LITMIR.BIZ

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mason called Giovanni Borgi. He belonged to the “opera di San Pietro”—that is, he was one of the workmen engaged for life by the administration of St. Peter’s for the maintenance and repair of the Basilica, the Vatican Palace and its many dependent buildings. The “opera” was a close corporation and included artisans of every necessary craft, from mosaic workers to bricklayers, plumbers, and carpenters. Of course the privileges were largely hereditary, the Italian traditions of Guilds leading the son to follow the trade or profession of his father whenever possible, but high character and a blameless record were also indispensable qualifications for every appointment.

      Giovanni Borgi, though poor and almost illiterate, had worked all his life in the holy places and was regarded by his fellows as very nearly a saint. While he worked he prayed, and when working hours were over he went regularly to the great Hospital of Santo Spirito in the “Borgo” and sat up late into the night nursing the sick and comforting the dying. The only reproach ever addressed to him was that he sometimes got sleepy over his work the morning after some unusually long vigil by the bedside of some sufferer who had entreated him to remain with him. Everybody loved the queer little man, and he loved all the world but himself. To this person he never gave a thought. Heaven had made him short and stumpy—but he could walk as well as the youngest; he had but one eye—but its sight was perfect; a funny bald head—but somebody had given him an old wig to cover it with; what was there to complain about? So, being empty of itself, his heart had room for others, and he took his fellow-beings’ wants and sufferings very seriously.

      One evening, before going to the hospital, he was accompanying a religious procession through the streets, when he noticed the dark forms of a little crowd of sleepers on the steps of the Pantheon. Coming nearer, he found that they were boys of various ages, ragged and forlorn, huddled together for warmth, and sound asleep. A little farther on, under the tables where fowls were sold in the daytime, more of these waifs had taken refuge. The sight grieved the good mason deeply. He could not pass on and leave them thus. Rousing some of them, he asked many questions and learnt that not one of them had a home or a guardian. Orphans, runaway boys from the hill villages, waifs of one sort and another—here was one of those collections of abandoned children who would later become criminals unless some kind hand were stretched out to save them. Giovanni did not hesitate for a moment. He bade the little crowd follow him to his lodging. There was one of those great ground-floor rooms only used for storing properties or cattle—no Roman will sleep near the ground if he can help it, for fear of fever—and in this barn-like place Giovanni bestowed his ragged guests after giving them whatever he could beg or buy for their supper.

      I do not think he went to the hospital at all that night. I fancy he sat long in the brick-floored room, staring at the three wicks of the “lucerna” and begging Heaven to show him what to do next. In the morning he had to let his flock out, promising them some supper if they would come back at nightfall, and exhorting them to be good meanwhile. The poor little creatures needed no second invitation and turned up faithfully, their numbers swelled by others to whom they had spoken of their good luck. Giovanni saw that he would soon have a community on his hands, and went to tell some priests, who were his friends, that he must be helped to teach and govern as well as to maintain the forsaken children. For their food—breakfast and supper—he begged, and the kind-hearted neighbours responded generously. His first care was to teach them the catechism, sitting among them in the evening and getting them to talk about themselves; he also taught them what little he knew of reading and writing; but it hurt him sorely to turn them out to face all the temptations of the streets during the daytime.

      

      Very soon the priests and some other charitable persons raised money to rent a part of an old palace, somewhat in ill repair, but providing luxurious quarters in comparison to the church steps and the fowl market. The priests offered to devote their evenings to teaching the boys, and found their efforts well rewarded, for the waifs, under the kind, firm rule of old Giovanni, were eager to make the best of their wonderful new advantages. He very soon solved the question of occupation during the daytime by placing them out in a number of workshops, where they could learn useful trades and earn something towards their own maintenance. He sent them out in the morning, giving each a loaf of bread to take with him for dinner; then he went to his own work at St. Peter’s. During the dinner hour he would rush round from one workshop to another to see that his “children” were behaving themselves and that none had played truant. Then in the evening he would go and fetch those of whose steadfastness he had any doubts, and by nightfall the whole big family was safely housed in the corner of the old Palazzo.

      Whatever they had earned during the day had to be rendered up to “Tata Giovanni” (Daddy John), as they had come to call him, and very dearly they came to love their queer, kind protector. Old people used to describe his taking them all out to Villa Borghese on holidays, and said it was wonderful to see the old fellow flying round, playing ball with the rest, his wig all awry and his mighty laugh showing how happy he was with his children.

      His good work had found friends and supporters from the beginning, and being brought to the notice of Pius VI, the pontiff bought the Palazzo Ruggia as a permanent home for it, and constituted himself its chief protector. Thus encouraged, Tata Giovanni started on a crusade which had for its object nothing less than the reclamation of all the good-for-nothing boys in Rome! He used to seek them out and follow them up, and if persuasion proved unavailing the dogged old man would seize them by the arm and march them off to his “Asilo” without more ado. Vagrancy, mendicancy, gambling roused his ire to such an extent that his name became a terror to all youthful evil-doers, and they would fly at the mere mention of it.

      Life at the Asilo was conducted on lines of military precision. The youngsters rose early, heard Mass, got a good breakfast, and marched away to their work, where, as I have said, their guardian looked in on some of them—and they never knew which it would be—during the course of the day. When the Ave Maria rang they all came home, and as they passed into the house, Tata Giovanni stood at the door with a bag in his hand, and into this they had to drop their earnings—not a baiocco was to be spent on the way or kept back!

      Then came the lessons, followed by the rosary, and supper, this last the crown of the day for the tired, healthy young people. The old ideals still found many followers in those days, and it was not at all unusual to see some great Cardinal “gird himself with a towel” and trot humbly a score of times between the kitchen and the refectory to wait on the boys. There were a hundred of them by this time, and great was Daddy John’s preoccupation as to their morals. Long inured to shortening his hours of sleep, he would pace the dormitories all night long to see that all was as it should be, only sleeping himself for a short hour in the morning; and certainly Heaven blessed his efforts, for as years went on, and his waifs grew old enough to go out into the world on their own account and others took their places, not one that I ever heard of brought discredit on his education.

      The sick at the hospital were not forgotten amid all these new labours and responsibilities; Tata Giovanni (no one ever called him anything else) went to them whenever he could, and when he could not he would send some of the older boys in his place, thus teaching them the lesson which had been the moral of his whole life—that no one must live for himself alone, and that the poorest and most ignorant can always find some sufferer to cheer and console. He died at last, the good, humble old workman, fifteen years after he had strayed from the procession to inspect the ragged sleepers on the steps of the Pantheon. He passed away on June 28, 1798. The whole city mourned for him, and his boys were broken-hearted. His work of love had become a public institution, and, incorporated with another of the same kind, lived till a few years ago, when it was swept aside and swallowed up with hundreds of other beneficent foundations in the “indiscriminate brigandage” of Rome’s latest rulers.

      Several years after Tata Giovanni’s death a young gentleman of noble birth, who came from Sinigaglia, was appointed the director of the Asilo. It was not a distinguished appointment by any means; of course no salary was attached to the position—it was not till the recent laicization of charity that any but unpaid volunteers attended to the wants of the poor in the Eternal City. That made no difference to this handsome young man, for he came of a wealthy family, but his father, who had had great ambitions for his son, was by no means pleased to see him buried in an orphan

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