Palazzo Rusticucci, Rome, Easter, 1900.

“Buona Pasqua!” said Filomena, when we came into breakfast this morning. Her Easter offering lay on the table, two hard-boiled eggs in a little basket of twisted bread at each plate. Soon after, Pompilia brought her inevitable regalo, a pair of lilac tissue paper fans (she has a relative who works in the paper factory). As I passed the door Pompilia’s annual basket of flowers, sent by her cousins every Easter, was brought in. Ignazio, the gardener, met us on the terrace with a pot of the biggest violets I have ever seen.

“Only yourself, Signora, and the Princess Doria, in all Rome, have these magnificent violets, the last novelty from Londra. The Prince has just introduced them. His gardener is my friend; cosÌ I am able to offer this bel’ vasino di fiori!”

A little later, Lorenzo, Villegas’ factotum, arrived with a basket of lemons from the Villino garden, covered with their own glossy green leaves and intoxicating blossoms; the petals are thick, pink outside, white inside, like orange flowers, only larger, and with a less cloying perfume.

We were up on the terrace in time to see the Host carried through the street; that was not allowed when we first came to live in the Borgo Nuovo. Little by little the old picturesque ceremonies of the Church are creeping back. It is a pretty sight. First march lovely little girls in white, scattering flowers; then come acolytes, deacons, young clerics—I am hazy about their titles—swinging censers, carrying the crucifix and banner; the arch-priest bearing the Sacrament in a golden monstrance, over which he holds protectingly the sides of his long, stiff, embroidered vestment, above his head a white and gold baldacchino supported by four young priests. The whole procession, children, acolytes, priests, attendant women in black veils, went singing across the piazza of St. Peter’s and down our street under a rain of pink and green disks of tissue paper thrown from the windows in lieu of flowers. Across the street Giuseppe, the baker, in white cap and drawers, naked to the waist, stood at his shop door cooling his heated body. Behind him in the dark shop as the boy opened the oven door and fed the flame with armfuls of brushwood, we caught the roar and blaze of fagots in a fiery cavern.

Giuseppe, a radical (the parroco says a Freemason, that means sure damnation) stood at his door as the procession passed and nodded to his little girl, the prettiest of the attendant cherubim, dropping rosebuds. It is pleasant to see one’s daughter chosen before others, and religion is an excellent thing in woman, according to Giuseppe’s philosophy. The crisp, appetizing smell of his hot bread suggested luncheon, which, in honor of the festa, was served on the terrace. The atmosphere has been ecstatically clear and golden all day, the view sublime, snow-clad peaks in the distance, the foreground purple, hazy, delicious. The bells of St. Peter’s (silent since Holy Thursday) have made constant music in the air. A fine day, with a trifle too much breeze for dignity; it blows the girls’ curls and draperies, even the scant skirts of the young priest pacing back and forth on the monastery terrace across the way, breviary in hand. He always ignores our presence, looks through us as if we were made of glass; but I catch him gazing with longing eyes at our roses and lilies that nod and gossip behind their screen of ivy; at the passion flowers and honeysuckles, haunts of the bee and butterfly. He knows as well as we do every stage of our roof garden’s history since that day six years ago when we potted the pink ivy geranium and the white carnation from the Campo di Fiori, the beginning of this earthly paradise. We have had a great deal of rain lately, which has been good for the yellow and orange-colored lichens that enamel the tiled roofs all about us, and alas! very good for slugs and snails. As to wall flowers, they simply ramp from every crack and cranny of the gorgeous cinque cento cornice, with its sharp-cut egg and dart (symbols of life and death), fragments of which still cling to the inner walls of our courtyard. The wild flowers run riot over the Corridojo di Castello, the quaint old fortified passage leading from the Vatican to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The Corridojo, built of tufa stone, is two stories high; the upper story is open like a loggia, the lower closed, with little slits to let in the light. Just behind our Palazzo the Corridojo crosses a back street by an enchanting arch, with the arms of the Pope who built or restored it carved on a stone escutcheon. In the old days the passage was used in time of danger as an escape from the Vatican to the fortress of Sant’ Angelo; the Pope himself always kept the keys, according to Patsy, who dropped in for tea and maritozzi and gave us a discourse on the subject.

