Caesar or Nothing

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"But is all this authentic?" asked the Canon, completely stupefied.

"Absolutely authentic."

The Canon made a gesture of resignation and looked at Don Calixto in
astonishment.

While Caesar was telling the story, the carriage had passed down a
narrow and rather deserted street, called Borgo Vecchio, in whose
windows clothes were hanging out to dry, and then they came out in
the Piazza di San Pietro. They drove around one edge of this enormous
square. The sky was blue. A fountain was throwing water, which changed
to a cloud in the air and produced a brilliant rainbow.

"One certainly wonders," said Caesar, "if Saint Peter's is not one of
the buildings in the worst taste that exist in the world."

They got out in front of the steps.

"Your friend is probably well up on archeological matters?" asked
Caesar.

"Who? Don Justo? Not in the least."

Caesar began to laugh, went up the steps ahead of the others, lifted the
leather curtain, and they all three went into Saint Peter's. _THERE IS
NO PERFORMANCE_

Caesar began his explanations with the plan of the church. The Canon
passed his hand over all the stones and kept saying:

"This is marble too," and adding, "How expensive!"

"Do you like this, Don Calixto?" Caesar asked.

"What a question, man!"

"Well, it is obviously very rich and very sumptuous, but it must give a
fanatic coming here from far away the same feeling a person gets when
he has a cold and asks for a hot drink and is given a glass of iced
orgeat."

"Don't let Don Justo hear you," said Don Calixto, as if they ought to
keep the secret about the orgeat between the two of them.

They came to the statue of Saint Peter, and Caesar told them it is the
custom for strangers to kiss its foot. The Canon piously did so, but
Don Calixto, who was somewhat uneasy, rubbed the statue's worn foot
surreptitiously with his handkerchief and then kissed it.

Caesar abstained from kissing it, because he said the kiss was
efficacious principally for strangers.

Then they went along, looking at the tombs of the Popes. Caesar was
several times mistaken in his explanations, but his friends did not
notice his mistakes.

The thing that surprised the Canon most was the tomb of Alexander
VII, because there is a skeleton on it. Don Calixto stopped with most
curiosity before the tomb of Paul III, on which one sees two nude women.
Caesar told them that popular legend claims that one of these statues,
the one representing Justice, is Julia Farnese, sister of Pope Paul
III, and mistress of Pope Alexander VI; but such a supposition seems
unlikely.

"Entirely," insisted the Canon gravely; "those are things invented by
the Free Thinkers."

Don Calixto allowed himself to say that most of the Popes looked like
drum-majors.

Don Justo continued appraising everything he saw like a contractor.
Caesar devoted himself to retailing his observations to Don Calixto,
while the Canon walked alone.

"I will inform you," he told him, "that on Saturday one may go up in
the dome, but only decently dressed people. So a placard on that door
informs us. If by any chance an apostle should re-arise and have a
fancy to do a little gymnastics and see Rome from a height, as he would
probably be dirty and badly dressed, he would get left, they wouldn't
let him go up. And then he could say: 'Invent a religion like the
Christian religion, so that after a while they won't let you go up in
the dome.'"

"Yes, certainly, certainly," replied Don Calixto. "They are absurd. But
do not let the Canon hear you. To be sure, all this does not look very
religious, but it is magnificent."

"Yes, it is a beautiful stage-setting, but there is no performance,"
said Caesar.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Don Calixto.

"That this is an empty place. It would have been well to build a temple
as large and light as this in honour of Science, which is humanity's
great creation. These statues, instead of being stupid or warlike Popes,
ought to be the inventor of vaccination or of chloroform. Then one could
understand the chilliness and the fairly menacing air that everything in
the place wears. Let people have confidence in the truth and in work,
that is good; but that a religion founded on mysteries, on obscurities,
should build a bright, challenging, flippant temple, is ridiculous."

"Yes, yes," said Don Calixto, always preoccupied in keeping the Canon
from hearing, "you talk like a modern man. I myself, down in my heart,
you know.... I believe you follow me, eh?"

"Yes, man."

"Well, I think that all this has no transcendency.... That is to say...."

"No, it has none. You may well say so, Don Calixto."

"But it did have it. That cannot be doubted, can it? And a great deal.
This is undeniable."

