Caesar or Nothing Part 18

"Pardon me, my daughter, but I must go on with my work"; and immediately, without a look at his nephew or his niece, he called the secretary, who brought him a portfolio of papers.

Caesar opened the gla.s.s door for Laura to pa.s.s.

"Would you like to see the palace?" Preciozi asked them. "There are some antique statues, magnificent marbles, and a chapel where Saint Aniceto's body is preserved."

"Let's leave Saint Aniceto's body for another day," Caesar replied sardonically.

Laura and Caesar went down the stairway.

"There was no need to come, to behave like that," she said, upset.

"How so?"

"How so! You behaved like a savage, no more nor less." "No, he was the one that behaved like a savage. I bowed to him, and he wasn't willing even to look at me."

"You made up for it by staring at him as if he had been some curious insect in a cage."

"It was his fault for not being even barely polite to me."

"Do you think that a Cardinal is an ordinary person to whom you say: 'h.e.l.lo! How are you? How's business?'"

"I met an English Cabinet Minister in a club once and he was like anybody else."

"It's not the same thing."

"Do you believe that perhaps our uncle considers that he fulfils a providential mission, a divine mission?"

"What a question! Of course he does."

"Then he is a poor idiot. However, it's nothing to me. Our uncle is a stupid fool."

"You discovered that in such a little while?"

"Yes. Fanatical, vain, fatuous, pleased with himself.... He is of no use to me."

"Ah, so you thought he would be of some use to you?"

"Why not?"

Her brother's arbitrary manner of taking things irritated and at the same time amused Laura.

She believed that he made it a rule to persist in always doing the contrary to other people.

Laura and her friends of both s.e.xes used to run across one another in museums, out walking in the popular promenades, and at the races. Caesar didn't go to museums, because he said he had no artistic feeling; races didn't interest him either; and when it came to walking, he preferred to wander at random in the streets.

As his memory was not full of historical facts, he experienced no great esthetic or archeological thrills, and no sympathy whatsoever with the various herds of tourists that went about examining old stones.

At night, in the salon, he used to give burlesque descriptions, in his laconic French, of street scenes: the Italian soldiers with c.o.c.k-feathers drooping from a sort of bowler hat, the porters of the Emba.s.sies and great houses, with their c.o.c.ked hats, their blue great-coats, and the staff with a silver k.n.o.b in their hands.

The precise, jocose, biting report of his observations offended Laura and her lady friends.

"Why do you hate Italians so much?" the Countess Brenda asked him one day.

"But I don't hate them."

"He speaks equally badly of everybody," explained Laura. "He has a bad character."

"Is it because you have had an unhappy life?" the Countess asked, interested.

"No, I don't think so," said Caesar, feeling like smiling; instead of which, and without knowing why and without any reason, he put on a sad look.

_EXERCISES IN HYPOCRISY_

Laura, with her feminine perspicacity, noted that from that day on the Countess looked at Caesar a great deal and with melancholy smiles; and not only the mother appeared interested, but the daughter too.

"I don't know what it is in my brother," thought Laura; "women are attracted to him just because he pays no attention to them. And he knows it; yes, indeed he does, even thought he acts as if he were unconscious of it. Both mother and daughter taken with him! Carminatti has been routed."

The Countess quickly discovered a great liking for Laura, and as they both had friends in good Roman society, they made calls together. Laura was astonished enough to hear Caesar say that if there was no objection, he would go with them.

"But the majority of our friends are old ladies, devout old ladies."

"All the better."

"All right. But if you come, it is on condition that you say nothing that would shock them." "Surely."

Caesar accompanied the Countess Brenda and his sister to various aristocratic houses, and at every one he heard the same conversation, about the King, the Pope, the Cardinals, and how few or how many people there were in the hotels. These topics, together with slanders, const.i.tuted the favourite motive for conversation in the great world.

Caesar conversed with the somewhat flaccid old ladies ("castanae molles," as Preciozi called them) with perfect hypocrisy; he regarded the cla.s.sic decorations of the salons, and while he listened to rather strange French and to most elegant and pure Italian, he wondered if there might be somebody among all this Papal society whom he could use to forward his ambitions.

Sometimes among the guests he would meet a young "monsignor," discreetly smiling, whose emerald ring it was necessary to kiss. Caesar would kiss it and say to himself: "Let us practise tolerance with our lips."

In many of these salons the mania for the English game called "bridge"

had caught with great violence.

Caesar hated card-games. For a man who made a study of the stock-exchange, the mechanism of a card-game was too stupid to arouse any interest. But he had no objection to playing and losing.

The Countesses Brenda and San Martino had "bridge-mania" very hard, and they used to go to Brenda's room in the evening to play.

After playing bridge a week, Caesar found that his money was insensibly melting away.

"Look here," he said to Laura.

"What is it?"

"You have got to teach me bridge."

"I don't know how to play, because I have no head for such things and I forget what cards have been played; but they gave me a little book on the game. I will lend it to you, if you like."