“Who keeps the keys now?” I asked.

“Chi lo sa? Since 1870 the Corridojo has been walled up. I once got a peep into it. ’T is going to wrack and ruin, which is a shame and disgrace.”

“Whose fault is it?”

“Chi lo sa? Lay it to the municipality,—they deserve a few extra curses thrown in for luck, on account of the artificial rockwork with which they are defacing the Pincio and the Janiculum.”

“Perhaps the Corridojo is no-man’s-land, now that the Vatican belongs to the Pope and the fortress to the King?”

“Chi lo sa?” said Patsy again. “When the Italians came to Rome they meant to leave the Borgo under the temporal control of the papacy. Consequently at the first plebiscite (October 2, 1870) no urn was provided for the Borgo’s vote. You don’t suppose a fellow like that,” he pointed to the baker, “would let such a little thing keep him out of United Italy? The first returns of the day were brought in from this, the fourteenth, rione (ward), by two strapping fellows, who marched up to the Capitol carrying between them a big urn with the votes from the Borgo. I have heard that your friend the baker’s father was one of them.”

“And this morning that man’s granddaughter walked in the procession of the Sacrament!”

“For the matter of that, here comes Prince Nero’s grandson wearing the King’s uniform. Both Blacks and Whites, Dio grazie, are fast fading into Grays.”

Beppino, very stiff in his military togs, was shown up on the terrace by Nena the shabby, who always manages to open the door to fashionable visitors.

“How do you like your service, Beppino? Your uniform is very becoming,” I began.

“I don’t like it at all! Fancy being obliged to clean one’s own horse, to polish one’s own boots—it’s not to be endured!”

It has to be endured; and, moreover, Beppino is enormously improved by his six months’ endurance of the obligatory military service. Those fiery brown eyes of his have grown serious.

“Is it true that you voted at the last election?” asked Patsy.

“It is true,” said Beppino.

“How did your grandfather take it?” Patsy persisted.

“I asked the Prince’s leave,” Beppino replied. “He said that for thirty years he had obeyed the Pope and abstained from voting, that he was too old to change his politics, but that I was free to do as I liked.”

“How do you account for such an extraordinary change of heart?”

“It’s all the Queen’s doing; she is so good; she is so clever. We Italians owe more to her than to any one alive to-day!”

Beppino is the son of the son of one of the stoutest pillars of the Church.

“Avanti la caccia (On with the chase)!” Patsy and I had been snail hunting when Beppino came up.

“Here is a sharp stick; if you run it round under the edge of the flower-pot you will get them quicker. Snail, I condemn you to the parabolic death!” Beppino threw a large fat snail out over the terrace wall. “That’s the easiest way; it spares our feelings and gives the snail a chance for his life. He disappears in a parabolic curve; he may fall upon a passing load of hay and be carried away to batten upon other rose-leaves.”

Suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, there appeared upon the peaceful terrace the parroco, with two black-a-vised French priests, preceded and announced by Nena. The parroco apologized; he said the gentlemen were anxious to see our view. The elder Frenchman never looked at the view at all, but examined the walls of the palace in a way I did not like. The parroco is always a welcome, if scarcely an easy guest. I hated his friends; they glanced with so indifferent an eye at the flowers and seemed so much more interested in the chimneys that J. and Lorenzo had cleverly contrived to keep me warm. When at last the three black figures disappeared down the terrace stairs, we other three drew a long breath.

“Good riddance,” said Patsy.

“You have not seen the last of their cassocks nor them,” said Beppino (he had an English nurse and governess, and speaks rather better English than most people). “I believe they mean to buy the palazzo over your heads. When will your lease be up?”

“In September; but we have the right to renew.”

“No Roman lease holds in case of sale,” said Beppino. “You will find that clause in your contract. You will see I am right. Some time ago Sua Santita requested such religious orders as had no house in Rome to establish one here. During the Anno Santo many have acted on the hint and bought property in Rome. I heard my grandfather say there were some French monks looking out for a place near the Vatican. This is just the sort of thing that would suit them.”

