Caesar or Nothing Part 13

"Of course; and you haven't discovered that his family is a family of a.s.sa.s.sins? How Spanish! What a savage Spaniard I have for a brother!"

Caesar burst into laughter, and taking advantage of the moment when everybody was going to the buffet, left the room. In the corridor, one of the San Martino girls, the more sweet and angelic of the two, was in a corner with one of the dancers, and there was a sound like a kiss.

The little blonde made an exclamation of fright; Caesar behaved as if he had noticed nothing and kept on his way.

"The devil!" exclaimed Caesar, "that angelic little princess hides in corners with one of these _briganti_. And their mother has the face to say that they don't know how to bait a hook! I don't know what more she could wish. Although it is possible that this is the educational scheme of the future for marriageable girls."

In the entrance-hall of the hotel were the Marchesa Sciacca's two children, attended by a sleeping maid; the little girl, seated on a sofa, was watching her brother, who walked from one side to the other with a roll of paper in his hand. In the entrance hall, opposite the hotel door, there was a bulletin, which was changed every day, to announce the different performances that were to be given that night at the theatres of Rome.

The small boy walked back and forth in front of the poster, and addressing himself to a public consisting of the sleeping maid and the little girl, cried:

"Step up, gentlemen! Step up! Now is the time. We are about to perform _La Geisha_, the magnificent English operetta. Walk right in! Walk right in!"

While the mother was dancing with the Neapolitan in the ball-room, the children were amusing themselves thus alone.

"The truth is that our civilization is an absurdity. Even the children go mad," thought Caesar, and took refuge in his room.

During the whole night he heard from his bed the notes of the waltzes and two-steps, and dancers' laughter and shouts and shuffling feet.

_THEY ARE JUST CHILDREN_

The next day, Laura, before going out to make a call, appeared at lunch-time most elegantly dressed, with a gown and a hat from Paris, in which she was truly most charming.

She had a great success: the San Martinos, the Countess Brenda, the other ladies congratulated her. The hat, above all, seemed ideal to them.

Carminatti was in raptures.

"_E bello, bellissimo_," he said, with great enthusiasm, and all the ladies agreed that it was _bellissimo_, lengthening the "s" and nodding their heads with a gesture of admiration.

"And you don't say anything to me, _bambino_?" Laura inquired of Caesar.

"I say you are all right."

"And nothing more?"

"If you want me to pay you a compliment, I will tell you that you are pretty enough to make incest legitimate." "What a barbarian!" murmured Laura, half laughing, half blushing.

"What has he been saying to you?" two or three people inquired.

Laura translated his words into Italian, and Carminatti found them admirable.

"Very appropriate! Very witty!" he exclaimed, laughing, and gave Caesar a friendly slap on the shoulder.

The Marchesa Sciacca looked at Laura several times with reflective glances and a rancorous smile.

"The truth is that these Southern people are just children," thought Caesar, mockingly. "What an inveterate preoccupation they have in the beautiful."

The Neapolitan was one of those most preoccupied with esthetics.

Caesar had a room opposite Signor Carminatti's, and the first few days he had thought it was a woman's room. Toilet flasks, sprays, boxes of powder; the room looked like a perfumery shop.

"It is curious," Caesar used to think, "how these people from famous historic towns can combine powder and the _maffia_, opoponax and daggers."

Almost every night after dinner there was an improvised dance in the salon. Somebody played the languorous waltzes of the Tzigane orchestras on the piano. The Maltese and Carminatti used to sing romantic songs, of the kind whose words and music seem to be always the same, and in which there invariably is question of panting, refulgent, love, and other suggestive words.

One Sunday evening, when it was raining, Caesar stayed in the hotel.

In the salon Carminatti was doing sleight-of-hand to entertain the ladies. Afterwards the Neapolitan was seen pursuing the Marchesa Sciacca and the two San Martino girls in the corridors. They shrieked shrilly when he grabbed them around the waist. The devil of a Neapolitan was an expert at sleight-of-hand.

VII. THE CONFIDENCES OF THE ABBE PRECIOZI

_NATURAL VARIETIES OF NOSES AND EXPRESSIONS_

Caesar admitted before his conscience that he had no plans, or the slightest idea what direction to take. The Cardinal, no doubt, did not feel any desire to know him.

Caesar often proceeded by more or less absurd hypotheses. "Suppose," he would think, "that I had an idea, a concrete ambition. In that case it would behoove me to be reserved on such and such topics and to hint these and those ideas to people; let's do it that way, even though it be only for sport."

Preciozi was the only person who was able to give him any light in his investigations, because the guests at the hotel, most of them, on account of their position, thought of nothing but amusing themselves and of giving themselves airs.

Caesar discovered that Preciozi was ambitious; but besides lacking an opening, he had not the necessary vigour and imagination to do anything.

The abbe spoke a macaronic Spanish, which he had learned in South America, and which provoked Caesar's laughter. He was constantly saying: "My friend," and he mingled Gallicisms with a lot of coa.r.s.e expressions of Indian or mulatto origin, and with Italian words. Preciozi's dialect was a gibberish worthy of Babel.

The first day they went out together, the abbe wanted to show him divers of Rome's picturesque spots. He led him behind the Quirinal, through the Via della Panetteria and the Via del Lavatore, where there is a fruit-market, to the Trevi fountain. "It is beautiful, eh?" said the abbe.

"Yes; what I don't understand," replied Caesar, "is why, in a town where there is so much water, the hotel wash-basins are so small."

Preciozi shrugged his shoulders.

"What types you have in Rome!" Caesar went on. "What a variety of noses and expressions! Jesuits with the aspect of savants and plotters; Carmelites with the appearance of highway men; Dominicans, some with a sensual air, others with a professorial air. Astuteness, intrigue, brutality, intelligence, mystic stupor.... And as for priests, what a museum! Decorative priests, tall, with white shocks of hair and big ca.s.socks; short priests, swarthy and greasy; noses thin as a knife; warty, fiery noses. Gross types; distinguished types; pale bloodless faces; red faces.... What a marvellous collection!"

Preciozi listened to Caesar's observations and wondered if the Cardinal's nephew might be a trifle off his head.

"Point out what is noteworthy, so that I may admire it enough," Caesar told him. "I don't care to burst out in an enthusiastic phrase for something of no value."

Preciozi laughed at these jokes, as if they were a child's bright sayings; but at times Caesar appeared to him to be an innocent soul, and at other times a Machiavellian who dissembled his insidious purposes under an extravagant demeanour.

When Preciozi was involved in some historic dissertation, Caesar used to ask him ingenuously:

"But listen, abbe; does this really interest you?"

Preciozi would admit that the past didn't matter much to him, and then with one accord, they would burst out laughing.