CHAPTER II.

Hans Riemann led Minna through one or two narrow streets and alleys, till they emerged in a small, quiet, but very pleasant-looking piazza, the exact locality of which I am not going to reveal; it was one of those which one is constantly coming upon in Rome in the most unexpected way--nooks which surprise and delight the old inhabitant almost as much as, perhaps more than, the hasty visitor, lying as they often do close beside or behind some well-known street or quarter which his steps have paced many a time, and with every winding of which he thought he was acquainted. Quaint and quiet, hoary and old, they hide themselves--known to those who inhabit them, and to few beside. It was on the sunny side of this piazza that the great brown palace was situated in which Madame Dietrich had a floor for her boarding-house. It is a large palace, though not one that is found on Baedeker’s plan of Rome, nor even is it mentioned in the compendious pages of Gsell-Fells. It was all quite new to Minna, and its aspect pleased her; a little quiet exclamation which broke from her lips as they entered it showed that she felt its charm.

‘Not bad, is it?’ said Hans Riemann, catching the sound of approval. ‘Here it is--Piazza Bocca della Verità, and here is the entrance to Casa Dietrich.’

He went in, under a great marble archway leading into a court, and she followed him.

‘Casa Dietrich is on the first _piano_,’ he observed. ‘That is one of its great merits. You will excuse me for thus singing its praises. You will find out its defects quickly enough.’

They climbed the stairs, broad and well laid, of a grayish-white marble, and dirty, of course, till they arrived at a door on the first _piano_, on which door was a brass plate with the inscription ‘Signora Dietrich,’ and before which lay a very dirty mat turned wrong way up, and inscribed ‘Salve.’ Hans Riemann pushed open the door, and waved his hand to Minna to pass on. She did so, and found herself in a large, well-proportioned hall, the floor of which was covered with straw-matting in tolerably good repair. Doors opened from it, of course, on all sides. There was a table in the middle of the space--at one side of the hall a marble-topped table against the wall, crowded with an array of lamps, large and small. This hall was a little dark, but not unfriendly in appearance.

‘We’ll go and sit in the _salon_ till the bell has rung,’ said Riemann, looking round and seeing no one. At that moment a waiter came into the hall--a young man with a handsome, silly, sentimental face, who looked vaguely round, and then gazed with bland benevolence on the pair.

‘Has the bell rung, Ettore?’ asked Riemann.

‘Signorino, no,’ replied Ettore in a soft voice, and with a _primo tenore_ kind of smile, and he shook his head.

‘Belongs to one of the oldest and noblest Florentine families,’ said Hans in an explanatory manner to Minna, in English. ‘Like all the rest of them, you know--_decaduto_. Italians and Irishmen are always descended from princes, and the lower their station the greater were the princes--in the days that are no more. It’s awfully sad! This way, Minna, please. I should deceive you if I led you to expect much in the way of punctuality here. I hope you are not famished.’

‘No,’ said Minna indifferently, as she followed him into the _salon_--a fine, large, admirably proportioned room, with a slightly vaulted ceiling and three windows. It was not at all surprising in Rome that a palace, or rather part of one, should now be a boarding-house; there was a fitness in the order of things which brought a nobly descended Florentine into its halls as a waiter. But there was something pathetic or exasperating--according to the temper of the observers--in the contrast between the just proportions and pleasing form of the room itself, which was so well designed to be furnished with stately richness and splendour, and the order of things actually prevailing. There was a piano, of course. There was a round table in the middle of the room, with a heavy, hideous plush cover; the said table was covered with trash of the meanest description--odd volumes of Tauchnitz novels with torn backs; a ragged archaic Baedeker’s ‘Central Italy and Rome’--for there are travellers who will take all the trouble necessary to get to a new country, and will then be too mean and too ignorant to buy themselves a new guide-book; a frightful blue-glass vase, filled with artificial flowers; a monstrosity in the shape of an inkstand (‘Does anyone ever write letters here?’ Minna wondered); and other decorative trifles of a like nature. The walls were hung with a series of the crudest chromo-lithographs of sentimental pictures--a simpering young lady in a crinoline and chignon lifting a bright green-upper skirt to show a dazzling white under one and ugly little black boots with elastic sides is being handed by an equally simpering young gentleman towards a close carriage, which looks much too small to contain her crinoline alone, not to speak of her own person and remaining garments, and those of the young gentleman. This fascinating work of art is labelled ‘I nuovi sposi.’ On the other side of a tarnished, distorting glass, which had once been a mirror, hung as a companion picture, and an encouragement to matrimony, the representation of a lovely being with an abnormally swan-like throat, and flowing robes and veil of black crape, pouring copious tears upon a little gravestone, with the perspective of which something had gone hopelessly wrong; she is surrounded by crosses, cypresses, and other accompaniments of a graveyard scene, and the exhilarating inscription of this work of art is ‘La Madre desolata.’

