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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Eternal City
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2006 [EBook #19732]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL CITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                            THE ETERNAL CITY
+
+                             By Hall Caine
+
+                    Author of "The Christian," etc.
+
+                    "He looked for a city which hath
+                 foundations whose builder and maker is
+                                 God."
+
+                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+                         PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                          Copyright, 1901, 1902
+                              By HALL CAINE
+                             Popular Edition
+
+                         Published October, 1902
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                         PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
+
+
+Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, to
+condense it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, and
+otherwise so to change it that to all outward appearance it is
+practically a new book? I leave this point in literary ethics to the
+consideration of those whose business it is to discuss such questions,
+and content myself with telling the reader the history of the present
+story.
+
+About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwards
+abandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial struggle
+which culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities of
+that country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which I
+witnessed there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. The
+sights of the day often followed me through the night, and after a more
+than usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of a
+Jewish woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russian
+police under a promise that they would spare his life, which they said
+he had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The husband
+came to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his wife as his
+worst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his safety had been
+the only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her again. His cause was
+lost, his hopes were dead, his people were in despair, because the one
+being whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up to
+his enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in the
+morning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story of
+Samson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of a
+play with the incident of husband and wife as the central situation.
+
+How from this germ came the novel which was published last year under
+the title of "The Eternal City" would be a long story to tell, a story
+of many personal experiences, of reading, of travel, of meetings in
+various countries with statesmen, priests, diplomats, police
+authorities, labour leaders, nihilists and anarchists, and of the
+consequent growth of my own political and religious convictions; but it
+will not be difficult to see where and in what way time and thought had
+little by little overlaid the humanities of the early sketch with many
+extra interests. That these interests were of the essence, clothing, and
+not crushing the human motive, I trust I may continue to believe, and
+certainly I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception of my
+book at the hands of that wide circle of general readers who care less
+for a contribution to a great social propaganda than for a simple tale
+of love.
+
+But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale
+of love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of
+producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and requested to
+prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences at the
+theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics and
+religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests with
+which alone the drama is allowed to deal. This has not been an easy
+thing to do, and now that it is done I am by no means sure that I may
+not have alienated the friends whom the abstract problems won for me
+without conciliating the readers who called for the story only. But not
+to turn my back on the work of three laborious years, or to discredit
+that part of it which expressed, however imperfectly, my sympathy with
+the struggles of the poor, and my participation in the social problems
+with which the world is now astir, I have obtained the promise of my
+publisher that the original version of "The Eternal City" shall be kept
+in print as long as the public calls for it.
+
+In this form of my book, the aim has been to rely solely on the
+humanities and to go back to the simple story of the woman who denounced
+her husband in order to save his life. That was the theme of the draft
+which was the original basis of my novel, it is the central incident of
+the drama which is about to be produced in New York, and the present
+abbreviated version of the story is intended to follow the lines of the
+play in all essential particulars down to the end of the last chapter
+but one.                                                         H. C.
+
+Isle of Man, Sept. 1902.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            THE ETERNAL CITY
+
+                                PROLOGUE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or
+twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one
+shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a
+grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad
+had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his
+short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was going
+home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something fantastic
+in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he was
+dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the London
+boys and the attentions of policemen.
+
+Coming to the Italian quarter in Soho, he stopped at the door of a shop
+to see the time. It was eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before
+he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the
+window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the
+pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red
+glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy
+blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and
+brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence.
+Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not
+a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to count,
+but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic was not
+at fault.
+
+The air grew warmer, and it began to snow. At first it was a fine
+sprinkle that made a snow-mist, and adhered wherever it fell. The
+traffic speedily became less, and things looked big in the thick air.
+The boy was wandering aimlessly through the streets, waiting for nine
+o'clock. When he thought the hour was near, he realised that he had lost
+his way. He screwed up his eyes to see if he knew the houses and shops
+and signs, but everything seemed strange.
+
+The snow snowed on, and now it fell in large, corkscrew flakes. The boy
+brushed them from his face, but at the next moment they blinded him
+again. The few persons still in the streets loomed up on him out of the
+darkness, and passed in a moment like gigantic shadows. He tried to ask
+his way, but nobody would stand long enough to listen. One man who was
+putting up his shutters shouted some answer that was lost in the
+drumlike rumble of all voices in the falling snow.
+
+The boy came up to a big porch with four pillars, and stepped in to rest
+and reflect. The long tunnels of smoking lights which had receded down
+the streets were not to be seen from there, and so he knew that he was
+in a square. It would be Soho Square, but whether he was on the south or
+east of it he could not tell, and consequently he was at a loss to know
+which way to turn. A great silence had fallen over everything, and only
+the sobbing nostrils of the cab-horses seemed to be audible in the
+hollow air.
+
+He was very cold. The snow had got into his shoes, and through the rents
+in his cross-gartered stockings. His red waistcoat wanted buttons, and
+he could feel that his shirt was wet. He tried to shake the snow off by
+stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could
+scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light coming
+from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his squirrel.
+The little thing was trembling pitifully in its icy bed, and he took it
+out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The
+sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within
+the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour
+cast outward from the fanlight he could see nothing but the crystal
+snowflakes falling wearily.
+
+He grew dizzy, and sat down by one of the pillars. After a while a
+shiver passed along his spine, and then he became warm and felt sleepy.
+A church clock struck nine, and he started up with a guilty feeling, but
+his limbs were stiff and he sank back again, blew two or three breaths
+on to the squirrel inside his waistcoat, and fell into a doze. As he
+dropped off into unconsciousness he seemed to see the big, cheerless
+house, almost destitute of furniture, where he lived with thirty or
+forty other boys. They trooped in with their organs and accordions,
+counted out their coppers to a man with a clipped moustache, who was
+blowing whiffs of smoke from a long, black cigar, with a straw through
+it, and then sat down on forms to eat their plates of macaroni and
+cheese. The man was not in good temper to-night, and he was shouting at
+some who were coming in late and at others who were sharing their supper
+with the squirrels that nestled in their bosoms, or the monkeys, in red
+jacket and fez, that perched upon their shoulders. The boy was perfectly
+unconscious by this time, and the child within the house was singing
+away as if her little breast was a cage of song-birds.
+
+As the church clock struck nine a class of Italian lads in an upper room
+in Old Compton Street was breaking up for the night, and the teacher,
+looking out of the window, said:
+
+"While we have been telling the story of the great road to our country a
+snowstorm has come, and we shall have enough to do to find our road
+home."
+
+The lads laughed by way of answer, and cried: "Good-night, doctor."
+
+"Good-night, boys, and God bless you," said the teacher.
+
+He was an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face,
+a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his
+manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a
+black cloak with a red lining, and followed them into the street.
+
+He had not gone far into the snowy haze before he began to realise that
+his playful warning had not been amiss.
+
+"Well, well," he thought, "only a few steps, and yet so difficult to
+find."
+
+He found the right turnings at last, and coming to the porch of his
+house in Soho Square, he almost trod on a little black and white object
+lying huddled at the base of one of the pillars.
+
+"A boy," he thought, "sleeping out on a night like this! Come, come," he
+said severely, "this is wrong," and he shook the little fellow to waken
+him.
+
+The boy did not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone,
+"Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again.
+Ninepence, sir, and Jinny is so cold."
+
+The man paused a moment, then turned to the door rang the bell sharply.
+
+
+                                 II
+
+Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the
+doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a
+shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off
+and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and
+moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a
+saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and
+legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the
+eyelids and twitching of the mouth.
+
+"He is coming to, mother," said the doctor.
+
+"At last," said his wife.
+
+The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood,
+black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the
+lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch,
+and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape.
+
+"Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a
+little longer."
+
+The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he
+raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for
+something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on
+which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It
+was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it
+tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his
+cheeks.
+
+"Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and
+after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted.
+
+"Italiano--si?"
+
+"Si, Signore."
+
+"From which province?"
+
+"Campagna Romana, Signore."
+
+"Where does he say he comes from, doctor?"
+
+"From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at
+Maccari's in Greek Street--isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How long have you been in England--one year, two years?"
+
+"Two years and a half, sir."
+
+"And what is your name, my son?"
+
+"David Leone."
+
+"A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor,
+smoothing the curly hair.
+
+"A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?"
+
+"Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some
+institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that
+name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?"
+
+But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed
+upon, and he made no answer.
+
+"Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?"
+
+"I have no father," said the boy.
+
+"Carino! But your mother is alive--yes?"
+
+"I have no mother."
+
+"Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my
+son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the
+sun had shone on it.
+
+"Listen, father!"
+
+Two little feet were drumming on the floor above.
+
+"Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the
+boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently."
+
+"Let her come down now," said the doctor.
+
+The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a
+bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a
+little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy
+black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a
+train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and
+carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was
+coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit.
+
+But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up
+suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the
+doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at
+the stranger in silence and aloofness.
+
+"Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the
+mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a
+brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has
+brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this
+was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly
+child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly
+frozen to death in the snow?"
+
+But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in
+search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow
+there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second
+suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still
+holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to
+anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's
+side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for
+sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to
+proper overtures.
+
+"Oo a boy?"
+
+The boy smiled again and assented.
+
+"Oo me brodder?"
+
+The boy's smile paled perceptibly.
+
+"Oo lub me?"
+
+The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly.
+
+"Oo lub me eber and eber?"
+
+The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark
+curls again, said:
+
+"You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna
+Romana--yes?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Perhaps it's a brother?"
+
+"I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last
+word with a thud.
+
+"You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor
+softly.
+
+"Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face
+smote her instantly and she said no more.
+
+"Time for bed, baby."
+
+But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy,
+and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say.
+
+"Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat
+pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other,
+kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at
+intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little
+waif-and-stray hands together and said:
+
+"Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be
+done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and
+forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And
+lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and
+eber. Amen."
+
+The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the
+surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the
+fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and
+listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at
+length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat
+of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the
+little head on the pillow.
+
+Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which
+great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels--sweet,
+soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna
+Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death!
+
+The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a
+long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken
+bondage.
+
+"Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not
+some day ... God forbid!"
+
+The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like
+the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of
+painful reverie.
+
+"Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles."
+
+Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and
+the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the
+dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was
+praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless
+darling cast adrift upon the world!
+
+The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the
+doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had
+ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were
+casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the
+yellow light of a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed
+where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol.
+
+"While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,
+The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around."
+
+Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his
+lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     PART ONE--THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+                           TWENTY YEARS LATER
+
+
+                                   I
+
+It was the last day of the century. In a Bull proclaiming a Jubilee the
+Pope had called his faithful children to Rome, and they had come from
+all quarters of the globe. To salute the coming century, and to dedicate
+it, in pomp and solemn ceremony, to the return of the world to the Holy
+Church, one and universal, the people had gathered in the great Piazza
+of St. Peter.
+
+Boys and women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a
+bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the
+obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who were listening
+to their cicerone.
+
+"Yes, that is the Vatican," said the guide, pointing to a square
+building at the back of the colonnade, "and the apartments of the Pope
+are those on the third floor, just on the level of the Loggia of
+Raphael. The Cardinal Secretary of State used to live in the rooms
+below, opening on the grand staircase that leads from the Court of
+Damasus. There's a private way up to the Pope's apartment, and a secret
+passage to the Castle of St. Angelo."
+
+"Say, has the Pope got that secret passage still?"
+
+"No, sir. When the Castle went over to the King the connection with the
+Vatican was cut off. Ah, everything is changed since those days! The
+Pope used to go to St. Peter's surrounded by his Cardinals and Bishops,
+to the roll of drums and the roar of cannon. All that is over now. The
+present Pope is trying to revive the old condition seemingly, but what
+can he do? Even the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee laments the loss of the
+temporal power which would have permitted him to renew the enchantments
+of the Holy City."
+
+"Tell him it's just lovely as it is," said the girl on the obelisk, "and
+when the illuminations begin...."