_IT IS A MAGNIFICENT BUSINESS CONCERN_

"It was really a magnificent business concern," said Caesar. "Think
of monopolizing heaven and hell, selling the shares here on earth and
paying the dividends in heaven! There's no guarantee trust company or
pawn-broker that pays an interest like that. And at its height, how many
branches it developed! Here, in this square, I have a friend, a Jewish
dealer in rosaries, who tells me his trade is flourishing. In three
weeks he has sold a hundred and fifty kilos of rosaries blessed by the
Pope, two hundred kilos of medals, and about half a square kilometre of
scapulars."

"What an exaggeration!" said Don Calixto.

"No, it is the truth. He is glad that these things, which he considers
accursed, sell, because after all, he is a liberal and a Jew; the only
thing he does, if he can, to ease his conscience, is to get ten per
cent. profit on everything, and he says to himself: 'Let the Catholics
worry!'"

"What tales! If the Canon should hear you!"

"No, but all this is true. As my friend says: Business is business. And
he has made me take notice that when the Garibaldini come here, they
spend the price of a few bottles of Chianti, and then they sleep in any
dog-kennel, and spend nothing more. On the contrary, the rich Catholics
buy and buy ... and off go his kilos of rosaries and of medals, his tons
of veils for visiting the Pope, his reams of indulgences for eating
meat, and for eating fish and meat, and even for blowing your nose on
pages of the Bible if you like."

"Do not be so disrespectful."

When the Canon had made sure of all the square metres of marble there
are in Saint Peter's they went out into the square again. Caesar
indicated the heap of irregular edifices that form the Vatican.

"That ought to be the Pope's room," said Caesar, pointing to a window,
at random. "You must have been there, Don Calixto?" "I don't know.
Really," he said, "I haven't much idea where I was."

"Nor has he any idea how he went," thought Caesar, and added: "That is
the Library; over there is the Secretary of State's apartment; there is
where the Holy Office meets"; and he said whatsoever occurred to him,
perfectly tranquilly.

They took their carriage, and as they passed a shop for objects of
religion, Don Calixto said to the Canon:

"What do you say to this, Don Justo? According to Don Caesar, the
proprietors of the shops where they sell medals, are Jews."

"Bah! that cannot be so," replied the Canon roundly.

"Why not?"

"Bah!"

"Why should it shock you?" exclaimed Caesar. "If they sold Jesus Christ
alive, why are they not to sell him dead?"

"Well, I am glad to know it," Don Justo burst forth, "because I was
going to buy some medals for presents, and now I won't buy them."

Don Calixto smiled, and Caesar understood that the good Canon was taking
advantage of the information to save a penny.

XXI

DON CALIXTO IN THE CATACOMBS

Don Calixto and the Canon were very anxious to visit the Catacombs.
Caesar knew that the visit is not entirely agreeable, and attempted to
dissuade them from their intention.

"I don't know whether you gentlemen know that one has to spend the
entire day there."

"Without lunch?" asked the Canon.

"Yes."

"Oh, no; that is impossible."

"One has to sacrifice oneself for the sake of Christianity," said
Caesar.

"You haven't much desire to sacrifice yourself," retorted Don Calixto.

"Because I believe it is damp and unwholesome down there, and a
Christian bronchitis would not be wholly pleasant, despite its religious
origin. And besides, as you already know, one must go without food."

"We might eat something there," said Don Justo.

"Eat there!" exclaimed Caesar. "Eat a slice of ham, in front of the
niches of the Catacombs! It would make me sick."

"It wouldn't me," replied the Canon.

"In front of the tombs of martyrs and saints!"

"Even if they were saints, they ate too," replied the Canon, with his
excellent good sense.

Caesar had to agree that even if they were saints, they ate.

There was a French family at the hotel who were also thinking of going
to see the Catacombs, and Don Calixto and Don Justo decided to go the
same day with them. The French family consisted of a Breton gentleman,
tall and whiskered, who had been at sea; his wife, who looked like a
village woman; and the daughter, a slender, pale, sad young lady. They
had with them, half governess, half maid, a lean peasant-woman with a
suspicious air.

The young lady confessed to Caesar that she had been dreaming of the
Catacombs for a long while. She knew the description Chateaubriand gives
of them in _Les Martyres_ by heart.

The next day the French family in one landau, and Don Calixto with the
Canon and Caesar in another, went to see the Catacombs.

The French family had brought a fat, smiling abbe as cicerone.

Five persons couldn't get inside the landau, and the Breton gentleman
had to sit by the driver. Don Calixto offered him a seat in his
carriage, but the Breton, who must have been obstinate as a mule, said
no, that from the driver's seat he enjoyed more of the panorama.