‘That is the high-art side of the room,’ said Hans, kindly explaining. ‘Art, love and grief, the piano, the “Sposi” and the desolate mother--you see the connection, I doubt not. Here is the frivolous, or society department.’ He pointed where a stove reared itself, where the sofas and easy-chairs, all more or less dingy-looking, congregated, and where, on the walls, was a great collection of photographic likenesses of ladies and gentlemen, in every variety of posture, size, and costume, but mostly, as here represented, uninteresting, to use the mildest term. In addition to these were hung up all kinds of rubbish in the shape of little fancy baskets, boxes with handles, trumpery ‘ornamental’ cases and bottles, and unclassable, unusable trash of every description. The wall-paper, against which were hung these gems of art and fancy, was of a brilliant yellow; the carpet, now faded, had once been dazzlingly, agonizingly variegated. The ruling _motif_, as it were, of the furniture colour was of a deep, full rose, with a suspicion of magenta in it. It had been also mercifully dimmed by time and having been sat upon by the boarders of many seasons.

Minna looked round this _salon_ with a slow, scrutinizing, comprehensive glance, taking it all in, nodding her head mournfully now and then, as she recognised with experienced eye some decoration, some ornament, or some piece of furniture common to this class of establishment.

‘Yes,’ said Hans, laughing; ‘it is bad, I know; but it is Rome. Because she has been first in everything--art and beauty included, therefore--you know what I would say!’

‘Yes,’ Minna assented; ‘it is her curse now, of course.’

She seated herself in one of the dingy easy-chairs, Hans in another, and after they had been talking together for a little time they became aware of a series of lusty thumps and bangs, apparently on different doors, which knocks gradually approached nearer to where they were, till at last the door was flung open, and Ettore cried, much as ‘Ready’ is cried when the guard whistles and the train starts, ‘Lunch is ready,’ and disappeared.

In ten minutes the entire company then staying at Casa Dietrich had assembled in the dining-room, and were discussing their lunch, or _colazione_, and the day’s doings or the morrow’s doings, with a loud rattle of knives and forks, a clashing of plates and dishes, and a consumption of thin red wine such as was going on at that same hour in dozens of _pensioni_ and hotels all over the great city.

There was nothing very remarkable about any of the boarders at Casa Dietrich, or if there were, their peculiarities were veiled by the absorbing interest of the moment. Hans Riemann received a good many nods and smiles of friendly greeting from the very mixed specimens of nationalities who dropped in. Some glances of inquiry and interest were bestowed upon his companion, but in the main everyone appeared thoroughly interested in his or her own business. Next to Minna, on her right, sat an intelligent-looking lady, with a clever face and white hair drawn very tightly back from her forehead and twisted into what Minna felt must be a painfully firm knob at the back. An English upper servant would have sniffed at her dress as being too ugly and badly made for anyone with a sense of self-respect to wear. Of course she soon revealed herself as a German, and one who could give a good account of herself in the matter of culture, no matter what her shortcomings as to dressmaking might be. Riemann sat on Minna’s left hand, and opposite to her was an empty place.

‘Well,’ said Minna to herself, ‘they are not distinguished-looking, I must say. Some of them are decidedly odd. Those Americans up at the end of the table are simply awful. The Italian men look a pretty decent sort. The Englishwoman down there at the other end of the table, with the red nose and the round hat and veil--unspeakable, quite. The old Scotchman and his lady-wife are an odd-looking couple; but I must say they don’t stare at one as if one were a wild beast, nor look as if they would take a week to make up their minds whether they should speak to one or not, as they certainly would have done at Mrs. Cartwright’s.--Am I making a long stay?’ she added, turning with a smile to the German lady, who had just asked her a question, and explaining her situation to her.

‘Ah, so!’ said the latter as if much impressed; and Minna, turning again to her plate, discovered that the empty seat opposite to her was just being occupied by its rightful owner. He was at one and the same time seating himself and looking with piercing earnestness at her, Minna Hastings. Her quick first glance at him showed her a man considerably above middle height, rather spare and muscular, age apparently fifty at least, hair beginning, but only just beginning, to be grizzled, eyes dark and brilliant, full of fire, and capable too of softness, a mobile mouth, concealed by a heavy dark moustache, a fine chin. It was in every respect a noble head. Every line of his figure and face betrayed an eager, restless, nervous temperament, force of intellect, force of will, while a certain perversity about the lines which came from the nose to the mouth, and a certain biting of the lips together, would seem to indicate powerful prejudices, strong passions. The whole aspect of the man was outside the common run; as he looked at her and she at him, Minna felt, without putting her feelings into words, that whatever the rest of the company might be, one member of it was beyond, perhaps above, the average. He gave her the impression of bringing a different atmosphere into the whole place. Almost before she had had time to form these conclusions, Hans Riemann, half rising and addressing the new-comer and Minna, formally presented him to her as Signor Giuseppe Oriole. As he rose again from his chair to make her a profound bow, Minna noticed how exceeding shabby was his dress of rusty black, the cloth worn to its foundation, pathetically poverty-stricken, and how spotlessly clean on the other hand was his white linen collar and shirt-front; he wore no cuffs. They were, as she knew with lightning-like swiftness of intuition, far too great an extravagance for everyday use.

