Part 37 (2/2)
The church was full; there were many people in the centre of it; he didn't know what they were doing. Doubtless they were gathered there for some reason, although Caesar didn't understand what. Caesar sat down on a bench, worn out; he would have liked to listen to organ music, to a boy choir. No ideas occurred to him but sentimental ones. Some time pa.s.sed, and a priest began to preach. Caesar got up and went into the street.
”I must get rid of these miserable impressions, get back to n.o.ble ideas.
I must fight this sentimental leprosy.”
He started to walk with long strides through the sad, empty streets.
He went toward the river and met Kennedy, who was coming back, he told him, from the studio of a sculptor friend of his.
”You look like desolation. What has happened to you?”
”Nothing, but I am in a perfectly h.e.l.lish humour.”
”I am melancholy too. It must be the weather. Let's take a walk.”
They went along the bank of the Tiber. Full of clay, more turbid than ever, and very high between the white embankments hemming it in, the river looked like a big sewer.
”This is not the 'coeruleus Tibris' that Virgil speaks of in the Aeneld, which presented itself to Aeneas in the form of an ancient man with his head crowned with roses,” said Kennedy.
”No. This is a horrible river,” Caesar opined.
They followed the sh.o.r.e, pa.s.sed the Castel Sant' Angelo and the bridge with the statues.
From the embankment, to the right, they could now see narrow lanes, sunk almost below the level of the river. On the other bank a new, white edifice towered in the rain.
They went as far as the Piazza d'Armi, and then came back at nightfall to Rome. The rain was gradually ceasing and the sky looked less threatening. A file of greenish gaslights followed the river-wall and then crossed over the bridge.
They walked to the Piazza del Popolo and through the Via Babuino to the Piazza di Spagna.
”Would you like to go to a Benedictine abbey tomorrow?” asked Kennedy.
”All right.”
”And if you are still melancholy, we will leave you there.”
_THE ABBEY_
The next day, after lunch, Kennedy and Caesar went to visit the abbey of Sant' Anselmo on the Aventine. The abbot, Hildebrand, was a friend of Kennedy's, and like him an Englishman.
They took a carriage and Kennedy told it to stop at the church of Santa Sabina.
”It is still too early to go to the abbey. Let us look at this church, which is the best preserved of all the old Roman ones.”
They entered the church; but it was so cold there that Caesar went out again directly and waited in the porch. There was a man there selling rosaries and photographs who spoke scarcely any Italian or French, but did speak Spanish. Probably he was a Jew.
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