without much strife and bloodshed, Etruria becomes first a tributary and then a vassal of the adolescent Empress of the world, who, through all the centuries of her after history, repeats that requisition. Rough, practical, hard-handed, and strong, yet avid of beauty, she will have all that is fairest and most precious. Her Art consisted in appreciation; she resolved to possess; the world had to be conquered to give her what she desired, but the world gave — Greece her sculpture and painting and poetry, the Orient its silks and jewels and spices, the South its gold and grain, its wild beasts and hordes of slaves, the North Its furs and warriors, the West its granite and lead; the seas swarmed with her laden fleets, and the whole known world became a vast diagram of white converging roads choked with spoils for Rome. 6 IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME What strange sights those roads must have seen when the long camel trains came plodding through from Persia with their escort of black-bearded, ringletted merchants, raising whirlwinds of dust and eliciting strings of curses from the fair-haired drivers of ox-teams from Gaul, draw- ing huge loads of fruit and wine to Roman markets! There the vendors of jewels, keen-eyed Jews and Syrians, armed to the teeth, had to draw aside angrily for the passage of bulky wares which one gem from the tiny silk- wrapped packet in their bosoms would have paid for ten times over; here comes a richly draped litter with armed horsemen in attendance — a great noble's wife? No, only a beautiful woman being carried to the slave market where she will fetch the highest price. Suddenly a solitary horse- man dashes through the throng at break-neck pace, heed- less of the death his steed's hoofs may deal. Shall the Caesar's despatches wait for the safety of the common herd? With perhaps eight or nine hundred miles of road to cover in a given time, the Imperial messenger sees nothing, knows nothing, but his goal and the shortest way to it. How they rode — those express messengers ! There are many wild rides on record, but for swiftness and perseverance I think that of the benevolent Roman official Cassarius, hastening from Antioch to Constantino- ple to intercede for the guilty Antiocheans, is the most wonderful. I believe it is Theodoret who attests to the fact that he covered the distance of nearly eight hundred miles through two ranges of mountains and over much broken country, in six days ! Many a century had to pass before all roads could lead to Rome, but, while the city was still a mere fortified ham- let, one spot took on the character which it has kept through the ages and will keep till the last day. Looking 7 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS over to the further bank of the river, the builders on the Palatine could see, as we see to-day, when the sun has sunk in the west, a long dark ridge rising like a wall to shut out the lower crimson of the sky. It was wooded then, with oak and pine, though now there is but one tree left, the " Doria pine," to mark where the forest grew. The ridge sunk at its northern extremity, in Irregular un- dulations, heavily wooded and mysteriously dark, and these connected it with a chain of low hills which stretched away along the river's bank till they were lost In the mist of the Campagna. The higher ridge very early took on the name of Mons Janlculum; the further hills were more or less nameless till the Renaissance : but the bosky stretch between the two was regarded from the first as sacred ground. Why, one can scarcely say, except for its solitude and its cloistered verdure. Looking towards it now, one asks oneself if there was indeed a time when those who gazed westward from the city's ramparts at evening, did not behold, across the sea of mist that lays twilight on the streets while the heights are still bathed in go.ld, that immortal outline of a dome, dark, delicate, and definite, between them and the setting sun ? A time when the soil that bears It held only the oaks and ilexes of the grove where the " Vates," the unapproachable hierophants of high, half-known gods, prayed and prophesied according to their lights? Where the common people came, not too close, and paused, hushed and trembling, under the great trees, to learn the wills and ways of the gods? How gladly they must have sped back, ere night fell, across the one bridge, to their safe, crowded homes within the walls, to lean together across the olive-wood fire and speak in whispers of the oracles they had heard, while the baby rolled naked on 8 IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME the soft goatskin, and the brown-legged youngsters sat on their haunches, sniffing at the goat's meat bubbling in the caldron on the hook, and the good wife brought out the fern basket of snowy cheese and washed the crisp fennel roots on the doorstep ! Were they merely men of their hands, those first Romans, thinking more of com- fort and safety than of anything else? A writer who could surely speak with authority tells us that from the first the people of Rome itself have been innately reli- gious, always conscious or subconscious of their city's destiny. Surely to one, here and there, in some porten- tous dawn or brooding twilight, the figure of things to be was cast up against the sky I Did >not the slowly- moving clouds sometimes pause over that low ridge in the west, to mass themselves in the likeness of a dome, the stars sink down from their courses to foreshadow the gold of a cross? The Mons Vaticanus, low, and excluded from the city limits, was never reckoned one of the seven hills; of all the Roman district it was considered the least healthy part, the land being swampy and subject, on its lowest levels, to the periodical incursions of the river. The " Vates," versed as they were in all wisdoms, doubtless discovered means by which to preserve themselves from malaria, for this continued to be their sanctuary, if not their home, for many generations. After the Romans had, at the prayer of their stolen Sabine wives, become reconciled with the men of Sabina — and, in true Roman fashion, first given them part in the land and invited them to assist in government, and then taken them on as mas- ters — the great Sabine Judge-King, Numa Pompilius, established himself among the Vatican groves to coippile his books of laws. There he wrote, there he died, and ITALIAN YESTERDAYS there was buried, commanding that his precious volumes should have a separate tomb near his own. " A man's works hve after him;" the site of Numa's tomb was mere guess-work, his very existence was scoffed at as a myth, by progressive historians, till accident revealed the still intact sepulchre of his cherished writings, precisely on the spot marked by tradition for some twenty-five centu- ries. The good law-giver was one of the revered reali- ties of my childhood; with sorrow I saw his memory cast away, when I grew up, on the ever-growing scrap-heap of condemned myths, where the iconoclasts of history throw everything that does not fit in to their small neat conceptions; he has come back to me in these later years, and how welcome the towering luminous figure that hov- ered so protectingly over my early mind pictures of infant Rome! One point in his history always puzzled me, the great distance between his home across the Tiber and the grotto where Egeria, the heavenly nymph, instructed him in wis- dom. That lay in a fold of the Cslian Hill, and the en- tire length of the city has to be traversed to reach it from the Vatican. I used to weave many fairy tales for myself about Egeria when, as children, we were taken to spend the day in the lovely spot then known as her " Grotto," and so exquisitely described by Byron in " Childe Harold " that there seems nothing left for ordinary mortals to tell about it. But — I will take the risk of appearing pre- sumptuous and say that one factor was wanting to Byron for the task — he was not born a Roman, and his sad childhood, unlike my own, held no memories of paradisial hours of play and dreaming round the hallowed fountain, and in the sacred grove. For sacred the spot remains, although we know now lo IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME that it was not, as men thought for many centuries, Egeria's grotto and Egeria's grove, but the shrine and monument of a merely human love, very strong and pure, the love of a husband mourning a good wife and vowing to perpetuate her memory in beauty and charity. Since this book is not for the learned, but for those who, tread- ing the busy walks of modern life, have no time to pore over history and its romances, I will venture to tell again the story of this true lover. During the short reign of Nerva (96-98 A.D.), an Athenian gentleman, named Hipparchus, fell into disgrace with the still very Greek government of his native city. I do not know the origin of the trouble, but Athens always dealt rather capriciously with her great ones, and we may infer that the great wealth of Hipparchus had aroused envy in his less fortunate fellow-citizens. His entire for- tune was confiscated, nothing being left to him but an apparently worthless plot of ground near the Acropolis. This ground his son, Atticus, undertook with philosophical patience to cultivate, so as to provide some food for the impoverished family. To his amazement the furrow in- tended to produce leeks and cabbages revealed a hidden treasure of gold, buried there in some forgotten stress of past ages, and so abundant that the young man, after his first joy of surprise, was filled with terror. The discovery was portentous and the revulsion of feel- ing almost too much for a mortal to bear. However, he had presence of mind enough to keep the thing secret from all but his own family. One can fancy how, in the blue Athenian morning, he hastily threw the earth and stones back over the precious find, and, abandoning spade and ploughshare, went home to take counsel as to his con- duct in regard to it. Did the old man, Hipparchus, die II ITALIAN YESTERDAYS of joy on hearing of his good fortune? It may have been so, for at this point he disappears from the story and returns no more. Atticus remains in possession, but such hazardous possession ! If his fellow-citizens heard of the treasure, they would wrest Lt from him; if the Emperor learnt of it, he, as lord of all soil of the Empire, had the right to claim it for himself. To enjoy it on the spot or to remove it in secret was equally impossible, and Atticus wisely decided to throw himself on the well-known generosity of the Emperor. So he sent him word that he had discovered a fortune on his land, and humbly asked to be directed as to the disposal of it. The Emperor, too busy to give the subject much thought, or else pleased with the man's honesty, replied that he could use it as he liked. But this casual authorisation was not enough to calm the fears of Atticus. Once more he wrote to Nerva, saying that the treasure was too great for the use of a private person and that he entreated the Em- peror to make known his will in regard to it. This time he received a most explicit answer, to the effect that his own good fortune had bestowed the gift upon him and that he was to " use what he could, and abuse the rest." Thus fortified in his rights, Atticus did use his wealth royally, and bequeathed it to his own son, Herodes Atticus, who, forgetting past injuries, lavished it in ornamenting with splendid buildings the city of his birth, in all- embracing charities, in providing public games of the greatest splendour, and in the encouragement of art and literature. Then, desiring to see the seat of Empire and enjoy the intellectual atmosphere of the Augustan age, he removed to Rome, and on account of his great learn- ing and attainments, was appointed tutor to Marcus Au- relius and Lucius Verus, the adopted sons of the then 12 IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME reigning Emperor, Antoninus Pius. He left no literary monument of his own for us to admire, but the clear beauty of the style of Marcus Aurelius is doubtless due in great part to the early training received from his Greek tutor. Standing thus high in imperial favour, Herodes Atticus was enabled to make a splendid alliance. He obtained the hand of Annia Regilla, a daughter of the great Julian House, and thus crowned the long romance of his life by a real love marriage. Annia Regilla was marvellously beautiful, as good as she was fair, and returned her hus- band's affection by a love as whole-hearted as his own. In an age when universal selfishness and luxury made it necessary to legislate against race suicide, she bore Herodes child after child, each more welcome to its parents than the last. Was ever a man's cup of earthly happiness so royally full? Then it was dashed from him and emptied at a blow. Annia Regilla died very suddenly when the birth of her fifth child was hourly expected, and for a time her broken- hearted husband seemed likely to succumb to despair; but the very magnitude of his grief saved him — in more ways than one. The Greek desire for concrete expression, the Impulse to embody In visible form the worshipped Ideals of the mind, drove him at first to violent manifesta- tions of mourning which appeared extravagant and unreal to the easy-going superficial Romans of his day. They took life pretty much as It came, even as the Romans do now, and the sight of Herodes Atticus in his black robes, in his house hung completely with black — where he even removed the flowery-tinted marbles of walls and pave- ments to replace them with sombre grey — all this af- forded intense amusement to his fashionable friends. 13 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS But he had one enemy. His wife's brother had deeply resented the marriage of Annia RegUla to a man whom he considered a low-born outsider, quite unfit to mate with a maid of his own patrician house; and, she being dead, the haughty aristocrat gave free rein to his ani- mosity and accused Herodes of having poisoned his spouse. The absurdity of the indictment was potent to all, but the outraged widower Insisted upon being publicly tried for the crime. The outcome, as he intended It should, crushed the calumny forever, the Judges declar- ing that his devotion to his wife during her lifetime and the unmistakable sincerity of his grief at her death were all-sufficient proofs of his innocence. The fury of anger roused in him by the attack seems to have recalled his energies and restored his balance of mind. He quit mere repining, and swore to erect to his dead such a monument as woman never had before. The beautiful villa where their happy years had been passed stood In a shallow valley of the Campagna, some little distance to the right of the Appian Way, not far from the already ancient tomb of Cecilia Metella. At that time the land along the Appian Way, nearly as far as the Alban Hills, was covered with palaces and villas, costly monuments and beautiful gardens. The home of the wealthy Greek was remarkable enough to be famous even among these, although he had chosen for its site a piece of land belonging to his wife. Indeed, but held till then In rather scornful repute. In spite of the fact that a small temple of Jupiter had stood there from very early times, this charming valley had been used as a spot to which the " Jews," otherwise the Christians, had more than once been banished under very hard conditions, to punish their contumacy in refusing to sacrifice to the H IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME statues of the gods. Here, says a learned Catholic his- torian, St. Peter himself came with many of his flock, during his first visit to Rome, to take refuge in the sub- terranean crypts which, hastily dug in those early years, were afterwards enlarged and extended till they formed an underground city for the living and a safe resting-place for the dead. Of Christianity, whether above or below ground, Herodes Atticus knew little and doubtless cared less. The despised sect aroused but faint interest in the upper classes, and the most scathing reproaches on their voluntary degradation were addressed to any of the latter who joined it or manifested pity for its sufferers. But Atticus had a warm and generous heart in his bereavement; it Is said that he gave away great sums in charity, and one can scarcely doubt that some of these gifts relieved the wants of the poor Christians who begged for alms along the Appian Way, and, as we shall presently see, served the Church so notably in times of persecution, both before and after the days of Herodes Atticus. The estate of the latter covered all the ground on the right from the third to the fourth milestone of the famous road, and he had vowed during Annia Regilla's lifetime that he would make it the most beautiful as well as hospitable of all the suburban villages. Now, he laid out what was afterwards known as the " Pagus Triopius " in lovely gardens, baths, and temples, where all his friends, rich and poor, were invited to enjoy their share of his wealth by an inscription over one of the gates, which ran, " This is the abode of hospitality." After his acquittal from the abominable accusation brought against him by his brother-in-law, he offered all his wife's jewels to the Temple of Ceres and Proserpine, IS ITALIAN YESTERDAYS asking Heaven to smite him if he had been guilty of the imagined crime; then he built her a magnificent tomb in a garden laid out for that purpose — a garden which he called " The Field of Sepulchre " and in which only her direct descendants were to be laid forever. In reading all the story of this true lover (translated — for Greek is still Greek to me — from the very full in- scriptions found at the Pagus, and from the writings of Philostrates and Pausanias) I could not help reflecting how few direct ways true love has of manifesting itself — for one and the same was the thought of Abraham, insisting on buying and holding for his very own the field of Mamre, to bury Sara in — and the preoccupation of the highly cultured Greek to enshrine the remains of his beloved Annia, where, by all human prevision, they could never be disturbed. Also, the beloved Annia's tomb has crumbled into dust. All that is left of Herodes Atticus' garden is the ilex grove and the ruined nymphsum with the broken statue and the clear fountain, which, as a little girl, I knew as the grotto of Egeria. But that which, all unknown to Atticus, was even then burrowing and spreading beneath his beautiful gardens and palaces, the underground city of Christianity, where the faith lay like rich seed in the dark, warm earth, that survives, and its ways have been worn smooth by the feet of thousands of pilgrims for nearly twenty centuries. The rent bodies and few poor ashes of the " Christian Beggars " of the Appian Way were never approached save with love and veneration, and, whereas the slab of exquisite Pentelic marble on which Annia's epitaph — in thirty-nine Greek verses — was inscribed, has become part of a public collection, the name and date, and the rude attempt at a palm branch to indicate the martyr's i6 IMPRESSIONS OF EARLY ROME death, stand out as clear to-day on the walls of the Cata- combs as they did when they were hastily scratched in the soft clay, at some midnight burial under Nero or Diocletian, the envious though mourning brethren pray- ing " that the Church might have peace," but, yet more fervently, that they also might be found worthy if their own hour must come first. 