as
the unpacking, and little Reverdy had to be kept comforted, if possible;
I must start him in school too. Life must always go on. I became
sensible of many bells. The strange noises of a civilization wholly
unknown to me came up through my window. I looked out upon the Piazza di
Spagna, knowing nothing of its history. Who would be my friends here?
Back of me was nearly a quarter of a century in America and before me
what?

CHAPTER LII

Our pension was all that could be desired. Mr. and Mrs. Winchell were
here from America, from Connecticut. She was about twenty-seven; he was
nearly sixty. They were on their way around the world, stopping in Rome
for some months. She was studying painting under an artist who also
taught etching. In this way I came under the instruction of Luca, who
had a studio not far from the Piazza di Spagna, and also into daily
association with Mrs. Winchell.

First little Reverdy had to be placed in school and given a tutor.
Before doing this I took him around the city, and we saw together some
of the churches: S. Maria del Popolo, S. Giovanna dei Laterano, S.
Angelo, S. Paolo. I took him to the Pantheon, the Coliseum, to St.
Peter's, into the Vatican. Thus I gained my first impressions; and on
these rounds I found the courier Serafino Maletesta, who became a source
of so much interest and delight to me.

My mornings were spent in Luca's studio; my afternoons in sightseeing
with Serafino, in which Mr. and Mrs. Winchell joined, though
infrequently by him. He was ageing and not well. And often from the
beginning Mrs. Winchell and I set off together with Serafino to explore
museums, visit the Palatine, drive to the edge of the city where the
Alban hills were plainer across the Campagna, as level as a prairie
around Jacksonville.

I was struggling with Italian, carrying on such conversation as I could
with Serafino, and with Mrs. Winchell, who was growing proficient in the
language.

Serafino was something past sixty. He had been with the Carbonari of
1820, and in the Italian revolution of 1830-31. He saw this suppressed.
Then when the republican movements of 1848 shook Europe, he had
participated in the third Italian revolution of that year; and again he
had seen Italy put down, this time by the intervention of the French,
whose Louis Napoleon sought by this action to win the friendship of the
Catholic clergy in France. The hated Austrians now ruled Lombardy and
Venice. In Rome, now