CHAPTER VI.

‘Oh!’ replied Minna hastily, ‘I have never done anything worth speaking of, or calling work. People who wish to imagine that they are sculptors should not come to Rome. It is the last place in the world for them to be happy in.’

‘But you are surely working at something now?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Già,’ she said discontentedly.

‘You have bent me to your wish,’ he said; ‘will you not now bend to mine, and let me see something? It would, moreover, appear odd to people who should hear that I have been at your studio, but seen none of your work.’

‘You are a critic. You are a connoisseur in these things,’ she said; ‘I know it from many things I have heard you say--such just remarks! That was when I was afraid to speak to you.’

‘And you are afraid of my criticism! If you have anything of the true artist in you, you ought rather to welcome it.’

‘Yes, you are right. Very well. Pray come this way. Say the worst you think about it. I dare say it will be only what I deserve.’

She rose, took the lamp in one hand, and a screen in the other to control the light, and led the way into her studio.

She had not yet wrapped up the clay figure on which she was engaged, but had merely thrown a cloth over it until she should be ready to go. She placed the lamp on a table, saying:

‘This is all I can show you. The others are worth nothing.’

‘One moment, signora. Let me judge for myself,’ said he, and, taking the lamp into his hand, he went round the room, looking at first one thing and then another, saying, now and then, ‘This is a copy. That you invented for yourself, did you not?’ to which Minna usually found she had to reply, ‘Yes.’

He made no comment on any of the work, which annoyed her very much; she was convinced he was filled with contempt for it. She tried to reconcile herself to the situation by telling herself that, after what had passed between them, she owed it to him to let him see her work, and say anything or nothing, as he might think fit.

When he had gone the round of the room, he turned to her, saying:

‘And now for the _capo d’opera_. So far, it seems to me, you have not patience enough to finish anything. You begin your thought, but you do not carry it through.’

‘Don’t expect a _capo d’opera_,’ she said. ‘It may be worse than all the rest. I only know it interests me the most. If you will take hold of the cloth at that side, we can lift it off.’

They removed the covering from the figure, and the unfinished work stood revealed. Minna’s heart was beating fast. He stood and looked at the figure, and she, standing near him, tried to put herself, as it were, outside herself, and judge of it as an intelligent outsider might have done. The effort was useless, of course. She only succeeded in confusing herself and coming to no conclusion.

Meantime, the work at which they looked was this: a nearly life-size figure of a young man, somewhat above middle height, but not very tall. His dress--what there was of it--was the dress of a nineteenth-century working man; in this case, of an Italian working man. That is to say, he had on something between a _culotte_ and trousers, short and rather loose, of some thinnish linen, summer stuff, bound round his waist with a leathern belt. His shirt had been taken off and was cast in a little heap on the ground beside him. His sinewy naked feet seemed to clasp the ground on which he stood, which ground was strewn with bits of rough stone or pebble; he was standing erect; his right hand grasped the handle of a stout shovel, the spade part of which was half sunk in a heap of cindery-looking substance. His left arm was raised and crooked; the hand drooped somewhat in a peculiar way, with its back turned towards his forehead. The action was unmistakable: he had been wiping the sweat from his forehead, and the face of this figure, with the eyes raised, the head lifted, in the act of one who has suddenly paused for an instant in a piece of long-continued, strenuous labour, was filled with an expression of strength, resolution, energy, and at the same time of patient endurance, which was magnificently conveyed.

It was not a particularly Italian face--that is, though an Italian had served for its model, he had been one of the fair-haired, clear-complexioned, blue-eyed men whom one encounters, not unfrequently, but always with a thrill of surprise, in all parts of Italy, especially in Rome or its surrounding country, in the most unexpected way, amidst the swarthy children of a blazing sun and a fertile earth. There was nothing particularly Southern any more than particularly Northern in its features: there was a broad, rather rugged forehead; level eyebrows; a nose of no particular order, unless it might be called truculent; a mouth whose lips were hidden somewhat under a little rough moustache; the expression was the expression of the labouring man, full of life and strength, and not averse to his work, all the world over.

Signor Giuseppe stood quite still for what seemed to Minna a very long time, gazing in absolute silence at this figure, measuring it from head to foot in its strength, its vigour, earnestness, and even brutality.

At last, ‘That is your own--all your own?’ he asked.

‘Yes--and yet no; nothing is quite our own. It was just a coincidence that brought it about.’

