Here I understood two widely different poems: Hauch's Swiss Peasant, and Bjoernson's Over the Hills and Far Away. Hauch had felt this scenery and the nature of these people, by virtue of his Norwegian birth and his gift of entering into other people's thought; Bjoernson had given unforgettable expression to the feeling of imprisoned longing. But for the man who had been breathing street dust and street sweepings for four months, it was good to breathe the strong, pure air, and at last see once more the clouds floating about and beating against the mountain sides, leaning, exhausted, against a declivity and resting on their journey. Little children of eight or ten were guarding cattle, children such as we know so well in the North, when they come with their marmots; they looked, without exception, like tiny rascals, charming though they were.

I rode on a mule to Montanvert, and thence on foot over the Mer de Glace, clambered up the steep mountain side to Chapeau, went down to the crystal Grotto and rode from there back to Chamounix. The ride up in the early hours of the morning was perfect, the mountain air so light; the mists parted; the pine-trees round the fresh mountain path exhaled a penetrating fragrance. An American family with whom I had become acquainted took three guides with them for four persons. One worthy old gentleman who was travelling with his young daughter, would not venture upon this feat of daring, but his daughter was so anxious to accompany us that when I offered to look after her she was entrusted to my care. I took two mules and a guide, thinking that sufficient. From Montanvert and down to the glacier, the road was bad, a steep, rocky path, with loose, rolling stones. When we came to the Ice Sea, the young lady, as was natural, took the guide's hand, and I, the last of the caravan, strode cautiously along, my alpenstock in my hand, over the slippery, billow-like ice. But soon it began to split up into deep crevasses, and farther on we came to places where the path you had to follow was no wider than a few hands' breadth, with yawning precipices in the ice on both sides. I grew hot to the roots of my hair, and occasionally my heart stood still. It was not that I was actually afraid. The guide shouted to me: "Look neither to right nor left; look at your feet, and turn out your toes!" I had only one thought—not to slip!—and out on the ice I grew burningly hot. When at last I was across, I noticed that I was shaking. Strangely enough, I was trembling at the thought of the blue, gaping crevasses on both sides of me, down which I had barely glanced, and yet I had passed them without a shudder. The beginning of the crossing had been comparatively easy; it was only that at times it was very slippery. But in the middle of the glacier, progress was very uncomfortable; moraines, and heaps of gigantic blocks lay in your path, and all sorts of stone and gravel, which melted glaciers had brought down with them, and these were nasty to negotiate. When at last you had them behind you, came le Mauvais Pas, which corresponded to its name. You climbed up the precipitous side of the rock with the help of an iron railing drilled into it. But foothold was narrow and the stone damp, from the number of rivulets that rippled and trickled down. Finally it was necessary at every step to let go the railing for a few seconds. The ascent then, and now, was supposed to be quite free from danger, and the view over the glaciers which one gained by it, was a fitting reward for the inconvenience. Even more beautiful than the summit of Mont Blanc itself, with its rounded contours, were the steep, gray, rocky peaks, with ice in every furrow, that are called l'Aiguille du Dru. These mountains, which as far as the eye could range seemed to be all the same height, although they varied from 7,000 to 14,800 feet, stretched for miles around the horizon.

The ice grotto here was very different from the sky-blue glacier grotto into which I had wandered two years earlier at Grindelwald. Here the ice mass was so immensely high that not the slightest peep of daylight penetrated through it into the excavated archway that led into the ice. It was half-dark inside, and the only light proceeded from a row of little candles stuck into the crevices of the rock. The ice was jet black in colour, the light gleaming with a golden sheen from all the rounded projections and jagged points. It was like the gilt ornamentation on a velvet pall.

When I returned from Chamounix to Geneva, the proprietor of the hotel was standing in the doorway and shouted to me: "The whole of the French army, with the Emperor, has been taken prisoner at Sedan!"— "Impossible!" I exclaimed. "It is quite certain," he replied; "it was in the German telegrams, and so far there has not come a single unveracious telegram from the Germans."

The next day a Genevese paper published the news of the proclamation of the Republic in France.

Simultaneously arrived a letter from Julius Lange, attacking me for my "miserly city politics," seriously complaining that "our declaration of war against Prussia had come to nothing," and hoping that my stay in France had by now made me alter my views.

In his opinion, we had neglected "an opportunity of rebellion, that would never recur."

XXXIII.

Lake Leman fascinated me. All the scenery round looked fairy-like to me, a dream land, in which mighty mountains cast their blue-black shadows down on the turquoise water, beneath a brilliant, sparkling sunshine that saturated the air with its colouring. My impressions of Lausanne, Chillon, Vevey, Montreux, were recorded in the first of my lectures at the University the following year. The instruments of torture at Chillon, barbaric and fearsome as they were, made me think of the still worse murderous instruments being used in the war between France and Germany. It seemed to me that if one could see war at close quarters, one would come to regard the earth as peopled by dangerous lunatics. Political indifference to human life and human suffering had taken the place of the premeditated cruelty of the Middle Ages. Still, if no previous war had ever been so frightful, neither had there ever been so much done to mitigate suffering. While fanatic Frenchwomen on the battlefields cut the noses off wounded Germans, and mutilated them when they could, and while the Germans were burning villages and killing their peaceful inhabitants, if one of them had so much as fired a shot, in all quietness the great societies for the care of the wounded were doing their work. And in this Switzerland especially bore the palm. There were two currents then, one inhuman and one humane, and of the two, the latter will one day prove itself the stronger. Under Louis XIV. war was still synonymous with unlimited plundering, murder, rape, thievery and robbery. Under Napoleon I. there were still no such things as ambulances. The wounded were carted away now and again in waggons, piled one on the top of each other, if any waggons were to be had; if not, they were left as they lay, or were flung into a ditch, there to die in peace. Things were certainly a little better.

XXXIV.

In Geneva, the news reached me that—in spite of a promise Hall, as Minister, had given to Hauch, when the latter asked for it for me—I was to receive no allowance from the Educational Department. To a repetition of the request, Hall had replied: "I have made so many promises and half-promises, that it has been impossible to remember or to keep them." This disappointment hit me rather hard; I had in all only about L50 left, and could not remain away more than nine weeks longer without getting into debt, I, who had calculated upon staying a whole year abroad. Circumstances over which I had no control later obliged me, however, to remain away almost another year. But that I could not foresee, and I had no means whatever to enable me to do so. Several of my acquaintances had had liberal allowances from the Ministry; Krieger and Martensen had procured Heegaard L225 at once, when he had been anxious to get away from Rasmus Nielsen's influence. It seemed to me that this refusal to give me anything augured badly for the appointment I was hoping for in Denmark. I could only earn a very little with my pen: about 11s. 3d. for ten folio pages, and as I did not feel able, while travelling, to write anything of any value, I did not attempt it. It was with a sort of horror that, after preparing for long travels that were to get me out of the old folds, I thought of the earlier, narrow life I had led in Copenhagen. All the old folds seemed, at this distance, to have been the folds of a strait-waistcoat.

XXXV.

With abominable slowness, and very late, "on account of the war," the train crawled from Geneva, southwards. Among the travellers was a rhetorical Italian master-mason, from Lyons, an old Garibaldist, the great event of whose life was that Garibaldi had once taken lunch alone with him at Varese. He preserved in his home as a relic the glass from which the general had drunk. He was talkative, and ready to help everyone; he gave us all food and drink from his provisions. Other travellers told that they had had to stand in queue for fully twelve hours in front of the ticket office in Paris, to get away from the town.

The train passed the place where Rousseau had lived, at Madame de Warens'. In an official work on Savoy, written by a priest, I had recently read a summary dismissal of Rousseau, as a calumniator of his benefactress. According to this author, it certainly looked as though, to say the least of it, Rousseau's memory had failed him amazingly sometimes. The book asserted, for instance, that the Claude of whom he speaks was no longer alive at the time when he was supposed to be enjoying Madame de Warens' favours.

We passed French volunteers in blouses bearing a red cross; they shouted and were in high good humour; passed ten districts, where numbers of cretins, with their hideous excrescences, sat by the wayside. At last we arrived,—several hours behind time,—at St. Michel, at the foot of Mont Cenis; it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and I was beginning to feel tired, for I had been up since four in the morning. At five o'clock we commenced the ascent, to the accompaniment of frightful groanings from the engine; all the travellers were crowded together in three wretched little carriages, the small engine not being able to pull more. Gay young French girls exulted at the idea of seeing "Italy's fair skies." They were not particularly fair here; the weather was rough and cloudy, in keeping with abysms and mountain precipices. But late at night the journey over Mont Cenis was wonderful. High up on the mountain the moonlight gleamed on the mountain lake. And the way was dominated, from one rocky summit, by the castle of Bramans with its seven imposing forts.

