Caesar or Nothing

P >> Pio Baroja >> Caesar or Nothing

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

"I thought you had forgotten us," said Laura.

"I forget you, Marchesa! Never."

"You say you came to Rome...."

"From Nice I had to return to London, because my father was seriously
ill with an attack of gout."

"He is well again?"

"Yes, thank you. You are coming back from a drive?"

"Yes."

"Don't you want to come and have tea with my wife and me?"

"Where?"

"At the Hotel Excelsior. We are staying there. Will you come?" "All
right."

Laura accepted, and they went to the Via Veneto with the Englishman
riding beside them.

They went into the hotel and passed through to the "hall" full of
people, Marchmont sent word to his wife by a servant, to come down.
Laura and Caesar seated themselves with the Englishman.

"This hotel is unbearable," exclaimed Marchmont; "there is nothing here
but Americans."

"Your wife, however, must like that," said Caesar.

"No. Susanna is more European every day, and she doesn't care for the
shrieking elegance of her compatriots. Besides, her father is here, and
that makes her feel less American."

"It is an odd form of filial enthusiasm," remarked Caesar.

"It doesn't shock me. I almost think it's the rule," replied Marchmont;
"at home I could see that my brothers and sisters hated one another
cordially, and that every member of the family wanted to get away from
the others. You two who are so fond of each other are a very rare
instance. Is it frequent in Spain that brothers and sisters like one
another?"

"Yes, there are instances of it," answered Caesar, laughing.

Mrs. Marchmont arrived, accompanied by an old man who evidently was her
father, and two other men. Susanna was most smart; she greeted Laura and
Caesar very affably, and presented her father, Mr. Russell; then she
presented an English author, tall, skinny, with blue eyes, a white
beard, and hair like a halo; and then a young Englishman from the
Embassy, a very distinguished person named Kennedy, who was a Catholic.

_TEA_

After the introductions they passed into the dining-room, which was
most impressive. It was an exhibition of very smart women, some of
them ideally beautiful, and idle men. All about them resounded a nasal
English of the American sort.

Susanna Marchmont served the tea and did the honours to her guests.
They all talked French, excepting Mr. Russell, who once in a long while
uttered some categorical monosyllable in his own language.

Mr. Russell was not of the classic Yankee type; he looked like a vulgar
Englishman. He was a serious man, with a short moustache, grey-headed,
with three or four gold teeth.

What to Caesar seemed wonderful in this gentleman was his economy of
words. There was not one useless expression in his vocabulary, and
not the slightest redundancy; whatever partook of merit, prestige, or
nobility was condensed, for him, to the idea of value; whatever partook
of arrangement, cleanliness, order, was condensed to the word "comfort";
so that Mr. Russell, with a very few words, had everything specified.

To Susanna, imbued with her preoccupation in supreme _chic_, her father
no doubt did not seem a completely decorative father; but he gave Caesar
the impression of a forceful man.

Near them, at a table close by, was a little blond man, with a hooked
nose and a scanty imperial, in company with a fat lady. They bowed to
Marchmont and his wife.

"That gentleman looks like a Jew," said Caesar.

"He is," replied Marchmont, "that is Senor Pereyra, a rich Jew; of
Portuguese origin, I think."

"How quickly you saw it!" exclaimed Susanna.

"He has that air of a sick goat, so frequent in Jews."

"His wife has nothing sickly about her, or thin either," remarked Laura.

"No," said Caesar; "his wife represents another Biblical type; one of
the fat kine of somebody's dream, which foretold abundance and a good
harvest."

The Englishman, Kennedy, had also little liking for Jews.

"I do not hate a Jew as anti-Christian," said Caesar; "but as
super-Christian. Nor do I hate the race, but the tendency they have
never to be producers, but always middlemen, and because they incarnate
so well for our era the love of money, and of joy and pleasure."

The English author was a great partisan of Jews, and he asserted that
they were more distinguished in science and the arts than any other
race. The Jewish question was dropped in an instant, when they saw a
smart lady come in accompanied by a pale man with a black shock of hair
and an uneasy eye.

"That is the Hungarian violinist Kolozsvar," said Susanna.

"Kolozsvar, Kolozsvar!" they heard everybody saying.

"Is he a great virtuoso?" Caesar asked Kennedy.

"No, I think not," answered Kennedy. "It seems that this Hungarian's
speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country,
which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not
obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London
fight for him. His game is to pass himself off as a fallen man,
depraved, worn-out. There you have his phraseology.... They see a man to
save, to raise up, and convert into a great artist, and almost all of
them yield to this temptation."

