Caesar or Nothing Part 41

"'To me it seems indubitable. France is leaning constantly more towards the North. In Italy the same is true; Milan and Turin, where the Saxon and the Gaul predominate, are the real capitals of Italy. In Spain, however, this does not happen. We are separated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees, and joined to Africa by the sea and climate. Our plan ought to be to construct a great European Empire, to impose our ideas on the peninsula, and then to spread them everywhere.'"

XX. DON CALIXTO AT SAINT PETER'S

_DON CALIXTO UNDERSTANDS_

Kennedy was anxious that Caesar should turn into the good road. The good road, for him, was art.

"At heart," the Englishman informed him, "I am one of those Brothers of the Esthetic Doctrine who irritate you, and I must instruct you in the faith."

"I am not opposed to your trying to instruct me."

The two went several times to see museums, especially the Vatican museum.

One day, on leaving the Sistine Chapel, where they had had a long discussion on the merits of Michelangelo, Caesar met the painter Cortes, who came to speak to him.

"I am here with a gentleman from my town, who is a Senator," said Cortes. "A boresome old boy. Shall I introduce him?"

"All right."

"He is an old fool who knows nothing about anything and talks about everything."

Cortes presented Caesar to Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero, a man of some fifty-odd, Senator and boss of the province of Zamora.

Don Calixto invited Caesar and Kennedy to dine with him. The Englishman expressed regrets, and Caesar said he would go. They took leave of Cortes and Don Calixto, and went out to the Piazza di San Pietro.

"I imagine you are going to be bored tomorrow dining with that old countryman of yours," said Kennedy. "Oh, surely. He has all the signs of a soporific person; but who knows? a type like that sometimes has influence."

"So you are dining with him with a more or less practical object?"

"Why, of course."

The next evening, Caesar, in his evening clothes, betook himself to an hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, where Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero was staying. Don Calixto received him very cordially. He doubtless knew that Caesar was nephew to Cardinal Fort and brother to a marchioness, and doubtless that flattered Don Calixto.

Don Calixto honoured Caesar with an excellent dinner, and during dessert became candid with him. He had come to Rome to put through his obtaining a Papal t.i.tle. He was a friend of the Spanish Amba.s.sador to the Vatican, and it wouldn't have cost him any more to be made a prince, a duke, or a marquis; but he preferred the t.i.tle of count. He had a magnificent estate called La Sauceda, and he wanted to be the Count de la Sauceda.

Caesar comprehended that this gentleman might be fortune coming in the guise of chance, and he set himself to making good with him, to telling him stories of aristocratic life in Rome, some of which he had read in books, and some of which he had heard somewhere or other.

"What vices must exist here!" Don Calixto kept exclaiming. "That is why they say: _'Roma veduta, fede perduta.'_"

Caesar noted that Don Calixto had a great enthusiasm for the aristocracy; and so he took pains, every time he talked with him, to mix the names of a few princes and marquises into the conversation; he also gave him to understand that he lived among them, and went so far as to hint the possibility of being of service to him in Rome, but in a manner ambiguous enough to permit of withdrawing the offer in case of necessity. Fortunately for Caesar, Don Calixto had his affairs all completely arranged; the one thing he desired was that Caesar, whom he supposed to be an expert on archeological questions, should go about with him the three or four days he expected to remain in Rome. He had spent a whole week making calls, and as yet had seen nothing.

Caesar had no other recourse but to buy a Baedeker and read it and learn a lot of things quite devoid of interest for him.

The next day Don Calixto was waiting for him in a carriage at the door, and they went to see the sights.

Don Calixto was a man that made phrases and ornamented them with many adverbs ending in -ly.

"Verily," he said, after his first archeological walk in Rome, "verily, it seems strange that after more than two thousand years have pa.s.sed, all these monuments should still remain."

"That is most true," replied Caesar, looking at him with his impa.s.sive air.

"I understand why Rome is the real school for learning, integrally, both ancient and modern history."

"Most certainly," agreed Caesar.

Don Calixto, who knew neither Italian nor French, found a source of help, for the days he was to spend in Rome, in Caesar's friends.h.i.+p, and made him accompany him everywhere. Caesar was able to collect and preserve, though not precisely cut in bra.s.s, the phrases Don Calixto uttered in front of the princ.i.p.al monuments of Rome.

In front of the Colosseum, his first exclamation was: "What a lot of stone!" Then recalling his role of orator, he exclaimed: "The spirits are certainly daunted and the mind darkened on thinking how men could have sunk to such abysses of evil."

"Don Calixto is referring to those holes," thought Caesar, looking at the cellars of the Circo Romano.

From the Colosseum the carriage went to the Capitol, and then Don Calixto a.s.serted with energy:

"One cannot deny that, say what you will, Rome is one of the places most fertile in memories."

Don Calixto was an easy traveller for his _cicerone_. He far preferred talking to being given explanations; Caesar had said to him: "Don Calixto, you understand everything, by intuition." And being thus rea.s.sured, Don Calixto kept uttering terrible absurdities.

One day Don Calixto went to see the Pope, in evening clothes and with his abdomen covered with decorations, and he asked Caesar if a photographer couldn't take his picture in the act of leaving the carriage, so that the photograph would have Saint Peter's as a background.

"Yes, I think so. Why not? The only thing will be that the photographer will charge you more."

"I don't mind that. Could you arrange it for me?"

"Yes, man."

What Don Calixto desired was done.

"How did the Pope impress you?" Caesar asked him as he came out

"Very favourably, very favourably indeed."

"He has a stupid face, hasn't he?"

"No, man, not at all. He is like a nice country priest. His predecessor was no doubt more of a diplomat, more intelligent."

"Yes, the other seemed more of a rogue," said Caesar, laughing at the precautions Don Calixto took in giving his opinion.

The proofs of the photographs came in the evening, and Don Calixto was enchanted with them. In one of them you could see the Swiss guard at the door, with his lance. It was splendid. Don Calixto would not permit Caesar to go to his hotel, but invited him for dinner; and after dinner told him he was so indebted that he would be delighted to do anything Caesar asked him.

"Why don't you make me a Deputy?" said Caesar, laughing.

"Do you want to be one?"

"Yes, man."