The locomotive stopped for an hour, for want of water. We were thus obliged to sleep at the little Italian town of Susa (in a glorious valley under Mont Cenis), the train to Turin having left three hours before. Susa was the first Italian town I saw. When the train came in next morning to the station at Turin, a crowd of Italian soldiers, who were standing there, shouted: "The Prussians for ever!" and winked at me. "What are they shouting for?" I asked a young Turin fellow with whom I had had some long conversations. "It is an ovation to you," he replied. "People are delighted at the victory of the Prussians, and they think you are a Prussian, because of your fair moustache and beard."

XXXVI.

An overwhelming impression was produced upon me by the monuments of Turin, the River Po, and the lovely glee-singing in the streets. For the first time, I saw colonnades, with heavy curtains to the street, serve as pavements, with balconies above them. Officers in uniforms gleaming with gold, ladies with handkerchiefs over their heads instead of hats, the mild warmth, the brown eyes, brought it home to me at every step that I was in a new country.

I hurried up to Costanza Blanchetti. Madame la comtesse est a la campagne. Monsieur le comte est sorti. Next morning, as I was sitting in my room in the Hotel Trombetta, Blanchetti rushed in, pressed me to his bosom, kissed me on both cheeks, would not let me go, but insisted on carrying me off with him to the country.

We drove round the town first, then went by rail to Alpignano, where Costanza was staying with a relative of the family, Count Buglioni di Monale. Here I was received like a son, and shown straight to my room, where there stood a little bed with silk hangings, and where, on the pillow, there lay a little, folded-up thing, likewise of white silk, which was an enigma to me till, on unfolding it, I found it was a night- cap, the classical night-cap, tapering to a point, which you see at the theatre in old comedies. The Buglionis were gentle, good-natured people, rugged and yet refined, an old, aristocratic country gentleman and his wife. Nowhere have I thought grapes so heavy and sweet and aromatic as there. The perfume from the garden was so strong and fragrant. Impossible to think of a book or a sheet of paper at Alpignano. We walked under the trees, lay among the flowers, enjoyed the sight and the flavour of the apricots and grapes, and chatted, expressing by smiles our mutual quiet, deep-reaching sympathy.

One evening I went into Turin with Blanchetti to see the play. The lover in La Dame aux Camelias was played by a young Italian named Lavaggi, as handsome as an Antinous, a type which I often encountered in Piedmont. With his innate charm, restful calm, animation of movement and the fire of his beauty, he surpassed the acting of all the young lovers I had seen on the boards of the French theatres. The very play of his fingers was all grace and expression.

XXXVII.

On my journey from Turin to Milan, I had the mighty Mont Rosa, with its powerful snow mass, and the St. Bernard, over which Buonaparte led his tattered troops, before my eyes. We went across maize fields, through thickets, over the battlefield of Magenta. From reading Beyle, I had pictured Milan as a beautiful town, full of free delight in life. Only to see it would be happiness. And it was,—the cupola gallery, the dome, from the roof of which, immediately after my arrival, I looked out over the town, shining under a pure, dark-blue sky. In the evening, in the public gardens, I revelled in the beauty of the Milanese women. Italian ladies at that time still wore black lace over their heads instead of hats. Their dresses were open in front, the neck being bare half-way down the chest. I was struck by the feminine type. Upright, slender- waisted women; delicate, generally bare hands; oval faces, the eyebrows of an absolutely perfect regularity; narrow noses, well formed, the nostrils curving slightly upwards and outwards—the models of Leonardo and Luini.

The Last Supper, in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, and the drawings in the Ambrose Library, brought me closer to Leonardo than I had ever been able to get before, through reproductions; I saw the true expression in the face of the Christ in the Last Supper, which copies cannot avoid distorting.

XXXVIII.

A violent affection for Correggio, and a longing to see his works where they are to be found in greatest number, sent me to Parma.

I reached the town at night; no gas, no omnibus from any hotel. An out- porter trotted with my portmanteau on his back through wide, pitch-dark, deserted, colonnaded streets, past huge palaces, until, after half an hour's rapid walk, we arrived at the hotel. The day before my arrival dall'Ongaro had unveiled the beautiful and beautifully situated statue of Correggio in the Market Square. I first investigated the two domes in the Cathedral and San Giovanni Evangelista, then the ingratiating pictorial decoration of the convent of San Paolo. In the Museum, where I was pretty well the only visitor, I was so eagerly absorbed in studying Correggio and jotting down my impressions, that, in order to waste no time, I got the attendant to buy my lunch, and devoured it,—bread, cheese, and grapes,—in the family's private apartments. They were pleasant, obliging people, and as I bought photographs for a considerable amount from them, they were very hospitable. They talked politics to me and made no secret of their burning hatred for France.

There were other things to see at Parma besides Correggio, although for me he dominated the town. There was a large exhibition of modern Italian paintings and statuary, and the life of the people in the town and round about. In the streets stood carts full of grapes. Four or five fellows with bare feet would stamp on the grapes in one of these carts; a trough led from the cart down to a vat, into which the juice ran, flinging off all dirt in fermentation.

It was pleasant to walk round the old ramparts of the town in the evening glow, and it was lively in the ducal park. One evening little knots of Italian soldiers were sitting there. One of them sang in a superb voice, another accompanied him very nicely on the lute; the others listened with profound and eager attention.

XXXIX.

After this came rich days in Florence. Everything was a delight to me there, from the granite paving of the streets, to palaces, churches, galleries, and parks. I stood in reverence before the Medici monuments in Michael Angelo's sanctuary. The people attracted me less; the women seemed to me to have no type at all, compared with the lovely faces and forms at Milan and Parma. The fleas attracted me least of all.

Dall 'Ongaro received every Sunday evening quite an international company, and conversation consequently dragged. With the charming Japanese wife of the English consul, who spoke only English and Japanese, neither of her hosts could exchange a word. There were Dutchmen and Swiss there with their ladies; sugar-sweet and utterly affected young Italian men; handsome young painters and a few prominent Italian scientists, one of whom, in the future, was to become my friend.

I had a double recommendation to the Danish Minister at Florence, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from an old and intimate friend of his in Copenhagen. When I presented my letters, he exclaimed, in annoyance: "These special recommendations again! How often must I explain that they are unnecessary, that all Danes, as such, are welcome to my house!"—This was the delicate manner in which he let me understand that he was not inclined to do anything whatever for me. Moreover, he began at once with regrets that his family were absent, so that he was not in housekeeping, and could not entertain anyone.

At a production of Emile Augier's Le Fils de Giboyer, at which all the foreign diplomatists were present, he, too, turned up. While the other diplomatists greeted each other silently with a nod, he made more of the meeting than any one else did, went from place to place in the stalls, shook hands, spoke French, German, English and Italian by turns, was all things to all men, then came and sat down by me, made himself comfortable, and in a moment was fast asleep. When he began to snore, one after another of his colleagues turned their heads, and smiled faintly. He slept through two acts and the intervals between them, in spite of the voices from the stage and the loud talking between the acts, and woke up in the middle of the third act, to mumble in my ear, "It is not much pleasure to see the piece played like this."

At my favourite restaurant, Trattoria dell'antiche carrozze, I was one day witness to a violent dispute between a Polish noble who, for political reasons, had fled from Russian Poland, and Hans Semper, a Prussian, author of a book on Donatello. The latter naturally worshipped Bismarck, the former warmly espoused the cause of Denmark. When I left, I said politely to him:

"I thank you for having so warmly defended my country; I am a Dane." The next day the Pole came to look for me at the restaurant, and a closer acquaintance resulted. We went for many walks together along the riverside; he talking like a typical Polish patriot, I listening to his dreams of the resuscitated Poland that the future was to see. I mention this only because it affords an example of the remarkable coincidences life brings about, which make one so easily exclaim: "How small the world is!" This Pole became engaged several years afterwards to a young Polish girl and left her, without any explanation, having got entangled with a Russian ballet dancer. I made her acquaintance at Warsaw fifteen years after I had met him at Florence. She was then twenty-six years of age, and is one of the women who have taught me most; she told me the story of her early youth and of the unengaging part my acquaintance of 1870 had played in it.

At Florence I saw Rossi as Hamlet. The performance was a disappointment to me, inasmuch as Rossi, with his purely Italian nature, had done away with the essentially English element in Hamlet. The keen English humour, in his hands, became absurd and ridiculous. Hamlet's hesitation to act, he overlooked altogether. Hamlet, to him, was a noble young man who was grieved at his mother's ill-behaviour. The details he acted like a virtuoso. For instance, it was very effective during the mimic play, when, lying at Ophelia's feet, he crushes her fan in his hands at the moment when the King turns pale. I derived my chief enjoyment, not from the acting, but from the play. It suddenly revealed itself to me from other aspects, and I fell prostrate in such an exceeding admiration for Shakespeare that I felt I should never rise again. It was touching to hear the Italians' remarks on Hamlet. The piece was new to them. You frequently heard the observation: "It is a very philosophical piece." As people changed from place to place, and sat wherever they liked, I overheard many different people's opinions of the drama. The suicide monologue affected these fresh and alert minds very powerfully.

