At any rate, I had so long resigned the hope of revisiting the
quiet scene that when I revisited Rome last winter, after the flight of
ages, and one day found myself in a shop on the Corso, it was from
something like a hardy irony that I asked the shopman if a street called
Via del Gambero still existed in that neighborhood. I said that I had
once lodged in it forty-odd years before; but I believed it had been
demolished. Not at all, the shopman said; it was just behind his place;
and what was the number of the house? I told him, and he laughed for joy
in being able to do me a pleasure; me, a stranger from the strange land
of sky-scratchers _(grattacieli),_ as the Italians not inadequately
translate sky-scrapers. If I would favor him through his back shop he
would show me how close I was upon it; and from his threshold he pointed
to the corner twenty yards off, which, when I had turned it, left me
almost at my own door.
In that transmuted Rome Via del Gambero, at least, was wholly unchanged,
and there was not a wrinkle in the front of the house where we had
sojourned so comfortably, so contentedly, in our incredible youth.
Pages:
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204