17 CHAPTER II REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME Rome's Seasons — Childhood Memories of a Roman Spring — My Birth- day Festival — A Day in the Country — The Appian Way — Rome's Great Wall — An Adventure with the Campagna Steers — Campagna Sheep-Dogs — Early Morning Street Scenes — The Giardino Colonna — Secluded Italian Gardens — Inroads of Commercialism — Discovery of a Dream-Garden of the Renaissance — Song of the Nightingale in the Lost Italian Garden. IT is time to take breath. So far, we have been living over in mind the joys and sorrows of certain dwellers near the Appian Way, but every true story, however fair and fine, seems to run like crystal beads strung on a dark thread. The shadow of possible tragedy is behind all things human, and even the happiest tales of old leave one with a little pang at heart for the black hour of death which came to all the actors in them sooner or later. One turns with relief to the things that people wrongly call inanimate — the things of Nature, whose life is so comfortingly diiferent from our own, so rich in vitality that each declining season is lifted up and carried on in the arms of the next, as it were, to return in all its vigour and beauty when the moment arrives. To dwellers in Rome the " honied core " of all the year comes with the first days of spring. Looking back on Roman winters, indeed, from my later experiences of the season in arctic climates, they were, with few excep- tions, one carol of brightness and sunshine; we spoke of winter for the sake, of putting on our furs and lighting a few fires, but the violets never ceased to bloom in the i8 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME open, the shady avenues of the many villas were not too cool for dalliance, and it was only when the " tramon- tana," blowing over the mountains in the north, turned the air from balm to crystal, that we had a touch of real winter at all. Nevertheless, the spring, its opening day marked by the arrival of the first swallows, was intoxi- catingly welcome. The first day of Lent had put a period to most of the social functions and — such is the levity of youth — had given us girls time to think of a spring frock or so. Then, on some March morning, the cry would go through the house, " The swallows have come 1 " and thenceforward we lived very much in the open air. From the time when I was very small it had always been the same, and even now, at my " far world's end," and with five decades between the " now " and the *' then," the memory of those spring days goes to my head a little. In a snow-bound land of pale suns and wintry wastes I can shut my eyes and feel again the bath of sunshine, smell the bitter-sweet of Campagna thyme and daisy, almost hear the larks at their singing, the soft bleating of the Campagna lambs, the baying of the white sheep dogs, the faint piping of the solitary shepherd boy sitting on the low stone fence while his flock nibbled audibly at the newly sprung grass. That last is one of the prettiest of outdoor sounds, I think. The world has to be very still to let one hear it at all, and then the delicate " crsh- crsh " is like the music of a fairy March accentuated by the regular moving of the light little hoofs over the turf. One such morning comes back to me very vividly. I think It was that of my tenth birthday, and we had all been taken out to " Egeria's Grotto " to mark the festa. I wonder if parents know what a real birthday festivity means to an imaginative child? Mine came in the out- 19 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS burst of the Roman April, and, as long as we lived in the old Villa Negroni, was a perfect carnival of flowers. From the time I awoke in the morning, an air of joyous mystery pervaded the house. Every servant came to kiss my hand and bring me a fat posy, seint for to the country, of the strong farmhouse flowers that did not grow in our garden, marigolds and marguerites, jessa- mine and " gagia " — the yellow powdery blossoms that keep their perfume for fifty years, the whole tied up in a setting of sweet basil and " madre-cara " — I do not know its name in English — a feast of clean fragrance — ■ " Cento di questi giorni I " (a hundred of these days) said every one I met on my way to my mother's room, for the first thing to do was to rush into her arms and have her tell me how old I was. Then, with a handkerchief tied over my eyes, I was solemnly taken into the big red drawing-room where the rest of the household was al- ready assembled and led to the place where my portrait hung on the wall. There was a breathless second of expectation, then the handkerchief was whisked off, and I saw a bower of white spirea from which my own pic- ture smiled down at me, above a little table covered with a white cloth and smothered in spirea, too. Under the foam of the flowers were all my presents, done up in my dear mother's favourite parma violet tissue-paper and satin ribbons. The next hour was an intoxication. It always seemed as if all the things I had been longing for for months were collected there. When everybody had been thanked, I was left alone for a while to examine and exult in my new possessions ; then I had to be dressed in my best clothes for the real crown of the day, a walk alone with my adored mother, with my pockets stuffed with pennies so that I could give something to every 20 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME beggar we met I In the afternoon there would be a drive out to some point on the Campagna, with a box of bon- bons to help us enjoy the view, and in the evening the beloved godfather, Mr. Hooker, always came to dine and help me cut my birthday cake, a splendid edifice with my name and the date in pink and white frosting, wreathed in spirea and surrounded by lighted candles to the num- ber of the years I had attained. As I grew a little older I preferred to spend the whole day in the country, and then the place to make for was the so-called Grotto of Egeria. There was surely soli- tude, where it seemed as if no one ever came but our- selves; the outer world was left a thousand miles behind; the velvet undulations of the lonely valley were all a carpet of short thyme over which we rolled like the little kids of the goats that scampered away at our approach. And, best of all, there was the deep grotto with the broken statue and the shadowy crystal of its mysterious spring, its sides and vault one mantle of diamond — sprent maidenhair fern, its moist air and soft green light — a reflection from sun and grass outside — making it a place where the most light-hearted child could not but feel the solemnity of something very ancient and very spiritual. I used to linger there to dream of Egeria, the more than mortal, less than spirit maid who revealed the lore of Heaven to the Sabine Sage. I could picture her pale beauty, as she would sit by the spring and let Numa tell her of all the perplexities and difficulties of his rule, and very earnestly did I beg her to appear to me too, but she never came; how could she, when that had never really been her home? Then I would leap back to earth with a bound and join my brother and sisters and the little playmates who always came with us, in a breathless game 21 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS which began with a mystic incantation I have never heard except in those days and in my own family. I should be glad if any one could enlighten me as to its origin, though I fancy it may have been an inheritance from some witch ancestress. Thus it ran : " Intery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn, Apple Seed and Apple Thorn, Wire, Brier, Limber, Lock, Seven Geese in a Flock. Sit and Sing, By a Spring 1 O, U, T— Out!" For every word a head was counted round and round the hand-in-hand ring, and the unlucky one to whom fell the last one " Out " had to break away and fly, with all the rest in mad pursuit. Some distant point, generally the last ilex tree on the far side of the grove, had been fixed upon as sanctuary; if the fugitive could touch this before being caught, all was well ; if not, he or she was at the orders of the others for any wild prank they might choose to command — three somersaults down a steep incline was a favourite one, while the victors looked on and cheered or derided, as the case might be. Had our dear governess been of the Faith in those days as she was later, she could have told us more mar- vellous and romantic tales than we had ever heard about our storied playground — the " Triopius Pagus," * not only of Atticus and Annia Regilla, but of Cecilia and Valerianus, and Tiburtius, and all the valiant comrades * " Pagus " signified " village." The term " pagan " was first applied to the dwellers in rural districts, who, from the remoteness of their sur- roundings, were tardier in hearing of and embracing Christianity than the inhabitants of the cities. 22 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME of Urban, and the immediate successors of his stormy pontificate. As it was, the classical landmarks were all that the Appian Way held for us, barring one spot, the " Domine, quo vadis?" of St. Peter, which had an un- explained fascination for us all. The Appian Way we loved for the sake of its endless beauties and for the monuments and ruins which were like a compendium of the history of Rome. A writer that I used to admire, though time has robbed me of his name, said that the things he loved best in the world were its high roads; that to look along one of these and know that it cut its way, in a clean swath, over mountain and plain, from one end of a continent to the other, was to be free to travel whithersoever fancy flew, no matter how chained and confined the body might be. The Appian Way, lead- ing to the favourite seaport of Brundusium, a distance of rather less than a hundred and fifty miles, was the true road to Africa, to Palestine, and to all the eastern and southerly provinces of the huge straggling Empire. It was easier to sail the sea than to climb and descend the Alps; there are various records in history of a race, from some spot in the eastern portion of the Empire, run by accuser and accused, the one by sea and the other by land, each striving to reach the seat of power in Rome the first; and, in spite of the capricious storms and calms of the Adriatic, it was almost invariably the seafarer who won the day. Starting from the milestone of solid gold, which Rome set up on the Palatine as the centre of the world and the point from which all distances were to be measured, the Appian Way ran due south, issuing, in the early days, from the Capena Gate, which was pulled down and lost sight of when Aurelian enlarged the city's precincts and 23 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS rebuilt her walls as they stand to-day. Fine walls they were, with their huge outstanding buttresses at short, regular distances from one another all the way. The recesses between them were deep enough to shelter a dozen houses, and were utilised, down to my own time, for the erection of strong wooden stockades within which riders and pedestrians could take refuge at the approach of a herd of the fierce Campagna cattle being driven to market either in Rome or in some town further south. The Roman oxen look mild and peaceful enough when, nose-ringed and weighted with the ponderous wooden yoke, they draw the plough or wagon ; but the three-year- old steer, though he is one of the most beautiful crea- tures in the world, with his snow-white hide, his startled eyes and his widely curved, black-tipped, arrow-pointed horns, is a terrifying customer to meet in his untamed state and with a score or two of his companions ! It was forbidden of course to drive a herd through the city, but we often met them in our drives and rides. Once, I remember, riding alone save for a groom. I was exploring a winding lane, scarcely three feet wide and cut so deep that even from the saddle I could not see what lay on either side of it. Mooning along on a gentle little mare, perfectly happy with my own thoughts, I heard a cry from Tom, the good old English groom who was temporarily responsible for my safety: "Look out. Miss ! It's them blooming cattle. Put her at the bank! " I raised my eyes and saw a forest of horns, like files of spears, the first pair menacingly lowered, coming round a curve in the lane not twenty yards ahead of me. How we made the top of the bank I do not know — the mare quite understood the situation and was as nimble as a cat — but when we had dropped into the field on the 24 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME other side we were both very shaky, and I felt too meek to resent Tom's curt dictum : " The high road or the open after this, Miss I Them lanes isn't safe for the likes of you!" He was not my own servant, only an employe of the one English livery-stable Rome possessed in those days, but if he had seen me grow up he could not have been more faithful and vigilant for my comfort and safety. He taught me to ride, and many a delightful scamper we had together over those ideal stretches of springy turf, but he never relaxed from his stern contempt of all things not British, and particularly of Latin equestrianism. I think that and the Englishman's incurable homesickness were too much for him, for a year or two later I heard to my great regret that poor Tom had lost his mind and had had to be removed to an asylum. There are other animals, besides oxen, to whom it is well to give a wide berth on the Campagna — the sheep- dogs. They take their calling seriously and will let no stranger come within speaking distance of their flocks. There are two or more to each flock, and when they scent danger they send up a peculiar howl which summons the guardians of any others in the vicinity, so that before one knows it one may find oneself the centre of quite a mob of these formidable creatures, baying and leaping round one and thirsting for one's blood. They are exceedingly handsome, of a pure ivory white, with long silky coats and well-feathered tails, the head broad at the brow and pointed at the muzzle in approved sheep-dog style. Brought up at home, they show great affection for their masters and acquire charming manners, but as profes- sionals, in the exercise of their duty, they are rather ter- rifying. They particularly distrust mounted visitors, and 25 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS it is more dangerous to approach them on horseback than on foot. Once, I was out with Dr. Nevin, the American clergyman, an old cavalry officer and an enthusiastic rider, who ought to have known every trick of the Campagna and its beasts, when we stumbled right into a flock of sheep, and the next moment we were attacked by five or six infuriated sheep-dogs, barking madly, leaping at our horses' throats, catching at the skirt of my riding habit and Dr. Nevin's long coat in the effort to drag us down from our saddles. The horses were badly fright- ened, but managed to kick quite judiciously, and broke away before either they or we had been hurt. We had a good run then with the dogs in full pursuit at first; then they left us alone and returned stolidly to their re- spective posts. Talking of the sheep-dog, whom somebody has rightly called " that bundle of intelligence," I would note the fact that he has another delightful quality rather unusual in big dogs — humour. One of the quaintest incidents I ever saw occurred in a South Devon watering-place where we used to spend a good deal of our time. As the clock struck twelve, one fine summer's day, a large flock of sheep was driven in at the upper end of the town, through the whole length of which they had to pass to come out on the Exeter road beyond. One very old sheep- dog accompanied them, but just as they had passed the schoolhouse, the doors were opened and a crowd of lit- tle children tumbled out into the street. The dog saw that the sheep could make but few mistakes in the straight street, so he deliberately turned back and started to drive the children after them. Running round and round, bark- ing peremptorily, pushing the stragglers into place, he got some fifty or sixty little ones into a compact mass, and 26 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME drove them along in the wake of the sheep. The chil- dren saw the joke and were immensely amused, but not one dared to drop out till the old dog, visibly laughing too, said good-bye with a bark and a wag, and bounded away after his own flock. I have always wondered why the dogs that accom- panied the goats, when they were driven into Rome to be milked in the morning, were not proper sheep-dogs, but rather mild-tempered mongrels of every imaginable • variety. I suppose the real sheep-dog would consider it beneath his dignity to look after mere goats, despised creatures belonging to poor peasants ! Nevertheless, their daily visit was one of the pleasures of my youth — when I was not too sleepy to get up and look out of the win- dow towards six or seven a.m. Their coming was her- alded by the soft tinkling of two or three bronze bells hung round the necks of the leaders of the flocks, and then came the quick pattering of the little hoofs over the pave- ment of the Piazza SS. Apostoli. They had their regu- lar points of call, and that was one of them, in the angle formed by the side of the convent attached to the Church, and the small steep street which was one of the outlets of the Piazza. There they would stay for perhaps half an hour, in the warm brown shade, while the people from all the houses round ran down with mugs and pitchers which the goatherd, a handsome young contadino, in peaked hat, goatskin leggings, and scarlet vest, filled with creamy, foaming milk for about twopence a quart. I was often ordered to drink it, and the tall glass overflow- ing with warm ivory froth was such a pretty object that it made me forget the rather rank flavour of the draught. Long before the goats came in, however, the silence of the dawn had been broken by the strange sad cry of the 27 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS " Acqua Vi " man, who, announcing his wares in an almost funereal tone, lured the earliest labourers and artisans, on their way to their work, to begin the day with a nip of spirits. He was followed by two " cal- derari," or tinkers, who must have had some secret feud, for they came along within a few minutes of each other every day on the same beat, and even Roman pots and kettles do not break down every day. One man announced himself in deep and hollow tones, his long-drawn " Cal- de-raro I " sounding like a passing-bell; the other was all that was gay and sprightly, and his cry was like a ripple of laughter, ending on an impossibly high note. Then there was the tramp cobbler, the seller of roasted melon seeds (bruscolinaro), the umbrella-mender, and I do not know how many more; musical, friendly, familiar, the old street cries gave a great charm to the morning hours. At one time, in a certain warm spring and summer, I was taken with a passion for early rising, and with my mountain-born maid, Adelina, used to be out and away long before the sun was up, walking for miles outside one of the gates and enjoying every minute of the divine morning freshness. The infancy of the day is a very wonderful thing anywhere, but most of all in my own Romagna, where the glow of the later hours and the riotous colours of sunset have a ripeness which blends but too well with the ancientness of the buildings and the gilded tumble of the ruins that are, and always will be, Campagna's landmarks. But at dawn it is all young, bland, mysteriously dewy and immaculate, tint blending into tint, and shadow shaded through a hundred inde- finable modulations of unborn blue and hinted violet and cloud grey, that will be plain gold later in the day. One of my favourite haunts at that hour was the 28 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME ".Giardino Colonna " which stretches up in a series of terraces from behind the palace just across the square from the Odescalchi, to end on the Quirinal in Piazza di Monto Cavallo. On the lower level the gardens can only be approached from the house, with, which they are con- nected by a series of little ornamental bridges thrown across a deep and narrow intervening street utilised as a mews for the palace, but on the hill an imposing iron gateway, topped by the gilt crown and column which are the arms of the " Lustrissima Casa Colonna," gives ac- cess to a paradise of trees and flowers and fountains which is the more dehghtful because so unexpected in the very heart of the city. Italian gardens, though generally planned to give one imposing spectacle of some kind, with great wealth of statues and marble balustrades and elaborate formations or quiet stretches of water, are rich in small sequestered courts of flowers and greenery; the people who seem to jhave cared least for privacy in their houses took pains to make many solitudes in their gardens. Doubtless the desire for shade from summer heats had much to do with the intricate — apartments, one might almost call them — which diversify the villas and cut off spot after spot in an absolute seclusion of high box walls and over- arching trees, entered only by one small opening some- where in the otherwise impenetrable hedge. And, inci- dentally, the screened shelter thus afforded has fostered the growth and all-winter blooming of more delicate flow- ers and shrubs than could have survived the sudden attacks of the " tramontana," in the open. The " Giardino Colonna " was full of charming surprises of the kind one remembers gratefully In the more arid stretches of life. One particular morning there remains very clearly 29 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS imprinted on my memory, a morning of June, when I was running about with my small half-brother and sister, feel- ing very much their age. I had lost sight of them for a moment, and in seeking for them broke into an en- closure I had not seen before. Two or three tiny ter- races, bordered with old bas-reliefs, lay just touched by the first rays of the sun; a delicate mimosa tree, very feathery and fragile, stood within reach of the spray of a fountain that sent a shaft of diamonds high into the air; all around was a tangle of Banksia roses and white lilies, and an ancient sarcophagus of honey-coloured mar- ble on the top terrace, overflowing with ferns, looked like a golden casket in the low sunbeams. Every branch and leaf and petal was pearled with dew and spray, and the fragrance of the flowers in that miraculous freshness of the morning was almost too sweet for mortal senses to hear. It is so funny to see some of our brilliant decadents in art and literature trying to embody their ideas of the " joie de vivre " in pictures of wild debauch, in mad dances of painted girls and drunken youths, in reproduc- tions of the entertainments invented to stimulate the senses of the old Romans and Egyptians — people already half dead with satiety and incapable of experiencing a single thrill of healthy pleasure. Five minutes of existence, given a young heart in a young body, on a summer dawn amid the flowers, outtops their crude imaginings of the joy of life as completely as the rising sunbeams outshine our poor artificial lights. I have been afraid to ask after the " Giardino Colonna " of late years. So many other Roman gardens have been destroyed by the beauty-haters who rule the city that I am always expecting to be told that it exists 30 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME no longer. The great process of destruction has not been confined to Rome alone. Only the other day I learnt from a correspondent that the lovely Villa Doria at Pegli has been swept away to "make room" (in our half- depopulated Italy!) for a German soap factory! To the vultures of commerce nothing is sacred. All that is ancient and beautiful is an insult to the industrial no- bodies, with their sordid past and their ignoble future. The more perfect a spot is the more it arouses their desire to destroy it and annihilate even its memory by using its site for the basest ends. After all, everybody feels more at home in a background suited to his complexion ! I spoke in another book * of some forgotten villas that my sister and I discovered in the vicinity of Rome. One of these has, I have reason to believe, escaped the notice of the modern vandal, and I have no intention of revealing to him its name or location. Lying far out of the city, in a depression of the Campagna, it is in- visible till one is close upon it, and we had passed near it hundreds of times before an accident revealed its exist- ence to us. The very road to it is unmarked on the guide-book maps, and even from the road little is to be seen through the iron gate in the high brick wall save a formal court overgrown with grass, and a long low house, of graceful architecture, but much defaced by time and weather. Something of a mournful dignity in its aspect attracted us, and my sister suggested that we should alight from the carriage and see if we could get in. After ring- ing many times at the iron gate, we saw an alarmed contadino regarding us suspiciously from a corner of the house, evidently uncertain as to our character and mo- *"A Diplomatist's V^ife in Many Lands." 