Sigfried on page 50

"I listen to them, speaking knowledgeably of new finds, discussing archaeological digs and museum treasures; and I love them too, love the old gods, love beauty long buried in the ground now visible once more, I love the proportions and the smooth cold stone skin of the old statuary, but still more I love Rome as it is now, alive and manifest to me, I love its skies, Jupiter's fathomless sea, and I imagine we're drowned, we're Vineta, and up on top of the element that washes around us are ships never seen by us, sailing on dazzling seas, and Death casts his invisible net over the city, I love the streets, the corners, the stairways, the quiet courtyards with urns, ivy and lares, and the raucous squares with daredevil Lambretta riders, I love the people sitting on their doorsteps of an evening, their jokes, their expressive gestures, their gift for comedy, their conversation which is lost on me, I love the bubbling fountains with their sea gods, nymphs and tritons, I love the children sitting on the marble edge of the fountains, those tumbling, garlanded, cruel little Neros, I love the bustle, friction, barging, and shouting and laughter and looks on the Corso, and obscenities that are whispered to ladies in passing, and I love the stiff, empty larvae of the ladies' countenances, which the dirt helps to form, and I love their replies, their humiliation and their pleasure in these indecent tributes, which they bury underneath their street-masks in their real faces, and carry home with them and into their women's dreams, I love the gleaming affluent shopfronts, the display of the jewellers and the bird hats of the milliners, I love the snooty little Communist on the Piazza della Rotunda, I love the long, shiny espresso bar with the hissing, steam-belching machine and the men sitting there, drinking hot strong bitter-sweet coffee from little cups, I love hearing Verdi's music booming out in the passage i n front of the Pazza Colonna from the loudspeakers of the television studios and echoing back from the fin de siecle stucco facades, I love the Via Veneto, the cafes of Vanity Fair, with their funny chairs and colourful awnings, I love the leggy, slim-hipped models, their dyed hair the colour of flame, their pale faces, their great staring eyes, fire that I can't touch, I love the happy, stupid athletic gigolos in attendance, traded by the wealthy corseted ladies, I love the dignified American senators who get audiences with the Pope and can buy anything they want, I love the gentle, white-haired automobile kings, who spend their fortunes on supporting science, art and literature, I love the homosexual poets in their tight drainpipe jeans and pointy thin-soled shoes, living off awards and shaking their jangling silver bracelets coquettishly back from the overlong cuffs of their shirts, I love the old mouldering bathing-shop anchored in front of the Castle of the Angels on the turbid Tiber, and its naked red light-bulbs in the night, I love the small, secret, incense-steeped, art- and ornament-crammed churches, even though Kurenberg finds baroque Rome disappointing, I love the priests in their robes of black, red, violet and white, the Latin Mass, the seminarians with fear in their faces, the old prebendaries in stained soutanes and beautiful greasy Monsignore hats with funny red chords round their waists and fear in their faces, the old women kneeling at confessionals with fear in their faces, the poor cracked hands of the beggars in front of the carved and worked portals of the chapels and their fear trembling like the vein in their throats, I love the little shopkeeper in the Street of the Workers, cutting great slices of mortadella like leaves, I love little markets, the fruit-sellers' stalls all green red orange, the tubs of the fishmongers full of obscure sea-creatures and all the cats of Rome prowling along the walls..."