I Am Afraid I
Am No Authority On Butter And Milk, And Groceries I Do Not Know The
Prices Of; But Coffee Ought To Be Cheap, For Nobody Drinks Anything But
Substitutes More Or Less Unabashed.
For the passing stranger, or even the protracted so-journer, whose time
and money are not too much at odds, a hotel is best, and a hotel in the
new quarter is pleasanter than one in the old quarters.
Ours, at any
rate, was in a wide, sunny, and (if I must own it) dusty street, laid
out in a line of beauty on the borders of the former Villa Ludovisi,
where the aging or middle-aging reader used to come to see Guercino's
"Aurora" in the roof of the casino. Now all trace of the garden is
hidden under vast and vaster hotels and great blond apartment-houses,
and ironed down with trolley-rails; but the Guercino has been spared,
though it is no longer so accessible to the public. Still, there is a
garden left, and our hotel, with others, looks across the sun and dust
of its street into the useful vegetation of the famous old Capuchin
convent, with the church, to which I came so eagerly so long ago to
revere Guido's "St. Michael and the Dragon" and the decorative bones of
the good brothers braided on the walls and roofs of the crypt in the
indissoluble community of floral and geometric designs.
All through the months of February and March I woke to the bell that
woke the brothers to their prayers before daybreak and burst the
beauty-sleep of the hotel-dwellers, who have so far outnumbered the
monks since the obliteration of the once neighboring villa.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 86 of 353
Words from 23581 to 23869
of 97259