She returned his bow and his greeting with a polite inclination of the head, and replied to him in his own language.

‘Ah,’ said he, with another of the piercing looks, ‘you speak Italian!’

‘Surely,’ said she, smiling. ‘I have lived eight years in Rome.’

‘Really,’ said he, and then, looking at Riemann, who had become rather red: ‘Where, then, is your friend, Riemann?’

‘The signora is my friend,’ said Hans, blushing more violently than before. ‘We are cousins.’

‘Ah!’ said Signor Oriole with a decidedly haughty accent; ‘you did not, then, tell me the truth. You said, “un mio amico.”’

Hans looked awkward, but not angry, and Signor Oriole, suddenly relaxing his severity, said:

‘Well, well; boys will play tricks on old men to the end of time.’

With that he fell to vigorously on a dish of buttered eggs, which the sentimental-looking Ettore now offered to him.

Minna was not particularly hungry. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the company, and held a little conversation with the German lady and a little with Hans, and in the intervals watched her opposite neighbour with a kind of fascination which annoyed herself--she did not know why. He did not address her again. His looks wandered, or, rather, darted, sharply in every direction. The plaintive Ettore came to him repeatedly, apparently for directions, which were given to him in a low tone but with considerable agitation of manner; his eyes flashed, his hands worked, his patience was evidently not of the most elastic kind. Minna remembered what Hans had said, laughing, about Signor Giuseppe--that he supposed he was the manager. Apparently his surmise was right enough. His thoughts were evidently very much engrossed with the serving of the repast, which was very Italian in character and very slow in process. There was something incongruous and absurd in the contrast between his appearance and his pursuit. She felt inclined to laugh. Then, all at once, his sharp ear caught the import of a discussion at some little distance from him, which was going on between an English girl and her Italian neighbour, about the enormities committed by Nero, and the burning of Rome in his reign. The English young lady, whose entire views on the subject were evidently derived from Baedeker and some extremely elementary guide to Roman history, was duly shocked at the monster’s wickedness. Her neighbour, a young Italian in training for an _avvocate_, or lawyer, was vague to the last degree on the subject. Had the Emperor Nero, then, committed so many atrocities? He did not know. He had seen Rossi act the part in a play--oh, a long, very long play of five acts, most tedious! Rossi was too old, too fat; he puffed, he grunted; impossible that any illusion could exist with such a figure acting the principal part. In this long dry play it seemed to him that Nero was a born coward, and there had also been in it a woman, a most wearisome woman, who shouted and scolded and threatened, and was hideously ugly to boot.

‘But that was a play; this is history,’ said the young lady.

‘Really! well, I do not know much history, sa!’ said the young man, who then owned that for his part he had never been inside the Colosseum, nor to the Palatine Hill, nor any of those tumble-down places. He preferred Ronzi and Singers’ restaurant, or that of the Milano in Monte Citorio.

‘Oh, signore!’ cried the young lady. ‘But you must have learnt at school how wicked Nero was--the Christians--why, he----’

‘Do not be too sure of the wickedness of Nero, signorina mia,’ broke in the voice of Signor Giuseppe. ‘Nero was an artist. Never forget that. To an artist, much may be forgiven. He rebuilt Rome, and left it far more beautiful than did Augustus, even after his great boast. His feeling for the beautiful was keen, strong, intense; in art, in music, in architecture, in sumptuous ideas, grandly carried out, he excelled. He was an artist. Yes, that was, in the main, the character of Nero.’

Utterly abashed, and incapable, with her mere smattering of the language, of replying to him, or dealing with this view of the question, the young girl became crimson and remained silent. Hans Riemann, good naturedly but mistakenly advancing to her rescue, observed that Nero must have been a rather terrific kind of artist.

‘Che!’ snapped Signor Giuseppe, in great excitement, while the long sinewy fingers of his left hand endeavoured, with the aid of a piece of bread, to chase a piece of meat on to the point of a knife which he held in his right. Then, with flashing eyes, he muttered, but not so low that Minna could not hear it all:

‘Dio mio! These English! These Americans! These wearisome girls, as ignorant as apes, who come and patronize us--patronize Rome! and give forth their idiotic sentiments on her monuments and heroes. Bah! ugh! It is too much--it is far too much! It turns one’s blood to gall.’