Was not that a thunder clap? Characteristic too that Beppino, the astute Roman, should first suspect it. When J. came home from the studio and heard of the priests’ visit, he said: “Beppino is right; the Palazzo Rusticucci will be transformed into a monastery. They have already turned Mr. Vedder out of his studio after twenty years; we shall be the next to go.”

I can’t and won’t believe that this may be our last Easter here. Just as terrace and house have grown to fit us like soul and body, to be turned out into the bare, ugly world of hotels,—impossible!

The other day when I was at the studio J. told me that in consequence of the disappearance of ten francs he had finally decided to part with Pietro. He has often arrived at this decision before, but the creature, with a sort of uncanny second sight, always disarms him just in time by some act of faithfulness, some pretty attention; for Pietro is one of those Italians with a real genius for service. I happened to be at the studio when he applied to J. for the place and overheard their conversation.

“Signorino,” Pietro began, “you are my unique hope; do not abandon me, the poor disgraziato you have befriended so long: I regard you as my father.” (Pietro is at least twenty years older than J.)

“Where have you been all this time?” J. asked.

“Signorino, it is necessary for me to tell you the truth, or some unsympathetic person might do so: I have been in prison, though I am quite innocent.”

“What were you charged with?”

“It was that affair with Fagiolo the model; you perhaps remember.”

“The time you bit Fagiolo in the leg and gave him such a coltellata (stab) that he had to be sent to San Giacomo (the hospital)? I remember.”

“La storia era molto esaggerata, perÒ non potevo mai vedere quell’uomo (The story was much exaggerated, but I never could bear the sight of that man).”

J. remembered the affair, and thought Pietro had been rather hardly dealt with.

“Since I was discharged it is impossible to find employment; nobody wants a man, however innocent, who has been in prison.”

“Where is your wife?”

“AimÉ! was there ever so unfortunate a man? Zenobia, who, as you know, is a good seamstress and my sole means of support, broke her leg yesterday; this morning they carried her to the hospital of the Santo Spirito.”

J. engaged him on the spot, and Pietro has been in charge of the studio ever since. He has done very well; the only trouble has been that small sums of money, cigarettes, and boxes of matches are always disappearing. J. has spoken several times to Pietro about it. He always denies having taken anything. J. feels very half hearted about sending him away; he says that it will be impossible for the man to get another situation if he dismisses him for stealing. Besides, except for the pilfering, Pietro is the very man for the place; he takes good care of the studio, knows all about cleaning palettes and washing brushes, keeps the courtyard neat and full of such growing things as can exist with the little sun that penetrates to it, and is devoted to J.’s happy family, which just now consists of Checca, the lame jackdaw, bought from some boys in the street who were tormenting her, a pair of ducks, a stray black dog, and the prettiest maltese kitten you ever saw.

The jackdaw, a most diverting bird, is as curious as a coon. The other day she flew up on the easel from behind and pecked a hole in the picture on which J. was working. She put her closed bill through the canvas, then opened it wide, which made a straight up and down tear, to which the creature put her ridiculous eye and peeped through to see what J. was doing.

“Do you really think Pietro is the thief?” I asked. “It would be too suicidal in him to throw away his last chance!”

“Just what Pietro says,” answered J., “but who else can it be? There is a Yale lock to the door with two keys; I keep one, Pietro the other.”

While we were talking about him, Pietro came in to move an old stove which had stood in the corner of the studio all winter without being lighted. J. is sending it with other household stuff to the auction room. As Pietro moved the stove its door swung open and out rolled a quantity of cigarettes, matches, silver and copper coin, paint rags, orange peel, and among the rubbish a brand new ten-franc note.

“Caw, Caw!” screamed Checca, flapping across the floor and scolding at Pietro.

“Ah! Madonna dei setti dolori!” Pietro, swearing horribly, fell upon his knees, clasped his hands, invoked every holy thing he knew.

“Santa Maria, eccomi vindicato! Ah ladrone! Ah birborne (Behold me vindicated. O thief! O villain)!”

“Caw, Caw!” screamed Checca, pecking at Pietro’s legs. He was at first ready to wring her neck; then he grew lachrymose and tender.