That evening, moreover, I had occasion to observe human cowardice, which is never accounted so great as it really is. There was a noise behind the scene during the performance, and immediately afterwards a shout of Fuoco! The audience were overmastered by terror. More than half of them rushed to the doors, pulled each other down, and trampled on the fallen, in their endeavours to get out quickly enough; others rushed up on the stage itself. As there was not the least sign of fire visible, I of course remained in my seat. A few minutes later one of the actors came forward and explained that there had been no fire; a fight between two of the scene-shifters had been the cause of all the alarm. The good- humoured Italians did not even resent the fellows having thus disturbed and interrupted the performance.

John Stuart Mill had given me an introduction to Pasquale Villari, who, even at that time, was commendatore professore, and held a high position on the Board of Education, but was still far from having attained the zenith of his fame and influence. When the reserve of the first few days had worn off, he was simply splendid to me. When anything I said struck him as being to the point, he pressed my hands with all the ardour of youth, and he applauded every joke I attempted with uproarious laughter.

Some twenty years were to elapse before I saw him again. Then he called upon me in Copenhagen, wishing to make my acquaintance, without in the least suspecting that I was the young man who, so long before, had come to him from Mill. He looked with amazement at books in which he had written with his own hand, and at old letters from himself which I produced. I visited him again in 1898. His books on Machiavelli and Savonarola entitle him to rank among the foremost students and exponents of Italy.

I went one day to the great annual fair at Fiesole. Shouting and shrieking, the people drove down the unspeakably dusty road with such haste, carelessness and high spirits that conveyances struck against each other at every moment. It was the life represented in Marstrand's old-time pictures. In crowded Fiesole, I saw the regular Tuscan country type, brown eyes, yellow or clear, white skin, thin, longish face, brown or fair, but never black hair, strong, healthy bodies. The masculine type with which I was acquainted from the soldiers, was undeniably handsomer than our own, in particular, was more intelligent; the young women were modest, reserved in their manner, seldom entered into conversation with the men, and despite the fire in their eyes, manifested a certain peasant bashfulness, which seems to be the same everywhere.

XL.

Vines twine round the fruit-trees; black pigs and their families make their appearance in tribes; the lake of Thrasymene, near which Hannibal defeated the Romans, spreads itself out before us. The train is going from Florence to Rome. Towards mid-day a girl enters the carriage, apparently English or North American, with brown eyes and brown hair, that curls naturally about her head; she has her guitar-case in her hand, and flings it up into the net. Her parents follow her. As there is room in the compartment for forty-eight persons without crowding, she arranges places for her parents, and after much laughter and joking the latter settle off to sleep. The Italians stare at her; but not I. I sit with my back to her. She sits down, back to back with me, then turns her head and asks me, in Italian, some question about time, place, or the like. I reply as best I can. She (in English): "You are Italian?" On my reply, she tells me: "I hardly know twenty words in Italian; I only speak English, although I have been living in Rome for two years."

She then went on to relate that she was an American, born of poor parents out on the Indian frontier; she was twenty-six years old, a sculptor, and was on her way from Carrara, where she had been superintending the shipment of one of her works, a statue of Lincoln, which the Congress at Washington had done her the honour of ordering from her. It was only when she was almost grown up that her talent had been discovered by an old sculptor who happened to pay a visit and who, when he saw her drawing, had, half in jest, given her a lump of clay and said: "Do a portrait of me!" She had then never seen a statue or a painting, but she evinced such talent that before long several distinguished men asked her to do busts of them, amongst others, Lincoln. She was staying at his house that 14th April, 1865, when he was murdered, and was consequently selected to execute the monument after his death. She hesitated for a long time before giving up the modest, but certain, position she held at the time in a post-office; but, as others believed in her talent, she came to Europe, stayed first in Paris, where, to her delight, she made the acquaintance of Gustave Dore, and where she modelled a really excellent bust of Pere Hyacinthe, visited London, Berlin, Munich, Florence, and settled down in Rome. There she received plenty of orders, had, moreover, obtained permission to execute a bust of Cardinal Antonelli, was already much looked up to, and well-to-do. In a few weeks she was returning to America.

As she found pleasure in talking to me, she exclaimed without more ado: "I will stay with you," said a few polite things to me, and made me promise that I would travel with her to Rome from the place where we were obliged to leave the train, the railway having been broken up to prevent the Italian troops entering the Papal States. At Treni a Danish couple got into the train, a mediocre artist and his wife, and with national astonishment and curiosity watched the evident intimacy between the young foreigner and myself, concerning which every Scandinavian in Rome was informed a few days later.

From Monte Rotondo, where the bridge had been blown up, we had to walk a long distance, over bad roads, and were separated in the throng, but she kept a place for me by her side. Thus I drove for the first time over the Roman Campagna, by moonlight, with two brown eyes gazing into mine. I felt as though I had met one of Sir Walter Scott's heroines, and won her confidence at our first meeting.

XLI.

Vinnie Ream was by no means a Scott heroine, however, but a genuine American, and doubly remarkable to me as being the first specimen of a young woman from the United States with whom I became acquainted. Even after I had seen a good deal of her work, I could not feel wholly attracted by her talent, which sometimes expressed itself rather in a pictorial than a plastic form, and had a fondness for emotional effects. But she was a true artist, and a true woman, and I have never, in any woman, encountered a will like hers. She was uninterruptedly busy. Although, now that the time of her departure was so near, a few boxes were steadily being packed every day at her home, she received every day visits from between sixteen and twenty-five people, and she had so many letters by post that I often found three or four unopened ones amongst the visiting cards that had been left. Those were what she had forgotten, and if she had read them, she had no time to reply to them. Every day she sat for a few hours to the clever American painter Healy, who was an admirer of her talent, and called her abilities genius. Every day she worked at Antonelli's bust. To obtain permission to execute it, she had merely, dressed in her most beautiful white gown, asked for an audience of the dreaded cardinal, and had at once obtained permission. Her intrepid manner had impressed the hated statesman of the political and ecclesiastical reaction, and in her representation of him he appeared, too, in many respects nobler and more refined than he was. But besides modelling the cardinal's bust, she put the finishing touches to two others, saw to her parents' household affairs and expenses, and found time every day to spend a few hours with me, either in a walk or wandering about the different picture-galleries.

She maintained the family, for her parents had nothing at all. But when the statue of Lincoln had been ordered from her, Congress had immediately advanced ten thousand dollars. So she was able to live free from care, though for that matter she troubled not at all about money. She was very ignorant of things outside her own field, and the words my work were the only ones that she spoke with passion. What she knew, she had acquired practically, through travel and association with a multiplicity of people. She hardly knew a dozen words of any language besides English, and was only acquainted with English and American writers; of poets, she knew Shakespeare and Byron best; from life and books she had extracted but few general opinions, but on the other hand, very individual personal views. These were based upon the theory that the lesser mind must always subordinate itself to the higher, and that the higher has a right to utilise freely the time and strength of the lesser, without being called to account for doing so. She herself was abjectly modest towards the artists she looked up to. Other people might all wait, come again, go away without a reply.

Rather small of stature, strong and healthy,—she had never been ill, never taken medicine,—with white teeth and red cheeks, quick in everything, when several people were present she spoke only little and absently, was as cold, deliberate and composed as a man of strong character; but at the same time she was unsuspecting and generous, and in spite of her restlessness and her ambitious industry, ingratiatingly coquettish towards anyone whose affection she wished to win. It was amusing to watch the manner in which she despatched the dutifully sighing Italians who scarcely crossed the threshold of her studio before they declared themselves. She replied to them with a superabundance of sound sense and dismissed them with a jest.

One day that I went to fetch her to the Casino Borghese, I found her dissolved in tears. One of the two beautiful doves who flew about the house and perched on her shoulders, and which she had brought with her from Washington, had disappeared in the night. At first I thought that her distress was half jest, but nothing could have been more real; she was beside herself with grief. I realised that if philologians have disputed as to how far Catullus' poem of the girl's grief over the dead sparrow were jest or earnest, it was because they had never seen a girl weep over a bird. Catullus, perhaps, makes fun a little of the grief, but the grief itself, in his poem too, is serious enough.

In the lovely gardens of the Villa Borghese, Vinnie Ream's melancholy frame of mind was dispersed, and we sat for a long time by one of the handsome fountains and talked, among other things, of our pleasure in being together, which pleasure was not obscured by the prospect of approaching parting, because based only on good-fellowship, and with no erotic element about it. Later in the evening, she had forgotten her sorrow altogether in the feverish eagerness with which she worked, and she kept on, by candle-light, until three o'clock in the morning.

