A Philosopher's Romance

Chapter I

It was one o'clock on a certain Friday, the hottest day that Soloporto had as yet known in an unusually hot season. The sun shone in a dazzling, cloudless sky, distributing his beams impartially on everything they could reach ; and they reached me, Pepe Romagno, with such insistence that I strolled a few paces farther down the street, and leaning in the shade against the door-post of the shop of my friend Luigi Fascinato, who dealt wholesale in cabbages, garlic, and onions, continued my occupation of rolling a cigarette. It was the time for siesta and pedestrians were few, though a good many carriages plying for hire rolled past, occupied chiefly by young men (frequently without waistcoats) sitting in the idlest of attitudes ; for in Soloporto during the warm season no one who has thirty soldi in his pocket hesitates to spend it in saving his legs the length of a street.

The great sleepy oxen, having dragged their carts alongside the coasting-craft in the Canale Grande, opposite to which I was standing, had been relieved of their yokes, and now lay, ruminant and massive, taking their rest ; while their masters, stretched supine on the pavement in the shade of the houses, B with their arms under their heads and their hats over their eyes, took their siesta also. In the market-square hard by most of the stall holders had departed, and only the fruit-sellers still kept their places, for the sun cannot spoil grapes and peaches and apricots ; those who dealt in salads and green stuff had carried away what remained unsold of their limp and drooping stock, and the vendors of poultry had betaken themselves and their cackling, thirsty loads to their farms on the outskirts of the town.

Only the pigeons seemed unaffected by the general lassitude, for they cooed and preened themselves round the fountain, or explored the refuse of the half empty market-place, with no apparent diminution of energy. The Canale Grande, as every one knows, runs up from the sea in a short straight line to the white columned portico of the church of San Antonio Nuovo, and is wide enough for a small vessel to lie alongside each quay on either hand, while a third might pass between on her way out wards or inwards, through the two opening bridges, called, according to the colours they are painted, the Ponte Verde and the Ponte Rosso. Hither come the Turkish and Greek craft with tobacco, and oddly rigged Dalmatian coasters with fustic and planks, and sometimes a hold full of dried figs, which are thrown out with spades.

Sicilian and coasting vessels are here too, and one of these, the Stella del Mare of Ancona, lay exactly opposite to Luigi's shop, where indeed it had been moored for his especial convenience. The Stella del Mare I 3 had sailed up the Canale on the night before, laden with onions and a few water-melons, and manned by Toni Capello, his wife Nina, her brother Giacomo, his brother Tomasao, and a little cur dog belonging to all four. Toni had only been married a couple of months, and was a handsome young fellow of five-and twenty, brown - skinned and brown -eyed, with beautiful white teeth under his black moustache when he smiled, and crisp, curly black hair ; Nina was pretty, and immensely proud of her good looking husband, but also (and I must confess she had cause) terribly jealous of him. The other two men and the cur were of the ordinary kind, and merit no special description.

In addition to several other employments to which I will refer later on, I, Pepe Romagno, earned a fair amount of money by writing letters for those who either could not or would not write for themselves. Owing to my superior education (of which also more presently) I was in great demand as a scribe ; and epistles being sometimes exchanged between different parts of the city, I was not infrequently employed to answer my own letters. I leave you to imagine what frightful consequences might have ensued had I not been the soul of honour. Now I had often written to Nina in Ancona for Toni during his courtship, and had read her answers to her lover, for he could neither read nor write himself ; thus I knew all about them both, and had more than once administered a little advice to Toni respecting the bounds of discretion in an affianced man, which in his case appeared indeed limitless.

The incident I am about to relate, however, proves once more how an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory. I have said that it was the hour of siesta ; but Nina, thrifty soul, who had been washing shirts all the morning on deck, had taken her basket and departed in quest of maccaroni and beans for supper ; and oddly enough it was precisely during the half hour of her absence that there occurred to Bina Kovachich the unavoidable necessity for purchasing a water-melon. The pile of that fruit on board the Stella del Mare was a private venture of Toni, who only took the onions as freight, and he sold them as occasion offered. Bina's father was a coppersmith, and his dark old shop in the Ghetto was all agleam with his wares ; owing to their highly polished surfaces, Bina had had so many opportunities of admiring her own pretty face that she had ended by falling in love with it, and what was worse, endeavouring to get every man of her acquaintance into the same condition.