31 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS tlves. We lost no time in explanations, but promised him a lira if he would open the gate, whereupon he took courage, came and examined us more closely, and, see- ing only two young girls with a private carriage and a respectable family coachman smiling in amusement at our enthusiasm, the guardian of the place relented and let us in. Then we realised what we had found. That which we had taken for the front of the house was only its back, turned, Moorish fashion, to the public road. Its front, all balconies and arches and tall old windows, looked towards the southeast, and from the first terrace, with its supporting colonnade, the ground sloped away in ever-widening spaces of wild greenery intersected with thick avenues of ilex trees that twisted away and lost themselves in dells beyond our view. The house really stood high, and was placed just where an opening in the undulations beyond gave a wide view of the Campagna stretching away to Tivoli and the Sabine Hills; but a moment after stepping down from that first terrace the outside world vanished and we found ourselves in one of the dream-gardens of the Renaissance, where it seemed as if no foot had trod for the last hundred years. The ilexes, all untrimmed, had united in dense roofs over the grass-grown avenues ; the syringa had everywhere so interwoven itself with the high box hedges that these were now three and four feet thick and all abloom in their impenetrable interstices with white stars of sweetest perfume, mingling with the white cups of morning glories, unearthly pure and scentless, like the love prayers of a little nun. In ecstatic silence we went on and on, catching glimpses, through the rare openings in the green walls on either 32 REMINISCENCES OF MODERN ROME hand, of broad enclosures all a riot of flowers and grasses in the afternoon sun. It must have been at least a hun- dred years since the sun had struck through the many- tiered roof over our heads to touch the brown soil, bedded down with the leaves and acorns of a hundred autumns, under our feet. The shade that never could be shadow seemed painted in — a viewless veil of clear grey-brown, broken to an oval of gold where an archway in the hedge let in the westering sun. I had gathered a handful of ilex acorns, those delicate gems of polished grey-green set each in its fretted cup of colder grey — when a turn in the avenue brought us to a standstill be- fore a statue on a pedestal — a young god in very old, dappled marble, his arms stretched out, his head thrown back, as if calling despairingly after some vanished wor- shipper. The deep greenery rose in an arch above him, the green walls shrank back to make a niche; the clear, colourless light touched his face and limbs almost to life as we looked at him — and then his appeal was answered. From some unseen point close to us there burst forth such a torrent of heart-broken song as can only come from the throat of an Italian nightingale in the solitude of a lost Italian garden. The silver notes went soaring to heaven and fell back in a rain of music like audible tears. Then, from far away, a sister Philomel took up the strain, another and another broke in and linked it on, till all the air was a delirium of music, wild and sweet and thrilling — going up from the little brown throats, with- out money and without price. The nightingales' hour had come, and we, poor human intruders, crept away silently and left the lost garden to them. 33 CHAPTER in LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES St. Peter's First Visit to Rome— Wide Scope of His Work— Rome Des- tined to Become tlie Seat of Ecclesiastical Government — St. Peter's Early Converts — Persecution of the Jews — Life in the Catacombs — Simon Magus and St. Peter — ^Peter's Return to Rome — Nero's Slaugh- ter of Christians — Peter's Vision — " Lord, Whither Goest Thou ? " — Preparation for Martyrdom — Last Epistle — St. Peter's Successor — Imprisonment of St. Peter and St. Paul — Scenes of Final Tragedy — Crucifixion of Peter — Paul Beheaded — Devotion of Their Follovfers. THE perusal of the histories of Rome, both ancient and modern, inspires the reader with amazement, when he realises that, despite countless invasions, de- structions, and changes, certain apparently obscure land- marks of events which took place in the city during the first century after Christ, still exist, uneffaced and unfor- gotten. Yet so it is, particularly in regard to those con- nected with the sojourn of St. Peter in Rome. The devout pilgrim may visit them to-day with as little doubt as to their identity as did his ancestor in the Faith nearly two thousand years ago. The Apostle's first visit to Rome took place, according to St. Jerome, Eusebius, and the old Roman Calendar of Bucherius, in the year 45 of our era. Among illiterate sectarians it was still attempted, when I was young, to uphold the theory, invented by the so-called Reformers, that he had never been in Rome at all. Our separated brethren have since grown more enlightened and do not like to be reminded of that con- tention, annihilated again and again even by their own historians, notably by Baratier, a Protestant divine who 34 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES published his " Chronological Inquiry " relating to the Bishops of Rome, from Peter to Victor, at Utrecht, in 1740, and by the learned Protestant Bishop Pearson, who had preceded him in the task of demonstrating incon- trovertibly that St. Peter had held that See for many years. On the dispersion of the Apostles after the first persecution in Jerusalem, St. Peter had reserved the per- ilous enterprise of the conquest of " Babylon " (as the seat of empire was at that time called by the Christians) for himself, but there was other and nearer work for him to accomplish first, and it was only some twelve years later that he found it possible to carry out his intention. In the meantime he had travelled and preached un- ceasingly in Asia Minor, where during those years he organised and held the Bishopric of Antioch, the third greatest city of the Empire. From thence he instituted the See of Alexandria, of which he constituted St. Mark the Bishop, at the same time decreeing that Alexandria should be the second church of the world, taking prece- dence of Antioch, which thenceforth ranked as the third.* There had evidently never been any doubt in his mind that Rome was to be the first, the seat of ecclesiastical government, long prepared for that destiny by the decrees of Providence, carried out, as sealed orders, by her con- quering armies abroad, and by the perfection of her far- reaching yet completely centralised system of organisa- tion at home. We all know that the actual computation of the Christian era is a slightly faulty one, owing to the great laxity and confusion prevailing in the chronology of the Empire at the time of the birth of Christ. But, this much is certain — that some twelve years after the * Constantinople and Jerusalem were added in after times to the list, but only attained this honour bv the consent of the reigning Pontifi. 35 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS ascension of our Lord, St. Peter came to preach the Faith in Rome. St. Leo the Great (440 A.0.), in his splendid sermon on this subject, describes how the capital of the Empire, " ignorant of the Divine Author of her destinies, had made herself the slave of the errors of all the races, at the very moment when she held them under her laws. She thought she possessed a great religion because she had accepted every falsehood, but the more closely she was held in durance by Satan the more marvellously was she delivered by Christ." Then, after narrating the parti- tion of the evangelisation of the world among the Apostles, he exclaims : " And dost thou not fear, Peter, to come alone into this city? Paul, the companion of thy glory, is still occupied in founding other Churches; and thou, thou dost plunge into this forest peopled with wild beasts, thou treadest this ocean, whose depths growl with tempests, with more courage than on the day when thou didst walk on the waters towards thy Lord ! And thou fearest not Rome, the mistress of the world, thou who, in the house of Caiaphas didst tremble at the voice of a serving maid? Was the tribunal of Pilate, or the cruelty of the Jews, more to be feared than the power of a Claudius or the ferocity of a Nero? No, but the strength of thy love triumphed over fear, and thou didst not count them terrible whom thou hadst been com- manded to love." Would that some faithful companion had written down for us some details of that first arrival of St. Peter in Rome! Did he come by sea to Ostia, or to Par- thenopeia, like St. Paul? That seems the more likely conclusion, as, given fair winds, it was the route usually taken from the parts of Palestine or Asia Minor. But what must have been his feelings when, from far off, he 36 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES first beheld the gorgeous, insolent city, towering in gold and marble on its seven hills, swarming with its two million inhabitants, of whose very language he was ignorant! Did some of the few brethren then come out to meet him, as they did St. Paul, later? If he entered by the Ostian Way, he must have passed quite near to the spot which was to witness their double martyrdom twenty-five years afterwards. All we know is that his intrepid soul was not affrighted at the wealth and splen- dour of the hostile city which he meant to win back to his Master before his own labours should cease. From that day, although he had to leave it again and again to attend to the churches elsewhere, Rome was his home, his especial fold, the centre of Christendom, and the Holy City of generations to come, since Jerusalem had forfeited that title forever. It was not to the owners of Rome, but to the thou- sands of poor Jews who had been brought there as cap- tives, that St. Peter first came to preach. Already they were the despised hewers of wood and drawers of water for their enemies, and had managed, very early in their sojourn, to rouse the ire of their Roman masters. At first the Christian converts in Rome were entirely drawn from their ranks, and the Romans called them all " Jews," and occasionally banished them, as I have said elsewhere, from the city, to that spot, near the Porta Capena, which afterwards became the headquarters of the Church through centuries of persecution. Here, at least, they could do as they liked, and no one seems to have taken exception to their commencing that series of widely spreading underground labyrinths known now as the Catacombs, and usually regarded, quite mistakenly, as having been intended solely for purposes of sepulture. 37 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS That was provided for as one of its great objects, cer- tainly; but there were Churches where crowds could kneel together in worship round the tomb of some illustrious martyr; and there were halls and chambers as well, where, as after history showed, whole communities could live for weeks or months when It was not safe for Chris- tians to show their faces above ground. St. Peter had it from his Master's lips that he should follow Him in the manner of His death, but the day fixed by the Lord for that "birthday" (as the Christians called martyrdom) was hidden from him till almost the end. He was away from Rome when he heard that his once defeated adversary, the wizard-impostor, Simon Magus, was revelling there in the favour of Nero, and regarded by all as almost, if not actually, a god. The calling of the necromancer appealed strongly to Pagan sympathies at that time, and Nero was only too delighted to possess himself of the services of the famous magician. He showered gifts upon him, brought him to live in his own palace, and caused, or permitted a statue of him to be erected, of which the inscription attested his supposed divinity. So Simon Magus was the chief favourite, and was exercising whatever he had of unholy power, to make himself necessary to the Emperor and feared by the peo- ple. Although the fiercest of persecutions was raging, St. Peter at once came back to Rome to confront and con- found the diabolical impostor, even as he had done in Samaria, years before, when he (from whom all traffic in holy things was named) offered the Apostles money if they would impart to him the power conferred on them by the Holy Ghost. Nero, after reigning for five years with unusual mild- ness for those times, had, with the murder of his mother, 38 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES Agrippina, inaugurated a carnival of slaughter, and the Christians were suffering terribly. St. Peter hastened to sustain their courage and also their faith, fearing, as we are told, that the weaker brethren might be led astray by the skill of the magician, who, like all his kind, could sometimes command the powers of darkness and was able to supplement them by trickery when they failed him. St. Peter feared for the flock over whom he had ruled in person for some twenty-five years, so, as St. Jerome and other great authorities tell us, he made all the speed he could, and arrived in Rome to find the persecution at its height. It was at this time that she who had been Peter's wife in his youth, but whom, ever since the hour when he'was called by the Lord, he had regarded as a sister, and who had followed to minister to him in his wanderings, was led forth with other Christians to mar- tyrdom. St. Clement of Alexandria describes the scene, and tells us that, as they passed before St. Peter, who had been blessing them and praying for them, his last farewell to this faithful woman was summed up in three words, " Oh, remember the Lord! " All the love and longing of Peter's heart, all the tender memories of the Redeemer's blessed presence in their own house, were in the cry. She passed on, and won her crown first, but the Apostle had but a little while to wait for his. Simon Magus, crazed with pride, had promised to give the Emperor the most magnificent proof of his supernatural powers — he should behold him fly to heaven! Nero was delighted. A high and richly deco- rated scaffolding was erected, from which the Mage was to take his flight; a throne was raised opposite to it, whence his patron could watch his triumph; and the whole city crowded to the spot to witness and applaud. 39 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS Not far off in the crowd some poorly clad " Jews " surrounded an old man called Peter, who knelt and prayed — prayed fervently that God would confound the wicked and not permit His servants to be deluded by the snares of the Evil One. The great moment came. After pompous orations and loud acclaims, Simon Magus leapt from the scaffolding — and fell, a mangled heap, at the feet of Nero, whose face and garments were sprinkled with his blood. He lingered for two or three days and then expired misera- bly. The superstitious Emperor believed that magic had been pitted against magic to compass his own humiliation and his favourite's downfall. Who was the offender? Then some courtier pointed out the grey-haired man with the tear furrows in his cheeks, now returning thanks to God, and from that time the doom of the Apostle was sealed. Not at once did the tyrant's servants succeed in laying hands on St. Peter. The Christians, ready enough them- selves to face martyrdom and rejoin the victors who had gone before, could not reconcile themselves to the loss of the beloved Shepherd of their souls, and urged him, with wild entreaties, to flee to safety. He was still needed, they said; it could not be God's will that the Church should be left desolate of his sustaining presence in such evil times. Sorely against his will he consented to leave the city, but, as he chose the Appian Way for his flight, it is clear that he only contemplated remain- ing hidden for a time in the subterranean retreats of the Pagus Triopius ; had he meant to reach the coast, he would have taken the road to Ostia, emerging from the opposite and lower end of the town. In the very first years of his Pontificate in Rome, an edict of Claudius had 40 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES banished the " Jews " from the city and It is believed that St. Peter accompanied them in their exile to this spot, and he would naturally turn to it in an emergency. But, a little beyond the first milestone, the Apostle's steps were arrested by a vision which must have filled him with joy and yet wrung his heart with memories of pain.* One came towards him through the dusk, bear- ing a cross. The never-to-be-forgotten eyes once more looked into his. We can almost hear now the wild cry of the Apostle — " Lord, whither goest Thou? " " To Rome to be crucified anew," was the answer. The visionJfaded away, and, with a heart breaking with joy and love, the Apostle retraced his steps and told the faithful of the Lord's will, now so clearly re- vealed. " The Prince of Pastors " had spoken. The hour for which His great vicar had waited so long was at hand — the martyrdom for which he thirsted, already prepared. The weeping brethren went out to see the place where Christ had met their Spiritual Father, and found there the impress of the Saviour's blessed foot upon the stone. Later a church t was erected at the spot, but at that time all that was possible was to cover the sacred footprint and mark the site for veneration. (This stone was afterwards removed to the Church of St. Sebastian, but a copy of it is still kept at Domine Quo Vadis.) Every trace of the history of the Faith was so inexpressibly dear to those loving hearts ! One disciple, *St. Ambrose, Sermo contra Auxentium, No. 13; Hegesipp., lib. Ill; S. Greg. Magn. in Psalm IV, Penitentiae. t Cardinal Pole, after much research, came to the conclusion that the site chosen for the Church of " Domine Quo Vadis " was a mistaken one, and erected a tiny circular chapel at another crossroad which he believed had witnessed the mysterious encounter. This chapel is a humble little building, only a few feet in diameter. St. Peter's question is inscribed over the door. 41 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS who must have followed St. Peter at a distance on that memorable night, found in the path a little bandage which had detached itself from his foot (were his feet sore and cut from the many weary steps that the saving of souls had cost him?) and this was reverently treasured, and a Basilica called " In Titulus Fasciolae," and now known as the Church of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, was erected In after years to mark the spot and guard the humble souvenir. All this happened apparently in the month of Septem- ber or October. Within a year, at most, the mourning Christians, led by Clement, Peter's successor, put up the marble tablet — found in 191 1 — a small tablet of green- ish marble, on which these words were inscribed : " Here the Blessed Peter absolved us, the elect, from the sins confessed." But what a chapter of history had been written be- tween! St. Peter returned to the city and disposed all things for his death. His first care was to write his second Epistle General, his last will and testament, and his farewell to the faithful. " In a little while," he says, speaking of his mortal body, " this my tent will be folded away, as was signified to me by the Lord Himself," thus evidently referring to the vision on the Appian Way. Only the words of our Divine Lord surpass in majesty and tenderness that last Epistle of St. Peter. Heaven was very near as he wrote it, the celestial melodies were already in his ears, the recent apparition of his Master had filled his heart with love and longing almost too great to be borne, but that love translates itself into the most tender parental care for the children he was leaving behind. With what tears and devotion must the letter have been received in the different Churches that had 42 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES known his care, when It Game to them accompanied by the news of his death! More important even than his farewell to his children was the matter of appointing his successor, the second of the long line of which our own beloved Pius X is the present representative. Although Linus had been for ten years St. Peter's fervent auxiliary Bishop, his right hand In the government of the Church, whose vast growth had made It necessary In turn to appoint Cletus as auxiliary to Linus, the Apostle passed over them and chose Clement to Immediately succeed him as the Vicar of Christ.