+
+"Say, friend," said her parent again, "Rome belonged to the Pope--yes?
+Then the Italians came in and took it and made it the capital of
+Italy--so?"
+
+"Just so, and ever since then the Holy Father has been a prisoner in the
+Vatican, going into it as a cardinal and coming out of it as a corpse,
+and to-day will be the first time a Pope has set foot in the streets of
+Rome!"
+
+"My! And shall we see him in his prison clothes?"
+
+"Lilian Martha! Don't you know enough for that? Perhaps you expect to
+see his chains and a straw of his bed in the cell? The Pope is a king
+and has a court--that's the way I am figuring it."
+
+"True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his
+officers of state--Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies,
+Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard,
+as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the
+precincts night and day."
+
+"Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?"
+
+"Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this
+piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and
+outrage--and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!"
+
+"Well! this goes clear ahead of me!"
+
+Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in
+positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one
+of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid,
+fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his
+carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly
+dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up
+moustache and cropped black mane.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge
+since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir.
+'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and
+even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where
+it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for
+instance--this one with the people in the balcony...."
+
+The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on
+the farther side of the piazza.
+
+"Do you know whose palace that is?"
+
+"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the
+Interior."
+
+"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"
+
+"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted
+the Papacy?"
+
+"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir--old Baron Leone!"
+
+"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the
+grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say,
+'will be the richest man in Rome some day--richer than all their Roman
+princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"
+
+"He has, apparently."
+
+"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and
+having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the
+poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the
+Prime Minister of Italy--an infidel, an Antichrist."
+
+"So the Pope is a good man, is he?"
+
+"Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in
+life--the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation.
+Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for
+poor boys. Boys--that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything
+tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut."
+
+The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a
+rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the
+square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace.
+It had one occupant only--a man in a soft black hat. He was quite
+without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general
+commotion, and all faces were turning toward him.
+
+"Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in
+the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?"
+
+"David Rossi, the anarchist?"
+
+"Some people call him so. Do you know him?"
+
+"I know nothing about the man except that he is an enemy of his
+Holiness."
+
+"He intends to present a petition to the Pope this morning,
+nevertheless."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Haven't you heard of it? These are his followers with the banners and
+badges."
+
+He pointed to the line of working-men who had ranged themselves about
+the cab, with banners inscribed variously, "Garibaldi Club," "Mazzini
+Club," "Republican Federation," and "Republic of Man."
+
+"Your friend Antichrist," tipping a finger over his shoulder in the
+direction of the palace, "has been taxing bread to build more
+battleships, and Rossi has risen against him. But failing in the press,
+in Parliament and at the Quirinal, he is coming to the Pope to pray of
+him to let the Church play its old part of intermediary between the poor
+and the oppressed."
+
+"Preposterous!"
+
+"So?"
+
+"To whom is the Pope to protest? To the King of Italy who robbed him of
+his Holy City? Pretty thing to go down on your knees to the brigand who
+has stripped you! And at whose bidding is he to protest? At the bidding
+of his bitterest enemy? Pshaw!"
+
+"You persist that David Rossi is an enemy of the Pope?"
+
+"The deadliest enemy the Pope has in the world."
+
+
+                                 II
+
+The subject of the Frenchman's denunciation looked harmless enough as he
+sat in his hackney carriage under the shadow of old Baron Leone's gloomy
+palace. A first glance showed a man of thirty-odd years, tall, slightly
+built, inclined to stoop, with a long, clean-shaven face, large dark
+eyes, and dark hair which covered the head in short curls of almost
+African profusion. But a second glance revealed all the characteristics
+that give the hand-to-hand touch with the common people, without which
+no man can hope to lead a great movement.
+
+From the moment of David Rossi's arrival there was a tingling movement
+in the air, and from time to time people approached and spoke to him,
+when the tired smile struggled through the jaded face and then slowly
+died away. After a while, as if to subdue the sense of personal
+observation, he took a pen and oblong notepaper and began to write on
+his knees.
+
+Meantime the quick-eyed facile crowd around him beguiled the tedium of
+waiting with good-humoured chaff. One great creature with a shaggy mane
+and a sanguinary voice came up, bottle in hand, saluted the downcast
+head with a mixture of deference and familiarity, then climbed to the
+box-seat beside the driver, and in deepest bass began the rarest
+mimicry. He was a true son of the people, and under an appearance of
+ferocity he hid the heart of a child. To look at him you could hardly
+help laughing, and the laughter of the crowd at his daring dashes showed
+that he was the privileged pet of everybody. Only at intervals the
+downcast head was raised from its writing, and a quiet voice of warning
+said:
+
+"Bruno!"
+
+Then the shaggy head on the box-seat slewed round and bobbed downward
+with an apologetic gesture, and ten seconds afterwards plunged into
+wilder excesses.
+
+"Pshaw!" mopping with one hand his forehead under his tipped-up
+billicock, and holding the bottle with the other. "It's hot! Dog of a
+Government, it's hot, I say! Never mind! here's to the exports of Italy,
+brother; and may the Government be the first of them."
+
+"Bruno!"
+
+"Excuse me, sir; the tongue breaks no bones, sir! All Governments are
+bad, and the worst Government is the best."
+
+A feeble old man was at that moment crushing his way up to the cab.
+Seeing him approach, David Rossi rose and held out his hand. The old man
+took it, but did not speak.
+
+"Did you wish to speak to me, father?"
+
+"I can't yet," said the old man, and his voice shook and his eyes were
+moist.
+
+David Rossi stepped out of the cab, and with gentle force, against many
+protests, put the old man in his place.
+
+"I come from Carrara, sir, and when I go home and tell them I've seen
+David Rossi, and spoken to him, they won't believe me. 'He sees the
+future clear,' they say, 'as an almanack made by God.'"
+
+Just then there was a commotion in the crowd, an imperious voice cried,
+"Clear out," and the next instant David Rossi, who was standing by the
+step of his cab, was all but run down by a magnificent equipage with two
+high-stepping horses and a fat English coachman in livery of scarlet
+and gold.
+
+His face darkened for a moment with some powerful emotion, then resumed
+its kindly aspect, and he turned back to the old man without looking at
+the occupant of the carriage.
+
+It was a lady. She was tall, with a bold sweep of fulness in figure,
+which was on a large scale of beauty. Her hair, which was abundant and
+worn full over the forehead, was raven black and glossy, and it threw
+off the sunshine that fell on her face. Her complexion had a golden
+tint, and her eyes, which were violet, had a slight recklessness of
+expression. Her carriage drew up at the entrance of the palace, and the
+porter, with the silver-headed staff, came running and bowing to receive
+her. She rose to her feet with a consciousness of many eyes upon her,
+and with an unabashed glance she looked around on the crowd.
+
+There was a sulky silence among the people, almost a sense of
+antagonism, and if anybody had cheered there might have been a counter
+demonstration. At the same time, there was a certain daring in that
+marked brow and steadfast smile which seemed to say that if anybody had
+hissed she would have stood her ground.
+
+She lifted from the blue silk cushions of the carriage a small
+half-clipped black poodle with a bow of blue ribbon on its forehead,
+tucked it under her arm, stepped down to the street, and passed into the
+courtyard, leaving an odour of ottar of roses behind her.
+
+Only then did the people speak.
+
+"Donna Roma!"
+
+The name seemed to pass over the crowd in a breathless whisper,
+soundless, supernatural, like the flight of a bat in the dark.
+
+
+                                III
+
+The Baron Bonelli had invited certain of his friends to witness the
+Pope's procession from the windows and balconies of his palace
+overlooking the piazza, and they had begun to arrive as early as
+half-past nine.
+
+In the green courtyard they were received by the porter in the cocked
+hat, on the dark stone staircase by lackeys in knee-breeches and yellow
+stockings, in the outer hall, intended for coats and hats, by more
+lackeys in powdered wigs, and in the first reception-room, gorgeously
+decorated in the yellow and gold of the middle ages, by Felice, in a
+dress coat, the Baron's solemn personal servant, who said, in sepulchral
+tones:
+
+"The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some
+of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia,
+Excellency?"
+
+"So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English
+Ambassador.
+
+"A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's
+doings, I guess, and is urgent and important."
+
+"A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true."
+
+"Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you
+regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is
+the greatest man in the country--greater than the King himself--and a
+statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who
+carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are
+bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn."
+
+"And the other view?"
+
+General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains,
+from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and
+then he said:
+
+"A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and
+cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant."
+
+"Which view do the people take?"
+
+"Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with
+which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up."
+
+"And the clergy, and the Court, and the aristocracy?"
+
+"The clergy fear him, the Court detests him, and the Roman aristocracy
+are rancorously hostile."
+
+"Yet he rules them all, nevertheless?"
+
+"Yes, sir, with a rod of iron--people, Court, princes, Parliament, King
+as well--and seems to have only one unsatisfied desire, to break up the
+last remaining rights of the Vatican and rule the old Pope himself."
+
+"And yet he invites us to sit in his Loggia and look at the Pope's
+procession."
+
+"Perhaps because he intends it shall be the last we may ever see of it."
+
+"The Princess Bellini and Don Camillo Murelli," said Felice's sepulchral
+voice from the door.
+
+An elderly aristocratic beauty wearing nodding white plumes came in with
+a pallid young Roman noble dressed in the English fashion.
+
+"_You_ come to church, Don Camillo?"
+
+"Heard it was a service which happened only once in a hundred years,
+dear General, and thought it mightn't be convenient to come next time,"
+said the young Roman.
+
+"And you, Princess! Come now, confess, is it the perfume of the incense
+which brings you to the Pope's procession, or the perfume of the
+promenaders?"
+
+"Nonsense, General!" said the little woman, tapping the American with
+the tip of her lorgnette. "Who comes to a ceremony like this to say her
+prayers? Nobody whatever, and if the Holy Father himself were to
+say...."
+
+"Oh! oh!"
+
+"Which reminds me," said the little lady, "where is Donna Roma?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, where is Donna Roma?" said the young Roman.
+
+"_Who_ is Donna Roma?" said the Englishman.
+
+"Santo Dio! the man doesn't know Donna Roma!"
+
+The white plumes bobbed up, the powdered face fell back, the little
+twinkling eyes closed, and the company laughed and seated themselves in
+the Loggia.
+
+"Donna Roma, dear sir," said the young Roman, "is a type of the fair
+lady who has appeared in the history of every nation since the days of
+Helen of Troy."
+
+"Has a woman of this type, then, identified herself with the story of
+Rome at a moment like the present?" said the Englishman.
+
+The young Roman smiled.
+
+"Why did the Prime Minister appoint so-and-so?--Donna Roma! Why did he
+dismiss such-and-such?--Donna Roma! What feminine influence imposed upon
+the nation this or that?--Donna Roma! Through whom come titles,
+decorations, honours?--Donna Roma! Who pacifies intractable politicians
+and makes them the devoted followers of the Ministers?--Donna Roma! Who
+organises the great charitable committees, collects funds and
+distributes them?--Donna Roma! Always, always Donna Roma!"
+
+"So the day of the petticoat politician is not over in Italy yet?"
+
+"Over? It will only end with the last trump. But dear Donna Roma is
+hardly that. With her light play of grace and a whole artillery of love
+in her lovely eyes, she only intoxicates a great capital and"--with a
+glance towards the curtained door--"takes captive a great Minister."
+
+"Just that," and the white plumes bobbed up and down.
+
+"Hence she defies conventions, and no one dares to question her actions
+on her scene of gallantry."
+
+"Drives a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and
+threatens to buy an automobile."
+
+"Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had
+never known what it was to be poor."
+
+"And has she?"
+
+The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that
+moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer.
+
+"Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody
+mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old
+papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young
+Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy
+days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was
+expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when
+the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican,
+conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel.
+Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from
+Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the
+homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as
+a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life
+as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among
+the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life
+he came back to Italy as a conspirator--enticed back, his friends
+say--was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the
+island of Elba without a word of public report or trial."
