Book: The Three Cities Trilogy: Rome, Complete

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THE THREE CITIES



ROME



BY

EMILE ZOLA



TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY



PREFACE

IN submitting to the English-speaking public this second volume of M.
Zola's trilogy "Lourdes, Rome, Paris," I have no prefatory remarks to
offer on behalf of the author, whose views on Rome, its past, present,
and future, will be found fully expounded in the following pages. That a
book of this character will, like its forerunner "Lourdes," provoke
considerable controversy is certain, but comment or rejoinder may well be
postponed until that controversy has arisen. At present then I only
desire to say, that in spite of the great labour which I have bestowed on
this translation, I am sensible of its shortcomings, and in a work of
such length, such intricacy, and such a wide range of subject, it will
not be surprising if some slips are discovered. Any errors which may be
pointed out to me, however, shall be rectified in subsequent editions. I
have given, I think, the whole essence of M. Zola's text; but he himself
has admitted to me that he has now and again allowed his pen to run away
with him, and thus whilst sacrificing nothing of his sense I have at
times abbreviated his phraseology so as slightly to condense the book. I
may add that there are no chapter headings in the original, and that the
circumstances under which the translation was made did not permit me to
supply any whilst it was passing through the press; however, as some
indication of the contents of the book--which treats of many more things
than are usually found in novels--may be a convenience to the reader, I
have prepared a table briefly epitomising the chief features of each
successive chapter.

E. A. V.

MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND,
April, 1896.



CONTENTS TO PART I

I
"NEW ROME"--Abbe Froment in the Eternal City--His First Impressions--His
Book and the Rejuvenation of Christianity

II
"BLACK MOUTH, RED SOUL"--The Boccaneras, their Mansion, Ancestors,
History, and Friends

III
ROMANS OF THE CHURCH--Cardinals Boccanera and Sanguinetti--Abbes
Paparelli and Santobono--Don Vigilio--Monsignor Nani



CONTENTS TO PART II

IV
ROMANS OF NEW ITALY--The Pradas and the Saccos--The Corso and the Pincio

V
THE BLOOD OF AUGUSTUS--The Palaces of the Caesars--The Capitol--The
Forum--The Appian Way--The Campagna--The Catacombs--St. Peter's.

VI
VENUS AND HERCULES--The Vatican--The Sixtine Chapel--Michael Angelo and
Raffaelle--Botticelli and Bernini--Gods and Goddesses--The Gardens--Leo
XIII--The Revolt of Passion



CONTENTS TO PART III

VII
PRINCE AND PONTIFF--The International Pilgrimage--The Papal Revenue--A
Function at St. Peter's--The Pope-King--The Temporal Power

VIII
THE POOR AND THE POPE--The Building Mania--The Financial Crash--The
Horrors of the Castle Fields--The Roman Workman--May Christ's Vicar
Gamble?--Hopes and Fears of the Papacy

IX
TITO's WARNING--Aspects of Rome--The Via Giulia--The Tiber by Day--The
Gardens--The Villa Medici---The Squares--The Fountains--Poussin and the
Campagna--The Campo Verano--The Trastevere--The "Palaces"--Aristocracy,
Middle Class, Democracy--The Tiber by Night



CONTENTS TO PART IV

X
FROM PILLAR TO POST--The Propaganda--The Index--Dominicans, Jesuits,
Franciscans--The Secular Clergy--Roman Worship--Freemasonry--Cardinal
Vicar and Cardinal Secretary--The Inquisition.

XI
POISON!--Frascati--A Cardinal and his Creature--Albano, Castel Gandolfo,
Nemi--Across the Campagna--An Osteria--Destiny on the March

XII
THE AGONY OF PASSION--A Roman Gala--The Buongiovannis--The Grey
World--The Triumph of Benedetta--King Humbert and Queen Margherita--The
Fig-tree of Judas

XIII
DESTINY!--A Happy Morning--The Mid-day Meal--Dario and the Figs--Extreme
Unction--Benedetta's Curse--The Lovers' Death



CONTENTS TO PART V

XIV
SUBMISSION--The Vatican by Night--The Papal Anterooms--Some Great
Popes--His Holiness's Bed-room--Pierre's Reception--Papal Wrath--Pierre's
Appeal--The Pope's Policy--Dogma and Lourdes--Pierre Reprobates his Book

XV
A HOUSE OF MOURNING--Lying in State--Mother and Son--Princess and
Work-girl--Nani the Jesuit--Rival Cardinals--The Pontiff of Destruction

