We turned our pilgrim feet to where the Colosseum wheels against the sky and gives up the world’s eternal supreme note of splendour and of cruelty; and along the solitary dusty Appian Way, as if it were a country lane of the time we know, came a ragged Roman urchin with a basket.  Under the triumphal arch of Titus, where his forefathers jeered at the Jews in manacled procession, we bargained with him for his purple plums.  He had the eyes and the smile of immemorial Italy for his own, and the bones of Imperial Rome in equal inheritance, which he also wished to sell, by the way, in jagged fragments from his trouser pockets.  And it linked up those early days with that particular afternoon in a curiously simple way to think that from the Caesars to King Humbert there has never been a year without just such brown-cheeked, dark-eyed, imperfectly washed little Roman boys upon the Appian Way.

CHAPTER XII.

We were too late for the hotel dejeuner, and had to order it, I remember, a la carte.  That was why the Count was kept waiting.  We were kept waiting, too, which seemed at the moment of more importance, since the atmosphere of the classics had given us excellent appetites.  Emmeline decided upon ices and petits fours in the Corso for her party, after which they were going to let nothing interfere with their inspection of the prison of St. Paul; but we came back and ordered a haricot.  In the cavernous recesses beyond the door which opened kitchen-ward, commands resounded, and a quarter of an hour later a boy walked casually through the dining-room bearing beans in a basket.  Time went on, and the Senator was compelled to send word that he had not ordered the repast for the following day.  The small waiter then made a pretence of activity, and brought vinegar and salt, and rolls and water.  “The peutates is notta-cooks,” said he in deprecation, and we were distressed to postpone the Count for those peutates.  But what else was possible?

The dismaying part was that after luncheon had enabled us to regard a little thing like that with equanimity, my parents abandoned it to me.  Momma said she knew she was missing a great deal, but she really didn’t feel equal to entertaining the Count; her back had given out completely.  The Senator wished to attend to his mail.  With the assistance of his letters and telegrams he was beginning to bear up wonderfully, and, as it was just in, I hadn’t the heart to interfere.  “You can apologise for us, daughter,” said poppa, “and say something polite about our seeing him later.  Don’t let him suppose we’ve gone back on him in any way.  It’s a thing no young fellow in America would think of, but with these foreigners you never can tell.”

I saw at once that the Count was annoyed.  He was standing in the middle of the salon, fingering his sword-hilt in a manner which expressed the most absurd irritation.  So I said immediately that I was awfully sorry, but it seemed so difficult to get anything to eat in Rome at that time of year, that the head-waiter was really responsible, and wouldn’t he sit down?