+
+"Domicilio Coatto--a devilish and insane device," said the American
+Ambassador.
+
+"Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?"
+
+"Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared
+from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his
+daughter."
+
+"Donna Roma?"
+
+"Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and
+going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English
+wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out
+of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent
+her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established
+her in an apartment on the Trinità de' Monti, under the care of an old
+aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose
+which has long since seen its June."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by
+what appears--Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best
+milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome."
+
+"And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess,
+"and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her
+extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated,
+she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio,
+full of nymphs and cupids and limbs."
+
+"And all by virtue of--what?" said the Englishman.
+
+"By virtue of being--the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!"
+
+"Meaning by that?"
+
+"Nothing--and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of
+laughter.
+
+"In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she
+likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her."
+
+"Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why
+doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?"
+
+"Because the Baron has a Baroness already."
+
+"A wife living?"
+
+"Living and yet dead--an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in
+his castle in the Alban hills."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+The curtain parted over the inner doorway, and three gentlemen came out.
+The first was a tall, spare man, about fifty years of age, with an
+intellectual head, features cut clear and hard like granite, glittering
+eyes under overhanging brows, black moustaches turned up at the ends,
+and iron-grey hair cropped very short over a high forehead. It was the
+Baron Bonelli.
+
+One of the two men with him had a face which looked as if it had been
+carved by a sword or an adze, good and honest but blunt and rugged; and
+the other had a long, narrow head, like the head of a hen--a lanky
+person with a certain mixture of arrogance and servility in his
+expression.
+
+The company rose from their places in the Loggia, and there were
+greetings and introductions.
+
+"Sir Evelyn Wise, gentlemen, the new British Ambassador--General Morra,
+our Minister of War; Commendatore Angelelli, our Chief of Police. A
+thousand apologies, ladies! A Minister of the Interior is one of the
+human atoms that live from minute to minute and are always at the mercy
+of events. You must excuse the Commendatore, gentlemen; he has urgent
+duties outside."
+
+The Prime Minister spoke with the lucidity and emphasis of a man
+accustomed to command, and when Angelelli had bowed all round he crossed
+with him to the door.
+
+"If there is any suspicion of commotion, arrest the ringleaders at once.
+Let there be no trifling with disorder, by whomsoever begun. The first
+to offend must be the first to be arrested, whether he wears cap or
+cassock."
+
+"Good, your Excellency," and the Chief of Police went out.
+
+"Commotion! Disorder! Madonna mia!" cried the little Princess.
+
+"Calm yourselves, ladies. It's nothing! Only it came to the knowledge of
+the Government that the Pope's procession this morning might be made the
+excuse for a disorderly demonstration, and of course order must not be
+disturbed even under the pretext of liberty and religion."
+
+"So that was the public business which deprived us of your society?"
+said the Princess.
+
+"And left my womanless house the duty of receiving you in my absence,"
+said the Baron.
+
+The Baron bowed his guests to their seats, stood with his back to a wide
+ingle, and began to sketch the Pope's career.
+
+"His father was a Roman banker--lived in this house, indeed--and the
+young Leone was brought up in the Jesuit schools and became a member of
+the Noble Guard: handsome, accomplished, fond of society and social
+admiration, a man of the world. This was a cause of disappointment to
+his father, who has intended him for a great career in the Church. They
+had their differences, and finally a mission was found for him and he
+lived a year abroad. The death of the old banker brought him back to
+Rome, and then, to the astonishment of society, he renounced the world
+and took holy orders. Why he gave up his life of gallantry did not
+appear...."
+
+"Some affair of the heart, dear Baron," said the little Princess, with a
+melting look.
+
+"No, there was no talk of that kind, Princess, and not a whisper of
+scandal. Some said the young soldier had married in England, and lost
+his wife there, but nobody knew for certain. There was less doubt about
+his religious vocation, and when by help of his princely inheritance he
+turned his mind to the difficult task of reforming vice and ministering
+to the lowest aspects of misery in the slums of Rome, society said he
+had turned Socialist. His popularity with the people was unbounded, but
+in the midst of it all he begged to be removed to London. There he set
+up the same enterprises, and tramped the streets in search of his waifs
+and outcasts, night and day, year in, year out, as if driven on by a
+consuming passion of pity for the lost and fallen. In the interests of
+his health he was called back to Rome--and returned here a white-haired
+man of forty."
+
+"Ah! what did I say, dear Baron? The apple falls near the tree, you
+know!"
+
+"By this time he had given away millions, and the Pope wished to make
+him President of his Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, but he begged to be
+excused. Then Apostolic Delegate to the United States, and he prayed
+off. Then Nuncio to Spain, and he went on his knees to remain in the
+Campagna Romana, and do the work of a simple priest among a simple
+people. At last, without consulting him they made him Bishop, and
+afterwards Cardinal, and, on the death of the Pope, he was Scrutator to
+the Conclave, and fainted when he read out his own name as that of
+Sovereign Pontiff of the Church."
+
+The little Princess was wiping her eyes.
+
+"Then--all the world was changed. The priest of the future disappeared
+in a Pope who was the incarnation of the past. Authority was now his
+watchword. What was the highest authority on earth? The Holy See!
+Therefore, the greatest thing for the world was the domination of the
+Pope. If anybody should say that the power conferred by Christ on his
+Vicar was only spiritual, let him be accursed! In Christ's name the Pope
+was sovereign--supreme sovereign over the bodies and souls of
+men--acknowledging no superior, holding the right to make and depose
+kings, and claiming to be supreme judge over the consciences and crimes
+of all--the peasant that tills the soil, and the prince that sits on the
+throne!"
+
+"Tre-men-jous!" said the American.
+
+"But, dear Baron," said the little Princess, "don't you think there was
+an affair of the heart after all?" and the little plumes bobbed
+sideways.
+
+The Baron laughed again. "The Pope seems to have half of humanity on his
+side already--he has the women apparently."
+
+All this time there had risen from the piazza into the room a humming
+noise like the swarming of bees, but now a shrill voice came up from the
+crowd with the sudden swish of a rocket.
+
+"Look out!"
+
+The young Roman, who had been looking over the balcony, turned his head
+back and said:
+
+"Donna Roma, Excellency."
+
+But the Baron had gone from the room.
+
+"He knew her carriage wheels apparently," said Don Camillo, and the lips
+of the little Princess closed tight as if from sudden pain.
+
+
+                                V
+
+The return of the Baron was announced by the faint rustle of a silk
+under-skirt and a light yet decided step keeping pace with his own. He
+came back with Donna Roma on his arm, and over his coolness and calm
+dignity he looked pleased and proud.
+
+The lady herself was brilliantly animated and happy. A certain swing in
+her graceful carriage gave an instant impression of perfect health, and
+there was physical health also in the brightness of her eyes and the
+gaiety of her expression. Her face was lighted up by a smile which
+seemed to pervade her whole person and make it radiant with overflowing
+joy. A vivacity which was at the same time dignified and spontaneous
+appeared in every movement of her harmonious figure, and as she came
+into the room there was a glow of health and happiness that filled the
+air like the glow of sunlight through a veil of soft red gauze.
+
+She saluted the Baron's guests with a smile that fascinated everybody.
+There was a modified air of freedom about her, as of one who has a right
+to make advances, a manner which captivates all women in a queen and all
+men in a lovely woman.
+
+"Ah, it is you, General Potter? And my dear General Morra? Camillo mio!"
+(The Italian had rushed upon her and kissed her hand.) "Sir Evelyn Wise,
+from England, isn't it? I'm half an Englishwoman myself, and I'm very
+proud of it."
+
+She had smiled frankly into Sir Evelyn's face, and he had smiled back
+without knowing it. There was something contagious about her smile. The
+rosy mouth with its pearly teeth seemed to smile of itself, and the
+lovely eyes had their separate art of smiling. Her lips parted of
+themselves, and then you felt your own lips parting.
+
+"You were to have been busy with your fountain to-day...." began the
+Baron.
+
+"So I expected," she said in a voice that was soft yet full, "and I did
+not think I should care to see any more spectacles in Rome, where the
+people are going in procession all the year through--but what do you
+think has brought me?"
+
+"The artist's instinct, of course," said Don Camillo.
+
+"No, just the woman's--to see a man!"
+
+"Lucky fellow, whoever he is!" said the American. "He'll see something
+better than you will, though," and then the golden complexion gleamed up
+at him under a smile like sunshine.
+
+"But who is he?" said the young Roman.
+
+"I'll tell you. Bruno--you remember Bruno?"
+
+"Bruno!" cried the Baron.
+
+"Oh! Bruno is all right," she said, and, turning to the others, "Bruno
+is my man in the studio--my marble pointer, you know. Bruno Rocco, and
+nobody was ever so rightly named. A big, shaggy, good-natured bear,
+always singing or growling or laughing, and as true as steel. A terrible
+Liberal, though; a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, and everything
+that's shocking."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, ever since I began my fountain ... I'm making a fountain for the
+Municipality--it is to be erected in the new part of the Piazza Colonna.
+I expect to finish it in a fortnight. You would like to see it? Yes?
+I'll send you cards--a little private view, you know."
+
+"But Bruno?"
+
+"Ah! yes, Bruno! Well, I've been at a loss for a model for one of my
+figures ... figures all round the dish, you know. They represent the
+Twelve Apostles, with Christ in the centre giving out the water of
+life."
+
+"But Bruno! Bruno! Bruno!"
+
+She laughed, and the merry ring of her laughter set them all laughing.
+
+"Well, Bruno has sung the praises of one of his friends until I'm
+crazy ... crazy, that's English, isn't it? I told you I was half an
+Englishwoman. American? Thanks, General! I'm 'just crazy' to get him
+in."
+
+"Simple enough--hire him to sit to you," said the Princess.
+
+"Oh," with a mock solemnity, "he is far too grand a person for that! A
+member of Parliament, a leader of the Left, a prophet, a person with a
+mission, and I daren't even dream of it. But this morning, Bruno tells
+me, his friend, his idol, is to stop the Pope's procession, and present
+a petition, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone--see my
+man and see the spectacle--and here I am to see them!"
+
+"And who is this paragon of yours, my dear?"
+
+"The great David Rossi!"
+
+"_That_ man!"
+
+The white plumes were going like a fan.
+
+"The man is a public nuisance and ought to be put down by the police,"
+said the little Princess, beating her foot on the floor.
+
+"He has a tongue like a sword and a pen like a dagger," said the young
+Roman.
+
+Donna Roma's eyes began to flash with a new expression.
+
+"Ah, yes, he is a journalist, isn't he, and libels people in his paper?"
+
+"The creature has ruined more reputations than anybody else in Europe,"
+said the little Princess.
+
+"I remember now. He made a terrible attack on our young old women and
+our old young men. Declared they were meddling with everything--called
+them a museum of mummies, and said they were symbolical of the ruin that
+was coming on the country. Shameful, wasn't it? Nobody likes to be
+talked about, especially in Rome, where it's the end of everything. But
+what matter? The young man has perhaps learned freedom of speech in some
+free country. We can afford to forgive him, can't we? And then he is so
+interesting and so handsome!"
+
+"An attempt to stop the Pope's procession might end in tumult," said the
+American General to the Italian General. "Was that the danger the Baron
+spoke about?"
+
+"Yes," said General Morra. "The Government have been compelled to tax
+bread, and of course that has been a signal for the enemies of the
+national spirit to say that we are starving the people. This David Rossi
+is the worst Roman in Rome. He opposed us in Parliament and lost.
+Petitioned the King and lost again. Now he intends to petition the
+Pope--with what hope, Heaven knows."
+
+"With the hope of playing on public opinion, of course," said the Baron
+cynically.
+
+"Public opinion is a great force, your Excellency," said the Englishman.
+
+"A great pestilence," said the Baron warmly.
+
+"What is David Rossi?"
+
+"An anarchist, a republican, a nihilist, anything as old as the hills,
+dear friend, only everything in a new way," said the young Roman.
