At this season the skins are still white. Your artist must come
later--not later, however, than the end of August, for on the first of
September the bathing, be the weather never so warm, is officially, and
quite suddenly, at an end. Tiber water is declared to be "unhealthy"
after that date, and liable to give you fever; a relic of the days when
the true origin of malaria was unknown.
A glance at the papers is sufficient to prove that bathing has not yet
begun in earnest. No drowning accidents, up to the present. Later on
they come thick and fast. For this river, with its rapid current and
vindictive swirling eddies, is dangerous to young swimmers; it grips
them in its tawny coils and holds them fast, often within a few yards of
friend or parent who listens, powerless to help, to the victim's cries
of anguish and sees his arm raised imploringly out of that serpent-like
embrace. So it hurries him to destruction, only to be fished up later in
a state, as the newspapers will be careful to inform us, of "incipient
putrefaction."
A murderous flood....
That hoary, trickling structure--that fountain which has forgotten to be
a fountain, so dreamily does the water ooze through obstructive mosses
and emerald growths that dangle in drowsy pendants, like wet beards,
from its venerable lips--that fountain un-trimmed, harmonious, overhung
by ancient ilexes: where shall a more reposeful spot be found? Doubly
delicious, after the turmoil and glistening sheen by the river-bank.
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