I
The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters
of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is
this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona
you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"
In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during
the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The
ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with
rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples
with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the
Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the
staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp,
which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.
In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie
hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red
handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's
apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the
front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to
the roof.
In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a
young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of
six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a
comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was
a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion.
"Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to
the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'"
But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the
mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square.
"Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?"
"Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran
home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him."
"Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley
of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came
unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great
strength lieth....' But, mamma...."
"Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'"