Caesar or Nothing by Pio Baroja

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"He is a Sicilian," Mlle. Cadet told Caesar; "behind us here they are
saying rather curious things about the two of them."

The Countess Brenda's daughter was magnificent, with her milk-white
skin, and her arms visible through gauze. Despite her beauty she didn't
count many admirers; she was too insipid, and the majority of the young
men turned with greater enthusiasm to the married women and to those of
a very provocative type.

Mlle. de Sandoval, the most sought after of all, didn't wish to dance.

"My daughter is really very stiff," Mme. Dawson remarked. "Spanish women
are like that."

"Yes, they often are," said Caesar.

Among all these Italians, who were rather theatrical and ridiculous,
insincere and exaggerated, but who had great pliancy and great agility
in their movements and their expression, there was one German family,
consisting of several persons: a married couple with sons and daughters
who seemed to be all made from one piece, cut from the same block. While
the rest were busy with the little incidents of the ball, they were
talking about the Baths of Caracalla, the aqueducts, the Colosseum. The
father, the mother, and the children repeated their lesson in Roman
archeology, which they had learned splendidly.

"What very absurd people they are," murmured Caesar, watching them.

"Why?" said Mlle. de Sandoval.

"It appeals to these Germans as their duty to make one parcel of
everything artistic there is in a country and swallow it whole; which
seems to an ignoramus like me, a stupid piece of pretentiousness. The
French, on the contrary, are on more solid ground; they don't understand
anything that is not French, and they travel to have the pleasure of
saying that Paris is the finest thing on earth."

"It's great luck to be so perfect as you are," retorted Mlle. de
Sandoval, violently, "you can see other people's faults so clearly."

"You mistake," replied Caesar, coldly, "I do not rely on my own good
qualities to enable me to speak badly of others."

"Then what do you rely on?"

"On my defects."

"Ah, have you defects? Do you admit it?"

"I not only admit it, but I take pride in having them."

Mlle. de Sandoval turned her head away contemptuously; the twist Caesar
gave to her questions appeared to irritate her.

"Mlle. de Sandoval doesn't like me much," said Caesar to Mlle. Cadet.

"No? She generally says nice things about you."

"Perhaps my clothes appeal to her, or the way I tie my cravat; but my
ideas displease her."

"Because you say such severe things."

"Why do you say that at this moment? Because I spoke disparagingly of
those Germans? Are they attractive to you?"

"Oh, no! Not at all."

"They look like hunting dogs." "But whom do you approve of? The
English?"

"Not the English, either. They are a herd of cattle; sentimental,
ridiculous people who are in ecstatics over their aristocracy and over
their king. Latin peoples are something like cats, they are of the
feline race; a Frenchman is like a fat, well-fed cat; an Italian is like
an old Angora which has kept its beautiful fur; and the Spaniard is like
the cats on a roof, skinny, bare of fur, almost too weak to howl with
despair and hunger.... Then there are the ophidians, the Jews, the
Greeks, the Armenians...."

"Then for you the world is a zoological garden?"

"Well, isn't it?"

At midnight they tried to break the glass jar of bonbons. They
blindfolded various men, and one by one they made them turn around a
couple of times and then try to break the jar with a stick.

It was the Marquis Sciacca that did break the glass vase, and the pieces
fell on his head.

"Have you hurt yourself?" people asked him.

"No," said Caesar, reassuringly, but aside; "his head is protected."

_CHIROMANTIC INTERLUDE_

After this cornucopia number, there was a series of other games and
amusements, which required a hand-glass, a candle, and a bottle. The
conversation in Mlle. de Sandoval's group jumped from one thing to
another and finally arrived at palmistry.

Mlle. de Sandoval asked Caesar if he, as a Spaniard, knew how to tell
fortunes by the hand, and he jokingly replied that he did. Three or
four hands were stretched out toward Caesar, and he said whatsoever his
imagination suggested, foolishness, absurdities, impertinences; a little
of everything.

When anybody was a bit puzzled at Caesar's words, he said:

"Don't pay any attention to it; these are absurdities."

Afterwards Mlle. Cadet told Caesar that she was going to cast his
horoscope. "Good! Out with it."

The governess, who was clever, studied Caesar's hand and expressed
herself in sibylline terms:

"You have something of everything, a little of some things and a great
deal of others; you are not a harmonious individual."

"No?"

"No. You are very intelligent."

"Thank you."

"Let the sibyl talk," said the Sandoval girl.

"You have a strong sense of logic," the governess went on.

"That's possible."