"That is comical," said Caesar, looking curiously at the fiddler and his
lady.

"To a Spaniard," replied Kennedy, "it is comical; and probably it would
be to an Italian too; but in England there are many women that have a
purely imaginative idealism, a romanticism fed on ridiculous novels, and
they fall into traps like these, which seem clumsy and grotesque to you
here in the South, where people are more clear-sighted and realistic."

Caesar watched the brave fiddler, who played the role of a man used up,
to great perfection.

After tea, Susanna invited them to go up to her rooms, and Laura and her
brother and Kennedy and Mr. Russell went.

The English author had met a colleague, with whom he stayed behind
talking, and Marchmont remained in the "hall," as if it did not seem to
him proper for him to go to his wife's rooms.

Susanna's rooms were very high, had balconies on the Via Veneto, and
were almost opposite Queen Margherita's palace. One overlooked the
garden and could see the Queen Mother taking her walks, which is not
without its importance for persons who live in a republic.

Susanna was most amiable to Laura; repeated to all of them her
invitation to come and see her again; and after they had all promised
to see one another frequently, Caesar and Laura went down to their
carriage, and took a turn on the Corso by twilight.

XIII

ESTHETICS AND DEMAGOGY

_SUSANNA AND THE YOUNGSTERS_

From this meeting on, Caesar noticed that Marchmont paid court to Laura
with much persistence. A light-hearted, coquettish woman, it pleased
Laura to be pursued by a person like this Englishman, young,
distinguished, and rich; but she was not prepared to yield. Her
bringing-up, her class-feelings impelled her to consider adultery a
heinous thing. Nor was divorce a solution for her, since accepting it
would oblige her to cease being a Catholic and to quarrel irrevocably
with the Cardinal. Marchmont showed no discretion in the way he paid
court to Laura; he cared nothing about his wife, and talked of her with
profound contempt....

Laura found herself besieged by the Englishman; she couldn't decide to
discourage him entirely, and at critical moments she would take the
train, go off to Naples, and come back two or three days later,
doubtless with more strength for withstanding the siege.

"As a matter of reciprocal justice, since he makes love to my sister,
I ought to make love to his wife," thought Caesar, and he went several
times to the Hotel Excelsior to call on Susanna.

The Yankee wife was full of complaints against her husband. Her father
had advised her simply to get a divorce, but she didn't want to.
She found such a solution lacking in distinction, and no doubt she
considered the advice of an author in her own country very true, who had
given this triple injunction to the students of a woman's college: "Do
not drink, that is, do not drink too much; do not smoke, that is, do not
smoke too much; and do not get married, that is, do not get married too
much."

It did not seem quite right to Susanna to get married too much. Besides
she had a desire to become a Catholic. One day she questioned Caesar
about it:

"You want to change your religion!" exclaimed Caesar, "What for? I don't
believe you are going to find your lost faith by becoming a Catholic."

"And what do you think about it, Kennedy?" Susanna asked the young
Englishman, who was there too.

"To me a Catholic woman seems doubly enchanting."

"You would not marry a woman who wasn't a Catholic?"

"No, indeed," the Englishman proclaimed.

Caesar and Kennedy disagreed about everything.

Susanna discussed her plans, and constantly referred to Paul Bourget's
novel _Cosmopolis_, which had obviously influenced her in her
inclination for Catholicism.

"Are there many Jewish ladies who aspire to be baptized and become
Catholics, as Bourget says?" asked Susanna.

"Bah!" exclaimed Caesar.

"You do not believe that either?"

"No, it strikes me as a piece of naivety in this good soul of a
novelist. To become a Catholic, I don't believe requires more than some
few pesetas."

"You are detestable, as a Cardinal's nephew."

"I mean that I don't perceive that there are any obstacles to prevent
anybody from becoming a Catholic, as there are to prevent his becoming
rich. What a high ambition, to aspire to be a Catholic! While nobody
anywhere does anything but laugh at Catholics; and it has become an
axiom: 'A Catholic country is a country bound for certain ruin.'"

Kennedy burst out laughing.

Susanna said that she had no real faith, but that she did have a great
enthusiasm for churches and for choirs, for the smell of incense and
religious music.

"Spain is the place for all that," said Kennedy. "Here in Italy the
Church ceremonies are too gay. Not so in Spain; at Toledo, at Burgos,
there is an austerity in the cathedrals, an unworldliness...."