Toni had traded to Soloporto for over a year, and as copper cooking - utensils on board ship need occasional repair, like their companions on land, he was precisely the sort of young man to entrust a job of this kind to a craftsman with a pretty daughter. What more natural, then, than for an old acquaintance to continue her custom ? And it was of course a desire to do Toni a good turn that had brought Bina to the edge of the Canale that morning. I could not, however, persuade myself that it was for Nina's benefit that Bina had arrayed her- I A PHILOSOPHER'S ROMANCE 5 self in her best clothes, and twisted her sleek hair into the most fascinating knots and coils, orna mented with tortoise-shell combs and arrows. At all events there she was, and at sight of her, Toni, who had been half dozing on a pile of matting bags used to pack the onions, roused himself up and proceeded to select a fruit.

The customer was, however, difficult to please ; one melon was far too large, another probably half run to seed ; a third she was convinced had a bruise, and a fourth seemed hardly ripe. At last, however, one was found to her liking, and the vendor, drawing his clasp-knife, proceeded to cut out the usual small square block of rind and flesh to show the quality, which, as he had truly averred, was superb — a brilliant, dark-red pulp, studded with flat hand some black seeds. All was not over, however; there still remained the debatable question of price. ' How much ? ' demanded Bina. ' Twenty soldi,' quoth Toni. ' Benedetta ! ' screamed Bina ; ' twenty soldi ! ' Do you think I am made of money ? Ten soldi.' ' Twenty,' repeated Toni, with a flash of mischief in his eyes. ' God forbid ! ' expostulated Bina. ' How can you dream of asking a poor girl such a sum ; come, be reasonable, say twelve soldi ! ' ' Eighteen,' said Toni, apparently nerving him self to relent a little. ' You must be joking,' said Bina ; ' find some one more foolish to joke with.

I am going,' and she swung her petticoats round. 'Sixteen then,' said Toni. 'Come, it's dirt cheap at sixteen soldi.' ' I'm glad you think so,' replied Bina, tossing her head saucily ; ' you must be much richer than I am to think a water-melon cheap at sixteen soldi. I'll give you twelve, — there now ! ' 'It's a great deal over a twelve soldi size,' said Toni, patting the smooth striped rind sympathetically. ' A splendid melon like that for twelve soldi; why, it's the best and biggest I have on board ; upon my soul it is.' I had heard him make the same assertion with equal fervency six times previously during that same morning, and Bina probably understood how much it really meant, for she persisted in her offer of twelve soldi. ' Well, fourteen soldi,' said Toni, with a gesture implying that the fruit was torn from him against his will at that price. ' I will let you have it for fourteen soldi.' 'Twelve,' repeated Bina steadily, throwing him a languishing glance.

Toni looked carefully round. Giacomo and Tomasao were fast asleep under a little awning rigged up of sails in the stern ; the cur was wide awake certainly ; so was a big ox ruminating hard by ; but they would tell no tales. Scarcely any one was passing, and the rascal did not see me ; the deck was nearly level with the quay, and if Bina stooped a little ' Well, Bina,' he said in his softest, sweetest voice, and throwing a tremendous amount of expression into his brown eyes, ' I'll let you have it for twelve soldi and a kiss.' He em phasised the conjunction. I think it exceedingly probable that Antonio Kovachich's daughter had all along foreseen this proposal ; indeed she may have come to the Stella del Mare that morning quite as anxious for a kiss as for a melon. She made no verbal answer, but taking twelve little copper soldi out of her pocket she dropped them one by one into Toni's palms, and then stooped forward and curved her red lips towards him in the most tantalising fashion.

They had scarcely been brushed by an equally ready black moustache when I was aware of a figure coming swiftly round the corner ; re prehensible as I felt his conduct was I could not allow poor Toni to go unwarned, and I lifted up my voice. ' Toni,' I cried, ' Nina's coming ! ' The effect of my words was more than instantaneous ; it was electrical. Up to the time of Toni's compromise I fancy Bina had not been sure if his wife was on board or not ; now, when I say that she fled as fast as her legs would carry her, leaving both the water-melon and its price, I have said enough to show you that she was very unpleasantly startled indeed. As for the other conspirator, he dived suddenly down into the little cabin, still unconsciously grasping the melon. Nina leaped on board and hurried after him, spilling a lot of maccaroni, and as I dislike the sound of a woman's voice when raised above a certain pitch I strolled away to finish my second cigarette.