A poor man, an Italian, who kept a little hotel, came in that evening for a few minutes; he sometimes translated letters for Vinnie Ream. As he had no business with me, I did not address any of my remarks to him; she, on the contrary, treated him with extreme kindness and the greatest respect, and whispered to me: "Talk nicely to him, as you would to a gentleman, for that he is; he knows four languages splendidly; he is a talented man. Take no notice of his plain dress. We Americans do not regard the position, but the man, and he does honour to his position." I had not been actuated by the prejudices she attributed to me, nevertheless entered into conversation with the man, as she wished, and listened with pleasure to his sensible opinions. (He spoke, among other things, of Northern art, and warmly praised Carl Bloch's Prometheus.)

XLII.

Vinnie Ream's opinion of me was that I was the most impolitic man that she had ever known. She meant, by that, that I was always falling out with people (for instance, I had at once offended the Danes in Rome by some sharp words about the wretched Danish papers), and in general made fewer friends and more enemies all the time. She herself won the affection of everyone she wished, and made everyone ready to spring to do her bidding. She pointed out to me how politic she had had to be over her art. When she had wished to become a sculptor, everyone in her native place had been shocked at the un-femininity of it, and people fabled behind her back about her depraved instincts. She, for her part, exerted no more strength than just enough to carry her point, let people talk as much as they liked, took no revenge on those who spread calumnies about her, showed the greatest kindliness even towards the evil-disposed, and so, she said, had not an enemy. There was in her a marvellous commingling of determination to progress rapidly, of self- restraint and of real good-heartedness.

On October 20th there was a great festival in Rome to celebrate the first monthly anniversary of the entry of the Italians into the town. Young men went in the evening with flags and music through the streets. Everybody rushed to the windows, and the ladies held out lamps and candles. In the time of the popes this was only done when the Host was being carried in solemn procession to the dying; it was regarded therefore as the greatest honour that could be paid. Everyone clapped hands and uttered shouts of delight at the improvised illumination, while the many beautiful women looked lovely in the flickering lamplight. The 23d again was a gala day, being the anniversary of the death of Enrico Cairoli—one of the celebrated brothers; he fell at Mentana;—and I had promised Vinnie Ream to go to see the fete with her; but she as usual having twenty callers just when we ought to have started, we arrived too late. Vinnie begged of me to go with her instead to the American chapel; she must and would sing hymns, and really did sing them very well.

The chapel was bare. On the walls the ten commandments and a few other quotations from Holy Writ, and above a small altar, "Do this in remembrance of me," in Gothic lettering. I had to endure the hymns, the sermon (awful), and the reading aloud of the ten commandments, with muttered protestations and Amens after each one from the reverent Americans. When we went out I said nothing, as I did not know whether Vinnie might not be somewhat moved, for she sang at the end with great emotion. However, she merely took my arm and exclaimed: "That minister was the most stupid donkey I have ever heard in my life; but it is nice to sing." Then she began a refutation of the sermon, which had hinged chiefly on the words: "Thy sins are forgiven thee," and of the unspeakable delight it should be to hear this. Vinnie thought that no rational being would give a fig for forgiveness, unless there followed with it a complete reinstatement of previous condition. What am I benefitted if ever so many heavenly beings say to me: "I pretend you have not done it" if I know that I have!

The last week in October we saw marvellous Northern Lights in Rome. The northern half of the heavens, about nine o'clock in the evening, turned a flaming crimson, and white streaks traversed the red, against which the stars shone yellow, while every moment bluish flashes shot across the whole. When I discovered it I went up to the Reams' and fetched Vinnie down into the street to see it. It was an incredibly beautiful atmospheric phenomenon. Next evening it manifested itself again, on a background of black clouds, and that was the last beautiful sight upon which Vinnie and I looked together.

Next evening I wrote:

Vinnie Ream leaves to-morrow morning; I said good-bye to her this evening. Unfortunately a great many people were there. She took my hand and said: "I wish you everything good in the world, and I know that you wish me the same." And then: Good-bye. A door opens, and a door closes, and people never meet again on this earth, never again, never—and human language has never been able to discover any distinction between good-bye for an hour, and good-bye forever. People sit and chat, smile and jest. Then you get up, and the story is finished. Over! over! And that is the end of all stories, says Andersen.

All one's life one quarrels with people as dear to one as Ploug is to me. I have a well-founded hope that I may see Rudolph Schmidt's profile again soon, and a hundred times again after that; but Vinnie I shall never see again.

I did not understand her at first; I had a few unpleasant conjectures ready. I had to have many conversations with her before I understood her ingenuousness, her ignorance, her thorough goodness, in short, all her simple healthiness of soul. Over!

When I was teasing her the other day about all the time I had wasted in her company, she replied: "People do not waste time with their friends," and when I exclaimed: "What do I get from you?" she answered, laughing:

"Inspiration." And that was the truth. Those great brown eyes, the firm eyebrows, the ringleted mass of chestnut brown hair and the fresh mouth—all this that I still remember, but perhaps in three months shall no longer be able to recall, the quick little figure, now commanding, now deprecating, is to me a kind of inspiration. I have never been in love with Vinnie; but most people would think so, to hear the expressions I am now using. But I love her as a friend, as a mind akin to my own. There were thoughts of our brains and strings of our hearts, which always beat in unison. Peace be with her! May the cursed world neither rend her nor devour her; may she die at last with the clear forehead she has now! I am grateful to her. She has communicated to me a something good and simple that one cannot see too much of and that one scarcely ever sees at all. Finally, she has shown me again the spectacle of a human being entirely happy, and good because happy, a soul without a trace of bitterness, an intellect whose work is not a labour.

It is not that Vinnie is—or rather was, since she is dead for me—an educated girl in the Copenhagen sense of the word. The verdict of the Danish educational establishments upon her would be that she was a deplorably uneducated girl. She was incomprehensibly dull at languages. She would be childishly amused at a jest or joke or compliment as old as the hills (such as the Italians were fond of using), and think it new, for she knew nothing of the European storehouse of stereotyped remarks and salted drivel. Her own conversation was new; a breath of the independence of the great Republic swept through it. She was no fine lady, she was an American girl, who had not attained her rank by birth, or through inherited riches, but had fought for it herself with a talent that had made its way to the surface without early training, through days and nights of industry, and a mixture of enthusiasm and determination.

She was vain; she certainly was that. But again like a child, delighted at verses in her honour in the American papers, pleased at homage and marks of distinction, but far more ambitious than vain of personal advantages. She laughed when we read in the papers of Vinnie Ream, that, in spite of the ill-fame creative lady artists enjoy, far from being a monster with green eyes, she ventured to be beautiful.

She was a good girl. There was a certain deep note about all that her heart uttered. She had a mind of many colours. And there was the very devil of a rush and Forward! March! about her, always in a hurry.

And now—no Roman elegy—I will hide her away in my memory:

Here lies VINNIE REAM Sculptor of Washington, U.S.A. Six-and-twenty years of age This recollection of her is retained by One who knew her for seventeen days and will never forget her.

I have really never seen Vinnie Ream since. We exchanged a few letters after her departure, and the rest was silence.

Her statue of Abraham Lincoln stands now in a rotunda on the Capitol, for which it was ordered. Later, a Congress Committee ordered from her a statue of Admiral Farragut, which is likewise erected in Washington. These are the only two statues that the government of the United States has ever ordered from a woman. Other statues of hers which I have seen mentioned bear the names of Miriam, The West, Sappho, The Spirit of Carnival, etc. Further than this, I only know that she married Richard L. Hoxie, an engineer, and only a few years ago was living in Washington.

XLIII.

It was a real trouble to me that the Pope, in his exasperation over the conquest of Rome—in order to make the accomplished revolution recoil also on the heads of the foreigners whom he perhaps suspected of sympathy with the new order of things—had closed the Vatican and all its collections. Rome was to me first and foremost Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanzas and Loggias, and now all this magnificent array, which I had travelled so far to see, was closed to me by an old man's bad temper.

But there was still enough to linger over in Rome. The two palaces that seemed to me most deserving of admiration were the Farnese and the Cancellaria, the former Michael Angelo's, the latter Bramante's work, the first a perpetuation in stone of beauty and power, the second, of grace and lightness. I felt that if one were to take a person with no idea of architecture and set him in front of these buildings, there would fall like scales from his eyes, and he would say: "Now I know what the building art means."

