human
I passed it the other day,
gpt
And don't you intend to see the ruins?
human
No.
gpt
Why not?
human
They don't interest me. I can't see the past in them. I merely see ruins.
gpt
But then why did you come to Rome?
human
I don't know, she said, meekly.
gpt
I could just as well have gone somewhere else. But I had formed a great idea of Rome; and Rome disappoints me.
human
How so?
gpt
I find it hard and inexorable and devoid of feeling. I don't know why, but that's the impression it makes upon me. And I am in a mood at present which somehow makes me want something less insensible and imperturbable.
human
Come along, he said.
gpt
Come with me to the Palatine. I must show you Rome. It is so beautiful.
human
Vole? Vole?
gpt
This is Gaetano, he said.
human
I always take him. He knows me, don't you, Gaetano?
gpt
Si, signorino. Cavallo di sangue, signorina!
human
I am always frightened of these cabmen,
gpt
You don't know them, he answered, smiling.
human
I like them. I like the people. They're nice people.
gpt
You approve of everything in Rome.
human
And you submit without reserve to a mistaken impression.
gpt
Why mistaken?
human
Because that first impression of Rome, as hard and unfeeling, is always the same and always mistaken.
gpt
Yes, it's that. Look, we are driving by the Forum. Whenever I see the Forum, I think of Miss Hope and her orange lining.
human
This is the Palatine.
gpt
This wooden staircase takes us to the Palace of Tiberius. Above the palace, on the top of the arches, is a garden from which we look down on the Forum.
human
Tell me about Tiberius. I know that there were good and bad emperors. We were taught that at school. Tiberius was a bad emperor, wasn't he?
gpt
He was a dismal brute. But why do you want me to tell you about him?
human
Because otherwise I can take no interest in those arches and chambers.
gpt
Then let us go up to the top and sit in the garden.
human
Don't you feel Rome here?
gpt
I feel the same everywhere,
human
It's the atmosphere around you, he continued.
gpt
You should try to forget our hotel, to forget Belloni and all our fellow-visitors and yourself. When anybody first arrives here, he has all the usual trouble about the hotel, his rooms, the table-d'hôte, the vaguely likable or dislikable people. You've got over that now. Clear your mind of it. And try to feel only the atmosphere of Rome. It's as if the atmosphere had remained the same, notwithstanding that the centuries lie piled up one above the other. First the middle ages covered the antiquity of the Forum and now it is hidden everywhere by our nineteenth-century craze for travel. There you have Miss Hope's orange lining. But the atmosphere has always remained the same. Unless I imagine it....
human
Perhaps I do, he continued.
gpt
But what does that matter to me? Our whole life is imagination; and imagination is a beautiful thing. The beauty of our imagination is the consolation of our lives, to those of us who are not men of action. The past is beauty. The present is not, does not exist. And the future does not interest me.
human
Do you never think about modern problems?
gpt
The woman question? Socialism? Peace?
human
Well, yes, for instance.
gpt
No, he smiled.
human
I think of them sometimes, but not about them.
gpt
How do you mean?
human
I get no further. That is my nature. I am a dreamer by nature; and my dream is the past.
gpt
Don't you dream of yourself?
human
No. Of my soul, my inner self? No. It interests me very little.
gpt
Have you ever suffered?
human
Suffered? Yes, no. I don't know. I feel sorry for my utter uselessness as a human being, as a son, as a man; but, when I dream, I am happy.
gpt
How do you come to speak to me so openly?
human
Why should I be reticent about myself? he asked.
gpt
I either don't talk or I talk as I am doing now. Perhaps it is a little odd.
human
Do you talk to every one so intimately?
gpt
No, hardly to anybody. I once had a friend ... but he's dead. Tell me, I suppose you consider me morbid?
human
No, I don't think so.
gpt
I shouldn't mind if you did. Oh, how beautiful it is here! Are you drinking Rome in with your very breath?
human
Which Rome?
gpt
The Rome of antiquity. Under where we are sitting is the Palace of Tiberius. I see him walking about there, with his tall, strong figure, with his large, searching eyes: he was very strong, he was very dismal and he was a brute. He had no ideals. Farther down, over there, is the Palace of Caligula, a madman of genius. He built a bridge across the Forum to speak to Jupiter in the Capitol. That's a thing one couldn't do nowadays. He was a genius and a madman. When a man's like that, there's a good deal about him to admire.
human
How can you admire an age of emperors who were brutes and mad?
gpt
Because I see their age before my eyes, in the past, like a dream.
human
How is it possible that you don't see the present before you, with the problems of our own time, especially the eternal problem of poverty?
gpt
Yes, he said,
human
I know. That is my sin, my wickedness. The eternal problem of poverty doesn't affect me.
gpt
You don't belong to your period,
human
No.
gpt
Have you ever felt hungry?
human
Have you ever pictured yourself leading the life of a labourer, of a factory-girl who works until she's worn out and old and half-dead for a bare crust of bread?
gpt
Oh, those things are so horrible and so ugly: don't talk about them!