How pleasant it is to be a philosopher ! Given a sufficient supply of food, a cigarette of tolerable tobacco, a ready match, a shady corner in summer, a sunshiny one in winter, and what more can a man want ? I should say, perhaps, a man who is a philosopher, and I would strongly advise all who read this to strive after such an eminently desirable frame of mind. I will not venture to point out the best method of training for this result ; it must vary with the circumstances ofthe individual ; but I emphatically warn every one against the manner in which I became a philosopher. One may say of philosophy what your Shake speare said of greatness : ' Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.' Never having been great in any sense of the word I have had no practical experience of these sentiments ; but with regard to philosophy I say : ' Be born philosophical if you can ; strive to be philosophical if unfortunately you are not born so ; but never, dear friends, reduce yourselves to such a condition that philosophy is thrust upon you.

Once the result is brought about you will probably, like myself, be happy enough ; but I cannot recommend the thrusting process as an agreeable one.' In order, however, to explain how I became a philosopher it is needful to inflict on the reader some account of myself previous to the day on which I begin this story. My father was an Englishman, my mother an Italian, and the former fact accounts for my know ledge of your literature though I have not claimed the nationality to which I have a right. Some English autobiographies of self-made men begin, ' I was born of poor but respectable parents,' and I am sorry that in this particular I cannot emulate many of my illustrious compatriots ; my parents were neither poor nor respectable. My father, the heir to great wealth, came abroad after leaving Oxford,' to make the grand tour essential in the days of his youth to the completion of a young man's education.

His parents had long been dead, and the income upon a magnificent estate was being accumulated for him by his guardians, who, how ever, neglected to provide him with a sufficiently discreet tutor or companion on his travels. I have been given to understand that after getting into innumerable scrapes and difficulties my father, being still abroad with the ineffectual tutor, met my mother, a beautiful and charming actress, and married her in Milan a few days after he came of age. I have gathered from various old letters and family papers once in my possession that this step caused grave displeasure to his relatives in England, whom he never saw again, for he was too well pleased with life abroad to care to return, and his income could not be withheld. He proceeded therefore to enjoy himself after a fashion which no one could call philosophical.

If you are fond of cards and wine, and the usual accompaniments to these pleasures in the way of expensive friends, you can run through a good deal of money in a very short time, a task in which I have reason to believe my father was ably seconded by my mother. Of him I have no recollection ; but I connect my mother with a vision of a beautiful oval face, with large dark eyes and a high pale forehead crowned with masses of black hair. They died of cholera within a few hours of each other when I was^ four years old, leaving me to the tender mercies of my mother's relatives in Italy and those of my father in England. I had many subsequent interviews with the family solicitor, but my first meeting with him is one of the earliest things I can recollect. When he came to Italy to inspect me he was a man past middle age, portly, and wearing gold spectacles on a very wrinkled face ; his clothes were dark coloured, and his high collar, as stiff as starch could make it, almost concealed his ears.

Round his throat were swathes of black silk confined by a small diamond pin. His boots creaked and shone like glass under short drab gaiters ; he stared at me through his glasses for a moment, then cleared his throat with a tremendous noise, took a big pinch of snuff and cried, ' God bless me ! ' The noise, the snuff, and the ex clamation combined alarmed me so much that I fled, — a meagre, large -eyed, pale-faced little creature — to my grandmother for protection, and clinging to her skirts hid my face till sufficiently reassured for another peep at the stranger. Grandmother Anello had sold matches round the cafes till her only child, my beautiful mother, had been employed at the theatre, and quickly coming to the front had made her brilliant marriage with the Englishman my father. This was a lucky day for the old crone, who lived henceforth on an ample pension provided by my father ; she had lived with her daughter as my nurse ever since my birth, and she was at that time of my life of which I now speak the object of my deepest love.

Her sunken flashing eyes never looked fiercely at me, nor did her cracked old voice ever speak to me in any accents but those of kindness. I used to sit on her knee and twine my fingers among the coral beads round her wrinkled yellow throat, while she told me all manner of stories or raised a hoarse quavering chant to lull me to sleep. I suppose the family lawyer was impressed with her devotion ; at any rate he decided that I was to remain in her care till I was eight years old. Having attained that age I was transferred to England for purposes of education ; and here I spent the ten unhappiest years of all my life. I disliked my relatives as much as they disliked me, which was not a little ; they were a frigid, calm, reasonable, unlovable tribe, and so soon as I was eighteen I suggested that a year or two in Germany to finish my education would not be amiss.