"Yes," said Caesar; "unhappily we have nothing left there but
ceremonies. At the same time, the people are dying of hunger."

They discussed whether it is better to live in a decorative, esthetic
sphere, or in a more humble and practical one; and Susanna and Kennedy
stood up for the superiority of an esthetic life.

As they left the hotel Caesar said to Kennedy:

"Allow me a question. Have you any intentions concerning Mrs.
Marchmont?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Simply because I shouldn't go to see her often, so as not to be in the
way."

"Thank you ever so much. But I have no intentions in relation to her.
She is too beautiful and too rich a woman for a modest employee like me
to fix his eyes on."

"Bah! A modest diplomat! That is absurd. It is merely that you don't
take to her."

"No. It's because she is a queen. There ought to be some defect in her
face to make her human."

"Yes; that's true. She is too much of a prize beauty."

"That is the defect in the Yankee women; they have no character. The
weight of tradition might be fatal to industry and modern life, but it
is the one thing that creates the spirituality of the old countries.
Beyond contradiction American women have intelligence, beauty, energy,
attractive flashes, but they lack that particular thing created by
centuries: character. At times they have very charming impulses. Have
you heard the story about Prince Torlonia's wife?"

"No."

"Well, Torlonia's present wife was an American girl worth millions, who
came with letters to the prince. He took her about Rome, and at the end
of some days he said to her, supposing that the beautiful American had
the intention of marrying: 'I will introduce some young noblemen to
you'; and she answered: 'Don't introduce anybody to me; because you
please me more than anybody'; and she married him."

"It was a pretty impulse."

"Yes, Americans do things like that on the spur of the moment. But if
you saw a Spanish woman behave that way, it would seem wrong to you."

Chattering amicably they came to the Piazza Esedra.

"Would you care to have lunch with me?" said Kennedy.

"Just what I was going to propose to you."

"I eat alone."

"I do not. I eat with my sister."

"The Marchesa di Vaccarone?"

"Yes."

"Then you must pardon me if I accept your invitation, for I am very
anxious to meet her."

"Then come along."

_RUSKIN AND THE PHILISTINES_

They reached the hotel and Caesar introduced his friend to Laura.

"He is an admirer of yours."

"A respectful admirer ... from a distance," explained Kennedy.

"But are there admirers of that sort?" asked Laura, laughing.

"Here you have one," said the Englishman. "I have known you by sight
ever since I came to Rome, and have never had the pleasure of speaking
to you until today."

"And have you been here a long time?"

"Nearly two years."

"And do you like Rome; eh?"

"I should say so! At first, I didn't, I must admit. It was a
disappointment to me. I had dreamed so much about Rome!" and Kennedy
talked of the books and guides he had read about the Eternal City.

"I must admit that I had never dreamed about Rome," said Caesar. "And
you boast of that?" asked Laura.

"No, I don't boast of it, I merely state it. I understand how agreeable
it is to know things. Caesar died here! Cicero made speeches here! Saint
Peter stumbled over this stone! It is fine! But not knowing things
is also very comfortable. I am rather like a barbarian walking
indifferently among monuments he knows nothing about."

"Doesn't such an idea make you ashamed?"

"No, why? It would be a bother to me to know a lot of things offhand. To
pass by a mountain and know how it was thrown up, what it is composed
of, what its flora and fauna are; to get to a town and know its history
in detail.... What things to be interested in! It's tiresome! I hate
history too much. I far prefer to be ignorant of everything, and
especially the past, and from time to time to offer myself a capricious,
arbitrary explanation."

"But I think that knowing things not only is not tiresome," said
Kennedy, "but is a great satisfaction."

"You think even learning things is a satisfaction?"

"Thousands of years ago one could know things almost without learning
them; nowadays in order to know, one has to learn. That is natural and
logical."

"Yes, certainly. And the effort to learn about useful things seems
natural and logical to me too, but not to learn about merely agreeable
things. To learn medicine and mechanics is logical; but to learn to look
at a picture or to hear a symphony is an absurdity."

"Why?"

"At any rate the neophytes that go to see a Rafael picture or to hear
a Bach sonata and have an exclamation all ready, give me the sad
impression of a flock of lambs. As for your sublime pedagogues of the
Ruskin type, they seem to me to be the fine flower of priggishness, of
pedantry, of the most objectionable bourgeoisie."

"What things your brother is saying!" exclaimed Kennedy.

"You shouldn't notice him," said Laura.

