“But really, how did Rome strike you, on the whole?” asked the abbe.
“Well, I find it like a mixture of a monumental great city and a provincial capital.”
“That is possible,” responded the abbe. “Undoubtedly the provincial city is more of a city than the big modern capitals, where there is nothing to see but fine hotels on one hand and horrible hovels on the other. If you came from America, like me, you would see how agreeable you would find the impression of a city that one gets here. To forget all the geometry, the streets laid out with a compass, the right angles....”
“Probably so.”
The abbe seemed to have an interest in gaining Cæsar’s friendship. Cæsar said to him that, if he wished, they could go to his room to chat and smoke. The abbe accepted with gusto, and Cæsar, being a suspicious person, wondered if the Cardinal might have sent the abbe to find out what sort of man he was. Then he considered that his ideas must be of no importance whatsoever to his uncle; but on the chance, he set himself to throwing the abbé off the scent, talking volubly and emitting contradictory opinions about everything.
After chattering a long while and devoting himself to free paradox, Cæsar thought that for the first session he had not done altogether badly. Preciozi took leave, promising to come back the next day.
“If he reports our conversation to my uncle, the man won’t know what to think of me,” reflected Cæsar, on going to bed. “It would not be too much to expect, if His Eminence became interested and sent to fetch me. But I don’t believe he will; my uncle cannot be intelligent enough to have the curiosity to know a man like me.”
VI. THE LITTLE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE IN A ROMAN HOTEL. INTIMACIES
During some days the main interest of the people in the hotel was the growing intimacy established between the Marchesa Sciacca, who was the lady from Malta, and the Neapolitan with the Pulcinella air, Signor Carminatti.