To Germany accordingly I went, under the care of a tutor who was as discreet as the man who had escorted my father to Italy had been the contrary. I returned to England at twenty years of age, without having had the chance of sowing one wild oat of the bushel I was wearying to fling broadcast, and resolved to break my bonds on the earliest possible opportunity. The head of my family was an old lady, aristocratic, haughty, and handsome. Diamonds flashed on her withered fingers, and a white widow's coif crowned her abundant grey hair. She was always consulted with much deference by the family lawyer whenever any business was brewing. A few weeks before I came of age I asked her permission to go to France for a fortnight. Perhaps the request was unreasonable; I do not know ; at any rate she refused it, and I, boiling with anger, accepted the refusal with every show of respect.

As I left the room I heard the family lawyer say, with a pinch from the inevitable box : ' Better have consented, Lady Elizabeth. What's bred in the bone is born in the flesh. Better let the lad have a chance of ' I heard no more, but what I had heard increased my respect for the old gentleman's perspicacity. I was determined moreover to have a fling, come what might, and, being fairly supplied with money, I set off secretly for France just a week before I came of age. Of course people were sent to track me, but travelling in those days was not quite so rapid as at present, and I remained undiscovered till my twenty-first birthday. Having previously found out that the family lawyer was in Paris, I called on him on that day at his hotel, and announced my intention of living henceforth abroad, in order to renew some of my pleasant, childish impressions of sunshine and warm air, and colour in earth and sky and sea ; I would never return, I said, to that land of grey clouds and chill winds, of order and propriety and money-getting and respectability.

I directed that my income should be paid to me through a certain bank ; I thanked the old gentle man for his kindness and consideration in coming to Paris at his advanced age to look for me ; I made my bow, left the room, and never saw him again. When I recall the succeeding twenty years of my life my mind is torn in two : on the one hand I remember with regret how totally devoid of my present simple philosophy was my existence then ; on the other, a flicker of delight rises within me from the ashes of half forgotten things. Ah, it is good to be young and rich and free, to be blithe and light-hearted, to be glad in the gleam of red wine and the scent of flowers, to know the sweet ness of women's smiles and the softness in their eyes, to claim the pagan's birthright of sunshine and clean air and star -lit skies, to shroud conscience and heart in the simple joy of living and moving in beautiful places!

These things are indeed passing pleasant ; and when the in evitable happens, when the chapter is finished and the clock has struck, when to-day is done and to morrow begins to take its place, then, my friends, comes philosophy, the philosophy that presents itself as an alternative to suicide, the philosophy which, if you have a thread of manliness left in you, you will accept, the philosophy, in fact, that is thrust upon you. A noted French writer has bid us use men for our advancement and women for our pleasure, but always to preserve our honour. Never desiring advancement, I concerned myself little with the first item of the advice ; but the two last precepts I have always fulfilled. No debt of mine on horse or card was ever dishonoured, though I confess the end was bitter when I found nearly all my obliga tions held by one man, a Jew usurer, who, with the instinct of his race, knew exactly the moment to swoop upon his prey to the best advantage.

He would not grant me time to pay, except upon such extortionate conditions that my debts would have been practically doubled. Everything there fore went, and I found myself free indeed from all pecuniary embarrassments because I had simply nothing to be embarrassed about and no security upon which any one would lend me a farthing. I found that first year of apprenticeship to philo sophy sufficiently hard to endure ; but it came to an end like everything else, and I had not died of hunger, nor killed myself in despair. The former result I attribute to my Italian blood, which assimilated itself more readily to altered conditions of life and amusement ; the latter to that which was English in me, which supplied a certain dogged resolution to go on living in spite of fate. Without wearying the reader with a tedious account of every circumstance of my existence, I may say that in many cities I found various forms of em ployment.

I have taken toll at the gates of race courses where my own horses once ran ; I have sold wine where I used to buy it. In those days I learned to mend more shoes than I wore, and to turn and repair other clothes than my own. In fact, philosophy, who found me, on the day I took service with her, a useless man who had done nothing but amuse himself all his life, has turned me out after a sufficiently severe training rather a handy fellow, who has done and can do almost anything except lie, thieve, or beg ; for through all the vicissitudes which have fallen upon me I have never forgotten that I was born and shall die a gentleman. A few months, however, after the hot day of which I have just told you a story, I fell into a most disagreeable experience, whence I was rescued by a chance which brought me, at one and the same time, good luck and a new friend, of both of which more shall be told in the next chapter.

