Caesar or Nothing

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"I'm glad of it."

"Do you know, _bambino_, I have to go away for a few days."

"Where?"

"To Naples. Come with me."

"No; I have things to do here. I will take you to the station."

"Ah, you rascal! You are a Don Juan."

"No, dear sister. I am a financier."

"I can see your victims from here. But I shall put them on their guard.
You are a blood-thirsty hyena. You like to collect hearts the way the
Red-skins did scalps."

"You mean coupons."

"No, hearts. You like to pretend to be simple, because you are wicked. I
will tell the Countess Brenda and her daughter."

"What are you going to tell them?"

"That you are wicked, that you have a hyena's heart, that you want to
ruin them."

"Don't tell them that, because it will make them fall in love with me. A
hyena-hearted man is always run after by the ladies."

"You are right. Come along, go to Naples with me."

"Is your husband such a terrible bore, little sister?"

"A little more cream and a little less impertinence, _bambino_," said
Laura, holding out her plate with a comic gesture.

Caesar burst out laughing, and after lunch he took Laura to the station
and remained in Rome alone. His two chief occupations consisted in
making love respectfully to the Countess Brenda and going to walk with
Preciozi.

The Countess Brenda was manifestly coming around; in the evening Caesar
would take a seat beside her and start a serious conversation about
religious and philosophical matters. The Countess was a well-educated
and religious woman; but beneath all her culture one could see the
ardent dark woman, still young, and with intense eyes.

Caesar made it a spiritual training to talk to the Countess. She often
turned the conversation to questions of love, and discussed them with
apparent keenness and insight, but it was evident that all her ideas
about love came out of novels. Beyond a doubt, her calm, vulgar husband
did not fill up the emptiness of her soul, because the Countess was
discontented and had a vague hope that somewhere, above or beneath
the commonplaces of the day, there was a mysterious region where the
ineffable reigned.

Caesar, who hadn't much faith in the ineffable, used to listen to her
with a certain amazement, as if the plump, strong woman had been a
visionary incapable of understanding reality.

In the daytime Caesar went walking with Preciozi and they talked of
their respective plans.

_SOLITARY WALKS_

Often Caesar went out alone, chewing the end of his thoughts as he
strolled in the streets, working out possible schemes of investments or
of politics.

When he got away from the main streets, he kept finding some corner at
every step that left him astonished at its fantastic, theatrical air.
Suddenly he would discover himself before a high wall, on top of
which were statues covered with moss, or huge terra-cotta jars. Those
decorations would stand out against the dark foliage of the Roman ilex
and the tall, black cypresses. At the end of a street would rise a tall
palm, drooping its branches over a little square, or a stone pine, like
the one in the Aldobrandini garden.

"These people were real artists," Caesar would murmur, and mean it as a
fact, not taking it for either praise or blame.

His curiosity got excited, despite his determination not to resemble a
tourist in any way. The low windows of a palace would let him see lofty
ceilings with great stretches of painting, or decorated with medallions
and legends; a balcony would display a thick curtain of ivy that hid the
railings; here he would read a Latin inscription cut in a marble tablet,
there he would come upon a black lane between two old houses, with a
battered lantern at its entrance. In the part of town between the Corso
and the Tiber, which is full of narrow, crooked old streets, he loved to
wander until he was lost.

Some details already familiar, he was delighted to see again; he always
halted to look down the Via della Pillotta, with its arches over the
street; and the little flower-market in the Piazza di Spagna always gave
him a sensation of joy.

At dusk Caesar would walk in the centre of town; the bars filled up with
people who loved to take cakes and sweet wine; on the sidewalks the
itinerant merchants cried their trifling wares; along the Corso a
procession of carriages full of tourists passed rapidly, and a few
well-appointed victorias came driving back from the Pincio and the Villa
Borghese.

Once in a while Caesar went out in the evening after dinner. There was
scant animation in the streets, theatres didn't interest him, and he
would soon return to the hotel salon to chat with the Countess Brenda.

Later, in his room, he would write to Alzugaray, giving him his
impressions.

IX

NEW ACQUAINTANCES

"I PROTESTANTI DELLA SIMPATIA"

It began again to rain disastrously; the days were made up of downpours
and squalls, to the great despair of the foreigners.

At night the Piazza Esedra was a fine sight from the hotel balcony. The
arc lights reflected their glow in the lakes of rain beneath them, and
the great jet of the fountain in the centre took on tones of blue and
mother-of-pearl, where the rays of the electric light pierced through
it.

In the hotel parlour one dance followed another. Everybody complained
gaily of the bad weather.