"Those artistic pedagogues enrage me; they remind me of Protestant
pastors and of the friars that go around dressed like peasants, and who
I think are called Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. The pedagogues
are Brothers of the Esthetic Doctrine, one of the stupidest inventions
that ever occurred to the English. I don't know which I find more
ridiculous, the Salvation Army or Ruskin's books."

"Why have you this hatred for Ruskin?"

"I find him an idiot. I only skimmed through a book of his called _The
Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and the first thing I read was a paragraph
in which he said that to use an imitation diamond or any other imitation
stone was a lie, an imposition, and a sin. I immediately said: 'This man
who thinks a diamond is the truth and paste a lie, is a stupid fool who
doesn't deserve to be read.'"

"Yes, all right: you take one point of view and he takes another. I
understand why Ruskin wouldn't please you. What I do not understand is
why you find it absurd that if a person has a desire to penetrate into
the beauties of a symphony or a picture, he should do so. What is there
strange in that?"

"You are right," said Caesar; "whoever wants to learn, should. I have
done so about financial questions."

"Is it true that your brother knows all about questions of money?"
Kennedy asked Laura.

"He says so."

"I haven't much belief in his financial knowledge."

"No?"

"No, I have not. You are a sort of dilettante, half nihilist, half
financier. You would like to pass for a tranquil, well-balanced man, for
what is called a philistine, but you cannot compass it."

"I will compass it. It is true that I want to be a philistine, but a
philistine out in the real world. All those great artists you people
admire, Goethe, Ruskin, were really philistines, who were in the
business of being interested in poetry and statues and pictures."

"Moncada, you are a sophist," said Kennedy. "Possibly I am wrong in this
discussion," retorted Caesar, "but the feeling I have is right. Artists
irritate me; they seem to me like old ladies with a flatulency that
prevents their breathing freely."

Kennedy laughed at the definition.

_CHIC AND THE REVOLUTION_

"I understand hating bad kings and conquerors; but artists! What harm do
they do?" said Laura.

"Artists are always doing harm to the whole of humanity. They have
invented an esthetic system for the use of the rich, and they have
killed the Revolution. The _chic_ put an end to the Revolution. And
now everything is coming back; enthusiasm for the aristocracy, for the
Church; the cult of kings. People look backward and the Revolutionary
movement is paralysed. The people that irritate me most are those
esthetes of the Ruskin school, for whom everything is religious: having
money, buying jewels, blowing one's nose ... everything is religious.
Vulgar creatures, lackeys that they are!"

"My brother is a demagogue," said Laura ironically.

"Yes," added Kennedy; "he doesn't like categories."

"But each thing has its value whether he likes it or not."

"I do not deny different values, or even categories. There are things of
great value in life; some natural, like youth, beauty, strength;
others more artificial, like money, social position; but this idea of
distinction, of aristocratic fineness, is a farce. It is a literary
legend in the same style as the one current in novels, which tells
us that the aristocrats of old families close their doors to rich
Americans, or like that other story Mrs. Marchmont was talking to us of,
about the Jewish ladies who were crazy to become Catholics."

"I don't see what you are trying to prove by all this," said Laura.

"I am trying to prove that all there is underneath distinguished society
is money, for which reason it doesn't matter if it is destroyed. The
cleverest and finest man, if he has no money, will die of hunger in a
corner. Smart society, which thinks itself superior, will never receive
him, because being really superior and intelligent is of no value on
the market. On the other hand, when it is a question of some very rich
brute, he will succeed in being accepted and feted by the aristocrats,
because money has a real value, a quotable value, or I'd better say, it
is the only thing that has a quotable value."

"What you are saying isn't true. A man doesn't go with the best people
merely because he is rich."

"No, certainly; not immediately. There is a preparatory process. He
begins by robbing people in some miserable little shop, and feels
himself democratic. Then he robs in a bank, and at that period he feels
that he is a Liberal and begins to experience vaguely aristocratic
ideas. If business goes splendidly, the aristocratic ideas get
crystallized. Then he can come to Rome and go into ecstasies over
all the humbugs of Catholicism; and after that, one is authorized to
acknowledge that the religion of our fathers is a beautiful religion,
and one finishes by giving a tip to the Pope, and another to Cardinal
Verry, so that they will make him Prince of the Ecumenical Council or
Marquis of the Holy Crusade."

"What very stupid and false ideas," exclaimed Laura. "Really I
appreciate having a brother who talks in such a vulgar way."