Luini's exquisite painting, Vanity and Modesty, in the Galleria Sciarra, impressed me profoundly. It represented two women, one nun- like, the other magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well- known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essential feature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figure is seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though a very slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavens themselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the dark blue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown hair and the lovely hands. "It would be terrible to meet in real life a woman who looked like that," I wrote; "for a man would grow desperate at his inability to win her and desperate because the years must destroy such a marvel. That is why the gracious gods have willed it otherwise; that is why she does not exist. That is why she is only a vision, a revelation, a painting, and that is why she was conceived in the brain of Leonardo, the place on earth most favoured by the gods, and executed by Luini, that all generations might gaze at her without jealousy, and without dread of the molestations of Time."

One day, at the Museo Kircheriano, where I was looking at the admirable antiquities, I made acquaintance with a Jesuit priest, who turned out to be exceedingly pleasant and refined, a very decent fellow, in fact. He spoke Latin to me, and showed me round; at an enquiry of mine, he fetched from his quarters in the Collegio Romano a book with reproductions from the pagan section of the Lateran Museum, and explained to me some bas-reliefs which I had not understood. His obligingness touched me, his whole attitude made me think. Hitherto I had only spoken to one solitary embryo Jesuit,—a young Englishman who was going to Rome to place himself at the service of the Pope, and who was actuated by the purest enthusiasm; I was struck by the fact that this second Jesuit, too, seemed to be a worthy man. It taught me how independent individual worth is of the nature of one's convictions.

Most of the Italians I had so far been acquainted with were simple people, my landlord and his family, and those who visited them, and I sometimes heard fragments of conversation which revealed the common people's mode of thought to me. In one house that I visited, the mistress discovered that her maid was not married to her so-called husband, a matter in which, for that matter, she was very blameless, since her parents had refused their consent, and she had afterwards allowed herself to be abducted. Her mistress reproached her for the illegal relations existing. She replied, "If God wishes to plunge anyone into misery, that person is excused."—"We must not put the blame of everything upon God," said the mistress.—"Yes, yes," replied the girl unabashed; "then if the Devil wishes to plunge a person into misery, the person is excused."—"Nor may we put the blame of our wrongdoing on the Devil," said the mistress.—"Good gracious," said the girl, "it must be the fault of one or other of them, everybody knows that. If it is not the one, it is the other."

At the house of the Blanchettis, who had come to Rome, I met many Turin and Roman gentlemen. They were all very much taken up by an old Sicilian chemist of the name of Muratori, who claimed that he had discovered a material which looked like linen, but was impervious to bullets, sword- cuts, bayonet-thrusts, etc. Blanchetti himself had fired his revolver at him at two paces, and the ball had fallen flat to the ground. There could be no question of juggling; Muratori was an honourable old Garibaldist who had been wounded in his youth, and now went about on crutches, but, since we have never heard of its being made practical use of, it would seem that there was nothing in it.

I did not care to look up all the Italians to whom I had introductions from Villari. But I tried my luck with a few of them. The first was Dr. Pantaleoni, who had formerly been banished from the Papal States and who left the country as a radical politician, but now held almost conservative views. He had just come back, and complained bitterly of all the licentiousness. "Alas!" he said, "we have freedom enough now, but order, order!" Pantaleoni was a little, eager, animated man of fifty, very much occupied, a politician and doctor, and he promised to introduce me to all the scholars whose interests I shared. As I felt scruples at taking up these gentlemen's time, he exclaimed wittily: "My dear fellow, take up their time! To take his time is the greatest service you can render to a Roman; he never knows what to do to kill it!"

The next man I went to was Prince Odescalchi, one of the men who had then recently risen to the surface, officially termed the hero of the Young Liberals. Pantaleoni had dubbed him a blockhead, and he had not lied. He turned out to be a very conceited and frothy young man with a parting all over his head, fair to whiteness, of strikingly Northern type, with exactly the same expressionless type of face as certain of the milksops closely connected with the Court in Denmark.

XLIV.

There were a great many Scandinavians in Rome; they foregathered at the various eating-houses and on a Saturday evening at the Scandinavian Club. Some of them were painters, sculptors and architects, with their ladies, there were some literary and scientific men and every description of tourists on longer or shorter visits to the Eternal City. I held myself aloof from them. Most of them had their good qualities, but they could not stand the test of any association which brought them into too close contact with one another, as life in a small town does. They were divided up into camps or hives, and in every hive ruled a lady who detested the queen bee of the next one. So it came about that the Scandinavians lived in perpetual squabbles, could not bear one another, slandered one another, intrigued against one another. When men got drunk on the good Roman wine at the osterie, they abused one another and very nearly came to blows. Moreover, they frequently got drunk, for most of them lost their self-control after a few glasses. Strangely enough, in the grand surroundings, too much of the Northern pettiness came to the surface in them. One was continually tempted to call out to the ladies, in Holberg's words: "Hold your peace, you good women!" and to the men: "Go away, you rapscallions, and make up your quarrels!"

There were splendid young fellows among the artists, but the painters, who were in the majority, readily admitted that technically they could learn nothing at all in Rome, where they never saw a modern painting; they said themselves that they ought to be in Paris, but the authorities in Christiania and Copenhagen were afraid of Paris: thence all bad and dangerous influences proceeded, and so the painters still journey to Rome, as their fathers did before them.

XLV.

Towards the middle of November the Pope opened the Vatican. But in face of the enormous conflux of people, it was not easy to get a permesso from the consul, and that could not be dispensed with. I had just made use of one for the Vatican sculpture collection, one day, when I felt very unwell. I ascribed my sensations at first to the insufferable weather of that month, alternately sirocco and cold sleet, or both at once; then I was seized with a dread of the climate, of Rome, of all these strange surroundings, and I made up my mind to go home as quickly as possible. The illness that was upon me was, without my knowing it, the cause of my fear. The next day I was carried downstairs by two vile-smelling labourers and taken by Vilhelm Rosenstand the painter, who was one of the few who had made friends with me and shown me kindness, to the Prussian hospital on the Tarpeian Rock, near the Capitol.

Here a bad attack of typhoid fever held me prisoner in my bed for some few months, after a compatriot, who had no connection whatever with me, had been so inconsiderate as to inform my parents by telegraph how ill I was, and that there was little hope for me.

The first month I was not fully conscious; I suffered from a delusion of coercion. Thus it seemed to me that the left side of my bed did not belong to me, but to another man, who sometimes took the place; and that I myself was divided into several persons, of which one, for instance, asked my legs to turn a little to the one side or the other. One of these persons was Imperialist, and for that reason disliked by the others, who were Republicans; nevertheless, he performed great kindnesses for them, making them more comfortable, when it was in his power. Another strangely fantastic idea that held sway for a long time was that on my head, the hair of which had been shorn by the hospital attendant rather less artistically than one cuts a dog's, there was a clasp of pearls and precious stones, which I felt but could not see.

Afterwards, all my delusions centred on food.

I was very much neglected at the hospital. The attendance was wretched. The highly respected German doctor, who was appointed to the place, had himself an immense practice, and moreover was absolutely taken up by the Franco-Prussian war. Consequently, he hardly ever came, sometimes stayed away as long as thirteen days at a stretch, during all which time a patient who might happen to be suffering, say, from constipation, must lie there without any means of relief. My bed was as hard as a stone, and I was waked in the night by pains in my body and limbs; the pillow was so hard that the skin of my right ear was rubbed off from the pressure. There were no nurses. There was only one custodian for the whole hospital, a Russian fellow who spoke German, and who sometimes had as many as fourteen patients at a time to look after, but frequently went out to buy stores, or visit his sweetheart, and then all the patients could ring at once without any one coming. After I had passed the crisis of my illness, and consequently began to suffer terribly from hunger, I was ordered an egg for my breakfast; I sometimes had to lie for an hour and a half, pining for this egg. Once, for three days in succession, there were no fresh eggs to be had. So he would bring for my breakfast nothing but a small piece of dry bread. One day that I was positively ill with hunger, I begged repeatedly for another piece of bread, but he refused it me. It was not malice on his part, but pure stupidity, for he was absolutely incapable of understanding how I felt. And to save fuel, he let me suffer from cold, as well as from hunger; would never put more than one wretched little stick at a time into the stove. Everything was pinched to an incredible extent. Thus it was impossible for me to get a candle in the evening before it was absolutely dark, and then never more than one, although it made my eyes water to try to read. Candles and firing, it appears, were not put down in the bill. And yet this hospital is kept up on subscriptions from all the great Powers, so there must be someone into whose pockets the money goes. Most of us survived it; a few died who possibly might have been kept alive; one was preserved for whom the Danish newspapers have beautiful obituaries ready.

Over my head, in the same building, there lived a well-known German archaeologist, who was married to a Russian princess of such colossal physical proportions that Roman popular wits asserted that when she wished to go for a drive she had to divide herself between two cabs. This lady had a great talent for music. I never saw her, but I became aware of her in more ways than one: whenever she crossed the floor on the third story, the ceiling shook, and the boards creaked, in a manner unbearable to an invalid. And just when I had settled myself off, and badly wanted to sleep, towards eleven o'clock at night, the heavy lady above would sit down at her grand piano, and make music that would have filled a concert hall resound through the place.