"You are good and bad! You have much imagination and very little; you
are at the same time very brave and very timid. You have a loving
nature, but it is asleep, and little will-power."

"Little and ... a great deal," said Caesar.

"No, little."

"Do you believe that I have little will-power?"

"I am telling you what your hand says."

"Look here. My hand's opinion doesn't interest me so much as yours,
because you are an intelligent woman. Do you believe I have no
will-power?"

"A sibyl doesn't discuss her affirmations."

"Now you are worried about your lack of will-power," said Mlle. de
Sandoval, mockingly.

"Yes, I am, a bit."

"Well, I think you have will-power enough," she retorted; "what you do
lack is a little more amiability."

"Fortunately for you and for me, you are not so perspicacious in
psychology as this young lady."

"I don't expect to earn my living telling fortunes."

"I don't believe this young lady expects to, either. You have told me
what I am," Caesar pursued; "now tell me what is going to happen to me."

"Let me look," said Mlle. Cadet; "close your hand. You will make a
journey." "Very good! I like that."

"You will get into a desperate struggle...."

"I like that, too."

"And you will win, and you will be defeated...."

"I don't like that so much."

Mile. Cadet could not give other details. Her sibylline science extended
no further. During this chiromantic interlude, the dancing kept up,
until finally, about three in the morning, the party ended.

XI

A SOUNDING-LINE IN THE DARK WORLD

_THE ADVICE OF TWO ABBÉS_

The Abbé Preciozi several times advised Caesar to make a new attempt at
a reconciliation with the Cardinal; but Caesar always refused.

"He is a man incapable of understanding me," he would insist with naïve
arrogance.

Preciozi felt a great liking for his new friend, who invited him to
meals at good hotels and treated him very frequently. Almost every
morning he went to call on Caesar on one pretext or another, and they
would go for a walk and chat about various things.

Preciozi was beginning to believe that his friend was a man with a
future. Some explanations that Caesar gave him about the mechanism of
the stock-exchange convinced the abbé that he was in the presence of a
great financier.

Preciozi talked to all his friends and acquaintances about Cardinal
Fort's nephew, picturing him as an extraordinary man; some took these
praises as a joke; others thought that it was really very possible that
the Spaniard had great talent; only one abbé, who was a teacher in a
college, felt a desire to meet the Cardinal's nephew, and Preciozi
introduced him to Caesar.

This abbé was named Cittadella, and he was fat, rosy, and blond; he
looked more like a singer than a priest.

Caesar invited the two abbés to dine at a restaurant and requested
Preciozi to do the ordering.

"So you are a nephew of Cardinal Fort's?" asked Cittadella. "Yes."

"His own nephew?"

"His own nephew; son of his sister."

"And he hasn't done anything for you?"

"Nothing."

"It's a pity. He is a man of great influence, of great talent."

"Influence, I believe; talent, I doubt," said Caesar.

"Oh, no, no! He is an intelligent man."

"But I have heard that his _Theological Commentaries_ is absolutely
absurd."

"No, no."

"A crude, banal book, full of stupidities...."

"_Macché_!" exclaimed the indignant Preciozi, neglecting the culinary
conflict he was engaged in.

"All right. It makes no difference," replied Caesar, smiling. "Whether
he is a famous man, as you two say, or a blockhead, as I think, the fact
remains that my uncle doesn't wish to have anything to do with me."

"You must have done something to him," said Cittadella.

"No; the only thing is that when I was small they told me the Cardinal
wished me to be a priest, and I answered that I didn't care to be."

"And why so?"

"It seems to me a poor job. It's evident that one doesn't make much at
it."

Cittadella sighed.

"Yes, and what's more," Preciozi put in, "this gentleman says to anybody
who cares to listen, that religion is a farce, that Catholicism is like
a dish of Jewish meat with Roman sauce. Is it possible that a Cardinal
should bother about a nephew that talks like that?"

The Abbé Cittadella looked very serious and remarked that it is
necessary to believe, or at least to seem to believe, in the truths of
religion.

"Is the Cardinal supposed to have money?" asked Caesar.

"Yes, I should say he is," replied Preciozi. "Your sister and you will
be the only heirs," said Cittadella.

"Of course," agreed Preciozi.

"Has he made a will?" asked Caesar.

"All the better if he hasn't," said one of the abbés.

"If we could only poison him," sighed Caesar, with melancholy.

"Don't talk of such things just as we are going to eat," said Preciozi.

The dinner was brought, and the two abbés did it the honour it deserved.

Preciozi deserved congratulations for his excellent selection. They
ordered good wines and drank merry toasts.

