ound the market at the foot of the statue given
over, not to flowers, as the name of the place might imply, but to such
homely fruits of the earth as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, and, above
all, onions. There was a placidity in the simple scene that pleased me:
I liked the quiet gossiping of the old market-women over their baskets
of vegetables; the confidential fashion in which a gentle crone came to
my elbow and begged of me in undertone, as if she meant the matter to go
no further, was even mattering. But the solemnity of the face that
looked down on the scene was spoiled by the ribbon drawn across it to
fasten a wreath on the head, in the effort of some mistaken zealot of
free thought to enhance its majesty by decoration. It was the moment
when the society calling itself by Giordano Bruno's name was making an
effort for the suppression of ecclesiastical instruction in the public
schools; and on the anniversary of his martyrdom his effigy had suffered
this unmeant hurt. In all the churches there had been printed appeals to
parents against the agnostic attack on the altar and the home, and there
had been some of the open tumults which seem in Rome to express every
social emotion. But the clericals had triumphed, and an observer more
anxious than I to give a mystical meaning to accident might have
interpreted the disfiguring ribbon over Bruno's bronze lips as a new
silencing of the heretic.

[Illustration: 31 THE CARNIVAL (AS IT ONCE WAS)]

I certainly did not construe it so, and, if my notion of serially
visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of
the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any
mischance in my meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I
could not hope to carry out my scheme without greater expense both in
time and money than I could well afford, for, though cabs in Rome are
swift and cheap, yet the piazzas are many and widely distributed; and I
finally decided to indulge myself in a novelty of adventure verging
close upon originality. It had always seemed to me that the happy
strangers mounted on the tiers of seats that rise from front to back on
the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the
lowest place, on the life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a
bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh
impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not
the courage to give, though t