+
+"David Rossi is the politician who proposes to govern the world by the
+precepts of the Lord's Prayer," said the American.
+
+"The Lord's Prayer!"
+
+The Baron paraded on the hearthrug. "David Rossi," he said
+compassionately, "is a creature of his age. A man of generous impulses
+and wide sympathies, moved to indignation at the extremes of poverty and
+wealth, and carried away by the promptings of the eternal religion in
+the human soul. A dreamer, of course, a dreamer like the Holy Father
+himself, only his dream is different, and neither could succeed without
+destroying the other. In the millennium Rossi looks for, not only are
+kings and princes to disappear, but popes and prelates as well."
+
+"And where does this unpractical politician come from?" said the
+Englishman.
+
+"We must ask you to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed
+to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country.
+As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows
+certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was.
+Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his
+mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never talks about himself,
+and cannot be got to lift the veil which surrounds his birth and early
+life. Came back to Rome eight years ago, and made a vast noise by
+propounding his platonic scheme of politics--was called up for his term
+of military service, refused to serve, got himself imprisoned for six
+months and came out a mighty hero--was returned to Parliament for no
+fewer than three constituencies, sat for Rome, took his place on the
+Extreme Left, and attacked every Minister and every measure which
+favoured the interest of the army--encouraged the workmen not to pay
+their taxes and the farmers not to pay their rents--and thus became the
+leader of a noisy faction, and is now surrounded by the degenerate class
+throughout Italy which dreams of reconstructing society by burying it
+under ruins."
+
+"Lived in England, you say?"
+
+"Apparently, and if his early life could be traced it would probably be
+found that he was brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracy--perhaps
+under the influence of some vile revolutionary living in London under
+the protection of your too liberal laws."
+
+Donna Roma sprang up with a movement full of grace and energy. "Anyhow,"
+she said, "he is young and good-looking and romantic and mysterious, and
+I'm head over ears in love with him already."
+
+"Well, every man is a world," said the American.
+
+"And what about woman?" said Roma.
+
+He threw up his hands, she smiled full into his face, and they laughed
+together.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+A fanfare of trumpets came from the piazza, and with a cry of delight
+Roma ran into the balcony, followed by all the women and most of the
+men.
+
+"Only the signal that the cortège has started," said Don Camillo.
+"They'll be some minutes still."
+
+"Santo Dio!" cried Roma. "What a sight! It dazzles me; it makes me
+dizzy!"
+
+Her face beamed, her eyes danced, and she was all aglow from head to
+foot. The American Ambassador stood behind her, and, as permitted by his
+greater age, he tossed back the shuttlecock of her playful talk with
+chaff and laughter.
+
+"How patient the people are! See the little groups on camp-stools
+munching biscuits and reading the journals. 'La Vera Roma!'" (mimicking
+the cry of the newspaper sellers). "Look at that pretty girl--the fair
+one with the young man in the Homburg hat! She has climbed up the
+obelisk, and is inviting him to sit on an inch and a half of corbel
+beside her."
+
+"Ah, those who love take up little room!"
+
+"Don't they? What a lovely world it is! I'll tell you what this makes me
+think about--a wedding! Glorious morning, beautiful sunshine, flowers,
+wreaths, bridesmaids ready; coachman all a posy, only waiting for the
+bride!"
+
+"A wedding is what you women are always dreaming about--you begin
+dreaming about it in your cradles--it's in a woman's bones, I do
+believe," said the American.
+
+"Must be the ones she got from Adam, then," said Roma.
+
+Meantime the Baron was still parading the hearthrug inside and listening
+to the warnings of his Minister of War.
+
+"You are resolved to arrest the man?"
+
+"If he gives us an opportunity--yes."
+
+"You do not forget that he is a Deputy?"
+
+"It is because I remember it that my resolution is fixed. In Parliament
+he is a privileged person; let him make half as much disorder outside
+and you shall see where he will be."
+
+"Anarchists!" said Roma. "That group below the balcony? Is David Rossi
+among them? Yes? Which of them? Which? Which? Which? The tall man in the
+black hat with his back to us? Oh! why doesn't he turn his face? Should
+I shout?"
+
+"Roma!" from the little Princess.
+
+"I know; I'll faint, and you'll catch me, and the Princess will cry
+'Madonna mia!' and then he'll turn round and look up."
+
+"My child!"
+
+"He'll see through you, though, and then where will you be?"
+
+"See through me, indeed!" and she laughed the laugh a man loves to hear,
+half-raillery, half-caress.
+
+"Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of a line of princes, making love to a
+nameless nobody!"
+
+"Shows what a heavenly character she is, then! See how good I am at
+throwing bouquets at myself?"
+
+"Well, what is love, anyway? A certain boy and a certain girl agree to
+go for a row in the same boat to the same place, and if they pull
+together, what does it matter where they come from?"
+
+"What, indeed?" she said, and a smile, partly serious, played about the
+parted mouth.
+
+"Could _you_ think like that?"
+
+"I could! I could! I could!"
+
+The clock struck eleven. Another fanfare of trumpets came from the
+direction of the Vatican, and then the confused noises in the square
+suddenly ceased and a broad "Ah!" passed over it, as of a vast living
+creature taking breath.
+
+"They're coming!" cried Roma. "Baron, the cortège is coming."
+
+"Presently," the Baron answered from within.
+
+Roma's dog, which had slept on a chair through the tumult, was awakened
+by the lull and began to bark. She picked it up, tucked it under her arm
+and ran back to the balcony, where she stood by the parapet, in full
+view of the people below, with the young Roman on one side, the American
+on the other, and the ladies seated around.
+
+By this time the procession had begun to appear, issuing from a bronze
+gate under the right arm of the colonnade, and passing down the channel
+which had been kept open by the cordon of infantry.
+
+Roma abandoned herself to the fascinations of the scene, and her gaiety
+infected everybody.
+
+"Camillo, you must tell me who they all are. There now--those men who
+come first in black and red?"
+
+"Laymen," said the young Roman. "They're called the Apostolic Cursori.
+When a Cardinal is nominated they take him the news, and get two or
+three thousand francs for their trouble."
+
+"And these little fat folk in white lace pinafores?"
+
+"Singers of the Sistine Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro
+Mustafa--used to be the greatest soprano of the century."
+
+"And this dear old friar with the mittens and rosary and the comfortable
+linsey-woolsey sort of face?"
+
+"That's Father Pifferi of San Lorenzo, confessor to the Pope. He knows
+all the Pope's sins."
+
+"Oh!" said Roma.
+
+At that moment her dog barked furiously, and the old friar looked up at
+her, whereupon she smiled down on him, and then a half-smile played
+about his good-natured face.
+
+"He is a Capuchin, and those Frati in different colours coming behind
+him...."
+
+"I know them; see if I don't," she cried, as there passed under the
+balcony a double file of friars and monks. "The brown ones--Capuchins
+and Franciscans! Brown and white--Carmelites! Black--Augustinians and
+Benedictines! Black with a white cross--Passionists! And the monks all
+white are Trappists. I know the Trappists best, because I drive out to
+Tre Fontane to buy eucalyptus and flirt with Father John."
+
+"Shocking!" said the American.
+
+"Why not? What are their vows of celibacy but conspiracies against us
+poor women? Nearly every man a woman wants is either mated or has sworn
+off in some way. Oh, how I should love to meet one of those anchorites
+in real life and make him fly!"
+
+"Well, I dare say the whisk of a petticoat would be more frightening
+than all his doctors of divinity."
+
+"Listen!"
+
+From a part of the procession which had passed the balcony there came
+the sound of harmonious voices.
+
+"The singers of the Sistine Chapel! They're singing a hymn."
+
+"I know it. '_Veni, Creator!_' How splendid! How glorious! I feel as if
+I wanted to cry!"
+
+All at once the singing stopped, the murmuring and speaking of the crowd
+ceased too, and there was a breathless moment, such as comes before the
+first blast of a storm. A nervous quiver, like the shudder that passes
+over the earth at sundown, swept across the piazza, and the people stood
+motionless, every neck stretched, and every eye turned in the direction
+of the bronze gate, as if God were about to reveal Himself from the Holy
+of Holies. Then in that grand silence there came the clear call of
+silver trumpets, and at the next instant the Presence itself.
+
+"The Pope! Baron, the Pope!"
+
+The atmosphere was charged with electricity. A great roar of cheering
+went up from below like the roaring of surf, and it was followed by a
+clapping of hands like the running of the sea off a shingly beach after
+the boom of a tremendous breaker.
+
+An old man, dressed wholly in white, carried shoulder-high on a chair
+glittering with purple and crimson, and having a canopy of silver and
+gold above him. He wore a triple crown, which glistened in the sunlight,
+and but for the delicate white hand which he upraised to bless the
+people, he might have been mistaken for an image.
+
+His face was beautiful, and had a ray of beatified light on it--a face
+of marvellous sweetness and great spirituality.
+
+It was a thrilling moment, and Roma's excitement was intense. "There he
+is! All in white! He's on a gilded chair under the silken canopy! The
+canopy is held up by prelates, and the chairmen are in knee-breeches and
+red velvet. Look at the great waving plumes on either side!"
+
+"Peacock's feathers!" said a voice behind her, but she paid no heed.
+
+"Look at the acolytes swinging incense, and the golden cross coming
+before! What thunders of applause--I can hardly hear myself speak. It's
+like standing on a cliff while the sea below is running mountains high.
+No, it's like no other sound on earth; it's human--fifty thousand
+unloosed throats of men! That's the clapping of ladies--listen to the
+weak applause of their white-gloved fingers. Now they're waving their
+handkerchiefs. Look! Like the wings of ten thousand butterflies
+fluttering up from a meadow."
+
+Roma's abandonment was by this time complete; she was waving her
+handkerchief and crying "_Viva il Papa Re!_"
+
+"They're bearing him slowly along. He's coming this way. Look at the
+Noble Guard in their helmets and jackboots. And there are the Swiss
+Guard in Joseph's coat of many colours! We can see him plainly now. Do
+you smell the incense? It's like the ribbon of Bruges. The pluviale?
+That gold vestment? It's studded on his breast with precious stones. How
+they blaze in the sunshine! He is blessing the people, and they are
+falling on their knees before him."
+
+"Like the grass before the scythe!"
+
+"How tired he looks! How white his face is! No, not white--ivory! No,
+marble--Carrara marble! He might be Lazarus who was dead and has come
+back from the tomb! No humanity left in him! A saint! An angel!"
+
+"The spiritual autocrat of the world!"
+
+"_Viva il Papa Re!_ He's going by! _Viva il Papa Re!_ He has
+gone.... Well!"
+
+She was rising from her knees and wiping her eyes, trying to cover up
+with laughter the confusion of her rapture.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+There was a sound of voices in the distance chanting dolorously.
+
+"The cantors intoning _Tu es Petrus_," said Don Camillo.
+
+"No, I mean the commotion down there. Somebody is pushing through the
+Guard."
+
+"It's David Rossi," said the American.
+
+"Is that David Rossi? Oh, dear me! I had forgotten all about him." She
+moved forward to see his face. "Why ... where have I ... I've seen him
+before somewhere."
+
+A strange physical sensation tingled all over her at that moment, and
+she shuddered as if with sudden cold.
+
+"What's amiss?"
+
+"Nothing! But I like him. Do you know, I really like him."
+
+"Women are funny things," said the American.
+
+"They're nice, though, aren't they?" And two rows of pearly teeth
+between parted lips gleamed up at him with gay raillery.
+
+Again she craned forward. "He is on his knees to the Pope! Now he'll
+present the petition. No ... yes ... the brutes! They're dragging him
+away! The procession is going on! Disgraceful!"
+
+"Long live the Workmen's Pope!" came up from the piazza, and under the
+shrill shouts of the pilgrims were heard the monotonous voices of the
+monks as they passed through the open doors of the Basilica intoning the
+praises of God.
+
+"They're lifting him on to a car," said the American.
+
+"David Rossi?"
+
+"Yes; he is going to speak."