His angry passions had arisen. His colour had fled. His eyes flashed--his lips moved in whispers, inarticulate, of contempt and dislike. Minna, who was endowed with a strong sense of the ridiculous, felt the blood rush to her face in the strong effort she made to refrain from smiling. She felt that for some reason or other she would not for the world that Signor Giuseppe should see her smiling. Therefore, as a matter of course, he at once raised his eyes and fixed them full upon her face, just as the smile refused to be any longer utterly concealed, just as the recollection of his impassioned defence of Nero and his equally impassioned indictment of her younger countrywoman made the laughter bubble over, into her eyes and upon her mouth, whether she would or no. She felt as if she had been a schoolgirl caught laughing when she should have been respectfully listening to the professor’s lecture. The crimson tide mounted higher and higher--she found her situation embarrassing, and was enraged with herself for doing so. Relief appeared from an unexpected quarter. Ettore again came stealing softly round to Signor Oriole’s side, and whispered something in his ear.

‘Che diavolo!’ cried Signor Giuseppe, and this time the matter appeared to be one of such urgent importance that he sprang up, pushed his chair back with a loud rattle, and with a quick, eager step and rusty coat-tails flying behind him, followed Ettore round the table and out through a door.

‘Where has he gone?’ asked Minna of Hans, in a low voice. She felt almost hysterical in her effort not to laugh, not to betray how odd she found the whole situation, and the astonishing part of it was, to her, that the rest of the company sat so placidly in their places, engrossed in their talk and jokes, and seemed scarcely to have seen what had been going on in this particular corner.

‘To the kitchen,’ replied Hans, also betraying not the least surprise. ‘There is a new cook, the fifth in four months. He came yesterday, and he has probably made a frightful mess of something--tumbled the _compôte_ into the fire, or ruined the vegetables, or something, who knows? I do not wish to conceal any of our shortcomings--and they are many--from you.’

‘Into the kitchen!’ repeated Minna. ‘But isn’t there a Signora Dietrich?’

‘Of course there is. But she and Fulvia, the _bambina_, are away just now.’

‘So this poor gentleman is _facchino_ in ordinary, as well as manager,’ murmured Minna wonderingly. ‘What next?’

‘You’ve hit the right nail on the head when you say “this poor gentleman,”’ replied Hans in a rapid, discreetly low tone. ‘He’s a gentleman, and he’s poor, and----’

Here Signor Giuseppe reappeared, and went to his place, moving more calmly, perhaps, with a face white from inner excitement of some kind, probably painful. He seated himself in ominous silence. His lips moved a little, but no sound came from them. Once or twice he glanced, with eyes full of suppressed fire, towards the kitchen door. A great peace and silence now reigned in that region. Again no one seemed in the least struck by what had taken place. Again Minna felt a wild desire to burst into a peal of laughter, but happening just at that moment to glance towards Signor Giuseppe, she met his eyes fixed fully, and probably accidentally, on her face. Though he was looking at her, she did not feel as if he really saw her, and those eyes were full of such sadness, such despondency; over the whole face, still pale from recent excitement, there was a look of such resigned, all-enduring patience, that all her desire to laugh vanished away. Instead, she could have wept. She said nothing, but fixed her eyes firmly upon her plate, then, with an effort, turned to the German lady, and carried on a trifling conversation with her, until at last, to her intense relief, the company began to move, rising from their chairs and dispersing quickly.

‘I suppose you will want to go now, or very soon,’ said Hans Riemann to her.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Do you care to see the rooms, or not, after this specimen?’ he asked her in a low voice, with a half-laugh.

Minna paused perceptibly ere she replied. Should she come here or not? It was altogether very odd, and did not seem as if it would be very comfortable. Then she looked up, and saw that Signor Giuseppe was looking with the same piercing, almost suspicious, glance at her and Hans as they spoke together. She took her decision at once.

‘Yes, I think I will look at the rooms.’

‘Are you at liberty, Signor Giuseppe?’ asked Hans, in a matter-of-fact tone which jarred on Minna, though she felt it was ridiculous in her to think anything about it. After all, the man was the ‘manager,’ and was evidently heart and soul in his work.

‘At liberty for what?’ asked Signor Oriole, almost rudely.

‘Mrs. Hastings, you know, would like to see the rooms here, if you will kindly show her what you have disengaged.’

‘Ah, yes, yes!’ he said, as if remembering himself. Then, with a look upon his face expressive of extreme ill-temper, and dislike of everyone and everything in general, he said coldly:

‘This way, signora, if you will favour me so far.’