Part 13 (2/2)

The Neapolitan was one of those most preoccupied with esthetics.

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

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

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

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

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

VII. THE CONFIDENCES OF THE ABBE PRECIOZI

_NATURAL VARIETIES OF NOSES AND EXPRESSIONS_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preciozi shrugged his shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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