Read Ebook: Geschiedenis der Europeesche Volken by Kohl Johann Georg Kretschmer Albert Illustrator

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Ebook has 1705 lines and 262889 words, and 35 pages

"It will kill his father, if anything happens to him!" she said slowly, as if she knew herself to be the stronger. "You see he chose the grenadiers for Enrico because that regiment almost never leaves Rome: it stays with the King. And now the King is going to the front, they say--it will be the first of all!"

"I see!"

"To-night may be his last time at home."

"Perhaps," I said, seeking for the futile crumb of comfort, "they will take Giolitti's advice, and there will be no war."

Enrico, who had followed us from the dining-room, caught the remark and cried with youthful conviction: "That Giolitti is a traitor--he has been bought by the Germans!"

"Giolitti!" little Bianca echoed scornfully, arching her black brows. Evidently the politician had lost his popularity among the youth of Italy. Within the dining-room I could see the father sitting alone beside the candle, his face buried in his hands. Bianca caressed her brother's shoulder with her cheeks.

"Little Bianca is growing up fast!" I laughed.

"They take them all except the cripples," the signora commented bitterly, "even the girls!"

"But I am a woman," Bianca protested, drawing away from Enrico and raising her pretty head. "I shall get the hospital training and go up north, too--to be near 'Rico."

Something surely had come to the youth of this country when girls like Bianca Maironi spoke with such assurance of going forth from the home into the unknown.

The boy unclasped Bianca's tight little hands, kissed his mother and father, gave me the military salute ... and we could hear him running fast down the street. The signora blew out the sputtering candle and closed the door.

"I am going, too!" Bianca exclaimed.

The poet was coming to Rome. After the politician, close on his heels, the poet, fresh from his triumph at the celebration of Quarto, where with his flaming allegory he had stirred the youth of Italy to their depths! A few henchmen, waiting for the leader's word, had met Giolitti; all Rome, it seemed to me, was turning out to greet the poet. They had poured into the great square before the terminus station from every quarter. The packed throng reached from the dark walls of the ancient baths around the splashing fountain, into the radiating avenues, and up to the portico of the station itself, which was black with human figures. It was a quiet, orderly, well-dressed crowd that swayed back and forth, waiting patiently hour after hour--the train was very late--to see the poet's face, to hear, perhaps, his word of courage for which it thirsted.

"You came to welcome D'Annunzio?" I queried, knowing the good woman's prejudices.

"Him!" the signora retorted with curling lip. "Bianca brought me."

"Yes, we have been to the Red Cross," the girl flashed.

"Rome welcomes the poet as though he were royalty," I remarked, standing on tiptoe to sweep with a glance the immense crowd.

Her white teeth came together grimly, and she made a significant little gesture with her hand.

"Where's mamma?"

The signora had caught sight of another promising uniform and was talking with the kindly officer who wore it.

"His company is inside the station," she explained when she rejoined us, "and we can never get in there!"

She would have left if Bianca had not restrained her. The girl wanted to see the poet. Presently the night began to fall, the still odorous May night of Rome. The big arc-lamps shone down upon the crowded faces. Suddenly there was a forward swaying, shouts and cheers from the station. A little man's figure was being carried above the eager crowd. Then a motor bellowed for free passage through the human mass. A wave of song burst from thousands of throats, Mameli's "L'Inno." A little gray face passed swiftly. The poet had come and gone.

"Come!" Bianca exclaimed, taking my hand firmly and pulling the signora on the other side. And she hurried us on with the streaming crowd through lighted streets toward the Pincian hill, in the wake of the poet's car. The crowd had melted from about the station and was pouring into the Via Veneto. About the little fountain of the Tritone it had massed again, but persistent Bianca squirmed through the yielding figures, dragging us with her until we were wedged tight in the mass nearly opposite the Queen Mother's palace.

The vast multitude that reached into the shadow of the night were cheering and singing. Their shouts and songs must have reached even the ears of the German ambassador at the Villa Malta a few blocks away. The signora had forgotten her grenadier, her dislike of the poet, and for the moment was caught up in the emotion of the crowd. Bianca was singing the familiar hymn.... Suddenly there was a hush; light fell upon the upturned faces from an opened window on a balcony in the Hotel Regina. The poet stood forth in the band of yellow light and looked down upon the dense throng beneath. In the stillness his words began to fall, very slowly, very clearly, as if each was a graven message for his people. And the Roman youth all about me swayed and sighed, seizing each colored word, divining its heroic symbol, drinking thirstily the ardor of the poet.

"The light has not wholly gone from the Aurelian wall ... fifty years ago at this hour the leader of the Thousand and his heroic company.... We will not be a museum, an inn, a water-color in Prussian blue!..."