‘Tell me about it. But first let me guess. It is hardly finished enough yet to tell its own tale clearly. He is a working man with a spade. He has been pausing in his work and wiping his brow. What is that stuff into which he has been digging?’

‘Coal--engine coal,’ said Minna rather nervously.

‘Ah-h!’ Signor Giuseppe nodded his head. ‘Coal--bene! Well, what is to become of the coal?’

‘Here,’ said Minna, pointing to a lump of clay as yet shapeless, near to which the workman’s shirt was cast on the ground--‘here is to be--when it is done--one of those strong coarse wicker baskets which he is filling with coal. Each basket, when it is filled, will be carried to the tender of the locomotive and emptied into it. He is the stoker. He is helping because there is haste. I saw it one day when I was rambling about near the station. I had turned aside to have a look at my favourite bit of the Agger of Servius which is preserved there; you know, signore, what I mean: I may as well confess my debts. A writer of my country, a celebrated historian, who also loves very much many things connected with your country, has written, amongst other things, a little article on “The Walls of Rome,” which I have read so often that I almost know it by heart. Are you tired, or do you want to hear the whole history of this figure?’

‘I want to hear it all. Tell me about it.’

Minna took up a volume, bearing traces of having been much read, which lay on a stool near her work. It was the ‘Historical and Architectural Sketches’ of Freeman, and it opened of itself at the place she spoke of. She read, translating rapidly into Italian as she did so.

‘This bit is from a sketch called “Mons Sacer,”’ she said; ‘it is not the one about the walls. He says: “We set out along the Via Nomentana; we pass by the gimcrack Colosseum of the Prince; we pass by the two churches which have fared in such opposite ways at infallible hands; we ask ourselves the purpose of the ruin which stands in their close neighbourhood, and which, like so many others, bears the name of Maxentius. But this time we do not turn back when we have reached the basilica.... We are seeking a spot which tells us of days when as yet Rome had no prince but her Princeps Senatus; no pontiff but the head of the religion of Jupiter and Minerva. But before we altogether cast the modern world behind us, we are forcibly reminded of its presence as we cross the modern substitute for Appian and Flaminian Ways, the network of railways which carry out the saying that all roads lead to Rome. Nor is the reminder out of place,”’ Minna read slowly, and with emphasis; ‘“the great works of ancient and modern engineering skill have much in common. There is a likeness sometimes in their actual appearance--always in the mighty spirit of enterprise, the boundless command of physical resources, which is common to both and unknown to intermediate ages.”’

She paused and looked at him, half closing the book. His eyes gleamed with delight.

‘Bene, bene!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who is this man, this splendid fellow? I could embrace him. No whining over modern progress as destructive of ancient grandeur. This man takes hold of the thing at the right end.’

‘Oh, there is plenty of abuse--of things and people he doesn’t like!’ said Minna, laughing, and feeling excited and pleased. ‘Popes, for instance; and Barberini and Borghesi meet with short shrift from him.’

‘All the better; that is still more after my own heart. If he had included kings and princes in the list, better still. But go on!’

‘Well, you will understand that, knowing all this writing as I do, the very words of it went through my mind as I stood leaning against a railing near the siding at the railway-station, and looking at that bit of the Agger inside it, and thinking of the ancient engineering works and of what Freeman says about this weakest corner of the city; weakest by nature, made specially strong by art. “Here, on the eastern side, where there was no river to embank, no cliff to scarp, ran the mighty Agger of Servius Tullius ... within the line of the Agger and defended by a vast hornwork stood the Colline Gate.... Here was the natural point of attack for every enemy.... Through the Colline Gate the revolted army came back to overthrow the tyranny of the Decemvirs. Over the Colline Gate, so the tale ran, Hannibal hurled his spear--a tale wild enough, but one which still shows at which point men looked for Hannibal to have entered Rome if he had entered it at all. And it was by the Colline Gate that Rome fought her last battle for her being against Italian enemies. It was there that Scilla saved her when the last Pontius came to root up the wood which sheltered the wolves that so long had ravaged Italy. On that day Rome fought, not for dominion, but for life; she had not to fight for life again till the Colline Gate and the Servian Agger had passed away, and till Rome had found that she needed new ramparts to shield her from new enemies.”’

‘Ai--i,’ came like a long sigh from Signor Giuseppe’s lips; his eyes, his thoughts were far away. These words had roused again that passion for his country and for her freedom which had been so intense--he lived through his former struggles; he fought his battles o’er again.