* Clement with his noble name, his great gifts, and his eminent holiness, was the man needed In Rome at that moment, and, as Tertulllan and St. Epiphanlus attest, was at this time consecrated by St. Peter and then solemnly installed by him as head of the Universal Church. Then came the beginning of the end, but the first stage was a long and weary one. St. Paul, It appears, besides his reported share In the downfall of Simon Magus, had drawn upon himself the furious wrath of Nero by converting two of his favourites In the palace itself, one a concubine, the other a chamberlain in close attendance on his person. His doom was pronounced at the same time as that of St. Peter, though the manner of • St. Clement was soon exiled to the Chersonesus, where he remained for several years before his martyrdom there, and St. Linus during his absence filled his place in Rome till the death of St. Clement and his own succession to the Pontificate. Hence, many historians call Linus the immediate successor of St. Peter. St. Clement occupied the Papal Chair for 9 years, 6 months and 6 days, and, whereas modern lay historians give the length of St. Linus' reign as one year, he reigned in reality for II years, 2 months and 33 days. The confusion of the various Roman calendars at the time of the birth of our Lord gave rise to the errors in the calculation of that event and others following it. Our own accepted date is on that account some years removed from the true one. 43 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS their end was not at once decided upon. St. Paul was removed from the house in the Via Lata (now the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata) and, with St. Peter, was thrown into the Mamertine Prison, and Icept there for eight months. The very name of this dungeon still brings back to me a chill of fear when I hear it pro- nounced, for to me it was the most terrible spot in all Rome. Deep under the eminence which is crowned by the Capitol is a chamber cut in the rock, unlighted, un- aired, and lined with the huge uncemented blocks which date from Rome's prehistoric times; a prison dreadful enough by itself, but there is worse below. A square aperture in the floor, just large enough for a man's body to pass through, gives access to another dungeon exca- vated beneath it, a pit of blackness, where Jugurtha and many other poor wretches, condemned to die by violence or starvation, moaned their lives away, before it was honoured by the presence of the Apostles. They were let down into it by a rope, and the men who were lowering St. Peter carried out their task with such brutal rough- ness that they knocked his dear head violently against the wall, in his descent. The wall must have been less hard than their hearts, for it took the impression, and the mark has been kissed for close on two thousand years by the lips of ardent pilgrims. I remember touching it, when, as a child, I saw it first, and receiving the most extraordinary thrill of a living reality of some kind. There is now a staircase by which to descend to the lower prison, but in my early days there was only a rough ladder leading into what, in spite of the guardian's taper, showed as a black abyss. The place is thirty feet long and twenty-two wide, with a height of sixteen feet, and was often crowded with captives. We do not know how 44, LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES many it contained when the Apostles (probably not on the same day) were brought there; stagnant water cov- ered the floor, and fetid odours made the air a poison, but where St. Peter's feet first touched the pavement a spring of clear water bubbled up, and was running gaily when I visited the spot. We know that St. Peter and St. Paul converted and baptised forty-seven persons in this den, besides the two captains of their guards, St. Processus and St. Marcellianus, so that the little spring served for the most noble ends. The damp cold of the dungeon is so deathly that the Apostles' lives must have been preserved as by a miracle through those terrible eight months. They had bidden farewell to the light in the golden days of autumn; they came forth to meet its blinding radiance in the dazzle of June. Quickly the news spread among the Christians, ever eager to hear how it fared with their revered Pas- tors ; and already, when these had but just emerged from their dungeon, loaded with chains and under a heavy guard, the intrepid crowd had formed in procession to accompany them to their triumph. Their sentences were already pronounced. St. Peter, the poor Jew, was to be scourged and crucified; St. Paul's Roman citizenship for- bade these humiliations; he was to be beheaded. It is a long way from the Capitol to the Ostian gate and the Vatican, and the Apostles' limbs, cramped from long confinement, must have moved slowly and wearily over the Via Sacra, now, for the first time, deserving of its name; the heat at that time of year is overpowering, and the blaze of midday beat down upon their heads. At a certain point, about three-quarters of a mile from the present gate of St. Paul, the cortege halted and di- vided itself into two, and here the Fathers of all Chris- 45 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS tianity bade one another farewell ■ — for the few hours which must pass before they should be reunited " in the Lord." The little chapel which marks the spot bears this inscription:* " In this place SS. Peter and Paul separated on their way to Martyrdom, and Paul said to Peter, ' Peace be with thee. Foundation of the Church, Shepherd of the flock of Christ,' and Peter said to Paul, ' Go in peace, Preacher of good tidings and Guide of the salvation of the just' " The soldiers who had charge of St. Paul led him away to the westward, to a spot whither, as St. Clement gives us to understand, the Emperor Nero deigned to come to enjoy the sight of his sufferings. St. Peter's escort had been commanded to bring him to the Vatican hill, the old place for Christian executions, easy for the people to find, because of a very ancient terebinth tree which had stood there for hundreds of years and was a popular landmark. The murderers, when they were authorised ones, as in this case, always sought to give the greatest publicity to such executions, hoping (very much against hope, one would think) that the victims' courage would give way and fear induce apostasy at the last moment; or, failing that, that the sight of their tor- ments would deter others from embracing Christianity. So St. Peter, praying and rejoicing, was first scourged after the cruel Roman manner, and then both bound and nailed to his cross, head downward by his own re- quest, since he said he was not worthy to die like his Lord. The blood that flowed from his wounds was gath- * Taken from the epistle of St. Denis the Areopagite to Timothy, in which he narrates the incident and records the Apostles' words. 46 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES ered on linen cloths by the weeping Christians, who stood around him for the long hours he hung there. The ancient antiphon which used to be sung on the Feast, thus describes the martyrdom of St. Peter: " As they were leading Peter the Apostle to the cross, he, filled with a great joy, said: ' I am not worthy to die on the cross like my Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, while I was formed of the clay of the earth; therefore, my cross must show my head to the ground.' " So they reversed the cross, and nailed his feet at the top and his hands at the base. While Peter was on the cross there came a great multitude, cursing Cassar, and there was great lamentation before the cross. Peter, from the cross, exhorted the people, saying: " Weep not, but rejoice with me, because I go to-day to prepare a place for you." And having thus spoken he said: " Good Shepherd, I thank Thee that the sheep Thou didst confide to me take part in heart with my sufferings ; I beseech Thee that they may also take part with me in Thy grace for all eternity." 'Tis said that he repeated over and over in his heart that humble protestation, " Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee I " And when at last his praying and blessing ceased, and the beloved face turned grey and stiff, they took him down, washed the stains away from those fur- rows that the tears of repentance for his denial had been scoring in his cheeks for nigh on forty years, closed the eyes that had looked on the Lord and had been such wells of sorrow and contrition, and buried his blessed body close by, in the stricken soil that the Romans had learnt to shun. And " by the power of this other cross, raised in Rome, 47 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS Babylon became that day the Holy City, while Zion must forever rest under malediction for having crucified her Saviour. Rome may reject the Man-God as she will, she may shed His blood in that of His martyrs, but no crime of hers can avail against the tremendous fact accom- plished in this hour; the cross of Peter has transferred to her all the rights in the Cross of Jesus, — it is she who is now Jerusalem." . . . "This tribute of death, Levi knew it not; this dower of blood, Jehovah demanded it not of Aaron; men die not for a slave — and the Synagogue was not the Spouse." * The Vatican crypt which received the body of St. Peter immediately after his martyrdom, was excavated under a temple of Apollo, the deity supposed to preside over pubhc games, near the old circus of Nero. By the year 89 or 90 A.D., when St. Peter's fourth successor, St. Anacletus, became Pontiff, during the reign of the Em- peror Domitian, one is led to suppose that this temple was more or less forsaken as a place of pagan worship, since Anacletus was able to " build," as the phrase runs, a tiny oratory, just large enough for two or three persons to kneel in, around the tomb of St. Peter. Here again, apparent accident served the ultimate designs of Provi- dence in regard to this fore-hallowed site. The Chris- tians desired greatly to deposit the Apostle's remains in the deep and secret excavations, already crowded with the bodies of martyrs, near the fourth milestone on the Appian Way, the vaults which had more than once af- forded refuge to the persecuted brethren and to the Apostle himself. But with the persecution that was rag- ing at the moment of his death, it would have been * Dom Gueranger. 48 LAST DAYS OF THE APOSTLES impossible to transport the body without attracting notice, so the nearest spot was chosen, regardless of the fact that it was in the close neighbourhood of a number of pagan tombs. As we shall see later, this humble resting-place was threatened with desecration in its turn, and was emptied of its treasure for many years in favour of the more distant cemetery. The martyrdom of St. Peter attracted little notice ex- cept from the poor Christians who gathered round his hard deathbed, to weep and pray and receive his last blessing; that of St. Paul, the Roman citizen, was a much more public and popular affair. The intrepid band of disciples who followed him to the chosen spot on the Ostian Way, not far from the other (but divided by the slopes of the Janiculum), risked death more certainly in doing so, and some of them doubtless paid its penalty. Before reaching the place of execution, St. Paul saw, weeping bitterly by the roadside, the holy matron Plau- tilla, one of his converts, who had hastened thither to bid him farewell and ask for his last blessing. As our Lord, on the way to Calvary, paused to speak to the daughters of Jerusalem, so St. Paul stayed his steps to console this faithful woman. He asked her to give him her veil, that he might cover his eyes with it when he was beheaded, and he promised that he would return it to her after his death. Plautilla, feeling scarcely worthy of such an hon- our, yet rejoiced to be able to serve him, eagerly placed her veil in his hands, while his jailers mocked at the Apostle's promise. But her faith and love were re- warded, and she beheld the beloved Pastor again with her bodily eyes, when, after his martyrdom, he appeared to her and restored the veil, all stained with his blood. At the spot called then " ad Acquas Salvias," St. Paul 49 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS was tied to a pillar, and the executioner's sword severed his head from his body. The head, in falling, bounded away, touching the ground three times In all, and, at each point where it touched, a spring of clear water instantly burst forth and is still flowing. The first was warm as life-blood, the second tepid, and the third, Icy cold. A Frenchwoman has written of this miracle as only a Frenchwoman could: "At the first touch, the soul has but just escaped from the body — that glorious head is yet full of life! At the second, the shadow of death Is already cast over those wonderful features; at the third, the eternal sleep has overtaken them, and, though still radiant in beauty, they announce that the lips will never open again in this world, and that the eagle glance is veiled forever." The show is over, the Emperor Is borne away by his slaves and sycophants, sulky, perhaps, at not having seen more blood or greater wonders. But the destruction of Simon Magus and the alienation of his favourites is avenged. That is something to take back with him to the night's debauch on the Palatine. The vulgar crowd has followed him, and as the quick Italian night comes down, and the mists roll along the river, while the even- ing star hangs white in the low crimson of the West, the mourners gather up the sacred body and the haloed head, and hasten, as in St. Peter's case, to bury the martyr close by, in a bit of land owned by the noble matron Lucina, who, years later, builf on it a splendid tomb for his earthly resting-place. 50 CHAPTER IV ROMAN YESTERDAYS The Gods of the Roman World — Leaven of Christianity — ^Measures of the Emperors Against the Christians — Nine General Persecutions — Mad Extremes of Heliogabalus — Rescue of the Bodies of the Apostles — ^Tragic History of the Appian Way — The Joys of Solitude — How Marion Crawford Became the Master of San Niccola — A Solitude of Relaxation and Quiet — A Secluded Garden on the River in Rome — The Contrasts of Life and the Happiness in Hoping — ^An Artist's Fes- tival — 'How a Roman Emperor Looked. FEW things in the records of the past are stranger than the variations of attitude of the Roman Em- perors (barring some hasmatomaniacs like Nero) to- wards Christianity during the first three or four centuries of our era, quite apart from the moral attributes of the Emperors themselves. One feels, through the edicts, the bored irritation of the rulers at having to trouble them- selves at all about a few low-born individuals led away, as was believed, by a crazy illusion about another world, a life after this one, which they promised to all who would renounce the real pleasures — those considered as such by the great ones of the day and their followers — pride and power, riches, ambition, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. " Surely," one seems to hear authority exclaim, " human nature may be trusted to fight for its own, against such fanatics! We have had our Stoics and their disciples, and no one had to legislate against them. All they claimed was the right to despise ease and pleasure, and to find their reward in the admi- ration or notoriety that they gained in the process. Their 51 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS very uncomfortable doctrines were never the cause of great social upheavals ! What is behind this new teach- ing that men should be so excited about it? " Then little by little there creeps in the sign of an un- explained fear, the sense of being confronted by a new mysterious power, great enough to be menacing to the old order of things, which, after all, had served well and should not be interfered with unnecessarily. Few of the upper classes, except in times of great trouble, really relied much on the protection of Rome's inherited gods, but all felt that their worship was a powerful weapon wherewith to control or drive the great mass of the peo- ple. The common herd clung tenaciously to the belief that prosperity followed on faithfulness to the old dei- ties, and misfortune on any affront offered them. These tiresome Christians went out of their way to show their scorn of the very mixed crowd of gods and goddesses whom Rome had enshrined on her altars, and it was im- prudent to seem to pass over such offences against the public taste. One ruler tries to suppress the Christians with a high hand ; another suggests a compromise — he is willing to place the statue of Christ in the Capitol if they will show equal respect for the earlier residents there. No? Oh, well, let them be exterminated, then, since they are so bent on destruction ! The edicts are issued and fiercely followed up, till even the persecutors weary of the diversion and stop as if for want of breath. But the edicts are not repealed, and they lie there at the disposal of bloody-minded governors or covetous inform- ers, who desire to annex some Christian's estates or to possess themselves of beautiful Christian maids. Nine official general persecutions we count in all, spread over some three hundred years, but it must not be thought 52 ROMAN YESTERDAYS that the Church had peace, except occasionally for very short intervals, between. The reigning Emperor might be a monster like Nero or Domitian, or a gentle-minded tolerant man like Alexander Severus, the streams of blood were made to flow with awful continuity just the same, owing to the enormous power placed in the hands of his deputies, the governors of the cities and provinces that made up the unwieldy Empire. These fluctuations account for the many transporta- tions of the relics of the chief martyrs to different hiding- places during those early centuries. For some hundred and fifty years the bodies of the Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, reposed in the tombs where they had been first placed, and where they now lie, but soon after the ac- cession of Heliogabalus to the throne, the reigning Pope, St. Calixtus, found it necessary to remove them to a distant and secret spot in order to protect them from the most revolting sacrilege. Heliogabalus, the maddest of all the mad Emperors, suddenly decreed that no god but himself should be worshipped in Rome. He built a gorgeous temple to himself on the Palatine, and as the pagan historian, Lampridius, tells us, made arrangements to transfer to this temple not only all the objects of wor- ship most sacred in the eyes of the Romans, and regarded by them as talismans upon the safeguarding of which the destinies of the Empire depended — the fire of Vesta, the statue of Cybele, the Palladium, the Ancilia — but also " the religions of the Jews and Samaritans, and the Christian objects of devotion, in order that the priests of Heliogabalus should hold the secrets of every worship." It was well known that the objects most dear to Chris- tian devotion were the bodies of the glorious Apostles, and a hundred and fifty years of continuous pilgrimage to 53 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS their tombs had marked the way fairly clearly to those once secluded spots. St. Calixtus, it seems, was already preparing to remove the bodies when a new whim of the maniac Emperor caused him to do so with extreme haste. Heliogabalus issued orders for a great exhibition of harnessed elephants on the Vatican plain, and, to pro- cure sufficient space for the show, commanded that all inequalities should be levelled and all the sepulchres, pagan or Christian, should be destroyed. In fear and haste, St. Calixtus transported the holy remains to the Appian Way, already by that time honey- combed with subterranean vaults and passages. Above ground, the place was marked by the monuments of the Cscilii, whose illustrious daughter was soon to lie below; but St. Calixtus feared that the existing vaults, now for the first time called " Catacombs," were already too widely known to offer complete protection to the precious relics; so he caused a new chamber to be dug deep in the rock, to the right of the way, disposing the only entrance to it through a well; and there he laid the Apostles, each in a separate tomb, to abide the hour of the triumph of the Church. The Appian Way, with its miles of magnificent pagan monuments on the surface, and its far-reaching secret sanctuaries below, has in the course of time taken on something like a personality of its own. It is like a ribbon of marble laid across a sea of beauty even now, when the famous villas and gardens, overflowing with blooms gathered from every clime and shaded by groves of ilex and cedar, of palm and sycamore and cypress, have all been swept into the rich, soft mould; there you can look across twenty miles of waving grasses and wild flowers, broken only by some fragment still majestic in 54 ROMAN YESTERDAYS ruin and guarded by the dark, slender watch-towers — memories of a later age, when the few scared shepherds had to fly from Hun or Saracen — that rise at intervals all the way to the sea. The solitude seems boundless, yet gentle and familiar; little blind winds come wandering across from the south and lose their way among the flowers; for the Via Appia leads due south, and one knows that it goes on into the war-ploughed Kingdom of Naples, that " hothouse of Saints and Sinners," with its fierce suns burning down on castles whose very stones cry tragedy, on scorching hillsides where the black grapes ripen into fiery wine, on flats seething in the heat under the man-high crops of maize. But near Rome, looking towards the soft green outline of the Alban Hills, all that seems illusion; this is reality, this empty space, un- troubled by past or future, this sweep of dun gold and fading purple; its surrounding hills that all look towards Rome have seen the place unpeopled, seen it swarming with life; have seen it flaring with pomp and then sub- merged in blood; now they are guardians of that which modern cataclysms have failed to rend — the peace of a place whence even the memory of humanity is banished and Nature smiles and broods alone over her lovely handiwork. Often I have longed to withdraw for a time to one of those lonely watch-towers to " think things out." We Crawfords have never been able to see a really solitary spot without wanting it for our own. A certain empty tomb lost among the Umbrian hills, with the sun turning the red rock to gold and the wild camomile swaying its yellow blossoms in the breeze over the doorway, has been a haven of my spirit through many a breathless, over- peopled hour. I could fly there in mind, for days at a SS ITALIAN YESTERDAYS time, into an atmosphere of such still liberty as is only granted to disembodied souls. My dear brother Marion could never resist the call of fortressed solitudes. The story of how he became the master of San Niccola in Calabria is too characteristic not to be told in this con- nection. San Niccola is an Angevin castle, with walls twenty feet thick in places, perched on the rocks over an inhospitable little bay on the coast of Calabria, a bay too small and shallow to permit of sailing vessels being anchored inside its natural breakwater of tumbled stones. Marion often sailed thither, and, leaving the yacht out- side, would scramble on shore and linger for hours in the shade of the huge pile, weaving new stories and call- ing up pictures of the days when the cry would ring along the coast that a Saracen sail was in sight, and the in- habitants, snatching up whatever they could carry, raced for the nearest tower of refuge. San Niccola looks like a huge dark monolith, wide at the base and tapering slightly towards its truncated summit. It contained but two apartments, a vast square space, without windows, for animals below, and one great hall, as sparsely win- dowed as possible, above. In this it resembles most of its fellows along the coast, where " Carlo d'Angio," still almost a living personality to the people, planted them, at short distances from one another, for this very purpose. It was a roasting hot day in August; the felucca (this was before my brother bought the Alda) was swinging at anchor in deep water, and the " padroni," Marion and my sister-in-law, were sitting on the rocks in the shade, after lunch — the hour when most people go to sleep, but always a particularly inspiring one to him and responsible for many of his quaint whims. Suddenly he jumped up S6 ROMAN YESTERDAYS and announced that he needed a walk — he would go to the town — a tiny hamlet some miles distant — and buy — I forget what — fresh eggs for the morrow's breakfast, I think. Would Bessie like to come? Bessie, dozing over a novel under the shelter of a huge pink parasol, scarcely thought it necessary to reply audi- bly to such a crazy proposition, but as Marion turned and walked away she signalled to the faithful Luigi to follow and look after him, which Luigi — with what groans one can imagine, just after the midday macaroni and in that blazing heat — obediently did. The day wore on, the sun began to sink, and the even- ing breeze ruffled the water. The parasol had long been closed, the novel thrown aside, and Bessie was beginning to look anxiously landward, when the truants reappeared in the distance. As they drew nearer she could see that Marion carried in his hand a huge iron key, while Luigi, directly behind him, was flinging his arms up in the air in gestures of despair. As they came close, the gestures became those of beseeching deprecation, and she realised that he was trying to say, unbeknown to the " padrone," " It was not my fault, Signora mia, oh indeed, not my fault ! " while Marion, a little in doubt as to his recep- tion, stopped before her and held up the great rusty key, saying, " It's mine, mine, my dear, for the next thirty years ! " "What — this awful place? Oh, why did I let you go away without me?" she wailed. "What on earth are you going to do with it? — and what have you paid forij?" He mentioned the sum — ^not a very large one, it is true — but Luigi, hovering near, pale and scared, whis- pered, with every appearance of sincere grief : " He could 57 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS have had it for the hundredth part of that, Signora! Alas, for the good money 1 But it was not my fault — there was no holding the Signore, and those assassins at the Municipio took advantage of him! " To tell the truth, it was not the money side of the matter which distressed my sister-in-law so much as the prospect of being required to come and pass weeks at a time in this grim dungeon, without a single convenience of life, twelve miles from a market town, and of course lashed to the battlements by every Mediterranean storm. It took her some days to reconcile herself to the new ac- quisition — poor girl — but Marion had not made a mis- take, after all. The family was not invited to San Niccola till he had made several journeys thither him- self, with carpenters and materials, and when they did come they found that the lonely keep had been trans- formed internally to a quite possible dwelling — though certainly an inconveniently isolated one. Generally, how- ever, he went there alone, to rest from everything con- nected with modern life, and he found it a line, quiet place for writing in, at any rate. I fancy that people who take such keen delight as we do in sympathetic and cheery society are probably the ones who most enjoy — and need — the relaxation of seclusion and quiet. I remember a curious nook that my sister and I discovered In Rome itself; we never told any one about it, and used to go there day after day to think the " long, long thoughts " of youth and make wonderful plans for the two or three hundred years we must have expected to live if they were all to be car- ried out! From the Via di Repetta, on the right bank of the Tiber, we had noticed on the opposite side two or three 58 ROMAN YESTERDAYS very old little houses, with tiny gardens formed on the projecting bastions of a fragment of ancient wall which must have been built to protect the Via Lungara from the periodical overflowing of the river. Over the low parapet of one of them we could see a few flowers, a lemon tree, and an oleander bush in bloom; the owners of the old dwelling were never visible, but we made up our minds to bribe them to let us into their deserted and alluring back yard. Once in the Lungara we had some little trouble in locating the house, as nothing of the river was visible between the closely-set buildings that faced the street, but after one or two wrong shots we found it — in the possession of a good-natured young woman who could not in the least understand why we should offer her a lira for the privilege of passing through to her " loggia," a place she evidently despised since, to our joy, we found that she never even hung out the clothes to dry there, preferring the lines which run from window to window on the upper stories of most of the poor houses in Rome. She led us across the brick-floored kitchen, opened a door and shut it behind us as soon as we had passed through, and we found ourselves in a tiny paradise of flowers and herbs interspersed with frag- ments of sculptured marble — a frond of acanthus, a whorl of tracery — and provided with a stone seat inside the parapet. The whole jutted far out into the river, whose rushing water filled the air with drowsy sound. A few jonquils were blooming white and yellow in the clear shade; the pot of carnations — every Italian woman of the lower class has one, which she cherishes jealously — was spilling over with huge red " garofoli," scenting the air with their spicy fragrance, and from the seat by the wall we could look up and down the river fpr a long, 59 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS long way. The coolness, the unassailable privacy yet open-air sweetness of it all was indescribably delightful; for years we used to fly there when we had something to think out; and when the new works for keeping the Tiber within bounds swept the little old houses and their wee gardens away we felt as if we had been robbed of a bit of home. My dear sister Annie was usually the pioneer of our discoveries and expeditions; she was of a bolder spirit than I, and was ever on the alert for material for her painting, which was not always done with the brush. She shared in particular my love of things Etruscan. We used to fancy that we had both lived among the myste- rious, beauty-loving people of Etruria some three thou- sand years earlier. Everything connected with them had a haunting power over us, and sometimes we used to put words to the scenes on the vases and act them out with much fidelity for our own satisfaction. Only one friend was admitted to share these archaic sympathies and diver- sions; if these lines ever fall under "Minnie's" eyes, will she remember one notable night when she and Annie acted the parts of the devoted maidens, in clinging drapery and fillet-bound hair, who rescued the beautiful young warrior — myself — from the hideous fate de- creed for him by the (necessarily) invisible hierophants of the sacred fane in the wardrobe — the dressing table serving for the altar upon which he was to have been sacrificed? We were all three so overcome at the con- clusion of the drama that we broke down and wept in each other's arms ! " Le gioventu e un fiore che non ritorna piu ! " But those whose youth has been fed with colour and imagination and beauty keep young in spite of the pass- 60 ROMAN YESTERDAYS ing of years. In looking back, those stand out as the real things — the prosaic grind of existence falls away and shows itself as mere illusion. After all, what would life be without contrasts? They are the chief elements of drama. They furnish all its spice. The blackest shad- ows prove the existence of the brightest sun^ It is the people who have nothing to wish for who are to be pitied. The very poorest can dream and hope for some lightening of their lot; and when pleasures come to them — little tiny pleasures even — they enjoy them intensely; whereas those to whom nothing has been denied find life so atrociously dull that only a constant series of ficti- tious excitements enables them to bear it at all. Two men I know were walking down Fifth Avenue one day and paused to admire a magnificent diamond necklace dis- played in a jeweller's window. One of them said, with a sigh, " What wouldn't I give to be able to buy that for my wife ! " The other, a poor multi-millionaire, turned to him with a snarl of envious rage: " You lucky fellow! You have something still left to wish for! " The best — in the way of mere pleasure — that some of us could desire would be to live some hours over again and see once more the pictures that filled them. There used to be a day in May when all the artists in Rome united to hold high festival out in the country, and — speaking of pictures — one such day comes back to me and claims its record. Nobody was allowed to know be- forehand what the brotherhood was planning to do, but it was sure to be something very picturesque — and no wonder, considering the elements and facilities brought to bear on it ! All who could do so went out towards the appointed spot, the caves of Cervara, that morning, and we passed 6i ITALIAN YESTERDAYS so many vehicles on the road that we decided to turn off and make for our point across the turf, all unenclosed in that part of the plain. We almost forgot what we had come to look, for, in the pleasure of moving soundlessly over the short, new grass which gave out a warm fra- grance of mint and thyme as it was pressed by the horses' feet. The velvety undulations between which we threaded our way, shut out everything but the blue over- head and some glimpses of the Sabines, swimming like huge sapphires in a haze of airy gold. Suddenly, on the sky-line of a low ridge just ahead of us, a towering car moved into view, drawn by four white oxen, whose gilded horns were hung with wreaths of roses. The heavy wheels were smothered in roses too, scattering pink and white petals as they revolved over the newly-sprung grass. The sides of the car were all of fretted gold, catching the sun in a hundred lovely scrolls and ara- besques; raised high on a gold and ivory throne sate — a Roman Emperor, his white robes covered with jewels, the laurel wreath on his brow, his smooth young beauty facing the radiant morning with bland immobile inso- lence, his dark eyes fixed on the horizon, as if seeing his empire stretching away till its confines were lost in the unknown East. Behind him two black slaves held huge fans of white feathers over his head to protect him from the heat; at his feet, on a swirl of panther skins, sate his favourite of the moment, a beautiful, lithe Greek woman, her golden hair crowned with roses, her bare arms covered with bracelets and gleaming like marble in the sun, while a score or more of lovely girls in classical draperies leaned over the gilt balustrades that sank, tier below tier, from the sides of the throne down to the upper ledge of the rose-wreathed wheels. Black 62 ROMAN YESTERDAYS slaves in scarlet tunics led the oxen, urging them on with pointed gilt wands, and behind the Emperor's car, as far as one could see, followed a long procession of others, nearly as splendid as the first, crowded with all his at- tendants, gorgeous in raiment, grouped to perfection — and all, saving the ox-drivers, motionless as statues. It was a dream of Imperial times, too surprising to be real, till, as the first car passed close to us, one of the girls began to laugh and flung a handful of rose-petals in my face. How those young artists had enjoyed themselves in planning and producing the marvellous show! Painting pictures on canvas is all very well, but fancy the delight of making them live, on such a background, before peo- ple's eyes — of handling all that superb material to em- body visions that had haunted one despairingly for years, crying out to be used and shown I Upon my word, if I could start life over again and choose my own vocation, I believe I would make it that of a theatrical manager — an artist in flesh and blood 1 63 CHAPTER V A FEUDAL VILLA Ancient Beauty of Villa Borghese — A Sylvan Siesta — The Woodland of the Borghese — The Heart of the Trees — The Borghese Anemone — Vintage Time in the Grape Countries — Tuscany, an Atmosphere of Purity and Calm — Bunches of Grapes Two Feet Long — Muscatels of Etruria — October Festivals at the Villa Borghese — ^Peasants of the Coast Towns — Picturesque Costume of the Albanese — Feast in the Private Garden — Fountains of Wine — Classic Chariot Races — The Passing of the Feudal System. THE recollection of the artists' festival brings to my mind some festivals of other times, remembered by very few persons now alive. Next to those connected with the great religious anniversaries, the ones most ap- preciated by the Romans were, I think, the lavish enter- tainments given by Prince Borghese in his villa to celebrate the vintage, in October. The Villa Borghese, as every one knows, is a great pleasure park just outside the Porta del Popolo, but those who see it as it is now, exploited for the most vulgar commercial ends, and at the same time sadly neglected, can scarcely form an idea of its original plan and ancient beauty. Even in earlier days the fashionable crowd that drove there in the af- ternoon knew nothing of the remote dells and glades that lay lost in the great masses of woodland, of the meadows that spread beyond the woods, of statues and fountains shrined in the green and sequestered places that one might pass near a hundred times without becoming aware of their existence. It was one of the playgrounds of my babyhood, but even after I was grown up I sometimes made new discoveries there. 64 A FEUDAL VILLA In the very dawn of my recollections there is the mem- ory of one of childhood's long, long springs — when the days are all blue and silver overhead, and golden haze in the distance, and live emerald underfoot — when my old Maria used to convey me in the morning all the way from Villa Negroni on the Esquiline to Villa Borghese at Porta del Popolo, there to play in the grass till the sun began to sink towards St. Peter's. I was three years old, and there was as yet no all-important baby brother to whose existence my own was to be subordinated a year later. Nobody had yet started to train and discipline me, and each sun that rose shone through just so many hours of Paradise. To Maria I was sun and moon, and if I was happy she was happy, but there was one occupa- tion that kept her busy hour after hour in the distant villa, while I rolled on the grass — the picking of wild chicory for her supper salad. I can see her now, bent double, her good-natured dark face quite flushed with excitement as she pounced on the tender shoots that cropped up everywhere through the turf, till the red hand- kerchief in which she tied them up would hold no more, and she would slip it over her wrist, pick me up in her arms, and climb the tiers of the amphitheatre to reach our favourite luncheon room, a clear bubbling fountain in the avenue of ilex trees which crowned the ridge behind it. Here, close to the fountain, we had our midday meal, with the birds singing overhead and the wind dancing through the ilexes so that the ground was all a moving arabesque of sun and shade — the sweet fragrant ground that I could dig my fingers into to bring up handfuls of the gem-like ilex acorns that I loved so much. When the meal was over and my little silver mug had dipped up a drink for me from the fountain, I used to fall asleep 6S ITALIAN YESTERDAYS in Maria's arms to her queer lullabies — " Fringa, fringa ! " or " lo vorrei che alia luna ci s'andasse in carretella per vede le donne di lassu ! " It always seemed to me that I woke up when she stopped singing, and I could not understand why Maria, with her head against a tree-trunk, was snoring happily and had to be waked up herself. But our sylvan siesta had lasted an hour or two; the sun was no longer overhead, but streaming in floods of level gold through all the lower branches, turn- ing the turf and moss into live velvet, and flushing the statues' pale cheeks to a semblance of life. Then, with many a halt for gathering anemones and violets, and some running away on my part to hide in the intricacies of the marble grottoes which burrow behind the rococo temple fountain at the first parting of the great avenue, we wandered towards the entrance, avoiding the avenue itself and threading our way through the little woods, till we came out by " Napoleon's Tomb " — the exact copy of the. original one at St. Helena, weeping willow and all — till the great iron gates came in sight, and we had to re-enter the city again. Sometimes Maria was instructed to bring me back to Nazzarri's, in the Piazza di Spagna, in the middle of the day, for a solid meal; and then, scorning the "filet" which dear old Madame Nazzarri had had specially cooked for me, I used to persuade Maria to " trade " it for her own lunch, which I liked much better — " pane sott' olio," pieces of coarse casareccio bread sliced up in oil and vinegar, a favourite dish among the poorer classes to this day. Of course these little vagaries were most reprehensible and were never referred to at home — Maria's conscience concerning itself with one thing only — my three-year-old will and pleasure ! I believe she had a husband and son 66 A FEUDAL VILLA somewhere, and I know her old age was cosily cared for in the country, whence she used to come at intervals long after I was grown up, with a basket of " ciambelle " in one hand and a huge bunch of pink roses in the other. I started to speak of the villa and not of myself, but it was one of those places so inextricably entwined with the web of my own life that I cannot even now set it apart from personal associations and memories. I think it must have been there that I first made friends with trees — as trees. In our enchanted garden on the Es- quiline we had cypresses — the most perfect in all Italy — orange trees and ilexes, and one or two flowering junipers, but no shade trees or bits of woodland like those in the Borghese, where the ancient oaks and chest- nuts and beeches meet high overhead along avenues so extensive that to make the round twice in an afternoon was as much as most people ever did. As one drove through those avenues one looked down on the unex- plored and ever varied fields and woods within the circle, and, whether in winter or summer, at morning or at evening, one could always catch some new and lovely aspect of light and shade; it might be of mossed foliage, all bronze and velvet, thinning off into a copse of saplings unfurling their veil of feathery green in some breath of wind that left the giants calm and unruffled; or it might be a screen of bare tracery rising from some ridge, in cool, neutral tints into the chastened blue of an autumn sky; or again the fervid umber of slender trunks and branches cast up 'against the pale lemon and chrysoprase of a winter