"What an admirable secretary Preciozi would be, if I got to be a
personage!" exclaimed Caesar. "Twenty thousand francs or so salary, his
board, and the duty of choosing the dinner for the next day. That's my
proposal."

The abbé blushed with pleasure, emptied his glass of wine, and murmured:

"If it depended on me!"

"The fact is that the way things are arranged today is no good," said
Caesar. "A hundred years ago, by the mere fact of being a Cardinal's
nephew, I should have been somebody."

"That's true," exclaimed Preciozi.

"And as I should have no scruples, and neither would you two, we would
have plunged into life strenuously, and sacked Rome, and the whole world
would be ours."

"You talk like a Caesar Borgia," said Preciozi, aroused. "You are a true
Spaniard."

"Today one must have something to stand on," said Cittadella, coldly.

"Friend Cittadella," retorted Caesar, "I, as you see me here, am the man
who knows the most about financial matters in all Spain, and I believe I
shall soon get to where I can say, in all Europe. I put my knowledge at
the service of whoever pays me. I am like one of your old _condottieri_,
a mercenary general. I am ready to win battles for the Jewish bank, or
against the Jewish bank, for the Church or against the Church."

"For the Church is better. Against the Church we cannot assist you,"
said Preciozi.

"I will try first, for the Church. To whom can you recommend me first?"

The two abbés said nothing, and drank in silence.

"Perhaps Verry would see him," said Cittadella.

"Hm! ..." replied Preciozi. "I rather doubt it."

"What sort of a party is he?" asked Caesar.

"He is one of those _prelati_ that come out of the College of Nobles,"
said Cittadella, "and who get on, even if they are no good. Here they
consider him a haughty Spaniard; they blame him for wearing his robes,
and for always taking an automobile when he goes to Castel Gandolfo. The
priests hate him because he is a Jesuit and a Spaniard."

"And wherein does his strength lie?"

"In the Society, and in his knowing several languages. He was educated
in England."

"From what you two tell me of him, he gives me the impression of a
fatuous person."

A bottle of champagne was brought in and the three of them drank,
toasting and touching glasses.

"If I were in your place," said Cittadella, after thinking a long while,
"I shouldn't try to get at people in high places, but people who are
inconspicuous and yet have influence in your country."

"For instance...."

"For instance, Father Herreros, at the convent in Trastevere."

"And Father Miró too," added Preciozi, "and if you could talk to Father
Ferrer, of the Gregorian University, it wouldn't be a bad idea."

"That will be more difficult," said Cittadella.

"You could tell them," Preciozi suggested, "that your uncle the Cardinal
sent you, and hint that he doesn't want anybody to know that he is
backing you." "And if somebody should write to my uncle?"

"You mustn't say anything definite. You must speak ambiguously. Besides,
in case they did write, we would fix it up in the office."

Caesar began to laugh naïvely. Afterwards, the two abbés, a little
excited by the food and the good wine, started in to have a violent
discussion, speaking Italian. Caesar paid the bill, and pretending that
he had an urgent engagement, took leave of them and went out.

_A SPANISH MONK_

The next day Caesar went to look up Father Herreros. He had not yet
succeeded in forming a plan. His only idea was to see if he could take
advantage of some chance: to follow a scent and be on the alert, in case
something new should start up on one side or the other.

Father Herreros lived in a convent in Trastevere. Caesar took the tram
in the Piazza Venezia, and got out after crossing the Tiber, near the
Via delle Fratte.

He soon found the convent; it had a yellow portal with a Latin
inscription which sang the gymnastic glories of Saint Pascual Bailón.
Above the inscription there was a picture, in which a monk, no doubt
Bailón, was dancing among the clouds.

On the lintel of the gate were the arms of Spain, and at the sides, two
medallions bearing hands wounded in the palm.

The convent door was old and quartered. Caesar knocked.

A lay-brother, with a suspicious glance, came out to admit him, told him
to wait, and left him alone. After some while, he came back and asked
him to follow him.

They went down a small passage and up a staircase, which was at the
end, and then along a corridor on the main floor. On one side of this
corridor, in his cell, they found Father Herreros.

Caesar, after bowing and introducing himself, sat down, as the monk
asked him to do, in a chair with its back to the light. Caesar began to
explain why he had come, and as he had prepared what he was going to
say, he employed his attention, while speaking, on the cage and the kind
of big bird which were before his eyes.