XVI
JUDGMENT--Pierre and Orlando--Italian Rome--Wanted, a Democracy--Italy
and France--The Rome of the Anarchists--The Agony of Guilt--A
Botticelli--The Papacy Condemned--The Coming Schism--The March of
Science--The Destruction of Rome--The Victory of Reason--Justice not
Charity--Departure--The March of Civilisation--One Fatherland for All
Mankind



ROME



PART I



I

THE train had been greatly delayed during the night between Pisa and
Civita Vecchia, and it was close upon nine o'clock in the morning when,
after a fatiguing journey of twenty-five hours' duration, Abbe Pierre
Froment at last reached Rome. He had brought only a valise with him, and,
springing hastily out of the railway carriage amidst the scramble of the
arrival, he brushed the eager porters aside, intent on carrying his
trifling luggage himself, so anxious was he to reach his destination, to
be alone, and look around him. And almost immediately, on the Piazza dei
Cinquecento, in front of the railway station, he climbed into one of the
small open cabs ranged alongside the footwalk, and placed the valise near
him after giving the driver this address:

"Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera."*

* Boccanera mansion, Julia Street.

It was a Monday, the 3rd of September, a beautifully bright and mild
morning, with a clear sky overhead. The cabby, a plump little man with
sparkling eyes and white teeth, smiled on realising by Pierre's accent
that he had to deal with a French priest. Then he whipped up his lean
horse, and the vehicle started off at the rapid pace customary to the
clean and cheerful cabs of Rome. However, on reaching the Piazza delle
Terme, after skirting the greenery of a little public garden, the man
turned round, still smiling, and pointing to some ruins with his whip,

"The baths of Diocletian," said he in broken French, like an obliging
driver who is anxious to court favour with foreigners in order to secure
their custom.

Then, at a fast trot, the vehicle descended the rapid slope of the Via
Nazionale, which dips down from the summit of the Viminalis,* where the
railway station is situated. And from that moment the driver scarcely
ceased turning round and pointing at the monuments with his whip. In this
broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection.
Still, the wave of the cabman's whip became more pronounced and his voice
rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave
the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection
of stone, overladen with sculptured work-pediments and statues.

* One of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The other six
are the Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Esquiline, Coelian,
and Palatine. These names will perforce frequently occur in
the present narrative.

"The National Bank!" he said.

Pierre, however, during the week which had followed his resolve to make
the journey, had spent wellnigh every day in studying Roman topography in
maps and books. Thus he could have directed his steps to any given spot
without inquiring his way, and he anticipated most of the driver's
explanations. At the same time he was disconcerted by the sudden slopes,
the perpetually recurring hills, on which certain districts rose, house
above house, in terrace fashion. On his right-hand clumps of greenery
were now climbing a height, and above them stretched a long bare yellow
building of barrack or convent-like aspect.

"The Quirinal, the King's palace," said the driver.

Lower down, as the cab turned across a triangular square, Pierre, on
raising his eyes, was delighted to perceive a sort of aerial garden high
above him--a garden which was upheld by a lofty smooth wall, and whence
the elegant and vigorous silhouette of a parasol pine, many centuries
old, rose aloft into the limpid heavens. At this sight he realised all
the pride and grace of Rome.

"The Villa Aldobrandini," the cabman called.

Then, yet lower down, there came a fleeting vision which decisively
impassioned Pierre. The street again made a sudden bend, and in one
corner, beyond a short dim alley, there was a blazing gap of light. On a
lower level appeared a white square, a well of sunshine, filled with a
blinding golden dust; and amidst all that morning glory there arose a
gigantic marble column, gilt from base to summit on the side which the
sun in rising had laved with its beams for wellnigh eighteen hundred
years. And Pierre was surprised when the cabman told him the name of the
column, for in his mind he had never pictured it soaring aloft in such a
dazzling cavity with shadows all around. It was the column of Trajan.

The Via Nazionale turned for the last time at the foot of the slope. And
then other names fell hastily from the driver's lips as his horse went on
at a fast trot. There was the Palazzo Colonna, with its garden edged by
meagre cypresses; the Palazzo Torlonia, almost ripped open by recent
"improvements"; the Palazzo di Venezia, bare and fearsome, with its
crenelated walls, its stern and tragic appearance, that of some fortress
of the middle ages, forgotten there amidst the commonplace life of
nowadays. Pierre's surprise increased at the unexpected aspect which
certain buildings and streets presented; and the keenest blow of all was
dealt him when the cabman with his whip triumphantly called his attention
to the Corso, a long narrow thoroughfare, about as broad as Fleet
Street,* white with sunshine on the left, and black with shadows on the
right, whilst at the far end the Piazza del Popolo (the Square of the
People) showed like a bright star. Was this, then, the heart of the city,
the vaunted promenade, the street brimful of life, whither flowed all the
blood of Rome?

