A Dream of Rome

The train stopped.

'Capua! Capua!' three or four voices cried monotonously into the night.

A clanking of swords dragged on the ground was heard, and some lively muttering that passed between a Lombard and a Piedmontese. It came from a group of subaltern officers, who were ending their evening's amusement in coming to see the night train from Naples to Rome pass through. While the conductor chatted respectfully with the station-master, who gave him a commission for Caianello, and while the postman handed up a mail-sack full of letters to the clerk in the postal van, the officers, talking to each other and making their spurs ring (from habit), looked to see if anyone got in or out of the train, peeping through the doors which were open for the sight of a fair feminine face or that of a friend. But many of the doors were closed. Blue blinds were stretched over the panes, through which glimmered a faint lamplight, as if coming from a place where lay travellers overpowered by sleep. Bodies curled up in a dark tangle of coats, shawls, and sundry coverings, were dimly discernible.

'They are all asleep,' said one of the officers; 'let us go to bed.'

'This is probably a newly-married couple,' suggested another, reading over a door the word 'Reserved.' And since the blind was not drawn, the officer, aflame with youthful curiosity, jumped on the step and flattened his face against the window. But he came down at once, disappointed and shrugging his shoulders.

'It is a man, alone,' he said-'a deputy, no doubt; he is asleep, too.'

But the solitary man was not asleep. He was stretched out at full length on the seat, an arm under his neck, and one hand in his hair; the other hand was lost in the bosom of his coat. His eyes were closed, but his face bore not the soft expression of repose, not the deep peace of human lineaments in sleep. Instead, the effort of thought was to be read in those contracted features.

When the train had passed the bridge over the Volturno, and ran into the dark, deserted, open country, the man reopened his eyes, and tried another position more favourable to repose. But the monotonous, everlasting grind, grind of the train racked his head. Now and then a farmhouse, a little villa, a rural cottage, stood out darkly from a dark background; a thin streak of light would ooze out through a crack; a lantern would throw a glimmering, dancing circle in the path of the speeding train. The cold prevented him from sleeping. Accustomed to the mild Southern nights, and not in the habit of travelling, he had set out with a simple light overcoat and neither rug nor shawl; he had a small handbag, and other luggage was following him on the train. Of importance to him were neither clothes, nor maps, nor books, nor linen-nothing but that little gold medal, that precious amulet suspended from his watch-chain. From the day it was his-it had been obtained for him by special request through the qu?stor of the Chamber-his fingers were perpetually running over it with light touch, as if in a mechanical caress. At such times as he was alone he crushed it into the palm of his hand so hard that a red mark would remain on the skin. In order to have the compartment reserved, he had shown this to the station-master, lowering his eyes and compressing his lips to fight down a look of triumph and a smile of complacency. And since the beginning of the journey he held it in his hand, as though afraid to lose it, so infusing it with the warmth of the epiderm it was scorching. And so acute was the sensation of pleasure derived from the contact of that possession that he faintly felt every protuberance and every hollow in the face of the metal-felt under his fingers the number and the words:

'XIV. Legislature.'

On the reverse were a Christian name and a surname, indicative of the ownership:

'Francesco Sangiorgio.'

His hands were hot, yet he shook with the cold. He rose and went to the door. The train was now running through open country, but its noise was subdued. It seemed as though the wheels were anointed with oil as they rolled noiselessly along the rails, accompanying the travellers' sleep without disturbing it. The luminous windows stamped themselves as they fled by on a high, black embankment. Not a shadow behind the panes. The great house of slumbers coursed through the night, driven, as it were, by an iron, fervent will, whirling away with it those wills inert in repose.

'Let us try to sleep,' thought the Honourable Sangiorgio.

