you know nothing about women," said Antonio.
"I shall never marry," declared Gaspare; "but if I should be overtaken by such unhappiness, at least my wife shall not make herself ridiculous."
"Ridiculous?" retorted Regina. "Who? the unhappy one?"
Gaspare deigned no reply. They started.
Regina never forgave her husband for taking Gaspare with them on this their first walk through Rome.
"We'll go down Via Cavour to the Forum, and come back by Piazza Venezia and Via Nazionale," proposed Antonio, consulting his watch; "it's late already."
The weather had cleared. Great drops of shining water fell from the trees in the Via Torino gardens. Santa Maria Maggiore, rose-coloured and grey against the blue sky, towered like a mountain above her broad flight of rain-washed steps. Gaspare pointed to the church with his umbrella and named it. Regina looked indifferently; the edifice seemed to her ugly.
They went down Via Cavour. The wood pavement was drying rapidly, and Regina naïvely remarked that it wasn't polished as she had supposed last night.
"I should hope not!" said Gaspare, who dropped behind now and then to hawk and spit. "What extraordinary things women do suppose! The very opposite of the facts!"
"Men too," retorted Regina.
"Men oftener than women," added Antonio, gallantly.
"Eh! Possibly. Sometimes," said Gaspare, with a disagreeable smile.
Gaspare's rude manners offended Regina, though she had been warned he was "quite a character." Presently, however, she forgot him, and became absorbed in contemplation of the new things she was seeing.
People passed rapidly along the pavements, umbrellas under their arms; vivid light poured from the blue sky still furrowed by metallic clouds; through the bright moist air strayed the smell of roasted chestnuts. Yes! this wide, brilliant street was really fine! In a shop window were exhibited five astonishing hats, which Regina admired more than Santa Maria Maggiore. But presently the brothers made her deviate into a lane, dismal with old houses and old gardens hanging under high bastion-like walls, which went up and down, where there were no pavements, no shops, only a dirty crowd of hawkers, herb-sellers, street arabs. They walked on and on, but this melancholy street seemed endless. Regina grew tired; she leaned on Antonio's arm, and began again to feel a dull weight of sadness. Was this Rome?
The brothers made the blunder of supposing that Regina could walk as far as they. They dragged her on to the Forum, where, her eyes blinded by fatigue, she saw no more than a field of drenched ruins, a sorrow-stricken place, a cemetery over which the metallic clouds brooded, hiding the blue heaven and wrapping arches and columns in veils of doleful shade. Gaspare discoursed learnedly, but she did not listen. The tragic solitude of the vast graveyard was profaned by a great number of persons with eye-glasses and English gowns girded up with pins and dress-fasteners. The columns and the glorious fragments, still soaked with rain, seemed to Regina gigantic marble bones, exhumed by a nation of inquisitive children who amused themselves desecrating this stupendous sepulchre of a dead civilisation.
From the Forum they moved homewards towards Piazza Venezia. It was almost noon; the crowds took the trams by assault; a broad river of smartly-dressed women came down Via Nazionale, spread over the Piazza, and went up the Corso. A confused noise of trams, motors, carriages, human voices, sounded on the air which was still damp, but illuminated by changing light from between the clouds. Regina felt a kind of vertigo. She, who could see little that was distant, began to see even the near things confusedly. The incessant rumble of a thousand noises, among which the motors emitted roars like rampant wild beasts, gave her a vague sensation of terror. She fixed her wide eyes on the crowd, fascinated by the coming and going as by the flowing of a stream. She looked up and saw a network of telephone wires hiding the sky, which renewed her feeling of oppression; and yet, though tired and overwhelmed, she would not admit herself wondering or surprised. The elegance of the women certainly struck her. She felt envious, but also displeased. It was impossible there could be so many shapely and handsome women! They must be painted and padded! Oh, she knew very well! She knew how much corruption, falsity, hidden misery, that crowd carried within itself, the first contact with which on that uncertain autumn morning under the network of metallic threads awoke in her a mysterious sentiment of aversion and pity. Antonio fixed enamoured eyes on his bride's face; but those enamoured eyes failed to perceive the apathy of fatigue which was showing more and more plainly on the beloved features.
"Let's take a carriage," he suggested.
"Why not the tram?" asked Gaspare.
Antonio said the carriage would be quicker, but really he wanted at least for the first day to treat his Regina royally. Gaspare argued for the tram.
"Let's walk," said Regina.
"Walk? When we can't get you along?" exclaimed the brother-in-law.
"Then we'll have the carriage," said Regina to spite him.
"Oh, I see! We've become aristocrats!" said the misogynist.
They found a carriage and drove up Via Nazionale, now beginning to empty and a little somnolent. It appeared immense under the white light of a heaven which had become all silver. In the distant and vaporous background of Piazza Termini, the fountains looked like huge crystal flowers. The great street was a thing of exquisite beauty at that hour, under that tender and melancholy sky, with that grand yet delicate background. Antonio looked at his wife, hoping at last to find a ray of admiration in her bewildered eyes. But the great eyes, shadowed and full of weariness, were only following the floating flags, and did not notice the grandeur and beauty of the splendid street. At Via Napoli he said—
"Let's throw a glance into those cross-streets. We'll perhaps find our street, Regianotta!"
"It would take me three months to recognise it. I don't know what to look out for."
"But you aren't observing!"
"Very likely not. What's the good of observing?"
"What's the good of having eyes?" put in Gaspare.
"Yes, what's the good? One generally blunders with them."
Gaspare did not appear to understand. He merely spat, and reflected that women are all either fools or flirts.
From that day out, he classed Regina with what he called the "avalanche" of fool-women. She was like Arduina, like Marina the maid, like other women of his acquaintance. Supreme and reciprocal contempt reigned for their whole life between this brother and sister-in-law.
They came in, and Signora Anna declared the lunch "Ready, ready!" yet kept them waiting for half-an-hour. Regina had to give minute descriptions of everything she had seen. The three brothers argued about politics, their ideas being widely apart. Gaspare was a "forcaiuolo"[1] of the first water, uncompromising and cruel; Massimo was a Tolstoyan Socialist, as much against war as his brother was against liberty; Antonio was Liberal and a little opportunist. Signora Anna made excursions into her sons' conversation in a manner peculiar to herself. No matter what public character was named, she knew the history of his marriage and could give the name of his mistress. On all such matters she appeared singularly well informed.
After lunch Regina retired to her room, lay down, and slept. When she awoke her ears told her it was again raining, and very heavily. Finding herself