* M. Zola likens the Corso to the Rue St. Honore in Paris, but
I have thought that an English comparison would be preferable
in the present version.--Trans.

However, the cab was already entering the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which
follows the Via Nazionale, these being the two piercings effected right
across the olden city from the railway station to the bridge of St.
Angelo. On the left-hand the rounded apsis of the Gesu church looked
quite golden in the morning brightness. Then, between the church and the
heavy Altieri palace which the "improvers" had not dared to demolish, the
street became narrower, and one entered into cold, damp shade. But a
moment afterwards, before the facade of the Gesu, when the square was
reached, the sun again appeared, dazzling, throwing golden sheets of
light around; whilst afar off at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, steeped
in shadow, a glimpse could be caught of some sunlit palm-trees.

"That's the Capitol yonder," said the cabman.

The priest hastily leant to the left, but only espied the patch of
greenery at the end of the dim corridor-like street. The sudden
alternations of warm light and cold shade made him shiver. In front of
the Palazzo di Venezia, and in front of the Gesu, it had seemed to him as
if all the night of ancient times were falling icily upon his shoulders;
but at each fresh square, each broadening of the new thoroughfares, there
came a return to light, to the pleasant warmth and gaiety of life. The
yellow sunflashes, in falling from the house fronts, sharply outlined the
violescent shadows. Strips of sky, very blue and very benign, could be
perceived between the roofs. And it seemed to Pierre that the air he
breathed had a particular savour, which he could not yet quite define,
but it was like that of fruit, and increased the feverishness which had
possessed him ever since his arrival.

The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is, in spite of its irregularity, a very fine
modern thoroughfare; and for a time Pierre might have fancied himself in
any great city full of huge houses let out in flats. But when he passed
before the Cancelleria,* Bramante's masterpiece, the typical monument of
the Roman Renascence, his astonishment came back to him and his mind
returned to the mansions which he had previously espied, those bare,
huge, heavy edifices, those vast cubes of stone-work resembling hospitals
or prisons. Never would he have imagined that the famous Roman "palaces"
were like that, destitute of all grace and fancy and external
magnificence. However, they were considered very fine and must be so; he
would doubtless end by understanding things, but for that he would
require reflection.**

* Formerly the residence of the Papal Vice-Chancellors.

** It is as well to point out at once that a palazzo is not a
palace as we understand the term, but rather a mansion.--Trans.

All at once the cab turned out of the populous Corso Vittorio Emanuele
into a succession of winding alleys, through which it had difficulty in
making its way. Quietude and solitude now came back again; the olden
city, cold and somniferous, followed the new city with its bright
sunshine and its crowds. Pierre remembered the maps which he had
consulted, and realised that he was drawing near to the Via Giulia, and
thereupon his curiosity, which had been steadily increasing, augmented to
such a point that he suffered from it, full of despair at not seeing more
and learning more at once. In the feverish state in which he had found
himself ever since leaving the station, his astonishment at not finding
things such as he had expected, the many shocks that his imagination had
received, aggravated his passion beyond endurance, and brought him an
acute desire to satisfy himself immediately. Nine o'clock had struck but
a few minutes previously, he had the whole morning before him to repair
to the Boccanera palace, so why should he not at once drive to the
classic spot, the summit whence one perceives the whole of Rome spread
out upon her seven hills? And when once this thought had entered into his
mind it tortured him until he was at last compelled to yield to it.

The driver no longer turned his head, so that Pierre rose up to give him
this new address: "To San Pietro in Montorio!"

On hearing him the man at first looked astonished, unable to understand.
He indicated with his whip that San Pietro was yonder, far away. However,
as the priest insisted, he again smiled complacently, with a friendly nod
of his head. All right! For his own part he was quite willing.

The horse then went on at a more rapid pace through the maze of narrow
streets. One of these was pent between high walls, and the daylight
descended into it as into a deep trench. But at the end came a sudden
return to light, and the Tiber was crossed by the antique bridge of
Sixtus IV, right and left of which stretched the new quays, amidst the
ravages and fresh plaster-work of recent erections. On the other side of
the river the Trastevere district also was ripped open, and the vehicle
ascended the slope of the Janiculum by a broad thoroughfare where large
slabs bore the name of Garibaldi. For the last time the driver made a
gesture of good-natured pride as he named this triumphal route.