After a month had passed, the doctor declared that I had "turned the corner," and might begin to take a little food besides the broth that up till then had been my only nourishment. A little later, I was allowed to try to get up. I was so weak that I had to begin to learn to walk again; I could not support myself on my legs, but dragged myself, with the help of the custodian, the four or five steps from the bed to a sofa.

Just at this time I received two letters from Copenhagen, containing literary enquiries and offers. The first was from the editor of the Illustrated Times, and enquired whether on my return home I would resume the theatrical criticisms in the paper; in that case they would keep the position open for me. I gave a negative reply, as I was tired of giving my opinion on a Danish drama. The second letter, which surprised me more, was from the editor of the, at that time, powerful Daily Paper, Steen Bille, offering me the entire management of the paper after the retirement of Molbech, except so far as politics were concerned, the editor naturally himself retaining the latter. As Danish things go, it was a very important offer to a young man. It promised both influence and income, and it was only my profound and ever-increasing determination not to give myself up to journalism that made me without hesitation dictate a polite refusal. I was still to weak to write. My motive was simply and solely that I wished to devote my life to knowledge. But Bille, who knew what power in a little country like Denmark his offer would have placed in my hands, hardly understood it in this way, and was exceedingly annoyed at my refusal. It gave the first impulse to his altered feeling toward me. I have sometimes wondered since whether my fate in Denmark might not have been different had I accepted the charge. It is true that the divergence between what the paper and I, in the course of the great year 1871, came to represent, would soon have brought about a split. The Commune in Paris caused a complete volte face of the liberal bourgeoisie in Denmark, as elsewhere.

XLVI.

While I was still too weak to write, I received a letter from Henrik Ibsen (dated December 20, 1870), which impressed me greatly. Henrik Ibsen and I had been on friendly terms with one another since April, 1866, but it was only about this time that our intimacy began to emit sparks, an intimacy which was destined to have a very widening influence upon me, and which is perhaps not without traces on the stages of his poetical progress.

Ibsen thought I had already recovered, and wrote to me as to a convalescent. He complained bitterly of the conquest of Rome by the Italians: Rome was now taken from "us men" and given over to the "politicians"; it had been a spot sacred to peace, and was so no longer.—This assertion was at variance with my religion. It seemed to me unpermissible to desire, for aesthetic reasons, to see the restoration of an ecclesiastical regime, with its remorseless system of oppression. Human happiness and intellectual progress were worth more than the retention of the idylls of naivete. I replied to him by declaring my faith in freedom and soon he outdid me in this, as in other domains.

But there was one other part of the letter that went to my heart and rejoiced me. It was where Ibsen wrote that what was wanted was a revolt in the human mind, and in that I ought to be one of the leaders. These words, which were in exact agreement with my own secret hope, fired my imagination, ill though I was. It seemed to me that after having felt myself isolated so long, I had at last met with the mind that understood me and felt as I did, a real fellow-fighter. As soon as I was once more fit to use my pen, I wrote a flaming reply in verse (headed, The Hospital in Rome, the night of January 9, 1871). In it I described how solitary I had been, in my intellectual fight and endeavour, and expressed my contentment at having found a brother in him.

XLVII.

Among the Danes, and there were not many of them, who frequently came to see me at the hospital, I must mention the kind and tactful musician Niels Ravnkilde, whom I had known when I was a child. He had been living in Rome now for some twenty years. He was gentle and quiet, good- looking, short of stature, modest and unpretending, too weak of character not to be friends with everyone, but equipped with a natural dignity. When a young music master in Copenhagen, he had fallen in love with a young, wealthy girl, whose affections he succeeded in winning in return, but he was turned out of the house by her harsh, purse-proud father, and in desperation had left Denmark to settle down in Rome. As his lady-love married soon after and became a contented wife and mother, he remained where he was. He succeeded in making his way.

He gradually became a favourite teacher of music among the ladies of the Roman aristocracy, who sometimes invited him to their country-houses in the Summer. He was on a good footing with the native maestros most in request, who quickly understood that the modest Dane was no dangerous rival. Graceful as Ravnkilde was in his person, so he was in his art; there was nothing grand about him. But he was clever, and had a natural, unaffected wit. His difficult position as a master had taught him prudence and reserve. He was obligingness personified to travelling Scandinavians, and was proud of having, as he thought, made the acquaintance in Rome of the flower of the good society of the Northern countries. Even long after he had come to the front, he continued to live in the fourth storey apartment of the Via Ripetta, where he had taken up his abode on his arrival in Rome, waited upon by the same simple couple. His circumstances could not improve, if only for the reason that he sent what he had to spare to relatives of his in Copenhagen, who had a son who was turning out badly, and lived by wasting poor Ravnkilde's savings. After having been the providence of all Danish travellers to Rome for thirty years, certain individuals who had influence with the government succeeded in obtaining a distinction for him. The government then gave him, not even the poor little decoration that he ought to have had twenty years before, but—brilliant idea!—awarded him the title of Professor, which in Italian, of course, he had always been, and which was a much more insignificant title than Maestro, by which he was regularly called.

Ravnkilde wrote my letters at the hospital for me, and the day I came out we drove away together to the French restaurant to celebrate the occasion by a dinner.

I went from there up to Monte Pincio in a glorious sunshine, rejoiced to see the trees again, and the people in their Sunday finery, and the lovely women's faces, as well as at being able to talk to people once more. It was all like new life in a new world. I met a good many Scandinavians, who congratulated me, and a young savant, Giuseppe Saredo, who, as professor of law, had been removed from Siena to Rome, and with whom, at the house of dall'Ongaro at Florence, I had had some delightful talks. We decided that we would keep in touch with one another.

XLVIII.

It was only this one day, however, that happiness and the sun shone upon me. On the morrow pains in my right leg, in which there was a vein swollen, made me feel very unwell. So ignorant was the doctor that he declared this to be of no importance, and gave me a little ointment with which to rub my leg. But I grew worse from day to day, and after a very short time my leg was like a lump of lead. I was stretched once more for some months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since very heroic measures were used in the treatment of the complaint, a violent attack of phlebitis. The leg was rubbed every day from the sole of the foot to the hip with mercury ointment, which could not be without its effect on my general health.

Still, I kept up my spirits finely. Among the Scandinavians who showed me kindness at this time I gratefully remember the Danish painters Rosenstand and Mackeprang, who visited me regularly and patiently, and my friend Walter Runeberg, the Finnish sculptor, whose cheerfulness did me good.

Other Scandinavians with whom I was less well acquainted came to see me now and again, but they had one very annoying habit. It was customary at that time for all letters to be addressed, for greater security, to the Danish consulate, which served the purpose of a general Scandinavian consulate. Anyone who thought of coming to see me would fetch what letters had arrived for me that day and put them in his pocket to bring me. The letters I ought to have had at ten o'clock in the morning I generally received at seven in the evening. But these gentlemen often forgot to pay their visit at all, or did not get time, and then it would happen that after having gone about with the letters in their pockets for a few days, they took them back to the consulate, whence they were sent to me, once, three days late. As my whole life on my sick-bed was one constant, painful longing for letters from home, the more so as my mother, all the time I was in bed, was lying dangerously ill, I felt vexed at the thoughtless behaviour of my compatriots.

However, I had not travelled so far to meet Northmen, and I learnt far more from the one Italian who sat by my bedside day after day, Giuseppe Saredo. It was amusing to note the difference between his ways and the Northmen's. He did not come in; he exploded. At six o'clock in the evening, he would rush in without knocking at the door, shouting at one and the same time Italian to the people of the house, and French to me. He talked at a furious rate, and so loudly that people who did not know might have fancied we were quarrelling, and he changed his seat once a minute, jumped up from the easy chair and seated himself half in the window, began a sentence there and finished it sitting on my bed. And every second or third day he either himself brought books to entertain me or sent large parcels by a messenger.

He had risen to be professor at the University of the the capital, without ever having been either student or graduate. His family were too poor for him to study. For many years, when a lad, he had never eaten dinner. His occupation, when at last he began to get on, was that of proof-reader in a printing establishment, but he tried to add to his income by writing melodramas for the boulevard theatres in Turin.

