Now, On My Later Visit, It Was A Cold, Rainy Day, And It Was Chill
Within The House And Without,
And I imputed my weather to the time of
Keats's sojourn, and thought of him sitting by his table there
In that
bare, narrow, stony room and coughing at the dismal outlook. Afterward I
saw the whole place put in order and warmed by a generous stove, for
people who came to see the Keats and Shelley collections of books and
pictures; but still the sense of that day remains. The young girl
sympathized with my sympathy, and wished to find a rose for me in the
trellis through which the rain dripped. She could not, and I suggested
that there would be roses in the spring. "No," she persisted, "sometimes
it makes them in the winter," but I had to come away through the reeking
streets without one.
When it rains, it rains easily in Rome. But the weather was divine the
evening I looked one of my latest looks down on the Spanish Steps. The
sun had sunk rather wanly beyond the city, but a cheerful light of
electrics shone up at me from the Via dei Condotti. I stood and thought
of as much as I could summon from the past, and I was strongest, I do
not know why, with the persecutions of the early Christians. Presently a
smell of dinner came from the hotels around and the houses below, and I
was reminded to go home to my own _table d'hote._ My one-legged beggar
seemed to have gone to his, and I escaped him; but I was intercepted by
the sight of an old woman asleep over her store of matches. She was not
wakened by the fall of my ten-centime piece in her tray, but the boy
drowsing beside her roused himself, and roused her to the dreamy
expression of a gratitude quite out of scale with my alms.
V
AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY
My visit to the Roman Forum when the Genius Loci verified to my
ignorance and the intelligence of my companions the well-conjectured
site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was not the first nor yet the
second visit I had paid the place. There had been intermediate mornings
when I met two friends there, indefinitely more instructed, with whom I
sauntered from point to point, preying upon their knowledge for my
emotion concerning each. Information is an excellent thing - in others;
and but for these friends I should not now be able to say that this
mouldering heap of brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar's
house; or just where it was that Antony made his oration over the waxen
effigy which served him for Caesar's body. They helped me realize how
the business life and largely the social life of Rome centred in the
Forum, but spared me so much detail that my fancy could play about among
its vanished edifices without inconvenience from the clutter of shops
and courts and monuments which were ultimately to hem it in and finally
to stifle it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 67 of 186
Words from 34523 to 35043
of 97259