sunset; the blessed trees sounded every note, clothed themselves in every tint that human love and passion know, from the fresh unconscious caress of child- hood to the pomegranate outburst of first love — and 67 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS on to the gathered changeless riches of the heart's ma- turity — beyond which there lies nothing but dissolution and re-birth. I cannot explain these things; those who know them as I do admit the mystic relationship of some of us to the trees ; they can suffer, as I do, when murder- ers slay them ruthlessly, can kneel beside the fallen monarch and touch his pitiful wounds, and murmur all our love and veneration to the great heart that never will feel the sap leap and surge again. One poet said it for us all, when he wept in the woods before dawn and cried: " Great man-bodied tree, That mine arms in the dark are embracing, What magic of sympathy lies Between dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes? " It was in the Villa Borghese, driving round and round during the balmy afternoons of the spring before I was married, that my mother and I read William Morris's " Jason " aloud to each other, and never did a perfect poem have a more perfect setting. Where the lie of the land mounts a little towards the Pincio side of the Borghese, four avenues converge on a circle, in the centre of which is one of those broad lake fountains only to be seen in Rome, marble-rimmed and guarded by a group of marble sea-horses rearing and pawing round the tall shaft of water that bursts up from their midst. The carriage way is broad around the fountain, for here all the vehicles must pass, and the Roman world of my day prided itself on its shining equipages and thorough- bred horses. But all its pomp and brilliancy pales, at a certain moment of the spring, before the pink forest 68 A FEUDAL VILLA of juniper trees that thrust their thick-set branches out, from the darker foliage behind, to smother the marble seats below them in one enormous wreath of rose- coloured bloom, a carnival of loveliness only to be matched by the cherry blossoms in Japan. Here we used to leave the carriage and make our way into the vast enclosures of meadow under the stone-pines, where the wild anemone hid all the grass under a mantle of vivid pink. The Borghese anemone was a real wild thing, very like the English wind-flower that shimmers all along the landslip and the undercliff where the spring tides are flinging the Channel surf in thunder against the cliffs of the Isle of Wight. Only the English wind-flower is pale and fragile, white or lavender for choice, and the Roman one is of a flaunting purple-pink, with a strong stem the colour of brown madder — as is fitting for a self- respecting flower sprung from a soil that has been steeped in sun and soaked in blood. And it has this peculiarity, unique, so far as I know, among wild flowers, that if you bring.it home, in handfuls, as we used to do, and set it in water overnight, it will have grown many inches by the morning, every stalk stiff and proud, as if saying: " You thought I belonged in the fields, didn't you? No, indeed, my place is in a palace ! " Very different is the anemone of Villa Doria, far away across the city, on the Janiculum. It too nestles beneath the stone-pines, in the fine short grass, but it is a patri- cian bloom, each flower perfect, with broad polished petals of pure ivory or vivid scarlet or monsignore pur- ple, diverging from a heart as black as jet. It is chary of growth and keeps close to the ground, and you must tread delicately or you will crush some yet unopened buds. It meant a good deal to some of us — I wonder if the 69 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS others remember? One did. Far away In China, just before my eldest boy was born, there blew to me across the world a film of Honiton lace, and when I spread It out, there was a garland of Villa Doria anemones worked In the red West Country that Is the Italy of England, and sent as a greeting by a comrade of the vanished Roman days. Why don't we all die when we are young and sweet and true? But to return — (for the — th time?) — to my very much strayed sheep — the old October entertainments in the Villa Borghese. Those who have not lived In them would find it hard to understand what that month means to the children of the grape countries. It Is the very crown of the year In Romagna, Indeed all over Italy. The heats of summer, the stifling languors of sclrocco, are over and gone; the air is divinely cool and bright, and everything sparkles in a sun that warms but no longer scorches; the wind comes dancing over the mountains, like a song, rustling the trees and shaking little showers of bronzed leaves down on one's head. In the vine- yards the vines were stripped of most of their leaves In August to let the grapes bake In the sun till their hearts are like syrup In the black tight-drawn skins. Now, if the year is a good one, the rain came after the Feast of the Assumption to soften and swell the purple covering to all but bursting point, and the few leaves that hang on the vines have turned scarlet and yellow, so that they look like huge gaudy butterflies hovering round the long pear-shaped clusters of fruit. The strong wilful " ceps " is like fretted gold in the sunshine; every bunch that Is brought to one's table must be of perfect shape and have two or three inches of that corrugated stem to carry it by and two leaves at its head for wings; but 70 A FEUDAL VILLA by the first day of October the mere cutting for market is over, and the real business of the vintage begins, when the great wains go lumbering down the alleys of the vineyard, drawn by meek white oxen who move slowly but plunge into the rich loose soil up to the fetlock at every step. The vintners creep through the vine-rows, clipping, clipping with their clumsy shears, and tossing the fruit into the osier baskets strapped on their backs, while they sing the strange old songs that have been sung at the vintage since the days of Servius Tullius; the women's white head-coverings and dark blue skirts and scarlet bodices blaze out against the gold and green of the vine- rows, and as they carry their baskets — on their heads, after immemorial custom — to the man waiting on the wagon, they move with smooth, stately steps, like caryatides released from the marble. Towards midday the first wagons are full and go trailing up to the wine press near the house; the " treaders," the strongest of the young men, have been sitting on the stone bench in the shade, for their work is all before them and they have to keep limbs and garments clean. Now the wagon is drawn close to the vat, and the vintagers, working like demons, toss in a ton or two of grapes till the huge receptacle is piled high above its edges with a mountain of purple fruit. A ladder is set against it and the treader scrambles up, his bared limbs gleaming like cop- per in the sun, and the next instant he is a young Dionysus, leaping and dancing on that piled sweetness, chanting the song to which his feet keep time, while the rosy froth streams from the opening below into a second vat that ere long becomes a lake of dimpling crimson must, whose heady fragrance floats out intoxicatingly on 71 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS the October air. Ah, the good days I It would indeed have been a poor heart that could not rejoice in them ! More than once it was my good fortune to watch this almost sacred process in the villa where I happened to be spending the summer, and, though I am jealous for the glories of Romagna, I must admit that it is far more picturesque and attractive in Tuscany. The whole at- mosphere there is imbued with a purity and calm un- known to the perfervid rollicking South; the hills are the hills of Umbria — of Perugino's and Francia's back- grounds, pale and clear, rounding into little knolls that are more silvery than golden when the sun kisses side or summit; the mulberry and the acacia and the olive throw fans of timid tracery against the elusive sky; where the olive rustles to silver in the breeze a thousand shades of grey delight the eye, and on every ridge the sparse spires of the Tuscan cypresses, so feathery slender that the tapering points are fragile as a fern's fronds, delimit the view in lines of dark delicacy most restfully sym- metrical and definite. All is ascetic, yet tender, save where, far off on the plain, the low red wall of a city lies like a sword across the land. In the distance Umbria, with its clean, pale landscapes, so significant and lucent under the quivering dome of white, seems less of earth than Heaven, almost breathlessly impersonal, a country more for angels than for men; but nearer at hand she smiles at you, like some saint turning from the ravish- ments of contemplation to encourage a fellow-being whose vision is not clarified to behold what she has seen. If you stand where I used to stand, on the terraced eminence of a Tuscan " podere," you find yourself at the apex of a net of deep and wide grassways, diverging from you in every direction till the lines are lost in a 72 A FEUDAL VILLA froth of greenery, trained along avenues of mulberry trees that humbly support the airy garlands twenty and thirty feet from the ground. The trees are set with per- fect regularity, but wide apart, and the grapevines fling themselves from one to another in sweeping curves that are a joy to see. In Romagna the vineyard has little beauty of its own, for the modern cultivator keeps his grapes within a few feet of the ground; often he pulls them up every year, stores them carefully, and replaces them in the spring. But further north the stocky stem is encouraged to grow and harden for all time; time be- stows upon it the proportions and ruggedness of a tree; and the fruit, gloriously confident of its parent, throws out bunches sometimes two feet long; of incomparable fulness and flavour. Around Chiusi, in the heart of Etruria, the grapes are all muscatels, big globes of pale green jade, freckled with agate, and the perfume they distill is that of the white Roman rose — a fragrance indescrib- ably exquisite, and individual to that fruit and that flower alone. In my girlhood there were times when I was not very strong; life was almost too full, and I had to rest from it sometimes. Then my angel mother would make me lie down in her favourite room, the one where the walls were rose and old-gold, and the ceiling a vault of mother-of-pearl seen through Tuscan grapevines, and she would set a bunch of those white roses and a tiny Vene- tian goblet of amber-coloured " Est-Est " beside rne, and leave me alone for hours, while the fountain played in the courtyard and the Roman dusk came down and made shadows in the room. Then I used to close my eyes and play a little game, trying to find out which was rose and which was wine — and fall asleep before the point was decided — to dream that I was angel or butterfly — all 73 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS wings, anyway, free in a world where language was scent and music. Spoiling? Surely. But it was training, in a way. Why not develop all the senses that can help us in the long, long march of life? There was nothing languorous in the Tuscan airs. Even in the hottest hour of summer one was eager, in- terested, glad to move about; and when early autumn brought the vintage, life simply bubbled in one's veins. I could stand all day watching the oxen crawling up those grassy roads between the trellised vines, with the splen- did loads of grapes, or hover near the vats where the white-clad youths, who looked like Carpaccio's pages, danced and leapt as they trod the wine-press. We had to come away before the vintage was over, so as not to miss too much of the October loveliness at home, but the grapes followed us all the way. There was one sta- tion — that of Chiusi, I think — where the " ristorante " consisted of a little hand-cart with a high rail all around the sides; the rail was hung with hundreds of bunches of those scented, freckled grapes — two sous a bunch, if you please — and the vendor pushed it up and down the platform close to the carriage windows. It was a hot day, and never was fruit more welcome ! In the " spacious days " of the earlier part of the century the Borghese family, being, though not the most ancient, the wealthiest in Rome, used to mark the crown of the year by giving in their villa certain entertainments, intended chiefly for their own tenants, but the hospitality of which was extended to the entire population. The princely lavishness of these festivities resembled nothing 74 A FEUDAL VILLA that I have ever heard of in modern times; it recalled indeed the days of Roman Emperors whose only claim to the throne rested on their popularity with the people. On the Sundays of October the villa was thrown open at sunrise, and from all the " castelli " of the Sabine and Alban Hills, and from the sea-coast too, the peasants, who had been watching all night (and in some cases all the previous day), having heard Mass, trooped in with their wives and families, to eat and drink and enjoy theni- selves. Those were the times when every district had its distinctive costume, and the dazzling effects of colour were such as we shall never see again. The coast towns are very Greek, and the dress of the Nettuno and Fano women is almost Greek still — a clinging skirt and close- fitting coatlet of vivid scarlet, the tint that makes the eyes swim and wince — imparted, by secrets of their own, to a cloth of such velvety purity and softness that it lasts through three and four generations, and cost them (it is probably unobtainable now) five dollars the " palmo " of ten inches — half a dollar an inch. The hair was worn in two long braids hanging down the back from under a small cap of the same cloth, set rather far back on the head, and cap and bodice and skirt were stiff with gold embroidery. The effect was magnificent. Very different was the dress of the Albanese, with which, in a modified form, most travellers are familiar, since the women of Albano still have the privilege of nurs- ing the aristocratic babies of Rome. Their costume con- sists of a long full skirt of flowered silk, pale blue or cin- namon colour, brocaded with red carnations or pink roses; the " busto " or corset, as well as the tight long cuffs that reach from wrist to elbow, are of that same scarlet cloth and trimmed with heavy gold braid; but the chief 75 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS beauty of the costume is in the fine lace of the voluminous " fichu " which is pinned low down in folds behind to leave the strong young neck bare, and folded in to the corset in front, over a camisole of finest linen, also much adorned with lace. The fichu leaves all the throat — such a column of ivory! — and some expanse of chest bare to rise and fall under half a dozen strings of dark faceted red coral, huge beads bought by the ounce and treasured for hundreds of years; the earrings are great danglums of dropping pearls, and the headdress a crown of ruffled ribbon three or four inches wide, set tight round the coil of bfaids and held in place by big pins of gold filigree, while two long streamers of the ribbon hang nearly down to the hem of the skirt behind. A lace apron, like that which Hungarian ladles wear with court dress, completes the costume, and nobody can quarrel with " Balia " for holding her handsome head very high when she wears it. No greater contrast can be imagined than that pre- sented by these two costumes, of which one or the other strikes the type all through Romagna; and the men, in old times, were as picturesquely clad as the women, though deprived of the gold and lace in which the lat- ter delighted. Fancy hundreds and hundreds of these splendidly attired beings, with the beauty which is still the land's blessed heritage, streaming up the different avenues under those noble trees and then gathering in to the feast prepared for them in the private garden — a large open space laid out in variegated flower-beds of quaint design, and, on these famous Sundays, converted into an open-air banqueting hall where, at long tables loaded with good things, the crowds could eat their full, quenching their thirst at one of the fountains which ran 76 A FEUDAL VILLA with wine from dawn to dark. None were debarred from sharing the Prince's hospitality, whether they were his own people or strangers, and the " plebs " of Rome, who poured out in thousands, were as welcome as all the ten- ants and labourers on his many estates. My dear old stepfather, who saw it all when he was a young man and described it to me, said that what most impressed him was the perfect order that prevailed all day, the Romans having the happy gift of being able to enjoy themselves without becoming riotous. One of the great features of the villa is the " Teatro di Siena," the amphitheatre on the Pincio side of the prin- cipal avenue. The base is a green expanse of turf, from which rise several tiers of narrow terraces marked in white marble and also paved with turf. The summit of the circle is guarded by a ring of tall stone-pines which close it in and make an admirable frame for the spec- tacles of one kind and another which have taken place there. The prettiest I ever saw was the tournament given at the time of the Duke of Genoa's wedding, in which the present King of Italy, then a young boy, took such an animated part.* In the October days of which I was speaking a still more interesting show was provided in the form of chariot races, copied exactly from the an- cient Roman ones, the charioteers, bareheaded youths in classical costume, standing in the gilt " bigas " and urg- ing their teams to wildest speed round the broad race- course, while the bands filled the air with stirring music, and the people stood up in their seats and yelled and cheered, and laid their money on this or that chariot, just as their ancestors did in the Coliseum or in Nero's circus two thousand years ago. Now, as then, the only official •See "A Diplomatist's Wife in Many Lands." 77 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS reward for the victor was a laurel crown and the renown that came with it. The upheavals of 1848 made an end of the old feudal ways and festivities; but, though it may appear incom- prehensible to the philistines who rule the world to-day, they furnished mighty strands in the ties of sympathy and good-will which hold class and class together and keep a country sober, contented, and law-abiding. All healthy human nature needs healthy excitement from time to time, and, if that be unattainable, the craving is so imperative that it will find satisfaction in other and less wholesome ways. Talking of excitement, one realises that the ancients, in spite of the good taste with which we usually credit them, would have participated only too joyfully in all our modern crimes of speed had the opportunity been afforded. The inscription unearthed at Pompeii the other day shows that they could be as callous as ourselves in the pursuit of pleasure. "To-day" — here follows the date — " a Roman Knight in his biga ran over our little Calpurnius, aged three years. May Pluto shortly have his soul! " One is reminded of the child at the East-end Sunday-school, who, being asked to define the meaning of the clause in the Creed which speaks of " the quick and the dead," replied : " Them that runs away when the mo- tors is coming is the quick, and them that doesn't is the dead! " 78 CHAPTER VI A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE Church's Pilgrimage on the Feast of the Apostles — The Seven Com- memorative Churches — The Byzantine Basilica of St. Paul — The Apos- tle's Tomb— Ostian Way, the Saddest of All Roads— The Tideless Sea — Call of the Unknown, Gorgeous East — Santa Pudentiana, the Site of St. Paul's First Abiding Place in Rome — Christianity in Early Rome — Priest Pastor's Story of the Pudens Family — Holy Relics — Story of the Crime of the Vico Scellerato — The Last of the Roman Kings. FROM things of the recent past let us turn for a moment to follow a pilgrimage which the Church makes during the seven days following the Feast of the Apostles in June and in the course of which she draws our attention to the seven spots in the Eternal City most closely connected with their glorious end. These spots had been for long centuries points of attraction to the Christians who flocked Rome-wards from all over the world at that time of year, but it was not till 1743 that Benedict XIV, Prospero Lambertini of Bologna (and the fifth Pontiff born in that city of learning) , laid down the order in which the seven sanctuaries should be pub- licly honoured.* In a bull dated April i, 1743, Benedict decreed that the various corporations of the hierarchy should take it in turn to honour the Octave of SS. Peter and Paul by * Until the year 844 the Popes had continued to bear their own names after being elected to the Throne, but when the choice fell on a holy and humble man called Peter, he refused to keep the name of the Prince of the Apostles and chose for himself that of Sergvis — a renunciation which instituted the custom, followed ever since, of the Pope's selecting a new name on his accession. 