Shortly before the middle of Lent there arrived a Parisian family at the
hotel, composed of a mother with two daughters and a companion.

This family might be considered a representation of the _entente
cordiale_. The mother was French, the widow first of a Spaniard, Senor
Sandoval, by whom she had had one daughter, and then of an Englishman,
Mr. Dawson, by whom she had had another.

Mme. Dawson was a fat, imposing lady, with tremendous brilliants in
her ears and somewhat theatrical clothes; Mile. Sandoval, the elder
daughter, was of Arab type, with black eyes, an aquiline nose, pale
rose-coloured lips, and a malicious smile, full of mystery, as if it
revealed restless and diabolical intentions.

Her half-sister, Mile. Dawson, was a contrast, being the perfect type of
a grotesque Englishwoman, with a skin like a beet, and freckles.

The governess, Mile. Cadet, was not at all pretty, but she was gay and
sprightly. These four women seated in the middle of the dining-room, a
little stiff, a little out of temper, seemed, particularly the first
few days, to defy anybody that might have wished to approach them. They
replied coolly to the formal bows of the other guests, and none of them
cared to take part in the dances.

The handsome Signor Carminatti shot incendiary glances at Mlle. de
Sandoval; but she remained scornful; so one evening, as the Dawson
family came out of the dining-room, the Neapolitan waved his hand toward
them and said:

"I protestante della simpatia."

Caesar made much of this phrase, because it was apt, and he took it
that Carminatti considered the ladies protestants against friendliness,
because they had paid no attention to the charms that he displayed in
their honour.

_CONSEQUENCES OF THE RAIN_

Two or three days later Mme. Dawson bowed to Caesar on passing him in
the hall, and asked him:

"Aren't you Spanish?"

"Yes, madam."

"But don't you speak French?"

"Very little."

"My daughter is Spanish too."

"She is a perfect Spanish type."

"Really?" asked the daughter referred to.

"Thoroughly."

"Then I am happy."

In the evening, after dinner, Caesar again joined Mme. Dawson and began
to talk with her. The Frenchwoman had a tendency to philosophize, to
criticize, and to find out everything. She had no great capacity for
admiration, and nothing she saw succeeded in dragging warm eulogies from
her lips. There was none of the "_bello! bellissimo!_" of the Italian
ladies in her talk, but a series of exact epithets.

Mme. Dawson had left all her capacity for admiration in France, and was
visiting Italy for the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at the
conclusion that there is no town like Paris, no nation like the French,
and it didn't matter much to Caesar whether he agreed or denied it.

Mlle. de Sandoval had a great curiosity about things in Spain and an
absurd idea about everything Spanish.

"It seems impossible," thought Caesar, "how stupid French people are
about whatsoever is not French."

Mlle. de Sandoval asked Caesar a lot of questions, and finally, with an
ironic gesture, said to him:

"You mustn't let us keep you from going to talk with the Countess
Brenda. She is looking over at you a great deal."

Caesar became a trifle dubious; indeed, the Countess was looking at him
in a fixed and disdainful way.

"The Countess is a very intelligent woman," said Caesar; "I think you
would all like her very much."

Mme. Dawson said nothing; Caesar rose, took his leave of the family, and
went over to speak to the Countess and her daughter. She received him
coldly. Caesar thought he would stay long enough to be polite and then
get away, when Carminatti, speaking to him in a very friendly way and
calling him "_mio caro_," asked him to introduce him to Mme. Dawson.

He did so, and when he had left the handsome Neapolitan leaning back
in a chair beside the French ladies, he made the excuse that he had a
letter to write, and said good-night.

"I see that you are an ogre," said Mlle. de Sandoval.

"Do you want me for anything?"

"No, no; you may go when you choose."

Caesar repaired to his room.

"I don't mind those people," he said; "but if they think I am a man made
for entertaining ladies, they are very clever."

The next day Mme. Dawson talked with Caesar very affably, and Mlle. de
Sandoval made a few ironical remarks about his savage ways.

Of all the family Caesar conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most
intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a
turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke,
her voice had certain falsetto inflexions that were very comical.

Mlle. Cadet was on to everything the moment it happened. Caesar asked
her jokingly about the people in the hotel, and he was thunderstruck to
find that she had discovered in three or four days who all the guests
were and where they came from.

Mlle. Cadet also told him that Carminatti had sent an ardent declaration
of love to the Sandoval girl the first day he saw her.

"The devil!" exclaimed Caesar. "What an inflammable Neapolitan it is!
And what did she reply?"