"You are an aristocrat and the truth doesn't please you. But such are
the facts. I can see the chief of the bureau of Papal titles. What fun
he must have thinking up the most appropriate title for a magnate of
Yankee tinned beef or for an illustrious Andean general! How magnificent
it would be to gather all the Bishops _in partibus infidelium_ and all
the people with Papal titles in one drawing-room! The Bishop of Nicaea
discussing with the Marquis of the Holy Roman Empire; the Marchioness of
Easter Sunday flirting with the Bishop of Sion, while the Patriarchs
of Thebes, Damascus, and Trebizond played bridge with the sausage
manufacturer, Mr. Smiles, the pork king, or with the illustrious General
Perez, the hero of Guachinanguito. What a moving spectacle it would be!"

"You are a clown!" said Laura.

"He is a finished satirist," added Kennedy.

_CAESAR'S PLAN_

After lunch, Laura, Kennedy, and Caesar went into the salon, and Laura
introduced the Englishman to the San Martino girls and the Countess
Brenda. They stayed there chatting until four o'clock, at which time the
San Martinos got ready to go out in a motor car, and Laura, with the
Countess and her daughter, in a carriage.

Caesar and Kennedy went into the street together.

"You are awfully well fixed here," said Kennedy, "with no Americans, no
Germans, or any other barbarians."

"Yes, this hotel is a hive of petty aristocrats."

"Your sister was telling me that you might pick out a very rich wife
here, among the girls."

"Yes, my sister would like me to live here, in a foreign country, in
cowlike tranquillity, looking at pictures and statues, and travelling
pointlessly. That wouldn't be living for me; I am not a society man. I
require excitement, danger.... Though I warn you that I am not in the
least courageous."

"You're not?"

"Not at all. Not now. At moments I believe I could control myself and
take a trench without wavering."

"But you have some fixed plan, haven't you?"

"Yes, I expect to go back to Spain, and work there."

"At what?"

"In politics."

"Are you patriotic?"

"Yes, up to a certain point. I have no transcendental idea of patriotism
at all. Patriotism, as I interpret it, is a matter of curiosity. I
believe that there is strength in Spain. If this strength could be
led in a given direction, where would it get to? That is my form of
patriotism; as I say, it is an experimental form."

Kennedy looked at Caesar with curiosity.

"And how can it help you with your plans to stay here in Rome?" he
asked.

"It can help me. In Spain nobody knows me. This is the only place where
I have a certain position, through being the nephew of a Cardinal. I am
trying to build on that. How am I going to arrange it? I don't know. I
am feeling out my future course, taking soundings."

"But the support you could find here would be all of a clerical nature,"
said Kennedy.

"Of course."

"But you are not Clerical!"

"No; but it is necessary for me to climb. Afterwards there will be time
to change."

"You are not taking it into account, my dear Caesar, that the Church is
still powerful and that it doesn't pardon people who impose upon it."

"Bah! I am not afraid of it."

"And you were just saying you are not courageous! You are courageous, my
dear man.... After this, I don't doubt of your success."

"I need data."

"If I can furnish you with any...."

"Wouldn't it be disagreeable for you to help a man who is your enemy, so
far as ideas go?"

"No; because I am beginning to have some curiosity too, as to whether
you will succeed in doing something. If I can be of any use, let me
know."

"I will let you know."

Caesar and Kennedy took a walk about the streets, and at twilight they
took leave of each other affectionately.

XIV

NEW ATTEMPTS, NEW RAMBLES

_CARDINAL SPADA_

"I have arranged two interesting conferences for you," said Kennedy, a
few days later.

"My dear man!"

"Yes; one with Cardinal Spada, the other with the Abbe Tardieu. I have
spoken to them both about you."

"Splendid! What kind of people are they?"

"Cardinal Spada is a very intelligent man and a very amiable one. At
heart he is a Liberal and fond of the French. As to the Abbe Tardieu, he
is a very influential priest at the church of San Luigi."

After lunch they went direct to a solitary street in the old part of
Rome. At the door of the big, sad palace where Cardinal Spada lived, a
porter with a cocked hat, a grey greatcoat, and a staff with a silver
knob, was watching the few passers-by.

They went in by the broad entry-way, as far as a dark colonnaded court,
paved with big flags which had grass between them.

In the middle of the court a fountain shot up a little way and fell into
a stone basin covered with moss.

Kennedy and Caesar mounted the wide monumental stairway; on the first
floor a handsome glassed-in gallery ran around the court. The whole
house had an air of solemnity and sadness. They entered the Cardinal's
office, which was a large, sad, severe room.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22