“Ah! Ah! Pietro sfortunato! Guardi, Signora mia, was I not born unlucky? First I am sent to prison on the false oath of a rascally man. Adesso, anche la gazza m’inganna, mi perseguita, (Now even the jackdaw deceives me, persecutes me)!”

Plumped down on his knees there in the middle of the studio, poor Pietro began to cry like a baby. It ended in his getting the ten-franc note as a mancia, and Checca’s being so stuffed with good things that she is in a state of coma and on the verge of apoplexy. Truth really is stranger than fiction. I never before had much faith in the Jackdaw of Rheims.

June 10, 1900.

As we sat at dinner last night a messenger from the Casa Reale was announced. J. went out to receive him in person. He had brought a letter from a great personage at court to say that the Queen would come to the studio the next day to see J.’s decoration for the Boston Public Library. That was rather short notice for such an honor, but we did all we could to make the old barrack of a studio fit to receive the dear and lovely lady. We were up at dawn. Pietro had already turned the hose on the brick paved floors and stone steps. The first thing in the morning we were warned by the police that no one, not even our servants, must know of the visit beforehand, so we gave it out that Lord Curry, the British Ambassador, was coming to the studio, which was quite true. J. had called up the Embassy, and Lord Curry had promised, by telephone, to be on hand.

We telephoned the Signora Villegas asking if she could spare Lorenzo, who turned up at eleven with, I should think, every flower the Villino garden contained. The bouquet for the Queen I made myself of flowers from the terrace, gardenias, passion flowers, and maidenhair fern. We sent over to the studio from the house the fine old Portuguese leather armchair in which my mother sat to Villegas for her portraits some rugs, and the gold screens Isabel and Larz brought us from Japan.

You never saw a more squalid street than the Borgo Sant’ Angelo. I very much doubt if the Queen had ever entered so queer a door as the little antique green studio door with the modern Yale lock. The studio is up two long flights of stairs, with an iron railing, quite like a prison stair. If we had been given longer notice we could have done more to make things presentable; but that was a mere detail. The main thing was that the afternoon was fine, the light perfect. The days here are so much longer than at home that the hour named, six o’clock, was the very best in the twenty-four to see the pictures. We had never really believed that the Queen would come to the studio, though we had heard of her interest in seeing the work. There is a sort of tradition that the royal family very rarely come over to the Borgo, out of regard for the feelings of the Pope. During the day one and another secret service man in plain clothes arrived in the Borgo on their bicycles, and lounged about the street corners or in the cafÉs. At five several guardie in uniform arrived. We went over to the studio at half-past five in order to be in time to receive Lord Curry. J. went by the Borgo Nuovo and stopped at the front of the Palazzo Giraud Torlonia (the studio, you remember, is in the rear of the palace, with an entrance on the back street, Borgo Sant’ Angelo) to ask the proud young porter of the Torlonia to open the studio door, and generally stand by us. The Haywards, who live on the piano nobile, are the swells of the Borgo; they pay the proud young porter his wages, and they are in close relation with the Vatican. Fortunately they were out of town and never knew that we borrowed their porter to open the door to the Queen.

“The Ambasciatore Inglese and other personnaggi of importance are to visit my studio presently; do me the favor to open the door for them,” said J.

“Volontiere, Signore mio, un momento; I will change my coat and be with you instantly!”

The nearest way from the front of the Torlonia to the back is by the Vicolo dell’ Erba, a narrow little alley which runs beside the palace. We never use it—’t is so evil smelling, badly paved, and generally poverty stricken—unless we are in a great hurry. J. being pressed for time naturally took the vicolo. He happened to be wearing a red cravat,—in Italy, especially in Rome, supposed to be the badge of the anarchists and avoided by the Romans, and, one would fancy, by the anarchists accordingly. Of course all the guardie of our quarter know the pittore Inglese by sight, but the extra ones detailed for the day did not. Hurrying through the vicolo, J. ran round the corner into the Borgo Sant’ Angelo, and into the arms of one of these extraneous guardie, ordered to be on the lookout for suspicious characters. His eye caught the red cravat.

“Scusi, Signore; where might you be going in such a hurry?”

“I am going to No. 125, Borgo Sant’ Angelo.”

“You have business of importance there, or you would not be in so much haste?”

