"
Then, instead of dining at your smart hotel, it is so much more
adorable to drop in at some charming restaurant with tables set in the
open air, and to hear the band play, and to eat all sorts of delicious
unknowable dishes, and to drink a beautiful golden wine called
"Lachrima Christi" (the tears of Christ), and to watch the people--the
people--the people!
XIV
ROME
On Easter Sunday I had my first view of Rome, my first view of St.
Peter's. The day was as soft and mild as one of our own spring days,
and there was even that little sharp tang in the air which one feels
in the early spring in America. The wind was sweet and balmy, yet now
and then it had a sharp edge to it as it cut around a curve, as if to
remind one that the frost was not yet all out of the ground, and that
the sun was still only the heir-apparent to the throne and had not yet
been crowned king. It was the sort of day that one has at home a
little later, when one still likes the feel of the fur around the
neck, while the trees are still bare, when the eager spring wind
brings a tingle to the blood and the smell of rich, black earth and
early green springing things to the nostrils; when the eye is ravished
with the sight of purple hyacinths thrusting their royal chalices up
through the reluctant soil; when the sun-colored jonquil and the
star-eyed narcissus lift their scented heads above the sombre ground,
as if unconscious of the patches of snow here and there, forming one
of the contradictions of life, but a contradiction always welcome,
because it is in itself a promise of better things to come.
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