+
+"How delightful! Shall we hear him? Good! How glad I am that I came! He
+is facing this way! Oh, yes; those are his own people with the banners!
+Baron, the Holy Father has gone on to St. Peter's, and David Rossi is
+going to speak."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+A quivering, vibrating voice came up from below, and in a moment there
+was a dead silence.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+"Brothers, when Christ Himself was on the earth going up to Jerusalem,
+He rode on the colt of an ass, and the blind and the lame and the sick
+came to Him, and He healed them. Humanity is sick and blind and lame
+to-day, brothers, but the Vicar of Christ goes on."
+
+At the words an audible murmur came from the crowd, such as goes before
+the clapping of hands in a Roman theatre, a great upheaval of the heart
+of the audience to the actor who has touched and stirred it.
+
+"Brothers, in a little Eastern village a long time ago, there arose
+among the poor and lowly a great Teacher, and the only prayer He taught
+His followers was the prayer 'Our Father who art in Heaven.' It was the
+expression of man's utmost need, the expression of man's utmost hope.
+And not only did the Teacher teach that prayer--He lived according to
+the light of it. All men were His brothers, all women His sisters; He
+was poor, He had no home, no purse, and no second coat; when He was
+smitten He did not smite back, and when He was unjustly accused He did
+not defend Himself. Nineteen hundred years have passed since then,
+brothers, and the Teacher who arose among the poor and lowly is now a
+great Prophet. All the world knows and honours Him, and civilised
+nations have built themselves upon the religion He founded. A great
+Church calls itself by His name, and a mighty kingdom, known as
+Christendom, owes allegiance to His faith. But what of His teaching? He
+said: 'Resist not evil,' yet all Christian nations maintain standing
+armies. He said: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' yet
+the wealthiest men are Christian men, and the richest organisation in
+the world is the Christian Church. He said: 'Our Father who art in
+Heaven,' yet men who ought to be brothers are divided into states, and
+hate each other as enemies. He said: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
+on earth as it is done in Heaven,' yet he who believes it ever will come
+is called a fanatic and a fool."
+
+Some murmurs of dissent were drowned in cries of "Go on!" "Speak!"
+"Silence!"
+
+"Foremost and grandest of the teachings of Christ are two inseparable
+truths--the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But in Italy,
+as elsewhere, the people are starved that king may contend with king,
+and when we appeal to the Pope to protest in the name of the Prince of
+Peace, he remembers his temporalities and passes on!"
+
+At these words the emotion of the crowd broke into loud shouts of
+approval, with which some groans were mingled.
+
+Roma had turned her face aside from the speaker, and her profile was
+changed--the gay, sprightly, airy, radiant look had given way to a
+serious, almost a melancholy expression.
+
+"We have two sovereigns in Rome, brothers, a great State and a great
+Church, with a perishing people. We have soldiers enough to kill us,
+priests enough to tell us how to die, but no one to show us how to
+live."
+
+"Corruption! Corruption!"
+
+"Corruption indeed, brothers; and who is there among us to whom the
+corruptions of our rulers are unknown? Who cannot point to the wars made
+that should not have been made? to the banks broken that should not have
+broken? And who in Rome cannot point to the Ministers who allow their
+mistresses to meddle in public affairs and enrich themselves by the ruin
+of all around?"
+
+The little Princess on the balcony was twisting about.
+
+"What! Are you deserting us, Roma?"
+
+And Roma answered from within the house, in a voice that sounded strange
+and muffled:
+
+"It was cold on the balcony, I think."
+
+The little Princess laughed a bitter laugh, and David Rossi heard it and
+misunderstood it, and his nostrils quivered like the nostrils of a
+horse, and when he spoke again his voice shook with passion.
+
+"Who has not seen the splendid equipages of these privileged ones of
+fortune--their gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold--emblems of the
+acid which is eating into the public organs? Has Providence raised this
+country from the dead only to be dizzied in a whirlpool of scandal,
+hypocrisy, and fraud--only to fall a prey to an infamous traffic without
+a name between high officials of low desires and women whose reputations
+are long since lost? It is men and women like these who destroy their
+country for their own selfish ends. Very well, let them destroy her; but
+before they do so, let them hear what one of her children says: The
+Government you are building up on the whitened bones of the people shall
+be overthrown--the King who countenances you, and the Pope who will not
+condemn you, shall be overthrown, and then--and not till then--will the
+nation be free."
+
+At this there was a terrific clamour. The square resounded with confused
+voices. "Bravo!" "Dog!" "Dog's murderer!" "Traitor!" "Long live David
+Rossi!" "Down with the Vampire!"
+
+The ladies had fled from the balcony back to the room with cries of
+alarm. "There will be a riot." "The man is inciting the people to
+rebellion!" "This house will be first to be attacked!"
+
+"Calm yourselves, ladies. No harm shall come to you," said the Baron,
+and he rang the bell.
+
+There came from below a babel of shouts and screams.
+
+"Madonna mia! What is that?" cried the Princess, wringing her hands; and
+the American Ambassador, who had remained on the balcony, said:
+
+"The Carabineers have charged the crowd and arrested David Rossi."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"They're going through the Borgo," said Don Camillo, "and kicking and
+cuffing and jostling and hustling all the way."
+
+"Don't be alarmed! There's the Hospital of Santo Spirito round the
+corner, and stations of the Red Cross Society everywhere," said the
+Baron, and then Felice answered the bell.
+
+"See our friends out by the street at the back, Felice. Good-bye,
+ladies! Have no fear! The Government does not mean to blunt the weapons
+it uses against the malefactors who insult the doctrines of the State."
+
+"Excellent Minister!" said the Princess. "Such canaglia are not fit to
+have their liberty, and I would lock them all up in prison."
+
+And then Don Camillo offered his arm to the little lady with the white
+plumes, and they came almost face to face with Roma, who was standing by
+the door hung with curtains, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and
+parting from the English Ambassador.
+
+"Donna Roma," he was saying, "if I can ever be of use to you, either now
+or in the future, I beg of you to command me."
+
+"Look at her!" whispered the Princess. "How agitated she is! A moment
+ago she was finding it cold in the Loggia! I'm so happy!"
+
+At the next instant she ran up to Roma and kissed her. "Poor child! How
+sorry I am! You have my sympathy, my dear! But didn't I tell you the man
+was a public nuisance, and ought to be put down by the police?"
+
+"Shameful, isn't it?" said Don Camillo. "Calumny is a little wind, but
+it raises such a terrible tempest."
+
+"Nobody likes to be talked about," said the Princess, "especially in
+Rome, where it is the end of everything."
+
+"But what matter? Perhaps the young man has learned freedom of speech in
+a free country!" said Don Camillo.
+
+"And then he is so interesting and so handsome," said the Princess.
+
+Roma made no answer. There was a slight drooping of the lovely eyes and
+a trembling of the lips and nostrils. For a moment she stood absolutely
+impassive, and then with a flash of disdain she flung round into the
+inner room.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Roma had taken refuge in the council-room. There had been much business
+that morning, and a copy of the constitutional statute lay open on a
+large table, which had a plate-glass top with photographs under the
+surface.
+
+In this passionless atmosphere, so little accustomed to such scenes,
+Roma sat in her wounded pride and humiliation, with her head down, and
+her beautiful white hands over her face.
+
+She heard measured footsteps approaching, and then a hand touched her on
+the shoulder. She looked up and drew back as if the touch stung her. Her
+lips closed sternly, and she got up and began to walk about the room,
+and then she burst into a torrent of anger.
+
+"Did you hear them? The cats! How they loved to claw me, and still purr
+and purr! Before the sun is set the story will be all over Rome! It has
+run off already on the hoofs of that woman's English horses. To-morrow
+morning it will be in every newspaper in the kingdom. Olga and Lena and
+every woman of them all who lives in a glass house will throw stones.
+'The new Pompadour! Who is she?' Oh, I could die of vexation and shame!"
+
+The Baron leaned against the table and listened, twisting the ends of
+his moustache.
+
+"The Court will turn its back on me now. They only wanted a good excuse
+to put their humiliations upon me. It's horrible! I can't bear it. I
+won't. I tell you, I won't!"
+
+But the lips, compressed with scorn, began to quiver visibly, and she
+threw herself into a chair, took out her handkerchief, and hid her face
+on the table.
+
+At that moment Felice came into the room to say that the Commendatore
+Angelelli had returned and wished to speak with his Excellency.
+
+"I will see him presently," said the Baron, with an impassive
+expression, and Felice went out silently, as one who had seen nothing.
+
+The Baron's calm dignity was wounded. "Be so good as to have some regard
+for me in the presence of my servants," he said. "I understand your
+feelings, but you are much too excited to see things in their proper
+light. You have been publicly insulted and degraded, but you must not
+talk to me as if it were my fault."
+
+"Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she
+said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an
+expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no
+reply, and his silence broke her answer.
+
+"No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and
+he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held
+it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her
+head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand.
+
+"I suppose it is all over," she said.
+
+"Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring
+forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander
+and justify you in the eyes of all."
+
+At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to look beyond the
+Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the
+table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and
+revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of
+the Baron's castle in the Alban hills.
+
+"Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno."
+
+"I will discharge him this very day--I will! I will! I will!"
+
+There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had
+said must have come of what her own servant told him--that Bruno had
+watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the
+two men had discussed her between them.
+
+"I could kill him," she said.
+
+"Bruno Rocco?"
+
+"No, David Rossi."
+
+"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.
+
+"How?"
+
+"He shall be put on his trial."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime
+Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow
+has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."
+
+"What good will that do?"
+
+"He will be silenced--and crushed."
+
+She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her
+heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.
+
+"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning
+him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly
+enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater
+in his prison than the King on his throne."
+
+The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again.
+
+"Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on
+trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public
+will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was
+punished for telling the truth."
+
+The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache.
+
+"Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a double injury. The
+insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate
+for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will
+quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed
+until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of
+it."
+
+The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale,
+behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of
+vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring.
+
+"I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this
+humiliating situation."
+
+"Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already.
+
+"If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no
+good to the King."
+
+"It's true."
+
+"Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and
+the King some service."
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who
+he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from
+Rome."
+
+"I would certainly give a good deal to know."
+
+"You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his
+fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he
+belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether
+he is in league with the Vatican."
+
+She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I will find it all out for you."
+
+"My dear Roma!"
+
+"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"--she laughed, a
+little ashamed--"the inmost secrets of his soul."
+
+She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into
+her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy
+sky.
+
+The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms--to
+draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he
+has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do
+nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He
+should appear to regard them with contempt."
+
+He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire.
+The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the
+only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm
+of jealousy.
+
+"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are
+irresistible! But remember--the man is one of the incorruptible."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it
+is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."
+
+"I've seen him," she said.
+
+"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."
+
+She tossed her head and laughed again.
+
+The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can
+forgive."
+
+"And what about Bruno?" he said.
+
+"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."
+
+"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"
+
+"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has
+turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of
+his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'--he
+shall fall."
+
+The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes
+catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of
+vinegar. We shall see."
+
+A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable
+Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.
+
+"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the
+table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied
+that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."
+
+"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the
+forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."
+
+"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that
+the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."
+
+"Excellency!"
+
+"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him
+safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."
+
+The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore
+Angelelli backed out of the room.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                        PART TWO--THE REPUBLIC OF MAN
+
+
+                                    I
+
+The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters
+of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is
+this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona
+you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"
+
+In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during
+the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The
+ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with
+rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples
+with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the
+Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the
+staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp,
+which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.
+
+In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie
+hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red
+handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's
+apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the
+front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to
+the roof.
+
+In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a
+young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of
+six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a
+comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was
+a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion.
+
+"Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to
+the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'"
+
+But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the
+mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square.
+
+"Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?"
+
+"Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran
+home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him."
+
+"Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley
+of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came
+unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great
+strength lieth....' But, mamma...."
+
+"Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'"
+
+"'And she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man, and
+she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head....'"
