The Innocents Abroad

Chapter 25

There are a good many things about this Italy which I do not understand

--and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt Government can

have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of turnpikes. Why,

these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line, as smooth as

a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see any other

object, one can still see the white turnpikes of France and Italy; and

they are clean enough to eat from, without a table-cloth. And yet no

tolls are charged.

As for the railways--we have none like them. The cars slide as smoothly

along as if they were on runners. The depots are vast palaces of cut

marble, with stately colonnades of the same royal stone traversing them

from end to end, and with ample walls and ceilings richly decorated with

frescoes. The lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the broad

floors are all laid in polished flags of marble.

These things win me more than Italy's hundred galleries of priceless art

treasures, because I can understand the one and am not competent to

appreciate the other. In the turnpikes, the railways, the depots, and

the new boulevards of uniform houses in Florence and other cities here, I

see the genius of Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that

statesman imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall

be a foundation for these improvements--money. He has always the

wherewithal to back up his projects; they strengthen France and never

weaken her. Her material prosperity is genuine. But here the case is

different. This country is bankrupt. There is no real foundation for

these great works. The prosperity they would seem to indicate is a

pretence. There is no money in the treasury, and so they enfeeble her

instead of strengthening. Italy has achieved the dearest wish of her

heart and become an independent State--and in so doing she has drawn an

elephant in the political lottery. She has nothing to feed it on.

Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all manner of useless

expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day. She squandered

millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and the first time

she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than

Gilderoy's kite--to use the language of the Pilgrims.

But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy saw

utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth the

paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a 'coup de main'

that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less

desperate circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of

the Church! This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has

groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred

years! It was a rare good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that

drove her to break from this prison-house.

They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound

too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of

churches in Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in

its closets, and each with its battalion of priests to be supported.

And then there are the estates of the Church--league on league of the

richest lands and the noblest forests in all Italy--all yielding immense

revenues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the State.

In some great districts the Church owns all the property--lands,

watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They buy, they sell, they

manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with

them?

Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize it

in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something must be done to

feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all Italy

--none but the riches of the Church. So the Government intends to take to

itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly farms,

factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the churches and

carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own responsibility.

In a few instances it will leave the establishments of great pet churches

undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of priests will be retained

to preach and pray, a few will be pensioned, and the balance turned

adrift.

Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and see

whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not. In Venice,

today, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve hundred

priests. Heaven only knows how many there were before the Parliament

reduced their numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old

regime it required sixty priests to engineer it--the Government does it

with five, now, and the others are discharged from service. All about

that church wretchedness and poverty abound. At its door a dozen hats

and bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as

many hands extended, appealing for pennies--appealing with foreign words

we could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken

cheeks, and ragged raiment, that no words were needed to translate. Then

we passed within the great doors, and it seemed that the riches of the

world were before us! Huge columns carved out of single masses of

marble, and inlaid from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures

wrought in costly verde antique; pulpits of the same rich materials,

whose draperies hung down in many a pictured fold, the stony fabric

counterfeiting the delicate work of the loom; the grand altar brilliant

with polished facings and balustrades of oriental agate, jasper, verde

antique, and other precious stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear

--and slabs of priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as

if the church had owned a quarry of it. In the midst of all this

magnificence, the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar seemed

cheap and trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely fortune.

Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while

half of that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going

to keep body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting

hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the

useless trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to

death with taxation to uphold a perishing Government?

As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her

energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a

vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens

to accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of magnificence and

misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could

hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And

for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred--and rags and

vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth.

Look at the grand Duomo of Florence--a vast pile that has been sapping

the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly

finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but

when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking,

too suggestive, and I said, "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of

enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye?

Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?"

Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral.

And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I

can think of. They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built

to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in. It sounds

blasphemous, but it is true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and

damned Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her curse

for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly vaults,

and in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up. The

expedition sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could not

accomplish the burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant

now. They say the entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre,

and was only turned into a family burying place after the Jerusalem

expedition failed--but you will excuse me. Some of those Medicis would

have smuggled themselves in sure.--What they had not the effrontery to

do, was not worth doing. Why, they had their trivial, forgotten exploits

on land and sea pictured out in grand frescoes (as did also the ancient

Doges of Venice) with the Saviour and the Virgin throwing bouquets to

them out of the clouds, and the Deity himself applauding from his throne

in Heaven! And who painted these things? Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul

Veronese, Raphael--none other than the world's idols, the "old masters."

Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them

for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve. Served

him right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and

Marie de Medicis seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with the

Virgin Mary and the angels, (to say nothing of higher personages,) and

yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old

masters--because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in their

productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but I keep on

protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those masters

to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such monsters as

the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and three hundred

years ago, all the same.

I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful things for bread,

the princes and potentates being the only patrons of art. If a grandly

gifted man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for bread

rather than starve with the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse

is a valid one. It would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons,

and unchastity in women as well.

But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory. It

is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement of

a King's palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls are

made of--what? Marble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red porphyry

--verde antique--jasper--oriental agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl

--chalcedony--red coral--lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are made wholly

of these precious stones, worked in, and in and in together in elaborate

pattern s and figures, and polished till they glow like great mirrors

with the pictured splendors reflected from the dome overhead. And before

a statue of one of those dead Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with

diamonds and emeralds enough to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These

are the things the Government has its evil eye upon, and a happy thing it

will be for Italy when they melt away in the public treasury.

And now----. However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and

destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of

vituperation.

Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his comrades

--having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a kindlier

mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests and the

churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about either I

ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to the credit

of the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is

the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of

the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican friars--men who wear a

coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go

barefoot. They live on alms altogether, I believe. They must

unquestionably love their religion, to suffer so much for it. When the

cholera was raging in Naples; when the people were dying by hundreds and

hundreds every day; when every concern for the public welfare was

swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen made the

taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded themselves

together and went about nursing the sick and burying the dead. Their

noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them down

cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise, and

hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the

salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the

unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these would save their

souls though they were bankrupt in the true religion--which is ours.

One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with us

in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in the

cabin. He belonged in the steerage. He was the life of the ship, the

bloody-minded son of the Inquisition! He and the leader of the marine

band of a French man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera turn

about; they sang duets together; they rigged impromptu theatrical

costumes and gave us extravagant farces and pantomimes. We got along

first-rate with the friar, and were excessively conversational, albeit he

could not understand what we said, and certainly he never uttered a word

that we could guess the meaning of.

This Civita Vecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance we

have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which is

just like it. The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have

a smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well

the alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person

can stand, and of course, if they were wider they would hold more, and

then the people would die. These alleys are paved with stone, and

carpeted with deceased cats, and decayed rags, and decomposed

vegetable-tops, and remnants of old boots, all soaked with dish-water,

and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it. They are indolent, as

a general thing, and yet have few pastimes. They work two or three

hours at a time, but not hard, and then they knock off and catch flies.

This does not require any talent, because they only have to grab--if

they do not get the one they are after, they get another. It is all the

same to them. They have no partialities. Whichever one they get is the

one they want.

They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant.

They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind

of things than other communities, but they do not boast.

They are very uncleanly--these people--in face, in person and dress.

When they see any body with a clean shirt on, it arouses their scorn.

The women wash clothes, half the day, at the public tanks in the streets,

but they are probably somebody else's. Or may be they keep one set to

wear and another to wash; because they never put on any that have ever

been washed. When they get done washing, they sit in the alleys and

nurse their cubs. They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and the others

scratch their backs against the door-post and are happy.

All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not appear to have

any schools here, and only one billiard table. Their education is at a

very low stage. One portion of the men go into the military, another

into the priesthood, and the rest into the shoe-making business.

They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in Turkey. This

shows that the Papal States are as far advanced as Turkey. This fact

will be alone sufficient to silence the tongues of malignant

calumniators. I had to get my passport vised for Rome in Florence, and

then they would not let me come ashore here until a policeman had

examined it on the wharf and sent me a permit. They did not even dare to

let me take my passport in my hands for twelve hours, I looked so

formidable. They judged it best to let me cool down. They thought I

wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they know me. I wouldn't

have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They took one of my

ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read it backwards.

But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and every body

speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.

It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over

deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his

opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I

immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around.

And so I explained and explained and explained, and they took notes of

all I said, but the more I explained the more they could not understand

it, and when they desisted at last, I could not even understand it

myself. They said they believed it was an incendiary document, leveled

at the government. I declared solemnly that it was not, but they only

shook their heads and would not be satisfied. Then they consulted a good

while; and finally they confiscated it. I was very sorry for this,

because I had worked a long time on that joke, and took a good deal of

pride in it, and now I suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose

it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of Rome,

and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal machine which would

have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope all around, but for

a miraculous providential interference. And I suppose that all the time

I am in Rome the police will dog me about from place to place because

they think I am a dangerous character.

It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very narrow

and the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection

against the heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does

not appear to have a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that

went up in the chariot of fire could stand the climate.

There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with

eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not

show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any

smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or

Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't

any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross.

We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here.