Stretching out once more, he attempted to do so. But the name of Sparanise, called out softly two or three times at a stoppage, reminded him of a small and obscure place in the Basilicata, whence he hailed, and which, together with twenty other wretched villages, had given all their votes to make him a deputy. The little spot, three or four hours distant from an unknown station on the Eboli-Reggio line, seemed very far oft to the Honourable Sangiorgio-far off in a swampy vale, among the noxious mists which in autumn emanate from the streams, whose dried-up beds are stony, arid, and yellow in summertime. On the way to the railway-station from that little lonely place in the dreary tracts of the Basilicata he had passed close to the cemetery-a large, square piece of ground, with black crosses standing up, and two tall, graceful pines. There lay, under the ground, under a single block of marble, his erstwhile opponent, the old deputy who had always been re-elected because of patriotic tradition, and whom he had always fought with the enthusiasm of an ambitious young man ignoring the existence of obstacles. Not once had he defeated him, had this presumptuous young fellow, who was born too late, as the other said, to do anything for his country. But Death, as a considerate ally, had secured him a sweeping and easy victory. His triumph was an act of homage to the old, departed patriot. But as he had passed the burial-ground he had felt in his heart neither reverence nor envy in respect to the tired old soldier who had gone down to the great, serene indolence of the tomb. All of this recurred to his mind, as well as the long, odious ten years of his life as a provincial advocate, with the mean, daily task common in the courts, and rare appearance at assizes. Perhaps a land litigation over an inheritance of three hundred lire, a mere spadeful of ground; a whole miniature world of sordid, paltry affairs, of peasants' rascalities, of complicated lies for a low object, in which the client would suspect his lawyer and try to cheat him, while the lawyer would look upon the client as an unarmed enemy. Amid such surroundings the young advocate had felt every instinct of ardour die in his soul; speech, too, had died in his throat. And since the cause he must defend was barren and trivial, and the men he must address listened with indifference, he at last took refuge in hastening through the defence in a few dry words; therefore his reputation as an advocate was not great. Now he was entirely bereft of the capacity to regret leaving his home and his old parents, who at seeing him go had wept like all old persons of advanced years when someone departs through that great selfishness which is a trait of old age. Many secret, furious tempests, smothered eruptions that could find no vent, had exhausted the well-springs of tenderness in his heart. Now, during this journey, he remembered it all quite clearly, but without emotion, like an impartial observer. He shut his eyes and attempted to sleep, but could not.

In the train, however, everyone else appeared to be wrapped in deep slumber. Through the noise and the increased rocking the Honourable Sangiorgio seemed to hear a long, even respiration; he seemed almost to see a gigantic chest slowly rising and falling in the happy, mechanical process of breathing.

At Cassino, where there was a stop of five minutes at one in the morning, no one got out. The waiter in the café was asleep under the petroleum lamp, motionless, his arms on the marble table and his head on his arms. The station men, huddled up in black capes, with hoods over their eyes and lantern in hand, went by, testing the journals, which gave forth the sound of a metal bell, clear, crystalline in tone. The whistle of the engine, as the train started, was gently shrill; the loud, strident voice was lowered as if by courtesy. Resuming the journey, the movement of the train became a soft rocking, without shocks, without grating, without unevenness, a rapid motion as on velvet, but with a dull rumble like the snoring of a giant in the heavy plenitude of his somnolence. Francesco Sangiorgio thought of all those people who were travelling with him: people in sorrow over their recent parting, or glad at nearing their new bourn; people loving without hope, loving tragically, or loving happily; people taken up with work, with business, with anxieties, with idleness; people oppressed by age, by illness, by youth, by felicity; people who knew they were journeying towards a dramatic destiny, and those who were going that way unconsciously. But they all, within half an hour, had one by one yielded to sleep, in full forgetfulness of body and soul. The gentle, pacific, healing balm of rest had come to still the unquiet spirits, had soothed them, had spread over those perturbed mortals, whether too happy or too unhappy, and they were all at ease in their sleep. Irritated nerves, anger, disdain, desires, sickness, cowardice, incurable grief-all the bestiality and grandeur of human nature travelling in that nocturnal train was lost in the great, calm embrace of sleep. The train was hastening to their fate-sad, lucky, or commonplace-those dreaming spirits and those prostrate shapes of beings who were tasting the profound delight of painless annihilation, leaving it to a power outside of themselves to bear them along.

'But why cannot I sleep also?' thought Francesco Sangiorgio.

For a moment, as he stood in his solitary compartment under the wavering light of the oil-lamp, with the pitch-black earth scudding by past the windows, with the light vapour that clouded the glass, with the cold of the night that was growing more intense-for a moment he felt alone, irremediably lost and abandoned in the feebleness of his situation. He repented having so proudly asked for a reserved compartment, wished for the company of a human being, of anyone whomsoever, of anyone of his kind, even the very humblest. He was dismayed and terrified like a child, imprisoned in that cage out of which there was no escape, drawn along by a machine which he was powerless to stop in its course. Seized with unreasoning horror, with parched throat he dropped helplessly on the seat, from which, pricked by a latent reflection, he suddenly jumped up; he began to walk nervously back and forth.