+
+At that moment there came a knock at the door, whereupon the boy uttered
+a cry of delight, and with a radiant face went plunging and shouting out
+of the room.
+
+"Uncle David! It's Uncle David!"
+
+The tumultuous voice rolled like baby thunder through the apartment
+until it reached the door, and then it dropped to a dead silence.
+
+"Who is it, Joseph?"
+
+"A gentleman," said the boy.
+
+
+                                II
+
+It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up
+moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza
+of St. Peter.
+
+"I wish to speak with Mr. Rossi. I bring him an important message from
+abroad. He is coming along with the people, but to make sure of an
+interview I hurried ahead. May I wait?"
+
+"Certainly! Come in, sir! You say he is coming? Yes? Then he is free?"
+
+The woman's liquid eyes were glistening visibly, and the man's watchful
+ones seemed to notice everything.
+
+"Yes, madam, he is free. I saw him arrested, and I also saw him set at
+liberty."
+
+"Really? Then you can tell me all about it? That's good! I have heard so
+little of all that happened, and my boy and I have not been able to
+think of anything else. Sit down, sir!"
+
+"As the police were taking him to the station-house in the Borgo," said
+the stranger, "the people made an attempt to rescue him, and it seemed
+as if they must certainly have succeeded if it had not been for his own
+intervention."
+
+"He stopped them, didn't he? I'm sure he stopped them!"
+
+"He did. The delegate had given his three warnings, and the Brigadier
+was on the point of ordering his men to fire, when the prisoner threw up
+his hands before the crowd."
+
+"I knew it! Well?"
+
+"'Brothers,' he said, 'let no blood be shed for my sake. We are in God's
+hands. Go home!'"
+
+"How like him! And then, sir?"
+
+"Then the crowd broke up like a bubble, and the officer who was in
+charge of him uncovered his head. 'Room for the Honourable Rossi!' he
+cried, and the prisoner went into the prison."
+
+The liquid eyes were running over by this time, and the soft voice was
+trembling: "You say you saw him set at liberty?"
+
+"Yes! I was in the public service myself until lately, so they allowed
+me to enter the police station, and when the order for release came I
+was present and heard all. 'Deputy,' said the officer, 'I have the
+honour to inform you that you are free.' 'But before I go I must say
+something,' said the Deputy. 'My only orders are that you are to be set
+at liberty,' said the officer. 'Nevertheless, I must see the Minister,'
+said Mr. Rossi. But the crowd had pressed in and surrounded him, and in
+a moment the flood had carried him out into the street, with shouts and
+the waving of hats and a whirlwind of enthusiasm. And now he is being
+drawn by force through the city in a mad, glad, wild procession."
+
+"But he deserves it all, and more--far, far more!"
+
+The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not
+his wife--no?"
+
+"Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered.
+
+"But you live here?"
+
+"We live in the rooms on the roof."
+
+"Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?"
+
+"Yes--that is to say--yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi."
+
+At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by
+a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical
+noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.
+
+"It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was
+also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty
+canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a
+gigantic bird-cage.
+
+"Mr. Rossi's?"
+
+"Yes, and he is fond of animals also--dogs and cats and rabbits and
+squirrels, especially squirrels."
+
+"Squirrels?"
+
+"He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some
+people who love animals--he loves children, too. He loves all children,
+and as for Joseph...."
+
+"The little boy who cried 'Uncle David' at the door?"
+
+"Yes, sir. One day my husband said 'Uncle David' to Mr. Rossi, and he
+has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since."
+
+"This is the dining-room, no doubt," said the stranger.
+
+"Unfortunately, yes, sir."
+
+"Why unfortunately?"
+
+"Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there's not even a
+curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to
+everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give
+the chicken off his plate if he hadn't anything else. I have to scold
+him a little sometimes--I can't help it. And as for father, he says he
+has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people
+away."
+
+"That will be his bedroom, I suppose," said the stranger, indicating a
+door which the boy had passed through.
+
+"No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in
+Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers
+and so forth. Come in, sir."
+
+The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth,
+Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been
+furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with
+incongruous furniture.
+
+"Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a
+porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father's fishing-rod, you
+see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his
+mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets
+presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but
+nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the
+bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this."
+
+"A phonograph?"
+
+"It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island
+of Elba."
+
+"Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?"
+
+"'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an
+instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very
+next day the carriers brought the phonograph."
+
+"And then he reproduced the message?"
+
+"I don't know--I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the
+boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you
+may come in."
+
+It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white
+counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass
+to keep it from the flies.
+
+"How sweet!" said the stranger.
+
+"It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the
+other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid
+heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from
+the herring net.
+
+"I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from
+the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on
+his finger-nail.
+
+"Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A
+six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he
+threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers."
+
+"And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture
+in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait
+of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.
+
+"Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think."
+
+"An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for
+all that."
+
+At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great
+crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into the broad piazza. At
+the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another
+voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door.
+
+"They're coming! It's my husband! Bruno!" said the woman, and the ripple
+of her dress told the stranger she had gone.
+
+
+                                III
+
+Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi's people had
+brought him home in triumph, and now they were crowding upon him to kiss
+his hand, the big-hearted, baby-headed, beloved children of Italy.
+
+The object of this aurora of worship stood with his back to the table in
+the dining-room, looking down and a little ashamed, while Bruno Rocco,
+six feet three in his stockings, hoisted the boy on to his shoulder, and
+shouted as from a tower to everybody as they entered by the door:
+
+"Come in, sonny, come in! Don't stand there like the Pope between the
+devil and the deep sea. Come in among the people," and Bruno's laughter
+rocked through the room to where the crowd stood thick on the staircase.
+
+"The Baron has had a lesson," said a man with a sheet of white paper in
+his hand. "He dreamed of getting the Collar of the Annunziata out of
+this."
+
+"The pig dreamed of acorns," said Bruno.
+
+"It's a lesson to the Church as well," said the man with the paper. "She
+wouldn't have anything to do with us. 'I alone strike the hour of the
+march,' says the Church."
+
+"And then she stands still!" said Bruno.
+
+"The mountains stand still, but men are made to walk," said the man with
+the paper, "and if the Pope doesn't advance with the people, the people
+must advance without the Pope."
+
+"The Pope's all right, sonny," said Bruno, "but what does he know about
+the people? Only what his black-gowned beetles tell him!"
+
+"The Pope has no wife and children," said the man with the paper.
+
+"Old Vampire could find him a few," said Bruno, and then there was
+general laughter.
+
+"Brothers," said David Rossi, "let us be temperate. There's nothing to
+be gained by playing battledore and shuttlecock with the name of an old
+man who has never done harm to any one. The Pope hasn't listened to us
+to-day, but he is a saint all the same, and his life has been a lesson
+in well-doing."
+
+"Anybody can sail with a fair wind, sir," said Bruno.
+
+"Let us be prudent. There's no need for violence, whether of the hand or
+of the tongue. You've found that out this morning. If you had rescued me
+from the police, I should have been in prison again by this time, and
+God knows what else might have happened. I'm proud of your patience and
+forbearance; and now go home, boys, and God bless you."
+
+"Stop a minute!" said the man with the paper. "Something to read before
+we go. While the Carabineers kept Mr. Rossi in the Borgo, the Committee
+of Direction met in a café and drew up a proclamation."
+
+"Read it, Luigi," said David Rossi, and the man opened his paper and
+read:
+
+"Having appealed in vain to Parliament and to the King against the
+tyrannical tax which the Government has imposed upon bread in order that
+the army and navy may be increased, and having appealed in vain to the
+Pope to intercede with the civil authorities, and call back Italy to its
+duty, it now behoves us, as a suffering and perishing people, to act on
+our own behalf. Unless annulled by royal decree, the tax will come into
+operation on the 1st of February. On that day let every Roman remain
+indoors until an hour after Ave Maria. Let nobody buy so much as one
+loaf of bread, and let no bread be eaten, except such as you give to
+your children. Then, at the first hour of night, let us meet in the
+Coliseum, tens of thousands of fasting people, of one mind and heart, to
+determine what it is our duty to do next, that our bread may be sure and
+our water may not fail."
+
+"Good!" "Beautiful!" "Splendid!"
+
+"Only wants the signature of the president," said the reader, and Bruno
+called for pen and ink.
+
+"Before I sign it," said Rossi, "let it be understood that none come
+armed. There is nothing our enemies would like better than to fix on us
+the names of rioters and rebels. We must defeat them. We must show the
+world that we alone are the people of law and order. Therefore I call on
+you to promise that none come armed."
+
+"We promise," cried several voices.
+
+"And now go home, boys, and God bless you."
+
+After a moment there was only one man left in the room. It was the
+fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache.
+
+"For you, sir!" said the young man, taking a letter from a pocket inside
+his waistcoat.
+
+David Rossi opened the letter and read: "The bearer of this, Charles
+Minghelli, is one of ourselves. He has determined upon the
+accomplishment of a great act, and wishes to see you with respect to
+it."
+
+"You come from London?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You wish to speak to me?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You may speak freely."
+
+The young man glanced in the direction of Bruno and of Bruno's wife, who
+stood beside him.
+
+"It is a delicate matter, sir," he said.
+
+"Come this way," said David Rossi, and he took the stranger into his
+bedroom.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a
+sign to the man to take a chair that stood near.
+
+"Your name is Charles Minghelli?" said David Rossi.
+
+"Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own
+hands."
+
+The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence
+David Rossi replied as calmly:
+
+"I will ask you to explain what you mean."
+
+The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will
+permit me to speak plainly?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name
+to it. It is beautiful as a theory--most beautiful! And the Republic of
+Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that
+runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to
+tug at it."
+
+"I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi.
+
+"With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest
+against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your
+principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and
+without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then
+where are you?"
+
+David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines
+with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on
+the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with
+more vigour.
+
+"If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where
+are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men
+marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the
+other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or
+paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to
+overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of
+the world!"
+
+David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and
+forward with a step that was long and slow.
+
+"Well, and what do _you_ say we ought to do?" he said.
+
+A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice:
+
+"Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation."
+
+"The Prime Minister?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was silence.
+
+"You expect me to do that?"
+
+"No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right
+to resist violence."
+
+David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of
+introduction, and said:
+
+"That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why do you come to me?" he said.
+
+"Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of
+Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the
+way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the
+moment when he is to be found alone."
+
+"I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death."
+
+"A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight."
+
+"I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people."
+
+"On the day he dies, sir, the people will live."
+
+"Or that crimes--great crimes--have been the means of bringing about
+great reforms."
+
+"You are right, sir--but it would be no crime."
+
+The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned
+over to the desk and took up the dagger.
+
+"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet
+of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the
+word--may I take it?"
+
+"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know
+himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."
+
+The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.
+
+"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done--to
+know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the
+things; the actors, not the parts."
+
+The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open,
+and balancing the dagger on one hand.
+
+"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by
+every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy
+of liberty--that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight
+otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."
+
+The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
+
+"I knew you talked like that to the people--statesmen do
+sometimes--that's all right--it's pretty, and it keeps the people
+quiet--but _we_...."
+
+David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:
+
+"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."
+
+"So you dismiss me?"
+
+"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the
+progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of
+authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the
+destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as
+one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal
+quarrel against an enemy."
+
+The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
+
+"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime
+Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his
+mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who
+is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna
+at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and
+has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a
+liar and a cheat?"
+
+David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
+
+"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing
+that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."
+
+David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy
+in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police
+authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in
+Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy--she had been
+living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had
+turned out badly and run away."
+
+David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy
+stare.
+
+"I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the
+magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we
+didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month
+later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared
+entirely."
+
+David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into
+his shoulders.
+
+"I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I
+saw her?"
+
+David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the
+Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and
+one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her
+I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was
+lost in the streets of London."
+
+David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.
+
+The man staggered back and stammered:
+
+"Why ... what...."
