I Resolved To Take The Second
Excursion, Not The Next Day Perhaps, But Certainly The Day After The
Next, And Complete The Most Compendious Impression Of Ancient,
Mediaeval, And Modern Rome That One Can Have; But The Firmest Resolution
Sometimes Has Not Force To Hold One To It.
The second excursion remains
for a second sojourn, when perhaps I may be able to solve the question
whether I was moved by a fine instinct of proportion or by mere innate
meanness in giving our orator at parting just two francs in recognition
of his eloquence.
No one else, indeed, gave him anything, and he seemed
rather surprised by my tempered munificence. It might have been
mystically adjusted to the number of languages he used in addressing us;
if he had held to three languages I might have made it three francs; but
now I shall never be certain till I take the second excursion with a
company which imperatively requires English as well as French and
German, and with no solitary in yellow gloves to whom all languages are
alike.
To this end I ought to have thrown a copper coin into the Fountain of
Trevi as we passed it. You may return to Rome without doing this, but it
is well known that if you do it you are sure to come back. The Fountain
of Trevi is alone worth coming back for, and I could not see that it
poured scanter streams than it formerly poured over brimming brinks or
from the clefts of the artificial rocks that spread in fine disorder
about the feet of its sea-gods and sea-horses; but they who mourn the
old papal rule accuse the present Italian government of stinting the
supply of water. To me there seemed no stint of water in any of the
fountains of Rome. In some a mere wasteful spilth seems the sole design
of the artist, as in the Fontana Paolina on the Janiculum, where the
cold wash of its deluge seemed to add a piercing chill to our windy
afternoon. The other fountains have each a quaint grace or absolute
charm or pleasing absurdity, whether the waters shower over groups of
more or less irrelevant statuary in their basins or spout into the air
in columns unfurling flags of spray and keeping the pavement about them
green with tender mould. The most sympathetic is the Fountain of the
Triton, who blows the water through his wreathed horn and on the coldest
day seems not to mind its refluent splash on his mossy back; in fact, he
seems rather to like it.
He is one of many tritons, rivers, sea-gods, and aqueous allegories
similarly employed in Rome and similarly indifferent to what flesh and
blood might find the hardship of their calling. I had rashly said to
myself that their respective fountains needed the sun on them to be just
what one could wish, but the first gray days taught me better. Then the
thinly clouded sky dropped a softened light over their glitter and
sparkle and gave them a spirituality as much removed from the suggestion
of physical cold as any diaphanous apparition would suggest.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 106 of 186
Words from 55168 to 55699
of 97259