Father Herreros had a big rough head, black heavy eyebrows, a short
nose, an enormous mouth, yellow teeth, and grey hair. He wore a
chocolate-coloured robe, open enough to show his whole neck down to his
chest. The movement of the good monk's lips was that of a man who wished
to pass for keen and insinuating. His robe was dirty and he doubtless
had the habit of leaving cigarette stubs on the table.

The cell had one window, and in front of it a bookcase. Caesar made an
effort to read the titles. They were almost all Latin books, the kind
that nobody reads.

Father Herreros began to ask Caesar questions. In his brain, he was
doubtless wondering why Cardinal Fort's nephew should come to him.

After many useless words they got to the concrete point that Caesar
wanted to take up, Father Herreros's acquaintance in Spain, and the monk
said that he knew a very rich widow who had property in Toledo. When
Caesar went to Madrid, he would give him a letter of recommendation to
her.

"I cannot keep you any longer now, because a Mexican lady is waiting for
me," said Father Herreros.

Caesar arose, and after shaking the monk's fat hand, he left the
convent. He returned to Rome on foot, crossing the river again, and
looking at the Tiberine island; and arrived without hurrying at the
hotel. He wrote to his friend Azugaray, requesting him to discover, by
the indications he gave him, who the rich widow that had property in
Toledo could be.

_THE LICENTIATE MIRÓ_

The next day Caesar decided to pursue his investigations, and went to
see Father Miró.

Father Miró lived in a college in the Via Monserrato. Caesar inspected
the map of Rome, looking for that street, and found that it is located
in the vicinity of the Campo de' Fiori, and took his way thither.

The spring day was magnificent; the sky was blue, without a cloud; the
tiled roofs of some of the palaces were decorated with borders of
plants and flowers; in the street, dry and flooded with sunshine, a
water-carrier in a cart full of fat, green bottles, passed by, singing
and cracking his whip.

Caesar crossed the Campo de' Fiori, a very lively, plebeian square, full
of canvas awnings with open stalls of fruit under them. In the middle
stood the statue of Giordano Bruno, with a crown of flowers around its
neck.

Then he took the Via de' Cappellari, a narrow lane and dirty enough.
From one side to the other clothes were hung out to dry.

He came to the college and entered the church contiguous to it. He asked
for Father Miró; a sacristan with a long moustache and a worn blue
overcoat, took him to another entrance, made him mount an old wooden
staircase, and conducted him to the office of the man he was looking
for.

Father Miró was a tiny little man, dark and filthy, with a worn-out
cassock, covered with dandruff, and a large dirty square cap with a big
rosette.

"Will you tell me what you want?" said the little priest in a sullen
tone.

Caesar introduced himself, and explained in a few words who he was and
what he proposed.

Father Miró, without asking him to sit down, answered rapidly, saying
that he had no acquaintance with matters of finance or speculation.

Caesar felt a shudder of anger at the rudeness with which he was treated
by this draggled little priest, and felt a vehement desire to take him
by the neck and twist it, like a chicken's.

Despite his anger, he did not change expression, and he asked the priest
smilingly if he knew who could give him advice about those questions.

"You can see Father Ferrer at the Gregorian University, or Father
Mendia. He is an encyclopedist. It was he who wrote the theological
portion of the encyclical _Pascendi_, the one about Modernism. He is a
man of very great learning."

"He will do. Many thanks," and Caesar turned toward the door.

"Excuse me for not having asked you to sit down, but ..."

"No matter," Caesar replied, rapidly, and he went out to the stairs.

In view of the poor result of his efforts, he decided to go to the
Gregorian University. He was told it was in the Via del Seminario, and
supposed it must be the large edifice with little windowed bridges over
two streets.

That edifice was the Collegio Romano; the Gregorian University was in
the same street, but further on, opposite the Post Office Department.
Father Ferrer could not receive him, because he was holding a class; and
after they had gone up and come down and taken Caesar's card for Father
Mendia, they told him he was out.

Caesar concluded that it was not so easy to find a crack through which
one could get information of what was going on in the clerical world.

"I see that the Church gives them all a defensive instinct which they
make good use of. They are really only poor devils, but they have a
great organization, and it cannot be easy to get one's fingers through
the meshes of their net."

XII

A MEETING ON THE PINCIO

_A WALK IN THE VILLA BORGHESE_

At the beginning of Holy Week Laura returned to the hotel, at
lunch-time.

"And your husband?" Caesar asked her.

"He didn't want to come. Rome bores him. He is giving all his attention
to taking care of the heart-disease he says he has."

"Is it serious?"

"I think not. Every time I see him I find him with a new disease and a
new diet; one time it is vegetarian, another nothing but meat, another
time he says one should eat only grapes, or nothing but bread."

