Caesar or Nothing Part 10

It was Laura.

"Where are you keeping yourself?" she asked.

"Here I am, reading a little."

"But my dear man, we are waiting for you."

"What for?"

"The idea, what for? To talk."

"I don't feel like talking. I am very tired."

"But, _bambino; Benedetto_. Are you going to live your life avoiding everybody?"

"No; I will come out tomorrow."

"What do you want to do tonight?"

"Tonight! Nothing."

"Don't you want to go to the theatre?"

"No, no; I have a tremendously weak pulse, and a little fever. My hands are on fire at this moment."

"What foolishness!"

"It's true."

"So then you won't come out?"

"No."

"All right. As you wish."

"When the weather is good, I will go out."

"Do you want me to fetch you a Baedeker?"

"No, I have no use for it."

"Don't you intend to look at the sights, either?"

"Yes, I will look willingly at what comes before my eyes; it wouldn't please me if the same thing happened to me that took place in Florence."

"What happened to you in Florence?"

"I lost my time lamentably, getting enthusiastic over Botticelli, Donatello, and a lot of other foolishness, and when I got back to London it cost me a good deal of work to succeed in forgetting those things and getting myself settled in my financial investigations again. So that now I have decided to see nothing except in leisure moments and without attaching any importance to all those fiddle-faddles." "But what childishness! Is it going to distract you so much from your work, from that serious work you have in hand, to go and see a few pictures or some statues?"

"To see them, no, not exactly; but to occupy myself with them, yes.

Art is a good thing for those who haven't the strength to live, in realities. It is a good form of sport for old maids, for deceived husbands who need consolation, as hysterical persons need morphine...."

"And for strong people like you, what is there?" asked Laura, ironically.

"For strong people!... Action."

"And you call lying in bed, reading, action?"

"Yes, when one reads with the intentions I read with."

"And what are they? What is it you are plotting?"

"I will tell you."

Laura saw that she could not convince her brother, and returned to the salon. A moment before dinner was announced Caesar got dressed again in black, put on his patent-leather shoes, looked at himself offhandedly in the mirror, saw that he was all right, and joined his sister.

V. THE ABBE PRECIOZI. _THE BIG BIRDS IN ROME_

The next day Caesar awoke at nine, jumped out of bed, and went to breakfast. Laura had left word that she would not eat at home. Caesar took an umbrella and went out into the street. The weather was very dark but it held off from rain.

Caesar took the Via n.a.z.ionale toward the centre of town. Among the crowd, some foreigners with red guide-books in their hands, were walking with long strides to see the sights of Rome, which the code of worldly sn.o.bbishness considers it indispensable to admire.

Caesar had no settled goal. On a plan of the city, hung in a newspaper kiosk, he found the situation of the Piazza Esedra, the hotel and the adjacent streets, and continued slowly ahead.

"How many people there must be who are excited and have an irregular pulse on arriving for the first time in one of these historic towns,"

thought Caesar. "I, for my part, was in that situation the first time I clearly understood the mechanism of the London Exchange."

Caesar continued down the Via n.a.z.ionale and stopped in a small square with a little garden and a palm. Bounding the square on one side arose a greenish wall, and above this wall, which was adorned with statues, stretched a high garden with magnificent trees, and among them a great stone pine.

"A beautiful garden to walk in," said Caesar. "Perhaps it is an historic spot, perhaps it isn't. I am very happy that I don't know either its name or its history, if it really has one." From the same point in the Via n.a.z.ionale, a street with flights of steps could be seen to the left, and below a white stone column.

"Nothing doing; I don't know what that is either," thought Caesar; "the truth is that one is terribly ignorant. To make matters even, what a well of knowledge about questions of finance there is in my cranium!"

Caesar continued on to the Piazza Venezia, contemplated the palace of the Austrian Emba.s.sy, yellow, battlemented; and stopped under a big white umbrella, stuck up to protect the switchman of the tramway.

"Here, at least, the weight of tradition or history is not noticeable. I don't believe this canvas is a piece of Brutus's tunic, or of Pompey's campaign tent. I feel at home here; this canvas modernizes me."

The square was very animated at that moment: groups of seminarians were pa.s.sing in robes of black, red, blue, violet, and sashes of contrasting colours; monks of all sorts were crossing, smooth-shaven, bearded, in black, white, brown; foreign priests were conversing in groups, wearing little dishevelled hats adorned with a ta.s.sel; horrible nuns with moustaches and black moles, and sweet little white nuns, with a coquettish air.

The clerical fauna was admirably represented. A Capuchin friar, long-bearded and dirty, with the air of a footpad, and an umbrella by way of a blunderbuss or musket under his arm, was talking to a Sister of Charity.

"Undoubtedly religion is a very picturesque thing," murmured Caesar. "A spectacular impressario would not have the imagination to think out all these costumes."

Caesar took the Corso. Before he reached the Piazza Colonna it began to rain. The coachmen took out enormous umbrellas, all rolled up, opened them and stood them in iron supports, in such a way that the box-seat was as it were under a campaign tent.