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denizens, children half naked and devoured by vermin, bare-headed,

gesticulating and shouting women, whose skirts were stiff with grease,

old men who remained motionless on benches amidst swarms of hungry flies;

idleness and agitation appearing on all sides, whilst cobblers sat on the

sidewalks quietly plying their trade, and little donkeys pulled carts

hither and thither, and men drove turkeys along, whip in hand, and hands

of beggars rushed upon the few anxious tourists who had timorously

ventured into the district. At the door of a little tailor's shop an old

house-pail dangled full of earth, in which a succulent plant was

flowering. And from every window and balcony, as from the many cords

which stretched across the street from house to house, all the household

washing hung like bunting, nameless drooping rags, the symbolical banners

of abominable misery.

Pierre's fraternal, soul filled with pity at the sight. Ah! yes, it was

necessary to demolish all those pestilential districts where the populace

had wallowed for centuries as in a poisonous gaol! He was for demolition

and sanitary improvement, even if old Rome were killed and artists

scandalised. Doubtless the Trastevere was already greatly changed,

pierced with several new thoroughfares which let the sun stream in. And

amidst the _abattis_ of rubbish and the spacious clearings, where nothing

new had yet been erected, the remaining portions of the old district

seemed even blacker and more loathsome. Some day, no doubt, it would all

be rebuilt, but how interesting was this phase of the city's evolution:

old Rome expiring and new Rome just dawning amidst countless

difficulties! To appreciate the change it was necessary to have known the

filthy Rome of the past, swamped by sewage in every form. The recently

levelled Ghetto had, over a course of centuries, so rotted the soil on

which it stood that an awful pestilential odour yet arose from its bare

site. It was only fitting that it should long remain waste, so that it

might dry and become purified in the sun. In all the districts on either

side of the Tiber where extensive improvements have been undertaken you

find the same scenes. You follow some narrow, damp, evil-smelling street

with black house-fronts and overhanging roofs, and suddenly come upon a

clearing as in a forest of ancient leprous hovels. There are squares,

broad footways; lofty white carved buildings yet in the rough, littered

with rubbish and fenced off. On every side you find as it were a huge

building yard, which the financial crisis perpetuates; the city of

to-morrow arrested in its growth, stranded there in its monstrous,

precocious, surprising infancy. Nevertheless, therein lies good and

healthful work, such as was and is absolutely necessary if Rome is to

become a great modern city, instead of being left to rot, to dwindle into

a mere ancient curiosity, a museum show-piece.

That day, as Pierre went from the Trastevere to the Palazzo Farnese,

where he was expected, he chose a roundabout route, following the Via di

Pettinari and the Via dei Giubbonari, the former so dark and narrow with

a great hospital wall on one side and a row of wretched houses on the

other, and the latter animated by a constant stream of people and

enlivened by the jewellers' windows, full of big gold chains, and the

displays of the drapers' shops, where stuffs hung in bright red, blue,

green, and yellow lengths. And the popular district through which he had

roamed and the trading district which he was now crossing reminded him of

the castle fields with their mass of workpeople reduced to mendicity by

lack of employment and forced to camp in the superb, unfinished,

abandoned mansions. Ah! the poor, sad people, who were yet so childish,

kept in the ignorance and credulity of a savage race by centuries of

theocracy, so habituated to mental night and bodily suffering that even

to-day they remained apart from the social awakening, simply desirous of

enjoying their pride, indolence, and sunlight in peace! They seemed both

blind and deaf in their decadence, and whilst Rome was being overturned

they continued to lead the stagnant life of former times, realising

nought but the worries of the improvements, the demolition of the old

favourite districts, the consequent change in habits, and the rise in the

cost of food, as if indeed they would rather have gone without light,

cleanliness, and health, since these could only be secured by a great

financial and labour crisis. And yet, at bottom, it was solely for the

people, the populace, that Rome was being cleansed and rebuilt with the

idea of making it a great modern capital, for democracy lies at the end

of these present day transformations; it is the people who will inherit

the cities whence dirt and disease are being expelled, and where the law

of labour will end by prevailing and killing want. And so, though one may

curse the dusting and repairing of the ruins and the stripping of all the

wild flora from the Colosseum, though one may wax indignant at sight of

the hideous fortress like ramparts which imprison the Tiber, and bewail

the old romantic banks with their greenery and their antique dwellings

dipping into the stream, one must at the same time acknowledge that life

springs from death, and that to-morrow must perforce blossom in the dust

of the past.