‘Just then,’ said Minna, taking up her own narrative again, ‘while I was thinking about all this, my eye fell upon an engine and tender in the siding. There was the engine-driver, seated on a log of wood, eating his supper; there was a boy, and there was a young man who was the stoker, and they were talking. You see, I understand what they say. I am better off than so many people who come here. There was some discussion about coals being loaded into the tender. Someone who ought to have been there then, helping, had not come, and there was some haste. Suddenly this young man sprang up, seized a shovel, and fell to upon the work. He got hot, he threw his shirt off, and worked with a sort of fury. The sweat poured from him. The boy was working no less vigorously, seizing the baskets and emptying them into the coal place on the tender. I wished I could help them. They were splendid. Then all at once this fellow stopped short, wiped his brow with his hand, and stood still as you see him here. As he looked then, it seemed to me that his pose was almost classical. For all his energy, there was real rest and repose in the attitude. There flashed into my mind a recollection of that figure of the ‘Chariot-driver’ in the _Sala della Biga_ at the Vatican--you remember?’

He nodded.

‘A handsome lad, isn’t he? in all his elegant trappings, even if it isn’t very precious as a work of art. He stands there with great calm and self-possession, looking cool and comfortable; but all the same one knows, one feels, that sometimes he must have had to exert himself pretty hard, guiding his team of four or six, perhaps, or racing in grim earnest round the amphitheatre, amidst the cheers and howls of the greens and blues. He did not always look so cool and comfortable. I don’t know how my thoughts followed one another, but suddenly there it was--the connection, the analogue--that marble boy in the Vatican, and these, the real chariot-drivers of to-day, with their surroundings. I had always felt that there are things to-day as suited to be put into marble or bronze, and to live as records of our times, as there were in those other days which we study with such interest and delight. Only I had never been quite able to hit upon the exact thing that I wanted. Here it was, I thought--one instance of it, at any rate. The thought in my mind was a grand and beautiful one. I fell to work at once, in a fever of delight; then came doubts and difficulties, and that is all the result--all there is to show for it.’

She looked dejectedly at the figure.

‘All,’ echoed Signor Giuseppe, and then continued in tones of decision; ‘it contains the material for a very good “all.” Defy that feeling of discouragement. Work it out to the best of your power. You will never be satisfied with it; what artist ever was satisfied with his own embodiment of his own thought? But it has original power, it is distinctly a work of art; it has a right to live, to fulfil its mission of being exposed to view and giving pleasure and wakening thought in others. You say there was something classical in the young man’s pose as he paused in his toil. Well, as your work stands now, you have succeeded in conveying that classical quality into this work of to-day. It is the rarest good-fortune. You need wish for no higher praise than that, and I give it you confidently because I know what I am talking about.’

‘I cannot believe it. It seems impossible,’ said Minna, whose eyes were shining and whose heart was beating.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whether you believe or not, it is so. What do you intend to call it?’

‘I have thought of a great many names. The one that displeases me the least is simply the words “In the sweat of thy brow”--with “Roma” and the date when--if ever--it is finished. What do you think?’

She was astonished to find herself giving him such confidences; it was generally almost impossible for her to talk about her work.

‘Good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Don’t admit the idea of any other name into your mind. That fits it. That will do. Don’t soften it down, either the work or the name. There is a tinge of ferocity underlying all its repose. That is what gives it its character.’

‘You’ll turn my head with such praise.’

‘Che! Where did you get hold of the model for it?’

‘Oh, I was lucky in that. A young man to whose mother I had done some little kindnesses came and stood for it. He was glad of the money and interested in the whole thing; and there was a vast difference between him and the professional ones who lounge about on the Spanish Steps.’

‘Then, this face is not the face of the man you originally saw, when the idea occurred to you?’

‘No. That man was swarthy and black-browed--an unmistakable Italian. This, as you may guess, is one of the fair-haired, light-complexioned men whom I might see without surprise working on my brother’s land, or digging in my own garden, at home. But I thought it was so much the better. It is meant quite as much to be expressive of to-day, of work in general, as of Italy, so I did not see the need of having a purely Italian type.’

‘No; you were right,’ said Signor Giuseppe, helping her to envelop the figure again it its damp cloths. ‘I congratulate you,’ he added very gently, in a voice that shook Minna’s feelings somewhat. ‘Once,’ he added, ‘I thought of devoting myself to art. But there were obstacles in the way. I had to drop it. I had not time for even the least attempts at such a thing.’