"What would she reply? Nothing."

"As you are already familiar with everything going on here," said
Caesar, "I am going to ask you a question: what is the noise in the
court every night? I am always thinking of asking somebody."

"Why, it is charging the accumulator of the lift," replied Mlle. Cadet.

"You have relieved me from a terrible doubt which worried me."

"I have never heard a noise," said Mlle. de Sandoval, breaking into the
conversation.

"That's because your room is on the square," Caesar answered, "and the
noise is in the court; on the poor side of the house."

"Pshaw! There is no reason to complain," remarked Mlle. Cadet, "if they
give us a serenade."

"Do you consider yourself poor?" Mlle. de Sandoval asked Caesar,
disdainfully.

"Yes, I consider myself poor, because I am."

During the following days Mme. Dawson and her daughters were introduced
to the rest of the people in the hotel, and became intimate with them.
The "Contessina" Brenda and the San Martino girls made friends with the
French girls, and the Neapolitan and his gentlemen friends flitted among
them all.

The Countess Brenda at first behaved somewhat stiff with Mme. Dawson and
her daughters, but later she little by little submitted and permitted
them to be her friends.

She introduced the French ladies to the other ladies in the hotel; but
doubtless her aristocratic ideas would not allow her to consider Mlle.
Cadet a person worthy to be introduced, for whenever she got to her she
acted as if she didn't know her.

The governess, noticing this repeated contempt, would blush at it, and
once she murmured, addressing Caesar with tears ready to escape from her
eyes:

"That's a nice thing to do! Just because I am poor, I don't think they
ought to despise me."

"Don't pay any attention," said Caesar, quite aloud; "these middle-class
people are often very rude."

Mlle. de Sandoval gave Caesar a look half startled and half reproving;
and he explained, smiling:

"I was telling Mlle. Cadet a funny story."

Mme. Dawson and her daughters soon became friends with the most
distinguished persons in the hotel; only the Marchesa Sciacca, the
Maltese, avoided them as if they inspired her with profound contempt.

In a few days the Countess Brenda and Caesar's friendship passed beyond
the bonds of friendship; but in the course of time it cooled off again.

_INFLUENCE OF THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH'S AXIS ON WHAT IS CALLED
LOVE_

One evening, when the Countess Brenda's daughter had left Rome to go
with her father to a villa they owned in the North, the Countess and
Caesar had a long conversation in the salon. They were alone; a great
tenor was singing at the Costanzi, and the whole hotel was at the
theatre. The Countess chatted with Caesar, she reclining in a chaise
longue, and he seated in a low chair. That evening the Countess was
feeling in a provocative humour, and she made fun of Caesar's mode of
life and his ideas, not with the phrases and the manners of a great
lady, but with the boldness and spice of a woman of the people.

The angle that the earth's axis makes with the trajectory of the
ecliptic, and which produces those absurd phenomena that we Spaniards
call seasons, determined at that period the arrival of spring, and
spring had no doubt shaken the Countess Brenda's nerves.

Spring gave cooling inflexions to the lady's voice and made her express
herself with warmth and with a shamelessly libertine air.

No doubt the core of her personality was joyful, provoking, and somewhat
licentious.

Her eyes flashed, and on her lips there was a sensual expression of
challenge and mockery.

Caesar, that evening, without knowing why, was dull at expressing
himself, and depressed. Some of the Countess's questions left him in a
stupid unreadiness.

"Poor child; I am sorry for you," she suddenly said.

"Why?"

"Because you are so weak; you have such an air of exhaustion. What do
you do to make you like this? I am sure you ought to be given some sort
of iron tonic, like the anaemic girls."

"Do you really think I am so weak?" asked Caesar.

"Isn't it written all over you?"

"Well, anyway, I am stronger than you, Countess."

"In a discussion, perhaps. But otherwise.... You have no strength except
in your brains."

"And in my hands. Give me your hand."

The Countess gave him her hand and Caesar pressed it tighter and
tighter.

"You are strong after all," she said.

"That is nothing. You wait," and Caesar squeezed the Countess's hand
until he made her give a sharp scream. A servant entered the salon.
"It's nothing," said the Countess, getting up; "I seemed to have turned
my foot."

"I will take you to your room," exclaimed Caesar, offering her his arm.

"No, no. Thanks very much."

"Yes. It has to be."

"Then, all right," she murmured, and added, "Now you frighten me."

"Bah, you will get over that!" and Caesar went into her room with
her....

The next day Caesar appeared in the salon looking as if he had been
buried and dug up.