While thinking of all these things Pierre had reached the deserted,

stern-looking Piazza Farnese, and for a moment he looked up at the bare

monumental facade of the heavy square Palazzo, its lofty entrance where

hung the tricolour, its rows of windows and its famous cornice sculptured

with such marvellous art. Then he went in. A friend of Narcisse Habert,

one of the _attaches_ of the embassy to the King of Italy, was waiting

for him, having offered to show him over the huge pile, the finest palace

in Rome, which France had leased as a lodging for her ambassador.* Ah!

that colossal, sumptuous, deadly dwelling, with its vast court whose

porticus is so dark and damp, its giant staircase with low steps, its

endless corridors, its immense galleries and halls. All was sovereign

pomp blended with death. An icy, penetrating chill fell from the walls.

With a discreet smile the _attache_ owned that the embassy was frozen in

winter and baked in summer. The only part of the building which was at

all lively and pleasant was the first storey, overlooking the Tiber,

which the ambassador himself occupied. From the gallery there, containing

the famous frescoes of Annibale Caracci, one can see the Janiculum, the

Corsini gardens, and the Acqua Paola above San Pietro in Montorio. Then,

after a vast drawing-room comes the study, peaceful and pleasant, and

enlivened by sunshine. But the dining-room, the bed-chambers, and other

apartments occupied by the _personnel_ look out on to the mournful gloom

of a side street. All these vast rooms, twenty and four-and-twenty feet

high, have admirable carved or painted ceilings, bare walls, a few of

them decorated with frescoes, and incongruous furniture, superb pier

tables mingling with modern _bric-a-brac_. And things become abominable

when you enter the gala reception-rooms overlooking the piazza, for there

you no longer find an article of furniture, no longer a hanging, nothing

but disaster, a series of magnificent deserted halls given over to rats

and spiders. The embassy occupies but one of them, where it heaps up its

dusty archives. Near by is a huge hall occupying the height of two

floors, and thus sixty feet in elevation. Reserved by the owner of the

palace, the ex-King of Naples, it has become a mere lumber-room where

_maquettes_, unfinished statues, and a very fine sarcophagus are stowed

away amidst all kinds of remnants. And this is but a part of the palace.

The ground floor is altogether uninhabited; the French "Ecole de Rome"

occupies a corner of the second floor; while the embassy huddles in

chilly fashion in the most habitable corner of the first floor, compelled

to abandon everything else and lock the doors to spare itself the useless

trouble of sweeping. No doubt it is grand to live in the Palazzo Farnese,

built by Pope Paul III and for more than a century inhabited by

cardinals; but how cruel the discomfort and how frightful the melancholy

of this huge ruin, three-fourths of whose rooms are dead, useless,

impossible, cut off from life. And the evenings, oh! the evenings, when

porch, court, stairs, and corridors are invaded by dense gloom, against

which a few smoky gas lamps struggle in vain, when a long, long journey

lies before one through the lugubrious desert of stone, before one

reaches the ambassador's warm and cheerful drawing-room!

* The French have two embassies at Rome: one at the Palazzo

Farnese, to the Italian Court, and the other at the Palazzo

Rospigliosi, to the Vatican.--Trans.