79 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS proceeding in state to the Church designated for the day when a pontifical Mass was to be celebrated, with the assistance of the whole body of the Pope's Chair. These seven Churches are so bound up with the last days of our great Fathers in the Faith that in passing from one to another it is possible to realise very vividly the scenes of the tremendous drama enacted in the year of grace 67 during the last days of Heaven's patience with the tyranny of Nero. Taking them in their order we will leave the Pope, according to his wish, to say his Mass in St. Peter's on the 30th of June, and follow the Apostolic Vicars, his " Assistants of the Throne," as they go in state to the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls. Once that long road skirting the river was the most crowded of the ap- proaches to the city, but that was before the Tiber, hav- ing gorged itself to congestion with silt and plunder, had turned aside to find another outlet, when the galleys could still be rowed up within sight of Rome and tumble out their freight of grain or marble or wild beasts on the quays that are deserted to-day. The Ostian Way is the saddest of all roads now; few ever pass over it; there is but one habitation between the city gate and the Ba- silica, nearly two miles distant. The river rolls, yellow and sullen, to the sea, through flat lowland, reeking with malaria from the swamps, where the fierce black buffaloes still wander at will, and vehemently resent the intrusion of a stranger on their domain. The Basilica to which the Vicars Apostolic of Bene- dict XIV went in state was not the one which pilgrims visit now; in the early days it was the centre of a thriv- ing little town outside the town, the suburb of Joan- nopolis, so called from Pope John VII, who founded and 80 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE fortified it as a stronghold for the defence of Rome on the side towards the sea. Built in the time of Constan- tine, added to through the centuries, ever more beautified and never defaced, those who saw it tell us that it was a perfect specimen of the Byzantine Basilica, nobly se- vere, making the impression of vast undisturbed spaces for worship, yet in reality a treasure-house of riches and art. Its mysterious destruction by fire, scarcely to be accounted for in an erection all of marble and stone, took, place on the 15th of July, 1823, on the last night of the life of Pius VII, the Pontiff upon whom Napoleon had laid sacrilegious hands and kept in captivity over five years — a captivity that in years, months, and days was precise in duration with his own after-imprisonment at Saint Helena. Dates are curious things ! While Pius VII lay on his deathbed on that night of the 15th of July (the anniversary of his signing of the Concordat, twenty-two years earlier) , he was greatly distressed by a dream which roused him again and again from torpor to enquire of his attendants whether some great calamity had not fallen on Rome. With the dawn came the news of the burning of the Basilica, but it was kept from him, and he passed away that day, without learning the truth of that which the clairvoyance of ap- proaching dissolution had cloudily revealed to him. Some fragments were saved and incorporated in the new Church which at once rose to replace the ancient one, of which the Sovereigns of England were, until the Ref- ormation, proud to call themselves the titular protectors. The minute description of the original Basilica, left us by Cardinal Wiseman and others who had seen it, shows how, in all respects save one, the new one falls short of the earlier beauty and majesty; but the tomb of St. Paul, 81 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS the heart of the whole, remains to us intact, far below the level where fire or storm can rend it, and the very empti- ness and bareness of the great Church above seem to enhance the awe inspired by that great sarcophagus in the crypt — raised high from the ground of the deep vault, as on an altar throne, so as to be above the depre- dations of the Tiber even in the river's most uncon- trollable outbreaks. There, as far as human foresight can discern, the holy, weary relics will lie till the Judgment Day, resting after all the travel and shipwrecks, the cold and hunger and strifes of life, and from the hurried journeys on which they were carried hither and thither, in search of safety from profanation, after death. There is a loneliness of grandeur about the character and mission of St. Paul which, in these ends of time, have come to surround his grave also, and they suit it well. Often in my girlhood I traversed that desolate road between the city and the sea, and all the vitality of youth could not avert the shudder of cold and solitude that came over me in doing so, no matter how numerous and gay my companions might be. We used to drive out to Ostia in the spring, when the sea calls so alluringly to its lovers, and spend long hours under the pines that fringe the beach. The Tiber aban- doned the old port long ago and twists itself into the Mediterranean a couple of miles north of its original out- let. In April the stretch of low rolling ground near Castel Fusano is all one field of wild jonquils that fill the air with perfume, and beyond them there is nothing but the long forsaken beach and the regular beat of the tideless sea. I stood there one day on a little rock as far out as I dared to go, with the waves breaking round my feet, and the west wind singing in my ears — singing 82 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE strange songs of far lands that were already beckoning me away from my Roman home. The sun had sunk, to- wards them, leaving the sky a dome of green and citron, delicate and dim; the sea was sullen grey on the hither side, and floating opal in the west; and when at last I was called back to land, the pines leaned together and whispered dark things about the destinies of mortal maids who ventured to listen to the call of the Unknown. And how it calls me yet — the Unknown that has just flicked its fringes in my eyes, wafted a ghost of its scent in my nostrils ! There are two of us — I and my first-born — to whom Mother Asia still cries heart- breakingly through all the stress and all the staleness of life in the ready-made places. We began our life there together, the baby who opened his eyes in the white heat of an Asiatic summer, and I, who had passed from girl- hood to motherhood at his coming; we two knew it, the air of the great plains that reach from Pechili to the Tundras, from Peking to Lake Oo-nor — and the Altai — the padding of the camels' feet in the dust — the smell of camphor and sandal-wood, and tea-brick — the touch of Siberian sable and silver fox, lighter than my kiss on his cheek, warmer than my arms around his body — the clang of the hammer on the bronze, the damp sweetness of the temple courts, the gleam of rough gold and the blue of the turquoise — the melancholy eternal splendour of the heart of Asia, the dear raw strength of it all, uncannily perfumed and terrifyingly sacred, as the scent let loose from some regal, balm-stuffed tomb ! And we go back to Asia and follow the caravans starting for Nijni Novgorod, and talk with the merchants, and rest in our own fairy temple among the white pines of the western hills — for whole nights together sometimes — 83 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS and the next day return to our places in the cheap civilised world as if nothing had happened — and we never tell anybody where we have been I But we must continue to follow another and more im- portant pilgrimage. On the ist of July, the " Apostolic Pronotaries " celebrate the Divine Mysteries in the Church of Santa Pudentiana, the sanctuary which stands upon the site of the house where St. Paul lived during his first stay in Rome from 41 to 50 A.D. It was the prop- erty of Pudens, the same, apparently, whom St. Paul mentions in his second Epistle to Timothy, together with Eubulus and Linus (afterwards Pope) and Claudia. Pudens was a wealthy Senator who eagerly embraced the Christian Faith and brought all his family and household into the Fold. What power they had for good, those masters of huge households, in the Rome of the First Century of our era ! Doubtless, Pudens, like many others of whom it is consoling to read even in that age of gross selfishness and cruelty, had ever been a just man and merciful to his slaves; but what must have been the re- joicing of the poor bondsmen when he summoned them to listen to the Apostle and learn that Christ died for all, that He had bought for each one of them, as fully as for the greatest potentate on earth, an eternity of hap- piness in which they would be compensated for all the privations and sorrows of life! Think what that doc- trine meant to the unfortunate creatures for whom not only life itself with no hope or intimation of a beyond, but every alleviation of their wretched lot, depended on the whim of an owner, who, if reasonable and kind him- self, might at any moment sell or present them to an- 84 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE other, of the most cruel and savage character! Even to those of them who did not at once embrace Chris- tianity the master's altered convictions must have brought intense relief and comfort, and, to those who did, it must have been like the rising of a sun of warmth in darkest, coldest night. We get a beautiful glimpse into the home life of Chris- tians in those days in the detailed story of the family of Pudens, left us by the Priest, Pastor, the brother of Pius I. iThe friend and host of St. Paul, having mightily aided the cause of the Faith, was rewarded, it is believed, with the crown of martyrdom, under Nero, but his son, also named Pudens, and heir to his virtues as well as his estates, vigorously continued the good work begun by the father, and brought up his two daughters, Praxedis and Pudentiana, in the love of God from their earliest years. Of the manner of his end I have found no record, though we may be sure it was a happy one ; we know that by the time Pudentiana was sixteen, she and her sister were orphans, the possessors of great riches, and that they had vowed themselves to the service of God and His poor. It was the privilege of wealthy Christians to provide fitting places for the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries and for the assembling of catechumens for instruction, whenever a lull in the tempests of fast-succeeding perse- cutions made it safe for them to pray and teach else- where than in the Catacombs. Pudentiana, although the younger of the two sisters and scarcely more than a child when she died, seems to have been of a most valiant spirit, the one to direct and organise, while the gentle Praxedis, destined to survive her for some years, sup- ported and aided her in all things. These two rich girls, in the flower of their youth, gave all their time to prayer 85 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS and praise, to charity and penance. " They desired," says Pastor, " to have a baptistery in their house, to which the blessed Pius not only consented, but drew the plan of the fountain for it with his own hand. Then, calling in their slaves, both from town and country, the two vir- gins gave liberty to those who were Christians, and urged belief in the Faith on those who had not yet received it. By the advice of the blessed Pius, the affranchisement was declared, with all the ancient usages, in the oratory founded by Pudens; then, at the festival of Easter, ninety- six neophytes were baptised; so that thenceforth assem- blies were constantly held in the said oratory, which re- sounded with hymns of praise night and day. Many pagans gladly came thither to find the faith and receive baptism. " Meanwhile the Emperor Antoninus, being informed of what was taking place, issued an edict commanding all Christians to dwell apart in their own houses, without mixing with the rest of the people; also forbidding them to go to the public shops or to frequent the baths. Praxedis and Pudentiana then gathered Into their own house those whom they had led to the faith, and shel- tered and nourished them for many days, all watching and praying. The blessed Bishop Pius himself frequently visited us with joy, and often offered the Sacrifice for us to the Saviour. "Then Pudentiana went to God. Her sister and I wrapped her in perfumes and kept her concealed In the oratory. Then, at the end of twenty-eight days, we car- ried her to the cemetery of Priscilla, and laid her near her father, Pudens. " Eleven months after, Novatus * died in his turn. He * St. Novatus— apparently a brother or cousin of Pudens. 86 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE bequeathed all his goods to Praxedls, and she then begged of St. Pius to erect a Church in the baths of Novatus, which were no longer used and where there was a large and spacious hall. The Bishop made the dedica- tion in the name of the blessed virgin Praxedis herself, and in the same place he consecrated a baptistery. " But at the end of two years a great persecution was declared against the Christians, and many received the crown of martyrdom. Praxedis concealed a great num- ber of them in her oratory and nourished them with the food of this world and the Word of God. But the Em- peror Antoninus, having learnt that these meetings took place in the oratory of Praxedis, caused it to be searched, and many Christians were taken, especially the Priest Simetrius and twenty-two others, and the blessed Praxedis collected their bodies by night, and buried them in the cemetery of Priscilla on the seventh day of the Kalends of June. Then the virgin of the Saviour, worn out with sorrow, only asked for death. Her tears and her pray- ers reached to Heaven, and fifty-four days after her brethren had suffered she passed to God. And I, Pastor the Priest, have buried her body near that of her father, Pudens." * There is nothing that could be added to the Priest Pastor's story. It is so complete, so loving, and so illu- minating in the gentle charity with which it tells us that " Pudentiana passed to God." Not a word of her cruel death — we know of that from other sources, no com- plaints about the rampant hatred which made it neces- sary to conceal her body for four weeks before it could be laid beside that of her father in the holy ground of the * This translation of Pastor's narrative is the one used by Augustus J. Hare in his " Walks in Rome." 87 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS Appian Way. All is told without a spark of rancour or an exclamation of grief — yet when Pastor buried Praxe- dis beside her sister, the loving circle to which he had ministered in their house was broken up, every member of the family was dead, as well as most of the friends they gathered there ; the home had been raided and dese- crated, and he was a marked man, holding himself in readiness for his end. What strikes one particularly in all the stories of this time is the resolute veneration with which the Christians, in spite of all prohibitions, collected the bodies of their . slain comrades and succeeded In burying them in holy ground. The bodies of Pudentiana and Praxedis were finally restored to their home, already consecrated as a church, and there we can behold at this day the phials in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs. It was the zeal of the valiant Pudentiana in this work of love which drew down upon her the wrath of the perse- cutors and hastened her own death. A hundred years later the noble Cecilia, with her husband and his brother, suffered for the same cause, and what thousands had been immolated for it between I Nothing could daunt the Christian spirit in this regard, and it cannot but enhance the preciousness of our holy relics to reflect that so many of our forbears in the Faith preserved them for us at the price of their own lives. There are some startling juxtapositions in the topog- raphy of old Rome. But a stone's throw from the ven- erable Church of St. Pudentiana is a spot which, when I was a child, was still regarded by the Romans as cursed, still known to us as the Vico Scellerato, though I do not find the name on the modern lists of Roman streets. It was there that was enacted the last scene of one of 88 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE the ugliest tragedies in the records of humanity, a story of crime so appalling that it has survived twenty-five centuries of oblivion, and is still told, with shudders of horror, among the poor people of that quarter of the city, even as the memory of the good Queen Tanaquil is still venerated for her virtue and wisdom. In these times, when so much instructive old materiail has been swept away to make room for the fads and futilities of modem education, it seems worth while to place the tale on record again. It opens (as did the history of Hipparchus) with a Greek, one Lucumo, who drifted to Italy in the days of Ancus Martius. Lucumo was the son of a native of Corinth, and, on land- ing in Italy, settled at a town in the heart of Etruria, called Tarquinii. Doubtless he found friends and coun- trymen there, for the Greeks were ever a roving people and, to judge by the Greek influence so visible in Etrus- can Art, must very early have brought their love of beauty and skill in labour thither. Tarquinii was a walled city, five miles in circumference, as can still be seen from the remains near Corneto Tarquinii, the town which has re- placed it. But it was not stirring enough for the venture- some Lucumo, and, moved perhaps by some such myste- rious power as that which, centuries later, whispered in Alaric's ear, " Penetrabis ad Urbem," travelled south- wards and came to Rome, bringing with him his beauti- ful Greek wife, Tanaquil, and all his goods, which ap- pear to have been of great value. It was quite a caravan, therefore, which approached the northern gate of the city, and one can fancy the hum of excited talk among children and dependents as they paused to gaze at it. At that moment a great eagle, flapping along in search of a Campagna lambkin for its brood in the Sabines, 89 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS hovered above the travellers for a moment, its dark wings spread motionless against the blue; then it darted down, and, snatching the cap from the head of Lucumo, soared away with it, while all gazed up in awe and con- sternation, wondering what the marvel might portend. In an instant another followed. The eagle, after wheel- ing aloft, swooped down once more and replaced the cov- ering on the leader's head, then flew away and was no more seen. " It is a happy omen ! " cried Tanaquil to her husband, " of this great city thou shalt one day be King!" He found a warm welcome in Rome and so endeared himself to the inhabitants by his generosity and wisdom that when Ancus, the reigning King, died, they chose Lucumo to replace him. The new King did much to embellish and fortify the city, and Tanaquil, while shar- ing his state and councils, became the model of all Roman matrons, spinning and weaving the wool for the garments of her family, and clinging in all her ways to the old sim- ple, frugal ideals ; her distaff and spindle, and her woollen girdle, were preserved for many centuries, and ranked in importance with the " palladium " and other venerated insignia of Rome's power. One day, as she was crossing the court of the palace, the Queen saw some of her servants gathered in a group, staring at some object on the steps leading into the atrium. On approaching she beheld a young boy of great beauty ■ — Servius Tullius by name — whom she had taken into her service, lying asleep on the step, while a crown of lambent flame played above his unconscious head. The servants were terrified, but Tanaquil, versed in all the Etrurian lore of omen, at once perceived that he was to be a favourite of the gods. She told her husband that 90 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE the boy was destined to great glory, and Lucumo, ever heedful of her wise counsels, henceforth treated him as a son and educated him with the greatest care. Lucumo, whom the Romans by this time called Lucius, had sons of his own, but the succession, still purely elective, was coveted by the two sons of his predecessor Ancus. Filled with jealousy of the young Servius, whose election as - his own successor they feared that Lucius would procure, they laid a trap for the latter by re- questing a private audience with him. When they found themselves alone with the King, now an aged man — he had reigned forty years — they basely murdered him and rushed out into the city to tell the people he had died suddenly, and to sway the populace to make them Kings in his place. But so great was the mourning for good King Lucius when his death was announced, that the people gave them- selves up to their grief and put the matter of the election aside. And Tanaquil, the wise woman, caused it to be proclaimed, in an hour or two, that Lucius was merely stunned and not dead at all, and that until his recovery should be complete he desired that Servius should fill his place. Great was the rejoicing in Rome, and with much alacrity the people put themselves under the or- ders of the young Servius, who himself in all things obeyed the noble Tanaquil. So, for many days, the gov- ernment was carried on, and when the people had become accustomed to regarding Servius as their ruler, Tana- quil told them that her beloved husband had at last suc- cumbed to his wounds, and that Servius Tullius would in all things follow his good example If they would elect him as King. This they gladly did, and he reigned over them in 91 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS peace and honour for many years; but, alas! the bright portent of his youth no longer hovered over his destiny, and dark days were at hand for him and for Rome. He had two daughters, both called Tullia — the elder good and pure as Tanaquil, who had now passed away, and the younger with a heart full of evil and cruelty. These two girls their father had given in marriage to the two sons of his benefactor Lucius, in hope of securing peace to the kingdom by thus uniting the families. The two sons of Lucius presented the same violent contrasts of character as the daughters of Servius ; one was a sinner, the other a saint; and marriage mismated them, giving the elder Tullia to proud, wicked Lucius Tarquinius, and her black-hearted younger sister to the good Aruns. The consequences were soon all too apparent. Lucius fell in love with his brother's wife; she responded to his pas- sion; they two conspired to murder their lawful spouses, carried out their bloodthirsty plot, and then turned their attention to the removal of the aged Servius from their path to the throne. Servius, sprung from the people, had made many ene- mies among the nobles by restraining their oppressions, and by championing the poorer classes, and the wicked Lucius found no difficulty in drawing discontented men into a plot to kill the King. They waited craftily till the height of the harvest season, when the able-bodied workingmen were all busy in the fields outside the city; then, gathering in force in the Forum, they installed Lucius in the seat from which Servius was accustomed to judge the causes that were brought before him. Servius was at once warned of that which was taking place, and hurried on foot from the royal residence on the so-called Cispian Hill; in haste to reach the Forum 92 A CHURCH PILGRIMAGE and quell the insurrection, he took the short-cut through what is now the Via Urbana. At the end of this street he was met by a band of assassins who hewed him down and left him in his blood, lying right across the road. Meanwhile his daughter Tullia had left her own home (now marked by the Church of St. Peter of the Chains) and bade her charioteer drive at full speed to her fa- ther's house, of which it was arranged that she should take possession while the slayers were despatching him. On reaching the Via Urbana the driver, aghast, pulled up his horses. " We can go no further on this road. Lady! " he said, pointing to the body of the murdered King. " Drive on ! " she commanded. " I cannot — without crushing the King's body," he protested. " Drive on! " she cried, frantic to reach her goal, and the trembling man obeyed. The wheels bit deep into the yet warm flesh, and dripped and spattered her father's blood all along the road which the daughter followed to reach the stolen throne. And from that day on through all the ages the thoroughfare was called the Vico Scelle- rato — the atrocious road ! TuUia's son grew up to be " False Sextus," whose crime forced chaste Lucrece to fake her own life. Then the people rose against the tyrants and drove them out, to die despised and in exile and never another " King " ruled in Rome till it opened its dishonoured gates to Victor Emmanuel in 1870. 