“Yes; I am late for an appointment.”

“With whom?”

“That is a private matter and one which does not concern——”

At this hectic moment the proud young porter came hurrying along the vicolo, buttoning his gold-laced coat as he ran. He took in the situation at a glance, and with the exquisite tact of his people went bail for the pittore Inglese without seeming to do so.

“Is there anything I can do for you in the studio, Signore, before their excellencies arrive?” he asked.

“You know this gentleman?” demanded the guardia suspiciously.

“Know him! I have known him all my life! It is the gentleman who occupies the studio in the rear of the palace.”

“A thousand pardons, Signore,” said the guardia, with a magnificent military salute. J. had to thank the porter for not having been detained as “a suspicious person” during the time of the Queen’s visit to his studio.

A minute or two before the appointed hour we all went down into the vestibule. There was an odd hushed feeling in the street: a watering cart had just passed, the square gray cobble-stones were still wet, the air moist. Pietro had found time to pull up the weeds and grass from the pavement (worn into ruts by centuries of cart-wheels) in front of our door, and to clear away the bits of water-melon rind which the boys of the Borgo use as roller skates, in a game that I believe is indigenous to our quarter. Just as the bells of the Castle Sant’ Angelo were ringing six, we heard the jingling of chains and the sound of tramping horses. We were all on the sidewalk as the carriage with the scarlet liveries drew up before the studio. The proud young porter, his hand on the knob of the studio door, made the most sumptuous bow as the footman opened the door of the landeau. Lord Curry handed out the Queen,

presented J., then gave her his arm and led her up the dreadful long stair. Her lady in waiting, the Duchess Massimo, and the gentleman of the court in attendance, followed, looking aghast and rather scornful at the queer steps; but the royal lady never flinched; she walked up the stairway with as gay and light a step as if she were treading the red carpet of the Quirinale. Once in the studio one lost sight of the royal personage in the connoisseur, the lover and patron of art. It is no wonder that the artists look upon her as their friend. To her art is one of the serious concerns of life, one of the matters which it is her duty as a sovereign, as the mother of her people, to foster by every means in her power.

She looked at the decoration from every point of view, asked many questions about its destination. She knew of the Boston Public Library, and said many pleasant things of it, and of J.’s ceiling for it. She liked the funny old studio, with its big fireplace, its enormous window, and explored it with the fresh curiosity of a young girl. She asked what this and what that picture was, insisted on being shown canvases that stood with their faces to the wall. J.’s drawing of Dante and the death mask from which it was made interested her deeply; she is evidently a student of the divine poet. The portrait of the Duke of Cambridge which J. made last spring was standing on an easel. She laughed heartily when she saw it, and said, “It is so exactly like the old man that it makes me laugh.”

They stayed half an hour. Part of that time the Queen sat in the old Portuguese leather chair which our own dear mother queen always sat in when she was with us. As they went away, the Duchess Massimo said to me, “I assure you the Queen has been much interested and much pleased.”

We all went down to the carriage; the Borgo was one compact mass of people. We watched the carriage drive away, caught the sweet parting smile of our lovely visitor, and then went back to the studio to talk it all over. In a few minutes two of our best friends turned up. They had come over by chance to have tea at the studio, and had received quite a sensation at seeing the royal carriage with the scarlet liveries standing before the shabby old green door and the Borgo crammed with the Roman populace.

July 16, 1900.

Saturday evening as we sat at dinner another messenger from the Casa Reale was announced. He brought a letter from the Countess Villamarina, the Queen’s maid of honor, to J., in which she begged to send him, in the name of her “august sovereign,” the accompanying jewel for his wife, in memory of her visit to the studio. The jewel is a medallion of dark blue enamel, with M., the Queen’s initial, in diamonds, with a royal crown above it. On the reverse are the arms of Savoy, the red cross on the white field, the whole surrounded by a hoop of diamonds hanging from a bar of diamonds, set as a brooch, and very elegant.

J. says that we cannot afford to stay in the Borgo if we remain in Rome, we must move to a new quarter. Ever since the Queen’s visit, the gobbo, our favorite cabby, has called him Signor Marchese, and expects a larger mancia than he can afford to give.