Pierre came away quite aghast. And, as he walked along, the many other

grand palaces which he had seen during his strolls rose before him, one

and all of them stripped of their splendour, shorn of their princely

establishments, let out in uncomfortable flats! What could be done with

those grandiose galleries and halls now that no fortune could defray the

cost of the pompous life for which they had been built, or even feed the

retinue needed to keep them up? Few indeed were the nobles who, like

Prince Aldobrandini, with his numerous progeny, still occupied their

entire mansions. Almost all of them let the antique dwellings of their

forefathers to companies or individual tenants, reserving only a storey,

and at times a mere lodging in some dark corner, for themselves. The

Palazzo Chigi was let: the ground floor to bankers and the first floor to

the Austrian ambassador, while the Prince and his family divided the

second floor with a cardinal. The Palazzo Sciarra was let: the first

floor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second to a senator,

while the Prince and his mother merely occupied the ground floor. The

Palazzo Barberini was let: its ground floor, first floor, and second

floor to various families, whilst the Prince found a refuge on the third

floor in the rooms which had been occupied by his ancestors' lackeys. The

Palazzo Borghese was let: the ground floor to a dealer in antiquities,

the first floor to a Lodge of Freemasons, and the rest to various

households, whilst the Prince only retained the use of a small suite of

apartments. And the Palazzo Odescalchi, the Palazzo Colonna, the Palazzo

Doria were let: their Princes reduced to the position of needy landlords

eager to derive as much profit as possible from their property in order

to make both ends meet. A blast of ruin was sweeping over the Roman

patriziato, the greatest fortunes had crumbled in the financial crisis,

very few remained wealthy, and what a wealth it was, stagnant and dead,

which neither commerce nor industry could renew. The numerous princes who

had tried speculation were stripped of their fortunes. The others,

terrified, called upon to pay enormous taxes, amounting to nearly

one-third of their incomes, could henceforth only wait and behold their

last stagnant millions dwindle away till they were exhausted or

distributed according to the succession laws. Such wealth as remained to

these nobles must perish, for, like everything else, wealth perishes when

it lacks a soil in which it may fructify. In all this there was solely a

question of time: eventual ruin was a foregone and irremediable

conclusion, of absolute, historical certainty. Those who resigned

themselves to the course of letting their deserted mansions still

struggled for life, seeking to accommodate themselves to present-day

exigencies; whilst death already dwelt among the others, those stubborn,

proud ones who immured themselves in the tombs of their race, like that

appalling Palazzo Boccanera, which was falling into dust amidst such

chilly gloom and silence, the latter only broken at long intervals when

the Cardinal's old coach rumbled over the grassy court.

The point which most struck Pierre, however, was that his visits to the

Trastevere and the Palazzo Farnese shed light one on the other, and led

him to a conclusion which had never previously seemed so manifest. As yet

no "people," and soon no aristocracy. He had found the people so

wretched, ignorant, and resigned in its long infancy induced by historic

and climatic causes that many years of instruction and culture were

necessary for it to become a strong, healthy, and laborious democracy,

conscious of both its rights and its duties. As for the aristocracy, it

was dwindling to death in its crumbling palaces, no longer aught than a

finished, degenerate race, with such an admixture also of American,

Austrian, Polish, and Spanish blood that pure Roman blood became a rare

exception; and, moreover, it had ceased to belong either to sword or

gown, unwilling to serve constitutional Italy and forsaking the Sacred

College, where only _parvenus_ now donned the purple. And between the

lowly and the aristocracy there was as yet no firmly seated middle class,

with the vigour of fresh sap and sufficient knowledge, and good sense to

act as the transitional educator of the nation. The middle class was made

up in part of the old servants and clients of the princes, the farmers

who rented their lands, the stewards, notaries, and solicitors who

managed their fortunes; in part, too, of all the employees, the

functionaries of every rank and class, the deputies and senators, whom

the new Government had brought from the provinces; and, in particular, of

the voracious hawks who had swooped down upon Rome, the Pradas, the men

of prey from all parts of the kingdom, who with beak and talon devoured

both people and aristocracy. For whom, then, had one laboured? For whom

had those gigantic works of new Rome been undertaken? A shudder of fear

sped by, a crack as of doom was heard, arousing pitiful disquietude in

every fraternal heart. Yes, a threat of doom and annihilation: as yet no

people, soon no aristocracy, and only a ravenous middle class, quarrying,

vulture-like, among the ruins.