"Via Garibaldi!"

The horse had been obliged to slacken its pace, and Pierre, mastered by
childish impatience, turned round to look at the city as by degrees it
spread out and revealed itself behind him. The ascent was a long one;
fresh districts were ever rising up, even to the most distant hills.
Then, in the increasing emotion which made his heart beat, the young
priest felt that he was spoiling the contentment of his desire by thus
gradually satisfying it, slowly and but partially effecting his conquest
of the horizon. He wished to receive the shock full in the face, to
behold all Rome at one glance, to gather the holy city together, and
embrace the whole of it at one grasp. And thereupon he mustered
sufficient strength of mind to refrain from turning round any more, in
spite of the impulses of his whole being.

There is a spacious terrace on the summit of the incline. The church of
San Pietro in Montorio stands there, on the spot where, as some say, St.
Peter was crucified. The square is bare and brown, baked by the hot
summer suns; but a little further away in the rear, the clear and noisy
waters of the Acqua Paola fall bubbling from the three basins of a
monumental fountain amidst sempiternal freshness. And alongside the
terrace parapet, on the very crown of the Trastevere, there are always
rows of tourists, slim Englishmen and square-built Germans, agape with
traditional admiration, or consulting their guide-books in order to
identify the monuments.

Pierre sprang lightly from the cab, leaving his valise on the seat, and
making a sign to the driver, who went to join the row of waiting cabs,
and remained philosophically seated on his box in the full sunlight, his
head drooping like that of his horse, both resigning themselves to the
customary long stoppage.

Meantime Pierre, erect against the parapet, in his tight black cassock,
and with his bare feverish hands nervously clenched, was gazing before
him with all his eyes, with all his soul. Rome! Rome! the city of the
Caesars, the city of the Popes, the Eternal City which has twice
conquered the world, the predestined city of the glowing dream in which
he had indulged for months! At last it was before him, at last his eyes
beheld it! During the previous days some rainstorms had abated the
intense August heat, and on that lovely September morning the air had
freshened under the pale blue of the spotless far-spreading heavens. And
the Rome that Pierre beheld was a Rome steeped in mildness, a visionary
Rome which seemed to evaporate in the clear sunshine. A fine bluey haze,
scarcely perceptible, as delicate as gauze, hovered over the roofs of the
low-lying districts; whilst the vast Campagna, the distant hills, died
away in a pale pink flush. At first Pierre distinguished nothing, sought
no particular edifice or spot, but gave sight and soul alike to the whole
of Rome, to the living colossus spread out below him, on a soil
compounded of the dust of generations. Each century had renewed the
city's glory as with the sap of immortal youth. And that which struck
Pierre, that which made his heart leap within him, was that he found Rome
such as he had desired to find her, fresh and youthful, with a volatile,
almost incorporeal, gaiety of aspect, smiling as at the hope of a new
life in the pure dawn of a lovely day.

And standing motionless before the sublime vista, with his hands still
clenched and burning, Pierre in a few minutes again lived the last three
years of his life. Ah! what a terrible year had the first been, spent in
his little house at Neuilly, with doors and windows ever closed,
burrowing there like some wounded animal suffering unto death. He had
come back from Lourdes with his soul desolate, his heart bleeding, with
nought but ashes within him. Silence and darkness fell upon the ruins of
his love and his faith. Days and days went by, without a pulsation of his
veins, without the faintest gleam arising to brighten the gloom of his
abandonment. His life was a mechanical one; he awaited the necessary
courage to resume the tenor of existence in the name of sovereign reason,
which had imposed upon him the sacrifice of everything. Why was he not
stronger, more resistant, why did he not quietly adapt his life to his
new opinions? As he was unwilling to cast off his cassock, through
fidelity to the love of one and disgust of backsliding, why did he not
seek occupation in some science suited to a priest, such as astronomy or
archaeology? The truth was that something, doubtless his mother's spirit,
wept within him, an infinite, distracted love which nothing had yet
satisfied and which ever despaired of attaining contentment. Therein lay
the perpetual suffering of his solitude: beneath the lofty dignity of
reason regained, the wound still lingered, raw and bleeding.