They halted a moment, on the abbe's advice, at the Baths of Caracalla,
and went through them. The cicerone explained where the different
bathing-rooms had been and the size of the pools. Those cyclopean
buildings, those high, high arches, those enormous walls, left Caesar
overcome.

One couldn't understand a thing like this except in a town which had a
mania for the gigantic, the titanic.

They left the baths and started along. They followed the Via di Porta
San Sebastiano, between two walls. They left behind the imposing ruins
of the Baths of Caracalla and various establishments for archeological
reconstructions, and the carriage stopped at the gate of the Catacombs.

They went in, guided by the abbe, and arrived at a sort of office.

They each paid a lira for a taper which a friar was handing out, and
they joined a group of other people, without quite knowing what they
expected next. In the group there were two German Dominicans, a tall one
whose fiery red beard hung to his waist, and a slim one, with a nose
like a knife.

_IRREVERENT CICERONE_

It was not long before another numerous group of tourists came out of a
hole in the floor, and among them was a Trappist brother who came over
to where Don Calixto and Caesar were. The Trappist carried a stick,
and a taper twisted in the end of the stick. He asked if everybody
understood French; any one that didn't could wait for another group.

"I don't understand it," said the Canon.

"I will translate what he says, to you," replied Caesar.

"All right," answered the Canon.

"_En avant, messieurs_," said the Trappist, lighting his taper, and
requesting them all to do the same.

They went around giving one another a light, and with their little
candles aflame they began to descend into the Catacombs.

They went in by a gallery as narrow as one in a mine, which once in a
while broadened into bigger spaces.

In certain spots there were openings in the roof.

Caesar had never thought about what the celebrated Catacombs would be
like, but he had not expected them so poor and so sinister.

The sensation they caused was disagreeable, a sensation of choking, of
suffocation, without one's really getting any impression of grandeur.
The place seemed like an abandoned ant-hill. The wide spaces that opened
out at the sides of the passage were chapels, the monk said.

The Trappist cicerone contributed to removing any serious feelings with
his chatter and his jokes. Being familiar with these tombs, he had lost
respect for them, as sacristans lose it for the saints they brush the
dust off of with a feather-duster. Moreover, he judged everything by an
esthetic criterion, completely devoid of respect; for him there were
only sepulchres with artistic character, or without it; of a good or
a poor period; and the latter sort he struck contemptuously with his
stick.

The marine Breton was irritated, and asked Caesar several times:

"Why is that permitted?" "I don't know," answered Caesar.

The monk made extraordinary remarks.

Explaining the life of the Christians in the earliest eras of
Christianity, he said:

"In this century the habits of the pontiffs were so lax that the
Pope had to go out accompanied by two persons to insure his modest
behaviour."

"Oh, oh!" said a young Frenchman, in a tone of vexation.

_"Ah! C'est L'histoire,"_ replied the monk.

Caesar translated what the Trappist had said, to Don Calixto and the
Canon, and they were both really perplexed.

They followed the long, narrow galleries. It was a strange effect,
seeing the procession of tourists with their burning candles. One didn't
notice the modern clothes and the ladies' hats, and from a distance the
procession lighted by the little flames of the candles, had a mysterious
look.

At the tail of the crowd walked two men who spoke English. One was a
"gentleman" little versed in archeological questions; the other a tall
person with the face of a scholar. Caesar drew near them to listen. The
one was explaining to his companion everything they saw as they went
along, the signification of the emblems cut in the tablets, and the
funerary customs of the Christians.

"Didn't they put crosses?" asked the unlearned gentleman.

"No," said the other. "It is said that for the Romans the _crux_
represented the gallows! Thus the earliest representation of the
Crucified is a drawing in the Kirchnerian museum, which shows a
Christian kneeling before a man with a donkey's head, who is nailed to a
cross. In Greek letters one reads: 'Alexamenes adores his God.' They say
this drawing comes from the Palace of the Caesars, and it is considered
to be a caricature of Christ, drawn by a Roman soldier on a wall."

"Didn't they put up images of Christ, either?"

"No. You do not consider that they were at the height of the discussion
as to whether Christ was ugly or beautiful."

The tall gentleman got involved in a long dissertation as to what
motives they had had, some to insist that Christ's person was of great
beauty, others to affirm that it was of terrible ugliness.

Caesar would have liked to go on listening to what this gentleman said,
but Don Justo joined him. The Trappist was in front of two mummies,
explaining something, and he wanted Caesar to translate what he was
saying.