+
+"I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant
+companion--she was the same as my sister--and her father was the same as
+my father--and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous
+wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one
+word, but I won't. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my
+path again I'll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an
+assassin."
+
+Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled.
+
+
+                                V
+
+David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and
+tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire.
+
+"What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street," said
+Bruno.
+
+"A man whose room was better than his company, that's all."
+
+"What's his name?" said Bruno.
+
+"Charles Minghelli."
+
+"Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the
+Embassy in London, and got dismissed."
+
+"I thought as much!" said David Rossi. "No doubt the man attributed his
+dismissal to the Prime Minister, and wanted to use me for his private
+revenge."
+
+"That was his game, was it? Why didn't you let me know, sir? He would
+have gone downstairs like a falling star. Now that I remember, he's the
+nephew of old Polomba, the Mayor, and I've seen him at Donna Roma's."
+
+A waiter in a white smock, with a large tin box on his head, entered the
+hall, and behind him came the old woman from the porter's lodge, with
+the wrinkled face and the red cotton handkerchief.
+
+"Come in," cried Bruno. "I ordered the best dinner in the Trattoria,
+sir, and thought we might perhaps dine together for once."
+
+"Good," said David Rossi.
+
+"Here it is, a whole basketful of the grace of God, sir! Out with it,
+Riccardo," and while the women laid the table, Bruno took the dishes
+smoking hot from their temporary oven with its charcoal fire.
+
+"Artichokes--good. Chicken--good again. I must be a fox--I was dreaming
+of chicken all last night! _Gnocchi!_ (potatoes and flour baked).
+_Agradolce!_ (sour and sweet). _Fagioletti!_ (French beans boiled)
+and--a half-flask of Chianti! Who said the son of my mother couldn't
+order a dinner? All right, Riccardo; come back at Ave Maria."
+
+The waiter went off, and the company sat down to their meal, Bruno and
+his wife at either end of the table, and David Rossi on the sofa, with
+the boy on his right, and the cat curled up into his side on the left,
+while the old woman stood in front, serving the food and removing the
+plates.
+
+"Look at him!" said the old woman, who was deaf, pointing to David
+Rossi, with his two neighbours. "Now, why doesn't the Blessed Virgin
+give him a child of his own?"
+
+"She has, mother, and here he is," said David Rossi.
+
+"You'll let her give him a woman first, won't you?" said Bruno.
+
+"Ah! that will never be," said David Rossi.
+
+"What does he say?" said the old woman with her hand at her ear like a
+shell.
+
+"He says he won't have any of you," bawled Bruno.
+
+"What an idea! But I've heard men say that before, and they've been
+married sooner than you could say 'Hail Mary.'"
+
+"It isn't an incident altogether unknown in the history of this planet,
+is it, mother?" said Bruno.
+
+"A heart to share your sorrows and joys is something, and the man is not
+wise who wastes the chance of it," said the old woman. "Does he think
+parliaments will make up for it when he grows old and wants something to
+comfort him?"
+
+"Hush, mother!" said Elena, but Bruno made mouths at her to let the old
+woman go on.
+
+"As for me, I'll want somebody of my own about me to close my eyes when
+the time comes to put the sacred oil on them," said the old woman.
+
+"If a man has dedicated his life to work for humanity," said David
+Rossi, "he must give up many things--father, mother, wife, child."
+
+The corner of Elena's apron crept up to the corner of her eye, but the
+old woman, who thought the subject had changed, laughed and said:
+
+"That's just what I say to Tommaso. 'Tommaso,' I say, 'if a man is going
+to be a policeman he must have no father, or mother, or wife, or
+child--no, nor bowels neither,' I say. And Tommaso says, 'Francesca,' he
+says, 'the whole tribe of gentry they call statesmen are just policemen
+in plain clothes, and I do believe they've only liberated Mr. Rossi as a
+trap to catch him again when he has done something.'"
+
+"They won't catch _you_ though, will they, mother?" shouted Bruno.
+
+"That they won't! I'm deaf, praise the saints, and can't hear them."
+
+A knock came to the door, and seizing his mace the boy ran and opened
+it. An old man stood on the threshold. He was one of David Rossi's
+pensioners. Ninety years of age, his children all dead, he lived with
+his grandchildren, and was one of the poor human rats who stay indoors
+all day and come out with a lantern at night to scour the gutters of the
+city for the refuse of cigar-ends.
+
+"Come another night, John," said Bruno.
+
+But David Rossi would not send him away empty, and he was going off with
+the sparkling eyes of a boy, when he said:
+
+"I heard you in the piazza this morning, Excellency! Grand! Only sorry
+for one thing."
+
+"And what was that, sonny?" asked Bruno.
+
+"What his Excellency said about Donna Roma. She gave me a half-franc
+only yesterday--stopped the carriage to do it, sir."
+
+"So that's your only reason...." began Bruno.
+
+"Good reason, too. Good-night, John!" said David Rossi, and Joseph
+closed the door.
+
+"Oh, she has her virtues, like every other kind of spider," said Bruno.
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke of her," said David Rossi.
+
+"You needn't be, though. She deserved all she got. I haven't been two
+years in her studio without knowing what she is."
+
+"It was the man I was thinking of, and if I had remembered that the
+woman must suffer...."
+
+"Tut! She'll have to make her Easter confession a little earlier, that's
+all."
+
+"If she hadn't laughed when I was speaking...."
+
+"You're on the wrong track now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the
+little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and
+screeching like an old gandery goose."
+
+Dinner was now over, and the boy called for the phonograph. David Rossi
+went into the sitting-room to fetch it, and Elena went in at the same
+time to light the fire. She was kneeling with her back to him, blowing
+on to the wood, when she said in a trembling voice:
+
+"I'm a little sorry myself, sir, if I may say so. I can't believe what
+they say about the mistress, but even if it's true we don't know _her_
+story, do we?"
+
+Then the phonograph was turned on, and Joseph marched to the tune of
+"Swannee River" and the strains of Sousa's band.
+
+"Mr. Rossi," said Bruno, between a puff and a blow.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you tried the cylinder that came first?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"How's that, sir?"
+
+"The man who brought it said the friend who had spoken into it was
+dead." And then with a shiver, "It would be like a voice from the
+grave--I doubt if I dare hear it."
+
+"Like a ghost speaking to a man, certainly--especially if the friend was
+a close one."
+
+"He was the closest friend I ever had, Bruno--he was my father."
+
+"Father?"
+
+"Foster-father, anyway. For four years he clothed and fed and educated
+me, and I was the same as his own son."
+
+"Had he no children of his own?"
+
+"One little daughter, no bigger than Joseph when I saw her last--Roma."
+
+"Roma?"
+
+"Yes, her father was a Liberal, and her name was Roma."
+
+"What became of her?"
+
+"When the doctor came to Italy on the errand which ended in his
+imprisonment he gave her into the keeping of some Italian friends in
+London. I was too young to take charge of her then. Besides, I left
+England shortly afterward and went to America."
+
+"Where is she now?" said Elena.
+
+"When I returned to England ... she was dead."
+
+"Well, there's nothing new under the sun of Rome--Donna Roma came from
+London," said Bruno.
+
+David Rossi felt the muscles of his face quiver.
+
+"Her father was an exile in England, too, and when he came back on the
+errand that ended in Elba, he gave her away to some people who treated
+her badly--I've heard old Teapot, the Countess, say so when she's been
+nagging her poor niece."
+
+David Rossi breathed painfully.
+
+"Strange if it should be the same," said Bruno.
+
+"But Mr. Rossi's Roma is dead," said Elena.
+
+"Ah, of course, certainly! What a fool I am!" said Bruno.
+
+David Rossi had a sense of suffocation, and he went out on to the lead
+flat.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+The Ave Maria was ringing from many church towers, and the golden day
+was going down with the sun behind the dark outline of the dome of St.
+Peter's, while the blue night was rising over the snow-capped Apennines
+in a premature twilight with one twinkling star.
+
+David Rossi's ears buzzed as with the sound of a mighty wind rushing
+through trees at a distance. Bruno's last words on top of Charles
+Minghelli's had struck him like an alarum bell heard through the mists
+of sleep, and his head was stunned and his eyes were dizzy. He buttoned
+his coat about him, and walked quickly to and fro on the lead flat by
+the side of the cage, in which the birds were already bunched up and
+silent.
+
+Before he was aware of the passing of time, the church bells were
+tolling the first hour of night. Presently he became aware of flares
+burning in the Piazza of St. Peter, and of the shadows of giant heads
+cast up on the walls of the vast Basilica. It was the crowd gathering
+for the last ceremonial of the Pope's Jubilee, and at the sound of a
+double rocket, which went up as with the crackle of musketry, little
+Joseph came running on to the roof, followed by his mother and Bruno.
+
+David Rossi took the boy into his arms and tried to dispel the gloom of
+his own spirits in the child's joy at the illuminations.
+
+"Ever see 'luminations before, Uncle David?" said Joseph.
+
+"Once, dear, but that was long ago and far away. I was a boy myself in
+those days, and there was a little girl with me then who was no bigger
+than you are now. But it's growing cold, there's frost in the air,
+besides it's late, and little boys must go to bed."
+
+"Well, God is God, and the Pope is His Prophet," said Bruno, when Elena
+and Joseph had gone indoors. "It was like day! You could see the
+lightning conductor over the Pope's apartment! Pshew!" blowing puffs of
+smoke from his twisted cigar. "Won't keep the lightning off, though."
+
+"Bruno!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Donna Roma's father would be Prince Volonna?"
+
+"Yes, the last prince of the old papal name. When the Volonna estates
+were confiscated, the title really lapsed, but old Vampire got the
+lands."
+
+"Did you ever hear that he bore any other name during the time he was in
+exile?"
+
+"Sure to, but there was no trial and nothing was known. They all changed
+their names, though."
+
+"Why ... what...." said David Rossi in an unsteady voice.
+
+"Why?" said Bruno. "Because they were all condemned in Italy, and the
+foreign countries were told to turn them out. But what am I talking
+about? You know all that better than I do, sir. Didn't your old friend
+go under a false name?"
+
+"Very likely--I don't know," said David Rossi, in a voice that testified
+to jangled nerves.
+
+"Did he ever tell you, sir?"
+
+"I can't say that he ever.... Certainly the school of revolution has
+always had villains enough, and perhaps to prevent treachery...."
+
+"You may say so! The devil has the run of the world, even in England.
+But I'm surprised your old friend, being like a father to you, didn't
+tell you--at the end anyway...."
+
+"Perhaps he intended to--and then perhaps...."
+
+David Rossi put his hand to his brow as if in pain and perplexity, and
+began again to walk backward and forward.
+
+A screamer in the piazza below cried "_Trib-un-a!_" and Bruno said:
+
+"That's early! What's up, I wonder? I'll go down and get a paper."
+
+Darkness had by this time re-invaded the sky, and the stars looked down
+from their broad dome, clear, sweet, white, and serene, putting to shame
+by their immortal solemnity the poor little mimes, the paltry
+puppet-shows of the human jackstraws who had just been worshipping at
+their self-made shrine.
+
+As David Rossi returned to the house, Elena, who was undressing the boy,
+saw a haggard look in his eyes, but Bruno, who was reading his evening
+journal, saw nothing, and cried out:
+
+"Helloa! Listen to this, sir. It's Olga. She's got a pen, I can tell
+you. 'Madame de Pompadour. Hitherto we have had the pleasure of having
+Madame ----, whose pressure on the State and on Italy's wise counsellors
+was only incidental, but now that the fates have given us a Madame
+Pompadour....' Then there's a leading article on your speech in the
+piazza. Praises you up to the skies. Look! 'Thank God we have men like
+the Honourable Rossi, who at the risk of....'"
+
+But with a clouded brow David Rossi turned away from him and passed into
+the sitting-room, and Bruno looked around in blank bewilderment.
+
+"Shall you want the lamp, sir?" said Elena.
+
+"Not yet, thank you," he answered through the open door.