"Then I see that he belongs to the illustrious brotherhood of the
insane."

"You are not far from joining that brotherhood yourself."

"Dear sister, I am one of the few sane men that go stumbling around this
insane asylum let loose we call the earth."

"What you say about men is the truth, even though you are not an
exception. Really, the more I have to do with men, the more convinced I
am that any one of them who is not crazy, is stupid or vain or proud....
How much more intelligent, discreet, logical we women are!"

"Don't tell me. You are marvels; modest, kindly toward your rivals, so
little given to humiliating your neighbours, male or female...."

"Yes, yes; but we are not so conceited or such play-actors as you are.
A woman may think herself pretty and amiable and sweet, and not be so.
That is true; but on the other hand, every man thinks himself braver
than the Cid, even if he is afraid of a fly, and more talented than
Seneca, even if he is a dolt."

"To sum up, men are a calamity."

"Just so."

"And women spend their lives fishing for these calamities."

"They need them; there are inferior things which still are necessary."

"And there are superior things which are good for nothing."

"Will you come and take a drive with me, philosopher brother?"

"Where?"

"Let's go to the Villa Borghese. The carriage will be here in a moment."

"All right. Let us go there."

A two-horse victoria with rubber tires was waiting at the door, and
Laura and Caesar got in. The carriage went past the Treasury, and out
the Porta Salaria, and entered the gardens of the Villa Borghese.

The morning had been rainy; the ground was damp; the wind waved the
tree-tops gently and caused a murmur like the tide. The carriage rolled
slowly along the avenues. Laura was very gay and chatty. Caesar listened
to her as one listens to a bird warbling.

Many times while listening he thought: "What is there inside this head?
What is the master idea of her life? Has she really any idea about life,
or has she none?"

After several rounds they crossed the viaduct that unites the Villa
Borghese with the Pincio gardens.

_FROM THE PINCIO TERRACE_

They approached the great terrace of the gardens by an avenue that has
busts of celebrated men along both sides.

"Poor great men!" exclaimed Caesar. "Their statues serve only to
decorate a public garden." "They had their lives," replied Laura, gaily;
"now we have ours."

Laura ordered the coachman to stop a moment. The air was still murmuring
in the foliage, the birds singing, and the clouds flying slowly across
the sky.

A man with a black box approached the carriage to offer them postcards.

"Buy two or three," said Laura.

Caesar bought a few and put them into his pocket. The vendor withdrew
and Laura continued to look at Rome with enthusiasm.

"Oh, how beautiful, how lovely it is! I never get tired of looking at
it. It is my favourite city. '_O fior d'ogni cittá, donna del mondo_.'"

"She is no longer mistress of the world, little sister."

"For me she is. Look at St. Peter's. It looks like a shred of cloud."

"Yes, that's so. It's of a blue shade that seems transparent."

Bells were ringing and great majestic white clouds kept moving along the
horizon; on the Janiculum the statue of Garibaldi rose up gallantly into
the air, like a bird ready to take wing.

"When I look at Rome this way," murmured Laura, "I feel a pang, a pang
of grief."

"Why?"

"Because I remember that I must die, and then I shall not come back
to see Rome. She will be here still, century after century, full of
sunlight, and I shall be dead.... It is horrible, horrible!"

"And your religion?"

"Yes, I know. I believe I shall see other things; but not these things
that are so beautiful."

"You are an Epicurean."

"It is so beautiful to be alive!"

They stayed there looking at the panorama. Below, in the Piazza del
Popólo, they saw a red tram slipping along, which looked, at that
distance, like a toy.

A tilbury, driven by a woman, stopped near their carriage. The woman was
blond with green eyes, prominent cheek-bones, and a little fur cap. At
her feet lay an enormous dog with long flame-coloured hair.

"She must be a Russian," said Caesar.

"Yes. Do you like that type?"

"She has a lot of character. She looks like one of the women that would
order servants to be whipped."

The Russian was smiling vaguely. Laura told the coachman to drive on.
They made a few rounds in the avenues of the Pincio. The music was
beginning; a few carriages, and groups of soldiers and seminarians,
crowded around the bandstand; Laura didn't care for brass bands, they
were too noisy for her, and she gave the coachman orders to drive to the
Corso.

_MEETING MARCHMONT_

They passed in front of the Villa Medici, and when they got near the
Piazza, della Trinitá de' Monti they met a man on horseback, who, on
seeing them, immediately approached the carriage. It was Archibald
Marchmont, who had just arrived in Rome.

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