They went back into the sitting-room, and Minna began to put on her bonnet.

‘Do you drive?’ he asked, ‘or may I escort you to the house?’

‘I will walk if you will walk with me,’ replied Minna; and in a minute or two she had locked the door behind her, and they were going downstairs.

It was a mild and beautiful night, and they went slowly along the lighted streets and glittering _piazze_ towards Casa Dietrich. Rome was awake and alive, as she always begins to be about that hour. It is true, the turmoil never ceases for a moment throughout the day; but it is at night that the particularly vivid, eager life starts up, that crowds most do throng the streets, and pour in and out of the cafés, the faces gleam keener, and wit flows more freely, and gesticulation is more animated, and the cries are shriller of those who call newspapers and matches and sermons of fashionable preachers, and sponges and crockery, and miscellaneous toys and goods of every description, as well as the thousand other things which are hawked through Roman streets by stentorian Roman lungs.

Ever more piercing, ever more confounding to a sensitive set of nerves, ever more delightful and inspiring, do they grow to this wondrous race, which, while brimming over with life and eagerness and nervous force, yet seem to be sublimely ignorant of the existence of nerves in the sense of having them to be pained and wearied. It is unknown how many hours of sleep the average Roman extracts from the twenty-four, but probably fewer than the inhabitants of any other place in the world.

Minna knew the turmoil, the tumult, and the excitement, and loved them. They came to her ever fresh, ever interesting, ever inspiring. She loved them alike in these winter nights, in the spring evenings, and late in summer nights, when the mighty world-city with its great mystery had been during the burning hours of the day quelled into silence, but at night rose up, and, as it were, adorned herself and said, ‘I will go forth and wander in my gardens, and sit in my places of entertainment, and rest beside my fountains, and listen to the mirth of my children, for life is good.’ She loved it all, and loved to be in it. And as she and Signor Giuseppe paced slowly along on their way from her studio to the house, she tried to explain to him some of this feeling that she had, and some of the emotions which the spectacle of this mighty and throbbing life roused in her.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is dear to me, too. You think it noisy, as all foreigners do, disturbing, clashing, shrill. Yet I often come and wander about in it, to find quiet and peace. Then I study it, and every time I study it it twines itself more firmly about my heart. The roots of my love for it strike deeper and more inextricably into my being. Sometimes I see its tragic side most plainly, sometimes its happier one, but always it is wonderful and fascinating and indescribable, as it always must be for those who can see more than the mere outside. My city was once the mistress of the world. Times are changed since then; she is barely mistress of herself now that she has choked and strangled the power of her tyrants. But she has done it, and that power will never lift its head again. I know that the same spirit is still in my countrymen as was in them when that was built.’ He looked up at the Pantheon, beside which they now emerged from a side-street.

In less than five minutes they had climbed the stairs of Casa Dietrich, and stood within the hall. From the drawing-room was coming the usual evening clatter. On the hall-table stood a kind of infernal machine, miscalled a musical box, which, on being as it were fed with circular pieces of cardboard, riddled with holes and labelled with the names of different tunes--and on a handle being turned, ground forth the semblance of the said tunes. It formed an unfailing source of delight and recreation to at any rate the Italian portion of the company, one of whom was even now industriously turning the handle and producing a feeble and distorted version of the ‘Beautiful blue Danube’ waltzes--a performance which it made Minna shudder to hear.

When the Italian boy saw them he waved his disengaged hand gaily, wished them good-evening, and asked if the music was not charming. In a distant dark corner a figure was gyrating gracefully all alone, humming the notes of the air. As they advanced into the hall, its movements ceased, it also came forward, smiling, and undulating still in its walk--it was the fallen patrician Ettore, who bowed himself before them, saying gently:

‘With the permission of the signorina yonder, I was diverting myself and practising my dancing at the same time. I also wished to be on the spot when the Signor Oriole should return, in order to tell him that the signora and the Signorina Fulvia arrived an hour ago, and desired to speak to him the instant he came in.’

‘The signora has returned,’ repeated Signor Giuseppe, in a tone almost of bewilderment; and then, suddenly recovering himself:

‘Bene, bene! I will be with her in a moment.’

He turned to Minna with a face to which had returned, as she at once saw, all its old look of vexation and discontent, and with an effort wished her good-night. Then, as if wishful to get a bad business over as quickly as might be, he strode off in the direction of Signora Dietrich’s room, leaving Minna to go her own way.