93 CHAPTER VII THE LATER EMPERORS People and Scenes of the Corso — The Collegio Romano — Cardinal Merry del Val — Church of the Trinita dei Monti — A Picture of the Em- peror Theodosius and His Son — The Other Boy Emperor, Gratian — The Usurper, Maximus — Nobility of Gratian — Finally Overcome by Treachery — Saint Ambrose — Fifth Day at St. Peter of the Chains — Two Christian Empresses — ^The Miracle of the Chains — High Mass at San Pietro — ^Latter Days of the Pilgrimage — View from Janiculum Hill — Michelangelo and Vasari — Michelangelo's " Visiting Card." THE second day of July, if we follow out our pro- posed seven days' pilgrimage, brings us to a spot in the Corso which so hums and stirs with modern life that it is difficult for the imagination to connect it with antiquity at all. Not that the Corso itself has the appear- ance of a modern street by any means. Narrow and any- thing but straight, with great palaces and mean buildings crowding promiscuously and set as close together as pos- sible — princely houses flanked by humble shops — with cross streets debouching into it every few hundred yards, and pouring fotth a stream of traffic, spreading away here and there as if pushed out by main force, but yield- ing as little as possible of the coveted sidewalks, it is the real artery of Rome, pulsing with the life of a people who, from the days of Julius Caesar to our own, have carried on existence in the open air. There the lawyers discuss their cases, the politicians air their opinions; the young men, at a certain hour of the afternoon, stand in long lines, like troops on guard, on the outer edge of the sidewalk, to ogle and criticise the women who roll 94 THE LATER EMPERORS by in their carriages trying to look unconscious of the enfilade. But the morning is the Corso's real prime, a midday of spring for choice, when, from a cloudless sky, the sun in his zenith rakes the long street from the Piazza di Venezia to the Popolo without leaving so much as an inch of shade as a refuge from his fierce rays, ex- cept where the shop-awnings extend a merciful protection to foot-passengers. The flower vendors are everywhere, offering whole baskets of lilacs — the fat Roman lilacs — carnations, and roses for a franc or two, and eagerly offering to carry the burden home for one on the spot. The great ladies, who would rather die than be seen in the Corso on foot in the afternoon, are racing about in twos and threes, dressed as simply as possible, it is true, but with the huge diamond earrings, from which they never part, focussing the sunbeams, while their high- voiced, intimate chatter and proud faces express their complete contempt for and ignoring of any human being outside their own aristocratic circle. This Is the golden hour for the dressmakers and milliners and jewellers, and their faces are wreathed in smiles as they fly about to satisfy the wealthy customers who make the morning their own. Few foreigners are seen; they haunt the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti, the street of the jewellers, who work solely for them in Etruscan gold and cameos and mosaics, ornaments which no Roman would ever think of buying or wearing, though they are far more artistic than the Frenchified tiaras and rivieres to be seen on the Corso. A few minutes before noon the crowd thickens there near the Collegio Romano till it is hard to make one's way through it; the buzz of talk ceases, men get out their watches, and hold them in their hands while all 95 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS eyes are turned upward as If expecting the advent of some celestial apparition. Silence reigns for a minute or two; then it is rent by the thunderous boom of the midday gun at Sant' Angelo, and the next instant a babel of deafening sound has broken over the city. Every Church bell in Rome is ringing madly. The crowd cries " Mezzo Giorno ! " with one voice, the black cone has run up on the flagstaff of the College observatory, and the watches have been returned to their owners' pockets. There is a kind of stampede to homes and restaurants for the mid- day meal, unless it is checked by the appearance of a squadron of dragoons clattering down the street like mounted suns, their helmets and breastplates shining in- tolerably bright, their big black horses pretending to paw and chafe in tune with the military band that follows them and which is filling the air with the joyous strains of a popular march that tries to outdo the pealing of the bells. Beside and behind the band comes every ragamuffin in Rome, marching delightedly, head in air, mouth open, and roaring out the tune ; hunger and rags are forgotten for the moment and every beggar boy feels like a vic- torious general attending his own triumph. Now the doors of the CoUegio have opened to let out another great stream to join the throng — students of all classes and nationalities pour into the street. On certain days those of the CoUegio di Propaganda Fide may be seen hurrying across the town to take their ex- ercise in the suburbs. Here come Greeks and Copts, Bengalis and Chinese, crossing similar processions of fair-haired English and Germans, the latter picturesquely notable as they stride along, two by two, some forty of them perhaps, in the vivid scarlet cassock and hat which Gregory XVI imposed upon them to cure them of slip- 96 THE LATER EMPERORS ping unnoticed into a " birreria " for a glass of their national beverage, and which costume has caused the Romans to give them the nickname of " Gamberi " — Lobsters I They make a great contrast to the English- speaking students, Scotch, Irish, American, and English proper, who wear sombre black or dark purple; but the form of the uniform is always the same, a long cassock with St. Ignatius' streamers reaching to the hem and fly- ing from the shoulders at every touch of wind, every movement of the muscular young bodies. The whole is crowned by a wide, three-cornered hat, from under which the boyish faces look out roguishly enough on what the owners evidently consider a mighty pleasant world. A young priest who lately returned from studying for three years at the American College in Rome, was tell- ing me the other day what delightful recollections he had brought away with him, of the cheery home-like at- mosphere of the college — of the wisdom and kindness of the Superior and his aides, and of all the merry larks that the American boys indulged in when study hours were over. A frequent visitor there was Cardinal Merry del Val, the most boyish-hearted of ecclesiastics; he took the greatest interest in their baseball contests, which he used to watch closely to learn the rules of the game. The Cardinal's father was the Spanish ambassador to the Pope for many years, and the Countess was a friend of my own dear mother, who admired her enthusiastic- ally. She was a highly cultivated and most holy woman, combining all the dignity of the old-time great lady with the gentle urbanity of a Religious ; indeed, when she and her young daughters entered a room they seemed to bring with them that ineffable convent fragrance, sweet as the message of hidden violets, which one scarcely looks to 97 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS meet in the outside world. Their home was in the Span- ish palace, from which the Piazza di Spagna takes its name, standing just opposite the splendid sweep of the " Spanish Steps," which mount in broad gradations to their crown, the towering Church of the Trinita dei Monti. But I was talking of a warm spring morning, and that ascent should be made in the cooler hours. It is pleasanter just now to linger under some awning near the end of the Corso, and, looking down across the sun- smitten expanse of the Piazza del Popolo to the gate of that name, to muse on the processions which have passed through that northern portal of the city. There is one picture that returns oftener than others to my mind when I look at it, the picture of Theodosius, .the great Emperor, entering the city in state, with his little son, Honorius, on his knee, and his co-emperor, the younger Valentinian, by his side. Rome, like some aged and neglected parent, was seldom visited by her Emperors in those days; their headquarters were fixed where great events were stir- ring — in Constantinople, in Ravenna, in Milan, or Treves. So the 13th of June, 309 a.d., marked an event long remembered by the Romans, the hour when they looked upon their rulers' faces for the first time. There was but one real ruler just then, however; his younger colleague and his little son were merely being trained to take their places when he should be no more. The cheer- ing crowds were carried away by the sight of the princely child, as crowds always are, but some of the more thought- ful must have gazed — not too confidently — on the face of Theodosius, the strong, dark, capable Spaniard, so just and merciful in his calm moments, so violent in his angry ones that only his beloved adopted daughter, 98 THE LATER EMPERORS Serena, dared approach him then. And, whether calm or angry, there was one memory that seems never to have left him, the memory of his brave, loyal soldier father, ignominiously put to death by the Roman Em- peror whom he had faithfully served — on a charge so futile that it was not even mentioned in the order for his execution. Yet, remembering, he forgave, and did all in his power to protect and help the Romans. His son grew up, alas ! a mere shadow of a man, too weak and indolent even to be wicked, his short life a strange contrast to an- other, cut off in the flush of youth the year before he was born. Even with a son of his own to follow him, we know Theodosius never ceased to mourn the untimely death of Gratian, " the graceful," " the gracious," " the gratitude inspiring," as the orator Themistius calls him. We have indeed one beautiful picture of Honorius, when still but a youth he entered Rome again, and again heard the Roman shouts as he passed on to the Pala- tine, standing in his gilded chariot, the sun resting on his dark head and playing radiantly on the great neck- laces of emeralds that rose and fell in response to the joyful -beatings of a heart still very young, still responsive at times to noble impulses, the people cheering him madly, and the w.omen weeping for joy at the sight of his beauty. After that, all is darkness; his intellect, such as it was, was devoted to the most futile of pursuits — the raising of prize poultry! It was but a few years later that, on being told that " Rome had perished," he cried out in dismay, "What, my beautiful fowl?" And on being told that it was the Mother of cities, the Heart of the Empire, which had succumbed to Alaric, the Goth in- 99 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS vader, he gave a sigh of relief, exclaiming, " I thought you meant my bird was dead ! " Far different was the character of the other boy- Emperor, Gratian, the son of Valentinlan. There is something wonderfully appealing as well as pathetic in the story of this pure and high-hearted youth into whose twenty-five years of life there entered every element of the fierce mental and material conflicts that convulsed the world in the fourth century of our era, the century when Imperial children were used as shields and standards for the conflicting parties and were called upon to exercise the powers of government almost before they had learnt to read. Valentinian, bent, like those be- fore and after him, on converting an elective sovereignty into an hereditary one, resolved on taking his son into partnership on the throne while Gratian was, by most accounts, only eight years old. As usual, the question would be decided by the army, or that portion of it near- est at hand, and Valentinian, having insinuated the idea into his soldiers' minds, found that they were not averse to it. Any such proceeding was sure to be welcome to them, since it was certain to be accompanied by the large donatives of money for the sake of which the Purple was so constantly changing wearers in those times. Valentinian was at Amiens, and the troops, having been called together in the plain before the city, he pre- sented the boy to them in a harangue full of spirit, re- minding them that Gratian, from his birth, had played with their children, grown up with their own sons, and promising that he should be a worthy leader of such noble company. The bright, fearless child stood up be- side his father on the tribunal, and the soldiers, forgetting ulterior motives, hailed him with real enthusiasm, shout- 100 THE LATER EMPERORS ing, " Gratiane Auguste ! Gratiane Auguste ! " with all their heart. There was a great burst of trumpets and clash of arms, and then Valentinian spoke to the boy, so that all could hear him. It is a fine speech, the speech of a soldier, and short, as soldiers' speeches should be : " Thou hast now, my Gratian, by my decision and that of my brave comrades, been invested with the Imperial robes. Begin to strengthen thy soul to bear their weight. Prepare to cross the Danube and the Rhine, to stand firm in battle with these thy warrior friends, to shed thy blood and give up thy life itself for the defence of thy sub- jects, to think nothing too great or too little by which thou canst preserve the safety of the Empire. This is all I will say to thee now, but the rest shall be told thee when thou art mature enough to comprehend it." Then, turning to the troops, he ended by saying: " To you, my brave soldiers, I commit the boy — with the prayer that your love may guard him, your arms defend him, all his life ! " Valentinian's next care was to provide Gratian with wise tutors, and surely few youths were ever more fa- voured in that respect. The tie between him and St. Ambrose was as strong and tender a one as history has ever presented to our admiration. Gratian, in every cir- cumstance of his short and stormy life, turns to the great Bishop for support and counsel. Ambrose never seems to have the young ruler out of his thoughts; the Saint's outburst of sorrow at his death is the cry of a broken heart. It all forms a chapter of most unusual beauty in the story of mankind. Hardly less attractive is Gratian's affection for his other tutor, Ausonius, whom, even in the urgency of affairs and the stress of war, he never forgets, taking lOI ITALIAN YESTERDAYS time to send him a letter or a gift, remembering even the poet's harmless weaknesses, and making a long journey so as to assist in person at the investiture with the Con- sulship, which Gratian had bestowed upon him, thus crown- ing the highest ambition of the good man's heart. Yet, what a contrast the two teachers present! Ambrose, the " golden-mouthed " indeed, but inflexible, the uncon- querable fighter for the independence of the Church, the judge of his Emperor Theodosius, whom he punishes — during eight long months — for the Thessalonian massacre, by forbidding him to enter the sanctuary till he has repented of his cruelty publicly in dust and ashes before its threshold — and Ausonius, the " tranquil and indulgent man, mild of voice and eye," rejoicing in the beauties of his lovely home by the Moselle, bringing the exquisite freshness of a summer morning before us as few others have done, his sincere Christianity all warmed and illumined by his born kinship with Nature and his gratitude to the Creator; yet so human in his fluttering delight at Gratian's favours, his innocent triumph when the young Emperor not only associates him with himself In the Consulship, but sends him the very purple robe embroidered with palm branches which the great Con- stantine had worn on the same occasion. It is difiicult to understand how the grandson of " Gratian the rope-maker " — that rough country lad who wandered Into the Roman camp at Clbalae In Pannonia to sell his wares, and so pleased the soldiers by his strength and audacity that they kept him with them — should have come to be the very model and Ideal of a gentle knight, both in heart and person. He seems far more nearly allied to the noble Constantlne, of whom he speaks indeed as a parent, but only on the ground of 102 THE LATER EMPERORS having married his granddaughter Constantia. It was an age when the unending ramifications of the various Im- perial families furnished more occupants for thrones than there were thrones to occupy, and in which a successful claimant could almost always find a royal bride with whose name to strengthen his own hold on power. Add to this multiplicity of true heirs the numberless usurpers who struck but for themselves, or those whom the different Legions raised to the purple for their own ends ("bar- rack Emperors " as our own great historian, Thomas Hodgkin, called them), and you have such a bewildering crowd of Emperors and sham Emperors, of usurpers and rival usurpers, that one can scarcely remember their names, and their histories only awake a passing thrill of pity for the violent ends to which most of them came. One of the usurpers indeed (Magnentius by name) left an important, if disturbing, legacy to the world in the person of his widow Justina, a beautiful but not over- wise Sicilian woman whom his conqueror, Valentinian, already the father of Gratian, took to wife. The story of her triumphs and misfortunes, of the obstinate cham- pionship of the Arian heresy which brought her into such a series of battles with St. Ambrose, would fill volumes, and one gathers that she was a great thorn in the side of her stepson Gratian, who, while obliged to restrain her as far as possible, nevertheless treated her with un- varying kindness and deference. One of the most touch- ing incidents in the life of the boy Emperor is the fear and depression expressed in the letter in which he be- seeches St. Ambrose to send him some good book from which he can draw faith and courage in the struggle lying before him, the subjugation of the Goths, who had rebelled against his Arian uncle, Valens, still the reign- 103 ITALIAN YESTERDAYS ing Emperor in the East. St. Ambrose responds by writ- ing and sending his treatise " Of Faith," and from that time forth it is said that Gratian carried the little book about with him, studying it even in his chariot when on his travels. These were never-ending, his vigilance driving him hither and thither, to settle disputes, subdue rebellions, to pacify his still barbarous allies or correct the misde- meanours of iniquitous governors of provinces. His ac- tual reign only lasted seven or eight years, but very little even of that time can have been passed at the nominal seat of government, Augusta Treverorum, the modern Treves, at that time the finest and best fortified. city in the Empire, and showing, even now, magnificent blocks of fortress long put to base uses, but in these days restored to the original ones by the energetic militarism of Prussia. If Gratian was fortunate in having the holy Ambrose and the wise Ausonius to instruct