All Roads Lead to Rome

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 637, 13 April 1929, Page 19

All Roads Lead to Rome

(Continued from page 13) The ecclesiastics, too, and particularly their younger members, seem to ite awfully overclothed. They are so vital and so fresh-looking, these young priests in the making. One tan only hope that such secular moments as they may occasionally snatch tom their routine are not -without 'he ordinary interests of frailer mor'als. Anyway, they look most happy, ■hough one fancies one sometimes sees the glimmer of a fleeting regret h their eyes. In the Borgliese Gar“tns, where every morning the ladies °f Rome ride, astride and untram■oolled, on thoroughbred horses, and "here dashing young officers go by a! a gallop, standing up in their stirtops and being tremendously Cossack, ■he divinity students often gather and watch the manner in which smart Rome enjoys itself. At such times, Perhaps, they wonder at the wide divergence of modern fashion and ancient custom, and are a little sadly oonscious of the tyranny of the garments which ever-encroaching emancitaij°ns leave severely untouched. , Tnere are some bright brains among ■he fiercer Pascisti, but the pronouncements of their official newspaper are , moments a trifle too illuminating. 0 a fecent issue of this journal thert* PPeared an article which deplored the Presence in the capital city of so ~a cJ foreigners. These people were 1 lefly annoying, it seems, on accounf o their affected voices and their soterlc pronunciation! Well, of Urse - such complaints naturally ,® man d a certain amount of our mpathy, knowing what we know- and paring what we hear: but unless Pglißh visitors commit some more v ri °us crime tha.n these I am afraid ,“ elr Presence will, however unwilly. have to be tolerated. For no , ace In the winter can be more manning than Rome, with its skies of -corruptible blueness, and its languid, ndless days. There may be an oelonal lapse. Indeed, one day ®htly there happened, in weather

circles, something that amounted to a scandal. There is, in Rome, no such period as “the dead of winter.” Winter here has no dead. The most that happens is that the pathway of the sun across the trackless blue vault of heaven is a little shorter than in the' summertime; but the sun himself sets each evening in his accustomed curve of colour behind the Capitoline Hill. One evening he was observed to creep away shabbily, like the least important guest at a party. The next morning, when one looked out of the window, there lay snow, everywhere, a white scandal and more- was falling. The hotel servants were reticent, when the condition was commented on, or embarrassed, or unbelieving. “II neve?” they said in surprise; “yes, but it is not' our snow. There are cold countries north of Italy. It has come from one of them.” The mimosa trees were deeply affronted. In about a week’s time all the little clusters of yellow, duckling-like buds would be opening, and now this! The whole city covered with the woolly fleeces of angel lambs. The pointed cvpresses, used only to leaning against the pastel blue of Italian landscape, were suddenly and ignommiously turned into Christmas trees. Taxis slithered on the polished roads. The red-wheeled carriages with the vague, somnambulistic horses did not appear at all Manv shops did not open their doors’. Rome was a city beleaguered and ashamed. But oh. how beautiful and how unreal was that Roman snow So impalpable, so ethereal was it. that if vou tried to keep a snowflake it died delicately, with a little gasp, m your hand. It seemed so unkind to bring out the fire hoses and ash a.I the lovely whiteness away For once I hated Signor Mussolini for his efficiency But God was greater than V, enC Z\ ini With a gesture of magnificent derision he had Piled his gloriA„w high dazzlingly, on all the mountains around Rome, and even II once could hardly suggest hosing them!