He thought he had written over fifty. He told me: "The manager generally came to me on a Sunday, when we were at liberty, and said: 'We must have a new play for next Sunday.' On Monday the first act was finished, on Tuesday the second, etc.; and every act was delivered as it was written, and the parts allotted. Sometimes the last act was only finished on Saturday morning, which, however, would not prevent the piece being played on Sunday evening." In a number of the Revue des deux Mondes for 1857 we found Saredo mentioned among the melodramatists of Italy. This must have been ferreted out privately, since he always wrote these melodramas anonymously, he having determined, with naive conceit, "not to stain his future reputation." When he was twenty-one, he tried to raise himself from this rank to that of a journalist, and succeeded; he sent all sorts of articles to three newspapers. From his twenty-first to his twenty-fourth year he wrote for the daily papers, and wrote gay accounts of the volatile lives of young Italian journalists with the ladies of the theatres. Then he fell in love with the lady who later became his wife (known as a novelist under the pseudonym of Ludovico de Rosa), and from that time forth never looked at another woman. All his life he cherished a great admiration for his wife and gratitude towards her.

When he had commenced his legal work, he strained every nerve to the utmost, and obtained his professorships in the various towns through competition, without having followed the usual University path. "I have always had the most unshaken faith in my star," he said one day, "even when, from hunger or despair, thoughts of suicide occurred to me. When I broke my black bread, I said to myself: 'The day will come when I shall eat white.'"

Like all Italians at that time, Saredo detested and despised modern France. As far as reconquered Rome was concerned, he regarded her with sorrowful eyes. "There are only nobility, ecclesiastics, and workmen here," he said; "no middle classes, no industry and no trade. Absurd tariff laws have up till now shut off the Papal States from the surrounding world. And what a government! A doctor, who after his second visit did not make his patient confess to a priest, lost his official post, if he happened to hold one, and was in any case sent to prison for five months. A doctor who did not go to Mass a certain number of times during the week was prohibited practising. The huge number of tied-up estates made buying and selling very difficult. The new government has struck the nobility a fatal blow by abolishing entailed property and lands. The calling in of the ecclesiastical property by the State is giving the towns a chance to breathe."

Whenever I revisited Italy, I saw Saredo. His heroism during the inquiries into the irregularities in Naples in 1900-1901 made his name beloved and himself admired in his native country. He died in 1902, the highest life official in Italy; since 1897 he had been President of the Council.

XLIX.

I came under an even greater debt of gratitude than to Saredo, to the good-natured people in whose house I lay ill. I was as splendidly looked after as if I had made it a specified condition that I should be nursed in case of illness.

My landlady, Maria, especially, was the most careful nurse, and the best creature in the world, although she had the physiognomy of a regular Italian criminal, when her face was in repose. The moment she spoke, however, her features beamed with maternal benevolence. After the hospital, it was a decided change for the better. I was under no one's tyranny and did not feel as though I were in prison; I could complain if my food was bad, and change trattoria, when I myself chose. Everything was good.

As long as I was well, I had taken hardly any notice of the people in the house, hardly exchanged a word with them; I was out all day, and either hastily asked them to do my room, or to put a little on the fire. It was only when I fell ill that I made their acquaintance.

Let me quote from my notes at the time:

Maria is forty, but looks nearly sixty. Her husband is a joiner, a stout, good-looking man, who works all day for his living, and has a shop. Then there is Maria's niece, the nineteen-year-old Filomena, a tall, handsome girl. Every evening they have fine times, laugh, sing, and play cards. On Sunday evening they go out to the fair (alla fiera) and look at the things without buying. Others have to pay a lire to go in, but they go in free, as they know some of the people. On festival occasions Maria wears a silk dress.

There is a crucifix over my bed, an oleograph of the Madonna and child and a heart, embroidered with gold on white, horribly pierced by the seven swords of pain, which were supposed to be nails; on the centre of the heart, you read, partly in Latin, partly in Greek letters:

JESU XPI PASSIO.

All the same, Maria is very sceptical. Yesterday, on the evening of my birthday, we had the following conversation:

Myself: "Here you celebrate your saints' day; not your birthday; but, you know, up in the North we have not any saints"—and, thinking it necessary to add a deep-drawn religious sigh, I continued: "We think it enough to believe in God." "Oh! yes," she said slowly, and then, a little while after: "That, too, is His own business." "How?" "Well," she said, "You know that I am dreadfully ignorant; I know nothing at all, but I think a great deal. There are these people now who are always talking about the Lord. I think it is all stuff. When I married, they said to me: 'May it please the Lord that your husband be good to you.' I thought: If I had not been sensible enough to choose a good husband, it would not help me much what should please the Lord. Later on they said: 'May it please the Lord to give you sons.' I had some, but they died when they were little ones. Then I thought to myself: 'If my husband and I do not do something in the matter, it won't be much use for the Lord to be pleased to give them to us. Nature, too, has something to say to it. (Anche la natura e una piccola cosa.) You have no idea, sir, how we have suffered from priests here in the Papal State. Everyone had to go to Confession, and as of course they did not wish to confess their own sins, they confessed other people's,—and told lies, too,—and in that way the priests knew everything. If the priest had heard anything about a person, he or she would get a little ticket from him: 'Come to me at such and such a time! 'Then, when the person went, he would say: 'Are you mad to live with such and such a person without being married!'—and all the while he himself had a woman and a nest full of children. Then he would say: 'I won't have you in my parish,' and he would publish the poor thing's secret to the whole world. Or, if he were more exasperated, he would say: 'Out of the Pope's country!' and send for a few carabineers; they would take one to a cart and drive one to the frontier; there, there were fresh carabineers, who took one farther —and all without trial, or any enquiry. Often the accusation was false. But we were ruled by spies, and all their power was based on the confessional, which is nothing but spying. Shortly before Easter, a priest came and counted how many there were in the house. If afterwards there were one who did not go to mass, then his name was stuck up on the church door as an infidel, in disgrace. It is many years now since I have been to any confessor. When I die, I shall say: 'God, forgive me my sins and my mistakes,' and shall die in peace without any priest."

Whatever we talk about, Maria always comes back to her hatred of the priests. The other day, we were speaking of the annoyance I had been subjected to by a compatriot of mine, K.B., who came to see me, but looked more particularly at a large fiasco I had standing there, containing four bottles of Chianti. He tasted the wine, which was very inferior, declared it 'nice,' and began to drink, ten glasses straight off. At first he was very polite to me, and explained that it was impossible to spend a morning in a more delightful manner than by visiting the Sistine Chapel first, and me in my sick-room afterwards, but by degrees he became ruder and ruder, and as his drunkenness increased I sank in his estimation. At last he told me that I was intolerably conceited, and started abusing me thoroughly. Lying defenceless in bed, and unable to move, I was obliged to ring for Maria, and whisper to her to fetch a few gentlemen from the Scandinavian Club, who could take the drunken man home, after he had wasted fully six hours of my day. I managed in this way to get him out of the door. He was hardly gone than Maria burst out: "Che porcheria!" and then added, laughing, to show me her knowledge of languages: "Cochonnerie, Schweinerei!" She has a remarkable memory for the words she has heard foreigners use. She knows a number of French words, which she pronounces half like Italian, and she also knows a little Russian and a little German, having, when a young girl, kept house for a Russian prince and his family.

"I feel," she said to me, "that I could have learnt both French and German easily, if I could have compared them in a book. But I can neither read nor write. These wretched priests have kept us in ignorance. And now I am old and good for nothing. I was forty a little while ago, and that is too old to learn the alphabet. Do you know, signore, how it originally came about that I did not believe, and despised the priests? I was twelve years old, and a tall girl, and a very good-looking girl, too, though you cannot see that, now that I am old and ugly." (You can see it very plainly, for her features are haughty and perfectly pure of line; it is only that her expression, when she sits alone, is sinister.) "I lost my father when I was five years old. About that time my mother married again, and did not trouble herself any more about me, as she had children with her new husband. So I was left to myself, and ran about the streets, and became absolutely ungovernable, from vivacity, life, and mischief, for I was naturally a very lively child. Then one day I met a mule, alone; the man had left it; I climbed up, and seated myself upon it, and rode about, up and down the street, until a dog came that frightened the mule and it kicked and threw me over its head. There I lay, with a broken collar-bone, and some of the bone stuck out through the skin. Then a doctor came and wanted to bind it up for me, but I was ashamed for him to see my breast, and would not let him. He said: 'Rubbish! I have seen plenty of girls.' So I was bound up and for six weeks had to lie quite still. In the meantime a priest, whom they all called Don Carlo—I do not know why they said Don —came to see me, and when I was a little better and only could not move my left arm, he said to me one day, would I go and weed in his garden, and he would give me money for it. So I went every day into the garden, where I could very well do the work with one arm. He came down to me, brought me sweets and other things, and asked me to be his friend. I pretended not to understand. He said, too, how pretty I was, and such things. Then at last one day, he called me into his bedroom, and first gave me sweets, and then set me on his knee. I did not know how to get away. Then I said to him: 'It is wrong, the Madonna would not like it.' Do you know, sir, what he replied? He said: 'Child! there is no Madonna (non c'e Madonna) she is only a bridle for the common people' (e un freno per il populo basso). Then I was anxious to run away, and just then my mother passed by the garden, and as she did not see me there, called, 'Anna Maria! Anna Maria!' I said: 'Mother is calling me,' and ran out of the room. Then mother said to me: 'What did the priest say to you, and what did he do to you? You were in his bedroom.' I said: 'Nothing'; but when my mother went to confession, instead of confessing her sins, she said over and over again to him: 'What have you done to my daughter? I will have my daughter examined, to see what sort of a man you are.' He declared: 'I will have you shot if you do' (una buona schioppettata). So mother did not dare to go farther in the matter. But she would not believe me."