One autumn evening, however, under a dismal rainy sky, chance brought him
into relations with an old priest, Abbe Rose, who was curate at the
church of Ste. Marguerite, in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He went to see
Abbe Rose in the Rue de Charonne, where in the depths of a damp ground
floor he had transformed three rooms into an asylum for abandoned
children, whom he picked up in the neighbouring streets. And from that
moment Pierre's life changed, a fresh and all-powerful source of interest
had entered into it, and by degrees he became the old priest's passionate
helper. It was a long way from Neuilly to the Rue de Charonne, and at
first he only made the journey twice a week. But afterwards he bestirred
himself every day, leaving home in the morning and not returning until
night. As the three rooms no longer sufficed for the asylum, he rented
the first floor of the house, reserving for himself a chamber in which
ultimately he often slept. And all his modest income was expended there,
in the prompt succouring of poor children; and the old priest, delighted,
touched to tears by the young devoted help which had come to him from
heaven, would often embrace Pierre, weeping, and call him a child of God.

It was then that Pierre knew want and wretchedness--wicked, abominable
wretchedness; then that he lived amidst it for two long years. The
acquaintance began with the poor little beings whom he picked up on the
pavements, or whom kind-hearted neighbours brought to him now that the
asylum was known in the district--little boys, little girls, tiny mites
stranded on the streets whilst their fathers and mothers were toiling,
drinking, or dying. The father had often disappeared, the mother had gone
wrong, drunkenness and debauchery had followed slack times into the home;
and then the brood was swept into the gutter, and the younger ones half
perished of cold and hunger on the footways, whilst their elders betook
themselves to courses of vice and crime. One evening Pierre rescued from
the wheels of a stone-dray two little nippers, brothers, who could not
even give him an address, tell him whence they had come. On another
evening he returned to the asylum with a little girl in his arms, a
fair-haired little angel, barely three years old, whom he had found on a
bench, and who sobbed, saying that her mother had left her there. And by
a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless,
pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the
parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further
into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its
frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish
and impotent charity.

Oh! the grievous City of Misery, the bottomless abyss of human suffering
and degradation--how frightful were his journeys through it during those
two years which distracted his whole being! In that Ste. Marguerite
district of Paris, in the very heart of that Faubourg St. Antoine, so
active and so brave for work, however hard, he discovered no end of
sordid dwellings, whole lanes and alleys of hovels without light or air,
cellar-like in their dampness, and where a multitude of wretches wallowed
and suffered as from poison. All the way up the shaky staircases one's
feet slipped upon filth. On every story there was the same destitution,
dirt, and promiscuity. Many windows were paneless, and in swept the wind
howling, and the rain pouring torrentially. Many of the inmates slept on
the bare tiled floors, never unclothing themselves. There was neither
furniture nor linen, the life led there was essentially an animal life, a
commingling of either sex and of every age--humanity lapsing into
animality through lack of even indispensable things, through indigence of
so complete a character that men, women, and children fought even with
tooth and nail for the very crumbs swept from the tables of the rich. And
the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no
case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the
primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness,
with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled,
amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of
the queens of the world.

In every household Pierre heard the same story. There had been youth and
gaiety at the outset, brave acceptance of the law that one must work.
Then weariness had come; what was the use of always toiling if one were
never to get rich? And so, by way of snatching a share of happiness, the
husband turned to drink; the wife neglected her home, also drinking at
times, and letting the children grow up as they might. Sordid
surroundings, ignorance, and overcrowding did the rest. In the great
majority of cases, prolonged lack of work was mostly to blame; for this
not only empties the drawers of the savings hidden away in them, but
exhausts human courage, and tends to confirmed habits of idleness. During
long weeks the workshops empty, and the arms of the toilers lose
strength. In all Paris, so feverishly inclined to action, it is
impossible to find the slightest thing to do. And then the husband comes
home in the evening with tearful eyes, having vainly offered his arms
everywhere, having failed even to get a job at street-sweeping, for that
employment is much sought after, and to secure it one needs influence and
protectors. Is it not monstrous to see a man seeking work that he may
eat, and finding no work and therefore no food in this great city
resplendent and resonant with wealth? The wife does not eat, the children
do not eat. And then comes black famine, brutishness, and finally revolt
and the snapping of all social ties under the frightful injustice meted
out to poor beings who by their weakness are condemned to death. And the
old workman, he whose limbs have been worn out by half a century of hard
toil, without possibility of saving a copper, on what pallet of agony, in
what dark hole must he not sink to die? Should he then be finished off
with a mallet, like a crippled beast of burden, on the day when ceasing
to work he also ceases to eat? Almost all pass away in the hospitals,
others disappear, unknown, swept off by the muddy flow of the streets.
One morning, on some rotten straw in a loathsome hovel, Pierre found a
poor devil who had died of hunger and had been forgotten there for a
week. The rats had devoured his face.

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