Caesar or Nothing Part 9

Arrived at Rome, Laura and Caesar went up to the hotel, and were received by a bald gentleman with a pointed moustache, who showed them into a large round salon with a very high ceiling.

It was a theatrical salon, with antique furniture and large red-velvet arm-chairs with gilded legs. The enormous mirrors, somewhat tarnished by age, made the salon appear even larger. On the consoles and cabinets gleamed objects of majolica and porcelain.

The big window of this salon opened on the Piazza Esedra di Termini.

Caesar and Laura looked out through the gla.s.s. It was beginning to rain again; the great semi-circular extent of the square was s.h.i.+ning with rain.

The pa.s.sing trams slipped around the curve in the track; a caravan of tourists in ten or twelve carriages in file, all with their umbrellas open, were preparing to visit the monuments of Rome; strolling pedlars were showing them knick-knacks and religious gewgaws.

Caesar's and Laura's rooms were got ready and the manager of the hotel asked them again if they had need of nothing else.

"What are you going to do?" said Laura to her brother.

"I am going to stretch myself out in bed for a while."

"Lunch at half-past twelve."

"Good, I will get up at that time."

"Good-bye, _bambino_. Have a good rest. Put on your black suit to come to the table."

"Very well." Caesar stretched himself on the bed, slept off and on, somewhat feverish from fatigue, and at about twelve he woke at the noise they made in bringing his luggage into the room. He got up to open the trunks, washed and dressed, and when the customary gong resounded, he presented himself in the salon.

Laura was chatting with two young ladies and an older lady, the Countess of San Martino and her daughters. They were in Rome for the season and lived regularly in Venice.

Laura introduced her brother to these ladies, and the Countess pressed Caesar's hand between both of hers, very affectionately.

The Countess was tiny and dried-up: a mummy with the face of a grey-hound, her skin close to her bones, her lips painted, little penetrating blue eyes, and great vivacity in her movements. She dressed in a showy manner; wore jewels on her bosom, on her head, on her fingers.

The daughters looked like two little blond princesses: with rosy cheeks, eyebrows like two golden brush-strokes, almost colourless, clear blue eyes of a heavenly blue, and such small red lips, that on seeing them, the cla.s.sical simile of cherries came at once to one's mind.

The Countess of San Martino asked Caesar like a shot if he was married and if he hadn't a sweetheart. Caesar replied that he was a bachelor and that he had no sweetheart, and then the Countess came back by asking if he felt no vocation for matrimony.

"No, I believe I don't," responded Caesar.

The two young women smiled, and their mother said, with truly diverting familiarity, that men were becoming impossible. Afterwards she added that she was anxious for her daughters to marry.

"When one of these children is married and has a _bambino_, I shall be more contented! If G.o.d sent me a _cheru-bino del cielo_, I shouldn't be more so."

Laura laughed, and one of the little blondes remarked with aristocratic indifference: "Getting married comes first, mamma."

To this the Countess of San Martino observed that she didn't understand the behaviour of girls nowadays.

"When I was a young thing, I always had five or six beaux at once; but my daughters haven't the same idea. They are so indifferent, so superior!"

"It seems that you two don't take all the notice you should," said Caesar to the girls in French.

"You see what a mistake it is," answered one of them, smiling.

The last round of the gong sounded and various persons entered the salon. Laura knew the majority of them and introduced them, as they came, to her brother.

_OBSERVATIONS BY CaeSAR_

The waiter appeared at the door, announced that lunch was ready, and they all pa.s.sed into the dining-room.

Laura and her brother were installed at a small table beside the window.

The dining-room, very large and very high, flaunted decorations copied from some palace. They consisted of a tapestry with garlands of flowers, and medallions. In each medallion were the letters S.P.Q.R. and various epicurean phrases of the Romans: "_Carpe diem. Post mortem nulla voluptas_," et cetera.

"Beautiful decoration, but very cold," said Caesar. "I should prefer rather fewer mottoes and a little more warmth."

"You are very hard to please," retorted Laura.

Shortly after getting seated, everybody began to talk from table to table and even from one end of the room to the other. There was none of that cla.s.sic coolness among the people in the hotel which the English have spread everywhere, along with underdone meat and bottled sauces.

Caesar devoted himself for the first few moments to ethnology.

"Even from the people you find here, you can see that there is a great diversity of ethnic type in Italy," he said to Laura. "That blond boy and the Misses San Martino are surely of Saxon origin; the waiter, on the other hand, swarthy like that, is a Berber."

"Because the blond boy and the San Martines are from the North, and the waiter must be Neapolitan or Sicilian.

"Besides, there is still another type: shown by that dark young woman over there, with the melancholy air. She must be a Celtic type. What is obvious is that there is great liveliness in these people, great elegance in their movements. They are like actors giving a good performance."

Caesar's observations were interrupted by the arrival of a dark, plump woman, who came in from the street, accompanied by her daughter, a blond girl, fat, smiling, and a bit timid.

This lady and Laura bowed with much ceremony.

"Who is she?" asked Caesar in a low tone.

"It is the Countess Brenda," said Laura.

"Another countess! But are all the women here countesses?"

"Don't talk nonsense."

At the other end of the dining-room a young Neapolitan with the expression of a Pulcinella and violent gestures, raised his sing-song voice, talking very loud and making everybody laugh.

After lunching, Caesar went out to post some cards, and as it was raining buckets, he took refuge in the arcades of the Piazza Esedra.

When he was tired of walking he returned to the hotel, went to his room, turned on the light, and started to continue his unfinished perusal of Proudhon's book on the speculator.

And while he read, there came from the salon the notes of a Tzigane waltz played on the piano.

_ART, FOR DECEIVED HUSBANDS_

Caesar was writing something on the margin of a page when there came a knock at his door. "Come in," said Caesar.