"What is the matter?" Mme. Dawson and her daughters asked him.

"Nothing; only I had a headache and I took a big dose of antipyrine."

The relations of the Brenda lady and Caesar soon cooled. Their
temperaments were incompatible: there was no harmony between their
imaginations or between their skins. In reality, the Countess, with all
her romanticism, did not care for long and compromising liaisons, but
for hotel adventures, which leave neither vivid memories nor deep
imprints. Caesar noted that despite her lyricism and her sentimental
talk, there was a great deal of firmness in this plump woman, and a lack
of sensitiveness.

Moreover, this woman, so little aristocratic in intimacy, had much
vanity about stupid things and a great passion for jewelry; but what
contributed most to making Caesar feel a profound hatred for her was
his discovering what good health she enjoyed. This good health seemed
offensive to Caesar, above all when he compared it to his own, to his
weak nerves and his restless brain.

From considering her a spiritual and delicate lady he passed to
considering her a powerful mare, which deserved no more than a whip and
spurs.

The love-affair contributed to upsetting Caesar and making him more
sarcastic and biting. This spiritual ulceration of Caesar's profoundly
astonished Mlle. Cadet.

One day a Roman aristocrat, nothing less than a prince, came to call on
Mme. Dawson. He talked with her, with her daughters, and the Countess
Brenda, and held forth about whether the hotels in Rome were full or
empty, about the _pensions_, and the food in the restaurants, with a
great wealth of details; afterwards he lamented that Mme. Dawson, as a
relative of his, even though a very distant one, should have gone to a
ricevimento_ at the French Embassy, and he boasted of belonging to the
Black party in Rome.

When he was gone, Mlle. Cadet came over to Caesar, who was sunk in an
arm-chair gazing at the ceiling, and asked him:

"What did you think of the prince?"

"What prince?"

"The gentleman who was here talking a moment ago."

"Ah, was he a prince?"

"Yes."

"As he talked about nothing but hotels, I took him to be the proprietor
of one."

Mlle. Cadet told Mme. Dawson what Caesar had said, and she and her
daughters were amused at his error.

X

A BALL

A little later than the real day, they got up a ball at the hotel in
celebration of the French holiday Micareme.

When Caesar was asked if he thought of going to the ball, he said no;
but Mlle. de Sandoval warned him that if he didn't go she would never
speak to him again, and Mme. Dawson and the governess threatened him
with like excommunication.

"But you know, these balls are very amusing," said Mme. Dawson.

"Do you think so?"

"I do, and so do you."

"Besides, an observer like you," added Mlle. Cadet, "can devote himself
to taking notes."

"And why do you conclude that I am an observer?" asked Caesar.

"The idea! Because it is evident."

"And an observer with very evil intentions," insisted Mlle. de Sandoval.

"You credit me with qualities I haven't got."

Caesar had to accede, and the Dawson ladies and he were the first to
enter the salon and take their seats. In one corner was a glass vase
hung from the ceiling by a pulley.

"What is that?" Mme. Dawson asked a servant.

"It is a glass vase full of bonbons, which you have to break with a pole
with your eyes closed."

"Ah, yes."

Since nobody else came in, the Dawson girls and Caesar wandered about
looking into the cupboards and finding the Marchesa Sciacca's music and
the Neapolitan's. They looked out one of the salon windows. It was a
detestable night, raining and hailing; the great drops were bouncing on
the sidewalks of the Piazza Esedra. Water and hail fell mixed together,
and for moments at a time the ground would stay white, as if covered
with a thin coating of pearls.

The fountain in the centre cast up its streams of water, which mingled
with the rain, and the central jet shone in the lays of the arc-lights;
now and again the livid brilliance of lightning illuminated the stone
arches and the rumbling of thunder was heard ...

Still nobody else came to the salon. Doubtless the ladies were preparing
their toilets very carefully.

The first to appear, dressed for the ball, were the Marchesa Sciacca and
her husband, accompanied by the inevitable Carminatti.

The Marchesa, with her habitual brutality toward everybody that lived in
the house, bowed with formal coolness to Mme. Dawson, and sat down by
the piano, as far away as possible from the French ladies.

She wore a gown of green silk, with lace and gold ornaments. She was
very decolletee and had a fretful air. Her husband was small and
stooped, with a long moustache and shiny eyes; on his cheek-bones were
the red spots frequent in consumptives, and he spoke in a sharp voice.

"Are you acquainted with the Marquis?" Mme. Dawson asked Caesar.