Caesar did this bit of interpreting for him. The candles were beginning
to burn out and it was necessary to leave.

The cicerone took them rapidly along a gallery at whose end there was a
stairway, and they issued into the sunlight. The monk extinguished the
taper on his stick, and began crying:

"Now, gentlemen, do you want any scapulars, medals, chocolate?"

Caesar looked over his companions in the expedition. The Canon
was indifferent. The old maritime Breton showed signs of profound
indignation, and his daughter, the little French mystic, had tears in
her eyes.

"That poor little French girl, who arrived here so full of enthusiasm,
has come out of these Catacombs like a rat out of a sewer," said Caesar.

"And why so?" asked Don Calixto.

"Because of the things the monk said. He was really scandalous."

"It is true," said the Canon gravely. "I never would have believed it."

_"Roma veduta, fede perduta,"_ said Don Calixto. "And as for you,
Caesar, hasn't this visit interested you?"

"Yes, I have been interested in trying to keep from catching cold."

AGRO ROMANO

The landau that the Breton family was in took the Appian, Way, and
Caesar and Don Calixto's carriage followed behind it.

They passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and were able to look ahead
along the old road, on whose sides one sees the remains of aqueducts,
which at evening-fall have a grandeur so imposing. Don Calixto and Don
Justo were discussing a question of home politics.

On them magnificently indifferent, the broken sepulchres, the abandoned
arches invaded by grass, the vestiges of a gigantic civilization, did
not produce the least impression.

The coachman pointed out Frascati on the slope of a mountain, Albano,
Grotta Ferrata, and Tivoli.

Caesar felt the grandeur of the landscape; the enormous sadness of the
remnants of aqueducts, which had the colour of rusty iron, beneath a sky
of pink clouds.

At dusk they turned back. Caesar felt a weight on his spirits. The
walls of the Baths of Caracalla looked threatening to him. Those great
towering thick walls, broken, brick-colour, burned by the sun, gave
him an impression of the strength of the past. There were no trees, no
houses near them; as if those imposing ruins precluded any life round
about. Only one humble almond-tree held out its white flowers.

Don Calixto and the Canon continued chatting.

XXII

SENTIMENTALITY AND ARCHEOLOGY

Don Calixto and the Canon went away to Spain. Caesar thought he was
wasting time in Rome and that he ought to get out, but he remained. He
kept wondering why Susanna Marchmont had left and never written him.

Twice he asked about her at the Hotel Excelsior, and was told that she
had not returned.

One evening at the beginning of May, when he had managed to decide to
pack up and go, he received a card from Susanna, telling him of her
arrival and inviting him to have tea at the _Ristorante del Castello dei
Cesari._

Caesar immediately left the hotel and took a cab, which carried him to
the top of the Aventine Hill.

He got out at the entrance to the garden of the _Ristorante_, went
across it, and out on a large terrace.

There were a number of Americans having tea, and in one group of them
was Susanna.

"How late you come!" she said.

"I have just received your card. And what did you do in Corfu? How did
things go down there?"

"Very well indeed. It is all wonderful. And I have been in Epirus and
Albania, too."

Susanna related her impressions of those countries, with many details,
which, surely, she had read in Baedeker.

She was very smart, and prettier than ever. She said her husband must be
in London; she had had no news from him for more than a month. "And how
did you know I was still here?" Caesar asked her.

"Through Kennedy. He wrote to me. He is a good friend. He talked a lot
about you in his letters."

Caesar thought he noticed that Susanna talked with more enthusiasm than
ordinarily. Perhaps distance had produced a similar effect on her
to what wondering about her had on him. Caesar looked at her almost
passionately.

From the terrace one could see the tragic ruins of the Palace of the
Caesars; broken arcades covered with grass, remains of walls still
standing, the openings of arches and windows, and here and there a
pointed cypress or a stone pine among the great devastated walls.

Far away one could see the country, Frascati, and the blue mountains of
the distance.

As it was already late, the group of Susanna's American friends decided
to return by carriage.

"I am going to walk," said Susanna in a low tone. "Would you like to
come with me?"

"With great pleasure."

They took leave of the others, went down the garden road, which was
decorated on both sides with ancient statues and tablets, and issued on
the Via di Santa Prisca, a street between two dark walls, with a lamp
every once in a while.

"What a sky!" she exclaimed.

"It is splendid."

It was of a blue with the lustre of mother-of-pearl; in the zenith a
stray star was imperceptibly shining; to the west floated golden and red
clouds.

