Instead of the church domes and the monastery
bells, there were the harsh clang of electric trams, the thrum and throb
of automobiles, the rattle of cars and the tramp of soldiers.
Then I realised that there were two Romes--an old Rome and a new one,
and that the Rome we had come to hardly differed from the Cairo we had
left behind.
There was the same varied company of people of all nations, English,
Americans, French, German; the same nomad tribes of the rich and
dissolute, pitching their tents season by season in the sunny resorts of
Europe; the same aimless society, the same debauch of fashion, the same
callous and wicked luxury, the same thirst for selfish pleasures, the
same busy idleness, the same corruption of character and sex.
This made me very unhappy, but from first to last Alma was in the
highest spirits. Everybody seemed to be in Rome that spring, and
everybody seemed to be known either to her or to my husband. For Alma's
sake we were invited everywhere, and thus we saw not only the life of
the foreign people of the hotels but that of a part (not the better
part) of the Roman aristocracy.
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