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Page 48
"Perhaps, Mrs. Wick," she said sarcastically, "you intend to go to see
the Baths of Caracallus!"
To which momma replied certainly _not_, that was a very different thing.
And if I am unable to describe the Baths of Caracallus in this history,
it is on account of Miss Callis's personal influence and the remarkable
development of her sense of propriety.
At momma's suggestion we walked slowly all round the Via Sacra, looking
steadily down at its little triangular original paving-stones, and tried
to imagine ourselves the shackled captives of Scipio. If the party had
not consisted so largely of Emmeline the effort might have been
successful. Fragments of exhumed statuary, discoloured and featureless,
stood tipped in rows along the shorn foundations and inspired in Mr.
Malt a serious curiosity.
"The ancients," said Mr. Malt with conviction, "were every bit as smart
as the moderns, meaning born intelligence. Look at that ear--that ear
took talent. There isn't a terra-cotta factory in the United States that
could turn out a better ear to-day. But they hadn't what we call
gumption, they put all their capital into one line of business, and you
may be sure they swamped the market. If they'd just done a little
inventing now, instead--worried out the idea of steam, or gas, or
electricity--why Rome might never have fallen to this day." And no one
interfered with Mr. Malt's idea that the fall of Rome was a purely
commercial disaster. Doubtless it was out of regard for his feelings,
but he was exactly the sort of man to compel you to prove your
assertion.
We found the boundaries of the first Forum of the Republic, and poppa,
pacing it in a soft felt hat and a silk duster, offered a Senatorial
contrast to history. He looked round him with dignity and made the
gesture which goes with his most sustained oratorical flights. "I
wouldn't have backed up Cato in everything," he said thoughtfully. "No.
There were occasions on which I should have voted against the old man,
and the little American school-boys of to-day would have had to decline
'Mugwumpus' in consequence." And at the thought of Cann� and Trasimene
the nineteenth century Senator from Illinois fiercely pulled his beard.
We turned our pilgrim feet to where the Colosseum wheels against the sky
and gives up the world's eternal supreme note of splendour and of
cruelty; and along the solitary dusty Appian Way, as if it were a
country lane of the time we know, came a ragged Roman urchin with a
basket. Under the triumphal arch of Titus, where his forefathers jeered
at the Jews in manacled procession, we bargained with him for his purple
plums. He had the eyes and the smile of immemorial Italy for his own,
and the bones of Imperial Rome in equal inheritance, which he also
wished to sell, by the way, in jagged fragments from his trouser
pockets. And it linked up those early days with that particular
afternoon in a curiously simple way to think that from the C�sars to
King Humbert there has never been a year without just such
brown-cheeked, dark-eyed, imperfectly washed little Roman boys upon the
Appian Way.
CHAPTER XII.
We were too late for the hotel _d�jeuner_, and had to order it, I
remember, _� la carte_. That was why the Count was kept waiting. We were
kept waiting, too, which seemed at the moment of more importance, since
the atmosphere of the classics had given us excellent appetites.
Emmeline decided upon ices and _petits fours_ in the Corso for her
party, after which they were going to let nothing interfere with their
inspection of the prison of St. Paul; but we came back and ordered a
haricot. In the cavernous recesses beyond the door which opened
kitchen-ward, commands resounded, and a quarter of an hour later a boy
walked casually through the dining-room bearing beans in a basket. Time
went on, and the Senator was compelled to send word that he had not
ordered the repast for the following day. The small waiter then made a
pretence of activity, and brought vinegar and salt, and rolls and water.
"The peutates is notta-cooks," said he in deprecation, and we were
distressed to postpone the Count for those peutates. But what else was
possible?
The dismaying part was that after luncheon had enabled us to regard a
little thing like that with equanimity, my parents abandoned it to me.
Momma said she knew she was missing a great deal, but she really didn't
feel equal to entertaining the Count; her back had given out completely.
The Senator wished to attend to his mail. With the assistance of his
letters and telegrams he was beginning to bear up wonderfully, and, as
it was just in, I hadn't the heart to interfere. "You can apologise for
us, daughter," said poppa, "and say something polite about our seeing
him later. Don't let him suppose we've gone back on him in any way. It's
a thing no young fellow in America would think of, but with these
foreigners you never can tell."
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