Here we were interrupted by the Russian woman from next door coming in; she is married, more or less, to a waiter, and she complained of his volatility, and cried with jealousy. "Once I was just as weak," said Maria. "When I was newly married I was so jealous of my husband, that I could neither eat nor drink if any one came to me and said: 'This evening he is with such and such a one.' If I tried to eat, I was sick at once. I am just as fond of him as I was then, but I am cured now. If I saw his infidelity with my own eyes, I should not feel the least bit hurt about it. Then, I could have strangled him."



FILOMENA

Italian Landladies—The Carnival—The Moccoli Feast—Filomena's Views

Filomena sings lustily from early morning till late at night, and her name suits her. The Greek Philomela has acquired this popular form, and in use is often shortened to Filome.

The other day I made her a present of a bag of English biscuits. Her face beamed as I have never besides seen anything beam but the face of my cafetiere—he is a boy of twelve—when now and again he gets a few soldi for bringing me my coffee or tea. Anyone who has only seen the lighting up of Northern faces has no conception,—as even painters admit,—of such transfiguration. Yes, indeed! Filomena's tall figure and fresh mountain blood would freshen up the Goldschmidtian human race to such an extent that they would become better men and women in his next books.

I have seen a little of the Carnival. This morning Filomena came to my room, to fetch a large Italian flag which belongs there. "I am going to wave it on Thursday," she said, and added, with blushing cheeks, "then I shall have a mask on." But this evening she could not restrain herself. For the first time during the five months I have lived here, and for the first time during the month I have been ill, she came in without my having called or rung for her. She had a red silk cap on, with a gold border. "What do you say to that, sir!" she said, and her clear laughter rang through the room. It revived my sick self to gaze at ease at so much youth, strength and happiness; then I said a few kind words to her, and encouraged by them she burst into a stream of eloquence about all the enjoyment she was promising herself. This would be the first carnival she had seen; she came from the mountains and was going back there this Spring. She was in the seventh heaven over her cap. She always reminds me, with her powerful frame, of the young giantess in the fairy tale who takes up a peasant and his plough in the hollow of her hand.

Filomena is as tall as a moderately tall man, slenderly built, but with broad shoulders. She impresses one as enjoying life thoroughly. She has herself made all she wears—a poor little grey woollen skirt with an edging of the Italian colours, which has been lengthened some nine inches at the top by letting in a piece of shirting. A thin red-and- black-striped jacket that she wears, a kind of loose Garibaldi, is supposed to hide this addition, which it only very imperfectly does. Her head is small and piquant; her hair heavy, blue-black; her eyes light brown, of exquisite shape, smiling and kind. She has small, red lips, and the most beautiful teeth that I remember seeing. Her complexion is brown, unless she blushes; then it grows darker brown. Her figure is unusually beautiful, but her movements are heavy, so that one sees at once she is quite uneducated. Still, she has a shrug of the shoulders, ways of turning and twisting her pretty head about, that are absolutely charming.

I have sent Filomena into the town to buy a pound of figs for me and one for herself. While she is away, I reflect that I cannot sufficiently congratulate myself on my excellent landlady, and the others. As a rule, these Roman lodging-house keepers are, judging by what one hears, perfect bandits. When F., the Norwegian sculptor, lay dangerously ill, the woman in whose house he was did not even speak to him; she went out and left him alone in the house. When the Danish dilettante S. was at death's door, his landlady did not enter his room once a day, or give him a drink of water, and he was obliged to keep a servant. V.'s landlady stole an opera-glass, a frock-coat, and a great deal of money from him. Most foreigners are swindled in a hundred different ways; if they make a stain on the carpet, they must pay for a new one. Maria looks after me like a mother. Every morning she rubs me with the ointment the doctor has prescribed. When I have to have a bath, she takes me in her arms, without any false shame, and puts me in the water; then takes me up and puts me to bed again; after my sojourn in the hospital, I am not very heavy. What I am most astonished at is the indulgent delicacy of these people. For instance, Maria has forbidden her good-natured husband, whom, like Filomena, I like to call Zio (uncle), to eat garlic (the favourite food of the Romans) while I am ill, that I may not be annoyed in my room by the smell. I have only to say a word, and she and her niece run all my errands for me. Indeed, the other day, Maria exclaimed, quite indignantly: "Sir, do not say 'when you go into the town, will you buy me this or that?' Are we robbers, are we scoundrels? Only say, 'go,' and I will go." I never say to her: "Will you do me a favour?" without her replying: "Two, sir." Yes, and she heaps presents upon me; she and Filomena bring me, now a bundle of firewood, now a glass of good wine, now macaroni, etc. All the Danes who come here are astonished, and say: "You have got deucedly good people to look after you."

Maria's greatest pleasure is talking. She has no time for it in the day. In the evening, however, she tidies my room slowly, entertaining me all the time. When she has quite finished, at the time of day when others are drowsy or go to bed, she still likes to have just a little more conversation, and she knows that when I see she has put the last thing into its place, her task for the day is ended, and I shall dismiss her with a gracious Buona sera, bon riposo! To put off this moment as long as possible, she will continue to hold some object in her hand, and, standing in the favourite position of the Romans, with her arms akimbo, and some toilet article under her arm, will hold a long discourse. She sometimes looks so indescribably comic that I almost choke with suppressed laughter as we talk.

To-day is the first day of the Carnival. So even Filomena has been out this evening in tri-coloured trousers.

... I am interrupted by the inmates of all the floors returning from the Carnival, all talking at once, and coming straight in to me to show me their dress. Amongst them from the Carnival, all talking at once, and coming straight in to me to show me their dress. Amongst them are guests from the mountains, tall, dark men, in exceedingly fantastic garb. They tell me how much they have enjoyed themselves. Filomena has naively made me a present of a few burnt almonds with sugar upon them, that she has had in her trouser pockets, and informs me with impetuous volubility how she has talked to all the people she met, "who do not know her and whom she does not know." She has had one of my white shirts on, which she had embroidered all over with ribbons till it looked like a real costume. She is beaming with happiness. The tambourine tinkles all the evening in the street; they are dancing the tarantella to it down below, and it is difficult to go to sleep. Maria stays behind, when the others have gone, to finish her day's work. It is a sight for the gods to see her doing it with a gold brocade cap on her head, and in red, white and green trousers!

None of them guess what a torment it is to me to lie and hear about the Carnival, which is going on a few streets from where I am lying, but which I cannot see. When shall I spend a Winter in Rome again? And no other Carnival will be to compare with this one after the Romans for ten years have held altogether aloof from it, and one hardly even on Moccoli Eve saw more than two carriages full of silly Americans pelting one another with confetti, while the porters and the French soldiers flung jibes and dirt at each other. Now Rome is free, jubilation breaks out at all the pores of the town, and I, although I am in Rome, must be content to see the reflection of the festival in a few ingenuous faces.

It is morning. I have slept well and am enjoying the fresh air through the open windows. Heavens! what a lovely girl is standing on the balcony nearly opposite, in a chemise and skirt! I have never seen her there before. Olive complexion, blue-black hair, the most beautiful creature; I cannot see her features distinctly. Now they are throwing something across to her from the house next door to us, on a piece of twine; I think they are red flowers. They almost touch her, and yet she cannot catch them, and laughing stretches out both hands a second, a third and fourth time, equally unsuccessfully. Why, it is our Filomena, visiting the model the other side the street. She gives up the attempt with a little grimace, and goes in.

Loud voices are singing the Bersagliere hymn as a duet under my window. Verily, things are alive in Purificazione to-day. The contagion of example affects a choir of little boys who are always lying outside the street door, and they begin to sing the Garibaldi march for all they are worth. Our singers at the theatre at home would be glad of such voices. The whole street is ringing now; all are singing one of Verdi's melodies.

I am sitting up in bed. At the side of my bed, Filomena, with her black, heavy hair well dressed, and herself in a kind of transitional toilette; her under-garment fine, the skirt that of a festival gown, on account of the preparations for the Carnival; her top garment the usual red jacket. She is standing with her hand on her hip, but this does not make her look martial or alarming.