"Yes, he is a tiresome busybody," said Caesar, "the most boresome fellow
you could find. He stops you in the street to tell you things. The
other day he made me wait a quarter of an hour at the door of a tourist
agency, while he inquired the quickest way of getting to Moscow. 'Are
you thinking of going there?' I asked him. 'No; I just wanted to find
out ....' He is an idiot."

"God preserve us from your comments. What will you be saying about us?"
exclaimed Mlle. de Sandoval.

The Countess Brenda entered, with her husband, her daughter, and a
friend. She was dressed in black, low in the neck, and wore a collar of
brilliants as big as filberts, which surrounded her bosom with rays of
light and blinding reflections.

Her friend was a young lady of consummate beauty; a brunette with colour
in her skin and features of flawless perfection; with neither the
serious air nor the statuesqueness of a great beauty, and with none
of the negroid tone of most brunettes. When she smiled she showed her
teeth, which were a burst of whiteness. She was rather loaded with
jewels, which gave her the aspect of an ancient goddess.

"You, who find everything wrong," said Mlle. Cadet to Caesar, "what have
you to say of that woman? I have been looking at her ever since she came
in, and I don't find the slightest defect."

"Nor I. It is a face which gives no indication that the least shadow of
sorrow has ever crossed it. It is beauty as serene as a landscape or as
the sea when calm. Moreover, that very perfection robs it of character.
It seems to be less a human face than a symbol of an apathetic being and
an apathetic beauty."

"We have found her defect," said Mlle. Cadet.

After introducing her friend to the ladies and to the young men, who
were all dazzled, the Countess Brenda sat down near Mme. Dawson, in an
antique arm-chair.

She was imposing.

"You look like a queen holding audience," Mlle. de Sandoval said to her.

"Your beloved is like an actual monument," Mlle. Cadet murmured
jokingly, aside to Caesar.

"Yes, I think we ought to station a veteran at the door," retorted
Caesar.

"A veteran! No, for mercy's sake! Poor lady! A warrior in active
service, one on whom all the antipyrine in the world would make no
impression," Mlle. Cadet replied maliciously.

Caesar smiled at the allusion.

_SILENO MACARRONI_

Among the people there was one gentlerman that attracted Mlle. Cadet's
special attention. He was apart from any group, but he knew everybody
that arrived. This gentleman was fat, smiling, smooth-shaven, with a
round, chubby, rosy face and the body of a Silenus. When he spoke
he arched and lowered his eyebrows alternately, rolled his eyes,
gesticulated with his fat, soft hands, and smiled and showed his teeth.

His way of greeting people was splendid.

"Come sta, marchesa?" he would say. "Cavaliere!" "Commendatore!"
"La contessina va bene?" "Oh! Egregio!"

And the good gentleman would spread his arms, and close them, and
look as if he wanted to embrace the whole of humanity to his abdomen,
covered with a white waistcoat.

"Who can that gentleman be?" Mlle. Cadet asked various times.

"That? That is Signor Sileno Macarroni," said Caesar, "Commander of the
Order of the Mighty Belly, Knight of the Round Buttocks, and of other
distinguished Orders."

"He is a singer," said the Countess Brenda to Mlle. de Sandoval in a low
tone.

"He is a singer," repeated Mlle. de Sandoval to her governess in a
similar tone.

"Sileno Macarroni is a singer," said Mlle. Cadet, with equal
mysteriousness, addressing Caesar.

"But is our friend Macarroni going to sung?" asked Caesar.

The question was passed from one person to another, and it was
discovered that Macarroni was going to sing. As a matter of fact, the
fat Silenus did sing, and everybody was startled to hear a high tenor
voice issue from within that voluminous human being. The fat Silenus had
the misfortune to sing false in the midst of his bravest trills, and the
poor soul was overcome, despite the applause.

"Poor Macarroni!" said Caesar, "his high tenor heart must be broken
to bits." "He is going," put in Mlle. Cadet. "What a shame!" Sileno
vanished and the pianist began to play waltzes.

_THE WORLD AS A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN_

Carminatti was the first on the floor with his partner, who was the
Marchesa Sciacca.

The Maltese lady danced with an abandon and a feline languor that
imposed respect. One of the San Martino girls, dressed in white, like
a vaporous fairy, danced with an officer in a blue uniform, a slim,
distinguished person with languid eyes and rosy cheeks, who caused a
veritable sensation among the ladies.

The other San Martino, in pale pink, was on a sofa chatting with a man
of the cut-throat type, of jaundiced complexion, with bright eyes and a
moustache so long as almost to touch his eyebrows.

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