Chapter II

Reader, do you know Soloporto ? If not, the loss is yours, for it is one of the most interesting towns in Europe. Long before the birth of Christ the Roman eagles fluttered above the steeps that over hang a marshy level in the northernmost part of the Adriatic where the tideless sea claimed an almost complete sway. This desolate morass was the only possible landing-place for some twenty miles of naked iron-bound coast, against whose grim rocks the white waves fretted in vain. But once the first Roman galley thrust its heavy wooden prow through the salt ooze, once the first stalwart soldier, buckler on arm and sword in hand, had raised his helmeted head to gaze keen-eyed on the naked heights rising grim and uncouth above the marsh where the sea-wind sang unhindered, — and the loneliness of that desolate spot was gone for ever.

At first a mere cluster of huts, affording temporary shelter to a handful of Roman soldiers, rose within an earth-work, crowned by the inevitable standard bearing the Imperial eagle in its pride of place ; then, as the Roman thirst for conquest in creased, more permanent habitations were erected, and gradually the low steep hill became covered with U 9, buildings. Neither his gods nor his pastimes were ever neglected or forgotten by the ancient Roman ; and a temple to Jupiter was soon reared on the highest part of the hill, hard by the camp, that Martial and Flavian, and their companions of the guard, might have no long distance to go in order to record their parting vows or deposit their thank offerings to the god upon their safe return. Nor were the long detentions in camp allowed to become wearisome ; lower down the hill a stone theatre was raised, where sports and shows and games might be witnessed, and wagers exchanged.

But except to seaward, those very earliest settlers could have had little range. Behind the hill, and its slope where they had established their camp, rose other hills, the nearer ones rocky, but the farther, only however some three miles inland as the crow flies, overgrown with a dense and impenetrable forest, sparsely inhabited by savage tribes with whom in their labyrinthine solitudes even the fearless Romans would hardly come to close quarters. These forested mountains extended for many miles along the coast, and formed the step to the great table-land beyond. One thing succeeds another, and Time's foot leaves its print everywhere ; to look at the modern city of Soloporto to-day you could not tell that its inhabitants were once martial and disciplined. If you climb the steep streets of the Ghetto till you reach the cathedral you may see, through a grating made for the purpose, how St. Giusto's tower has risen above the carven columns that were once reared in honour of him who held the thunderc bolts ; hard by, in a damp and dreary little enclosure, you may see certain earthen^ wine -jars and sculptured stones collected as relics of the conquerors of the world, while down in the cellars of Antonio Kovachich's shop I have seen part of the pillars which once adorned the Roman theatre.

It is hardly, however, on account of its past that Soloporto is interesting now. Few of its inhabitants know that the place has a past ; fewer still know or care what that past was ; but if you would see the gateway of the East, if you would watch the strange and complete, yet imperceptible, mingling of Occident and Orient, if you would stand for a while in a debatable land where Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics do congregate with Lutherans and Catholics old and new, if you would see a score of countries in one town, a score of human types in one street, then, my reader, come to Soloporto. Though the place is not that of my birth, and though I am not especially attached to any one spot on earth, still I confess that this town has a certain fascination for me ; the reader must there fore excuse me for having for a moment forsaken the recital of my own adventures which I would fain believe he finds more interesting.

There was much poverty and not a little sickness in Soloporto during that autumn and winter, and for me also it was a hard time. People did not care to pay for the mending of shoes that would by any means stay on the feet without such assistance, and the clothes of my usual customers suffered much, to my mind, in A PHILOSOPHER'S ROMANCE II 19 appearance from the lack of my attentions. The letter -writing business, too, fell off just at this period, probably from the same cause of poverty, and I confess I was sorely pinched. I could live, but not save, and when trade was bad I was compelled to dispose of many necessaries which in the face of starvation seemed superfluous. I could not, of course, afford to take my warmer coat out of pawn when the cold weather began, and one can do without a waistcoat better than without food.

I freely confess that, contrary to my wont, I wore my coat buttoned up just then because there was nothing underneath it. I grew a beard too when my razors went (at half their value) because it is a good protection to the throat and chest. I will not distress myself by recalling an exceedingly painful period in my life, but pass over a fortnight of indescribable want, the last day of which found me crouching on the bare floor of a garret in the roof of one of the oldest houses in the Ghetto. The Bora, that terrible wind which is at once the scourge and the saving of Soloporto, for it scours the drains and sweeps away the evil odours, was abroad that night, and it was bitterly, piercingly cold. I shivered from head to foot, and suffered the more that for the first time for years a cruel hunger gnawed me.