Читать книгу Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century - Garibaldi Giuseppe - Страница 20

Imagine the consternation in Rome on the 15th of February, the day following the tragic death of the Cardinal Procopio and his two abettors. Great, in truth, was the agitation of the city when the three bodies were seen dangling from the upper window of the palace. The panic spread rapidly, and the immense crowd under the façade increased more and more, until a battalion of foreign soldiers, sent for by the terrified priests, appeared in the Lungara, and driving it back, surrounded and entered the palace. To tell the truth, the soldiers laughed sometimes at the jests, coarse but witty, which were flung by the mob at the three corpses as they commenced hauling them up. Many were the bitter things that passed below.

"Let them down head over heels," shouted one; "your work will be finished the sooner."

"Play the fish steadily, that they may not slip from the hook," hallooed another.

By-and-by the cord to which the corpulent body of the prelate was attached broke as the soldiers attempted to hoist it up, and hoarser than ever were the shouts of laughter with which it was greeted as it fell with a heavy shock upon the pavement.

Muzio, who was surveying the avenging spectacle, turned to Silvio, saying, with a shudder, "Let us away; this laughter is not to my taste now they have paid their debt.

"In truth, Pasquin is almost the only real memorial of ancient Rome. Would that my people possessed the gravity and force of those times, when our forefathers elected the great dictators, or bought and sold, at a high price, the lands upon which Hannibal was at the time attacked. But it must be long before their souls can be freed from the plague of priestly corruption, and before they can once more be worthy of their ancient fame and name."

"We must have patience with them," replied Silvio. "Slavery reduces man to the level of the beast These priests have themselves inculcated the rude mockery which we hear. At least, it could have no fitter objects than those dead carcasses. Reproach not the people to-day – mud is good enough for dead dogs."

Thus discoursing, the friends made their way through the crowd, and separated, having first appointed to meet at the end of the week in the studio of Attilio.

On the day in question they found the young artist at home, and gave him a detailed account of what they had witnessed under the palace windows. It was the time for the reassembling of the Three Hundred, but, before setting out to meet their associates at the Baths of Caracalla, they lay down to rest for a few hours; and while they slumber we will give some account of the place of assignation.

Masters of the world, and wealthy beyond compute from its manifold spoils, the ancient Romans gave themselves up, in the later days of the Republic, to fashion, luxuriousness, and excesses of all kinds. The toil of the field – whether of battle or of agriculture – although it had conduced to make them hardy and healthy before their triumphs, had now become distasteful and odious. Their limbs, rendered effeminate by a new and fatal voluptuousness, grew at last unequal even to the weight of their arms, and they chose out the stoutest from among their slaves to serve as soldiers. The foreign people by whom they were surrounded failed not to note the advantage which time and change were preparing for them over their dissolute masters. They rose with Goth and Ostrogoth to free themselves from the heavy yoke. They fell upon the queenly city on all sides, and discrowned her of her imperial diadem.

Such was the fate of that gigantic empire, which fell, as all powers ought to fall which are based on violence and injustice.

One of the chief imported luxuries of the degenerate Romans were the thermæ, or baths, edifices upon which immense sums were lavished to make them beautiful and commodious in the extreme. Some were private, others public. The emperors vied with each other to render them celebrated and attractive. Caracalla, the unworthy son of Severus, and one of the very vilest of the line of Cæsars, built the vast pile which is still called by his evil name; the ruins of which forcibly illustrate the splendor of the past sovereignty, and the reasons of its swift decay. The greater number of these conspicuous and magnificent buildings in the city of Rome have subterranean passages attached to them, provided by their original possessors as a means of escape in times of danger, or to conceal the results of rapine or violence. In the subterranean passages connected with the Baths of Caracalla it was that the Three Hundred had agreed to meet, and as the darkness of night crept on, the outposts of the conspirators, like gliding shadows, planted themselves silently at the approaches to the wilderness of antique stones, from time to time challenging, in a whisper, other and more numerous shadows, which by-and-by converged to the spot.