They went down the steep street, alongside a garden wall. In some
places, bunches of century plants showed their hard spikes, sharp as
daggers, over the low walls.

There was a great silence in this coming of night. Among the foliage of
the trees they heard the piping of sparrows. From far away there came,
from time to time, the puffing of a train.

_DESOLATION_

They walked without speaking, mastered by the melancholy of their
surroundings. Now and again, a peasant, tanned by the sun, with his
little sack full of grass, came home from the fields, singing.

Caesar and Susanna passed alongside of the Jewish cemetery, and stopped
to look in through a grill. The wall hid the burning zone of twilight; a
greenish blue reigned in the zenith.

They went on again. A bell began to ring.

Caesar was depressed. Susanna was silent.

They crossed a street of new, dark houses; they passed by a little
square with a melancholy church. The street they took was named for
Saint Theodore. To the left, down the Via del Velabro, they saw an arch
with many niches on the sides of the single opening.

A band of black seminarians passed.

"Poor creatures!" murmured Caesar.

"Are you very sympathetic?" said Susanna, mockingly.

"Yes, those chaps rouse my pity."

Now, on the right, the furious ruins of the Palatine were piled up:
brick walls, ruined arches, decrepit partitions, and above, the terrace
of a garden with a balustrade. Over the terrace, against the sky, were
the silhouettes of high cypresses almost black, of ilexes with their
dense foliage, and a large palm with arching leaves.

From these so tragic ruins there seemed to exhale a great desolation,
beneath the deep, green sky.

Susanna and Caesar drew near the Forum.

In the opaque light of dusk the Forum had the air of a cemetery. Two
lighted windows were shining in the high dark wall of the Tabularium,
and sharp-toned bells were beginning to ring.

They went up the stairway that leads to the Capitol, and on a little
terrace they stopped to look at the Forum.

"What terrible desolation!" exclaimed Susanna.

"All the stones look like tombs," said Caesar. "Yes, that is true,"

"What are those three high open vaults that give so strange an
impression of immense size?" asked Caesar.

"That is what remains of Constantine's basilica."

For a long while they gazed at that abandoned space, with its melancholy
columns and white stones.

In a street running into the Forum, there began to shine two rows of
gaslights of a greenish colour.

As they passed down the slope leading to the Capitol, in a little street
to the left, the Via Monte Tarpea, they saw a funeral procession ready
to start. At that moment the corpse was being brought into the street.
Several women in black were waiting by the house door with lighted
candles.

The priest, in his white surplice and holding up his cross, gave the
order to start, and pushed to the front of the crowd; four men raised
the bier and took it on their shoulders, and the procession of women in
black, men, and children, followed behind. Bells with sharp voices began
again to sound in the air.

"Oh, isn't it sad!" said Susanna, lifting her hand to her breast.

They watched how the procession moved away, and then Caesar murmured,
ill-humouredly:

"It is stupid."

"What?" asked Susanna.

"I say that it's stupid to take pleasure in feeling miserable. What we
are doing is absurd and unhealthy."

Susanna burst into laughter, and when she said good-night to Caesar she
squeezed his hand energetically.

XXIII

THE 'SCUTCHEON OF A CHURCH

"Susanna Marchmont," Caesar wrote to his friend Alzugaray, "is a
beautiful woman, rich, and apparently intelligent. She has given me to
understand that she feels a certain inclination for me, and if I please
her well enough, she will get a divorce and marry me.

"I have discovered the reasons for her inclination, first in a desire to
revenge herself on her husband by marrying the brother of the woman he
has fallen in love with; secondly, in my not having made love to her,
like the majority of the men she has known.

"Really, Susanna is a beautiful woman; but whereas other women gain
by being looked at and listened to, with her it is not so. In this
beautiful woman there is something cold, utilitarian, which she does not
succeed in hiding by her artistic effusions. Besides she has a great
deal of vanity, but stupid vanity. She has asked me if I couldn't manage
to acquire a high-sounding, decorative title in Spain.

"If Susanna knew that in my heart I keep up her friendship only through
inertia, because I have no plans, and that her millions and her beauty
leave me cold, she would be dumfounded; I believe that perhaps she
would admire me.

"At present we devote ourselves to walking, talking, and telling each
other our impressions. Any one would say that we intentionally play a
game of being contrary; whatsoever she finds wonderful seems worthy
of contempt to me, and vice-versa. It is strange that such absolute
disagreement can exist. This Sunday afternoon we have been taking a
long walk, half sentimental, half archeological.

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