We have charming glimpses of him enjoying in
company the hospitable shade of huge pine and white poplar on the grassy
terrace of some rose-perfumed Italian garden with noisy fountain and
hurrying stream. He loiters, with eyes bent on the pavement, along the
winding Sacred Way that leads to the Forum, or on his way home struggles
against the crowd as it pushes its way down town amid the dust and din
of the busy city. He shrugs his shoulders in good-humored despair as the
sirocco brings lassitude and irritation from beyond the Mediterranean,
or he sits huddled up in some village by the sea, shivering with the
winds from the Alps, reading, and waiting for the first swallow to
herald the spring.
We see him at a mild game of tennis in the broad grounds of the Campus
Martius. We see him of an evening vagabonding among the nameless common
folk of Rome, engaging in small talk with dealers in small merchandise.
He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is
not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men
of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too
intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless
gallantry.
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