The double line of soldiers behind us had forgotten their formation and were pressing forward to catch each word. The signora was gazing at the man with fascinated eyes. Bianca's little hand tightened unconsciously on mine, and her lips parted in a smile. The poet's words were falling into her eager heart. He was speaking for her, for all the ardent youth of Italy:

The voice ceased: for one moment there was complete silence; then a cheer that was half a sigh broke from the crowd. But the blade of light faded, the poet was gone. When at last I got the Maironis into a cab there were bright tears in Bianca's eyes and the mother's face was troubled.

"Perhaps it has to be," the signora murmured.

"Of course!" Bianca echoed sharply, raising her little head defiantly. "What else could Italy do?"

The streets were rapidly emptying. Some companies of infantry that had been policing the city all day marched wearily past. Bianca jumped up quickly.

The sympathetic cab-driver pulled up his horse while the soldiers tramped by.

"'Rico, 'Rico!" the girl called softly to the soldiers.

A hand went up, and the boy gave us a luminous smile as his file swung past.

"I have seen him again!" the mother said hungrily.

The poet spoke the next day, and the next, to the restless people who waited hour after hour in the street before his hotel. Having found its voice--a voice that revealed its inner heart--young Italy clamored for action. The fret of Rome grew louder hourly; soldiers cordoned the main streets, while Giolitti waited, the ambassadors flitted back and forth to the Consulta, the King took counsel with his advisers. I looked for young Maironi's face among the lines of troops barring passage through the streets. It seemed as if he might be called at any moment to do his soldier's duty here in Rome!

All day long and half the night the cavalry stood motionless before the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, ready to clear away the mobs that prowled about the corner of Via Cavour, where Giolitti lived. Once they charged. It was the night the poet appeared at the Costanzi Theatre. The narrow street was full of shouting people as I drove to the theatre with the Maironis. Suddenly there was the ugly sound of horses' feet on concrete walks, shrieks and wild rushes for safety in doorways and alleys. As our cab whisked safely around a corner the cavalry came dashing past, their hairy plumes streaming out from the metal helmets, their ugly swords high in the air. The signora's face paled. Perhaps she was thinking, as I was, that there might be one thing worse than war with Austria, and that would be revolution. Bianca exclaimed scornfully:

"They had better be fighting Italy's enemies!"

"They are not yet enemies," I ventured.

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

"They will be to-morrow!"

When the little poet entered his flower-wreathed box every one cheered and waved to him. He stood looking down on the passionate human sea beneath him, then slowly plucked the red flowers from a great bunch of carnations that some one handed him and threw them one by one far out into the cheering throng. One floated downward straight into Bianca's eager hand. She snatched it, kissed the flower, and looked upward into the poet's smiling face....

He recited the suppressed stanzas of a war-poem, the slow, rhythmic lines falling like the red flowers into eager hearts. The signora was standing on her seat beside Bianca, clasping her arm, and tears gathered slowly in her large, wistful eyes, tears of pride and sadness.... Out in the still night once more from that storm of passion we walked on silently through empty streets. "He believes it--he is right," the signora sighed. "Italy also must do her part!"

"Of course," Bianca said quickly, "and she will!... See there!"

The girl pointed to a heap of stones freshly upturned in the street. It was the first barricade.

"Our soldiers must not fight each other," she said gravely, and glanced again over her shoulder at the barricade....

In front of Santa Maria the tired cavalry sat their horses, and a double line of infantry was drawn across the Via Cavour before the Giolitti home. The boys were slouching over their rifles; evidently, whatever play there had been in this picket duty had gone out of it. Suddenly Bianca and her mother ran down the line. "Maironi, Maironi!" I heard some of the soldiers calling softly, and there was a shuffle in the ranks. Enrico was shoved forward to the front in comradely fashion. Mother and sister chatted with the boy, and presently Bianca came dashing back.

"They haven't had anything to eat all day!"

We found a caf? still open and loaded ourselves with rolls, chocolate, and cigarettes, which Bianca distributed to the weary soldiers while the young lieutenant tactfully strolled to the other end of the line.

"To think of keeping them here all day without food!" the signora grumbled as we turned away. The boys, shoving their gifts into pockets and mouths, straightened up as their officer came back down the line. "They might as well be at war," the signora continued.

The nation's crisis had come and passed. We did not know it, but it was marked by those little piles of stones in the Via Viminale. The disturber Giolitti had fled overnight at the invitation of the government, which now knew itself to be strong enough to do what it would. And thereafter events moved more swiftly. Rome was once more calm. The people gathered again by the hundreds of thousands, but peacefully, in the spirit of concord, in the Piazza del Popolo and in the Campidoglio. Their will had prevailed, they had found themselves. A great need of reconciliation, of union of all spirits, was expressed in these meetings, under the soft spring sky, in spots consecrated by ancient memories of greatness.

In the crowd that filled the little piazza of the Campidoglio to the brim and ran down into the old lanes that led to the Forum and the city I met Signora Maironi once more. She had not come thither to find her boy--soldiers were no longer needed to keep the Romans from violence. She came in the hungry need to fill her heart with belief and confidence, to strengthen herself for sacrifice.

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