It was not invented for so stupendous a crisis. I
am waiting for my negress--can't you understand?--and she is already
seven minutes late...."
A flaming morning, forestaste of things to come.
I find myself, after an early visit to the hospital where things are
doing well, glancing down, towards midday, into Trajan's Forum, as one
looks into some torrid bear-pit.
Broken columns glitter in the sunshine; the grass is already withered to
hay. Drenched in light and heat, this Sahara-like enclosure is
altogether devoid of life save for the cats. The majority are dozing in
a kind of torpor, or moribund, or dead. My experiences in the hospital
half an hour ago dispose me, perhaps, to regard this menagerie in a more
morbid fashion than usual. To-day, in particular, it seems as if all the
mangy and decrepit cats of Rome had given themselves a rendezvous on
this classic soil; cats of every colour and every age--quite young ones
among them; all, one would say, at the last gasp of life. This pit, this
crater of flame, is their "Home for the Dying." Once down here, nothing
matters any more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, from
dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in a
stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One
would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or
slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing
where one dies.
There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated
tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the
mouth.
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