+
+The wood fire was glowing on the hearth, and in the acute state of his
+nerves he shuddered involuntarily as its reflection in the window
+opposite looked back at him like a fiery eye. He opened the case of the
+phonograph, which had been returned to its place on the piano, and then
+from a drawer in the bureau he took a small cardboard box. The wood in
+the fire flickered at that moment and started some ghastly shadows on
+the ceiling, but he drew a cylinder from the box and slid it on to the
+barrel of the phonograph. Then he stepped to the door, shut and locked
+it.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+"Well!" said Bruno. "If that isn't enough to make a man feel as small as
+a sardine!"
+
+There was only one thing to do, but to conceal the nature of it Bruno
+flourished the newspaper and said:
+
+"Elena, I must go down to the lodge and read these articles to your
+father. Poor Donna Roma, she'll have to fly, I'm afraid. Bye-bye,
+Garibaldi-Mazzini! Early to bed, early to rise, and time enough to grow
+old, you know!... As for Mr. Rossi, he might be a sinner and a criminal
+instead of the hero of the hour! It licks me to little bits." And Bruno
+carried his dark mystery down to the café to see if it might be
+dispelled by a litre of autumnal light from sunny vineyards.
+
+Meantime, Joseph, being very tired, was shooting out a pettish lip
+because he had to go to bed without saying good-night to Uncle David; and
+his mother, making terms with this pretence, consented to bring down his
+nightdress, thinking Rossi might be out of the sitting-room by that
+time, and the boy be pacified. But when she returned to the dining-room
+the sitting-room door was still closed, and Joseph was pleading to be
+allowed to lie on the sofa until Uncle David carried him to bed.
+
+"I'm not asleep, mamma," came in a drowsy voice from the sofa, but
+almost at the same moment the measured breath slowed down, the
+watch-lights blinked themselves out, and the little soul slid away into
+the darksome kingdom of unconsciousness.
+
+Suddenly, in the silence of the room, Elena was startled by a voice. It
+came from the sitting-room. Was it Mr. Rossi's voice? No! The voice was
+older and feebler than Mr. Rossi's, and less clear and distinct. Could
+it be possible that somebody was with him? If so, the visitor must have
+arrived while she was in the bedroom above. But why had she not heard
+the knock? How did it occur that Joseph had not told her? And then the
+lamp was still on the dining-room table, and save for the firelight the
+sitting-room must be dark.
+
+A chill began to run through her blood, and she tried to hear what was
+said, but the voice was muffled by its passage through the wall, and she
+could only catch a word or two. Presently the strange voice, without
+stopping, was broken in upon by a voice that was clear and familiar, but
+now faltering with the note of pain: "I swear to God I will!"
+
+That was Mr. Rossi's voice, and Elena's head began to go round. Whom was
+he speaking to? Who was speaking to him? He went into the room alone, he
+was sitting in the dark, and yet there were two voices.
+
+A light dawned on Elena, and she could have laughed. What had terrified
+her as a sort of supernatural thing was only the phonograph! But after a
+moment a fresh tremor struck upon her in the agony of the exclamations
+with which David Rossi broke in upon the voice that was being reproduced
+by the machine. She could hear his words distinctly, and he was in great
+trouble. Hardly knowing what she did, she crept up to the door and
+listened. Even then, she could only follow the strange voice in
+passages, which were broken and submerged by the whirring of the
+phonograph, like the flight of a sea-bird which dips at intervals and
+leaves nothing but the wash of the waves.
+
+"David," said the voice, "when this shall come to your hands ... in my
+great distress of mind ... do not trifle with my request ... but
+whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child ... remember
+that ... Adieu, my son ... the end is near ... if death does not
+annihilate ... those who remain on earth ... a helper and advocate in
+heaven ... Adieu!" And interrupting these broken words were half-smothered
+cries and sobs from David Rossi, repeating again and again: "I will!
+I swear to God I will!"
+
+Elena could bear the pain no longer, and mustering up her courage she
+tapped at the door. It was a gentle tap, and no answer was returned. She
+knocked louder, and then an angry voice said:
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"It's I--Elena," she answered timidly. "Is anything the matter? Aren't
+you well, sir?"
+
+"Ah, yes," came back in a calmer voice, and after a shuffling sound as
+of the closing of drawers, David Rossi opened the door and came out.
+
+As he crossed the threshold he cast a backward glance into the dark
+room, as if he feared that some invisible hand would touch him on the
+shoulder. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood on his
+forehead, but he smiled, and in a voice that was a little hoarse, yet
+fairly under control, he said:
+
+"I'm afraid I've frightened you, Elena."
+
+"You're not well, sir. Sit down, and let me run for some cognac."
+
+"No! It's nothing! Only...."
+
+"Take this glass of water, sir."
+
+"That's good! I'm better now, and I'm ashamed. Elena, you mustn't think
+any more of this, and whatever I may do in the future that seems to you
+to be strange, you must promise me never to mention it."
+
+"I needn't _promise_ you that, sir," said Elena.
+
+"Bruno is a brave, bright, loyal soul, Elena, but there are times...."
+
+"I know--and I'll never mention it to anybody. But you've taken a chill
+on the roof at sunset looking at the illuminations--that's all it is!
+The nights are frosty now, and I was to blame that I didn't send out
+your cloak."
+
+Then she tried to be cheerful, and turning to the sleeping boy, said:
+
+"Look! He was naughty again and wouldn't go to bed until you came out to
+carry him."
+
+"The dear little man!" said David Rossi. He stepped up to the couch, but
+his pale face was preoccupied, and he looked at Elena again and said:
+
+"Where does Donna Roma live?"
+
+"Trinità de' Monti--eighteen," said Elena.
+
+"Is it late?"
+
+"It must be half-past eight at least, sir."
+
+"We'll take Joseph to bed then."
+
+He was putting his arms about the boy to lift him when a
+slippery-sloppery step was heard on the stairs, followed by a hurried
+knock at the door.
+
+It was the old Garibaldian porter, breathless, bareheaded, and in his
+slippers.
+
+"Father!" cried Elena.
+
+"It's she. She's coming up."
+
+At the next moment a lady in evening dress was standing in the hall. It
+was Donna Roma. She had unclasped her ermine cloak, and her bosom was
+heaving with the exertion of the ascent.
+
+"May I speak to Mr. Rossi?" she began, and then looking beyond Elena and
+seeing him, where he stood above the sleeping child, a qualm of
+faintness seemed to seize her, and she closed her eyes for a moment.
+
+David Rossi's face flushed to the roots of his hair, but he stepped
+forward, bowed deeply, led the way to the sitting-room, and, with a
+certain incoherency in his speech, said:
+
+"Come in! Elena will bring the lamp. I shall be back presently."
+
+Then, lifting little Joseph in his arms, he carried him up to bed,
+tucked him in his cot, smoothed his pillow, made the sign of the cross
+over his forehead, and came back to the sitting-room with the air of a
+man walking in a dream.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Being left alone, Roma looked around, and at a glance she took in
+everything--the thin carpet, the plain chintz, the prints, the
+incongruous furniture. She saw the photograph on the piano, still
+standing open, with a cylinder exposed, and in the interval of waiting
+she felt almost tempted to touch the spring. She saw herself, too, in
+the mirror above the mantel-piece, with her glossy black hair rolled up
+like a tower, from which one curly lock escaped on to her forehead, and
+with the ermine cloak on her shoulders over the white silk muslin which
+clung to her full figure.
+
+Then she heard David Rossi's footsteps returning, and though she was now
+completely self-possessed she was conscious of a certain shiver of fear,
+such as an actress feels in her dressing-room at the tuning-up of the
+orchestra. Her back was to the door and she heard the whirl of her skirt
+as he entered, and then he was before her, and they were alone.
+
+He was looking at her out of large, pensive eyes, and she saw him pass
+his hand over them and then bow and motion her to a seat, and go to the
+mantel-piece and lean on it. She was tingling all over, and a certain
+glow was going up to her face, but when she spoke she was mistress of
+herself, and her voice was soft and natural.
+
+"I am doing a very unusual thing in coming to see you," she said, "but
+you have forced me to it, and I am quite helpless."
+
+A faint sound came from him, and she was aware that he was leaning
+forward to see her face, so she dropped her eyes, partly to let him look
+at her, and partly to avoid meeting his gaze.
+
+"I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to
+disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me."
+
+He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and
+continued in the same soft voice:
+
+"If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can
+only come to you and tell you that you are wrong."
+
+"Wrong?"
+
+"Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong."
+
+"You mean to tell me...."
+
+He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly:
+
+"I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was
+false."
+
+There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she
+knew that he was looking at her still.
+
+"If ... if...."--his voice was thick and indistinct--"if you tell me that
+I have done you an injury...."
+
+"You have--a terrible injury."
+
+She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should
+see something in her face.
+
+"Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to
+accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I
+believe you will accept it."
+
+"If ... if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said--what
+I implied--was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it
+is all a cruel and baseless calumny...."
+
+She raised her head, looked him full in the face.
+
+"I _do_ give it," she said.
+
+"Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I
+believe you."
+
+She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on
+her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed
+with other men.
+
+"I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have
+lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so,
+perhaps it has been partly the fault of the men about me. When is a
+woman anything but what the men around have made her?"
+
+She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first
+man who has not praised and flattered me."
+
+"I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and
+perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to
+struggle and starve."
+
+She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face.
+
+"I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a
+man like you my life might have been different. I used to hope for such
+things long ago--that a man of high aims and noble purposes would come
+to meet me at the gate of life. Perhaps you have felt like that--that
+some woman, strong and true, would stand beside you for good or for ill,
+in your hour of danger and your hour of joy?"
+
+Her voice was not quite steady--she hardly knew why.
+
+"A dream! We all have our dreams," he said.
+
+"A dream indeed! Men came--he was not among them. They pampered every
+wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was
+dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my
+pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in
+secret ... what you said in public this morning."
+
+He was looking at her constantly with his wistful eyes, the eyes of a
+child, and through all the joy of her success she was conscious of a
+spasm of pain at the expression of his sad face and the sound of his
+tremulous voice.
+
+"We men are much to blame," he said. "In the battle of man with man we
+deal out blows and think we are fighting fair, but we forget that behind
+our foe there is often a woman--a wife, a mother, a sister, a
+friend--and, God forgive us, we have struck her, too."
+
+The half-smile that had gleamed on Roma's face was wiped out of it by
+these words, and an emotion she did not understand began to surge in her
+throat.
+
+"You speak of poor women who struggle and starve," she said. "Would it
+surprise you to hear that _I_ know what it is to do that? Yes, and to be
+friendless and alone--quite, quite alone in a cruel and wicked city."
+
+She had lost herself for a moment, and the dry glitter in her eyes had
+given way to a moistness and a solemn expression. But at the next
+instant she had regained her self-control, and went on speaking to avoid
+a painful silence.
+
+"I have never spoken of this to any other man," she said. "I don't know
+why I should mention it to you--to you of all men."
+
+She had risen to her feet, and he stepped up to her, and looking
+straight into her eyes he said:
+
+"Have you ever seen me before?"
+
+"Never," she answered.
+
+"Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you."
+
+She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into
+her face.
+
+"You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you
+something of mine."
+
+She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be
+pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge
+from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands.
+Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his
+voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.
+
+She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust
+and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the
+edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a
+little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.
+
+"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the
+house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever
+sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who
+nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can
+you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be
+homeless, nameless, and alone?"
+
+She looked up--a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not
+seen there before.
+
+"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who
+has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I
+never knew my mother."
+
+The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her
+knees.
+
+"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied
+to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name,
+placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung
+herself into the Tiber."
+
+Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.
+
+"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."
+
+"_Your_ mother?"
+
+"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in
+the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope
+was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo
+Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a
+child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the
+white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered
+them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to
+foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was
+sent to London."
+
+Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.
+
+"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty
+foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the
+streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of
+white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and
+were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then
+the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little
+southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in
+the darkness and the snow."
+
+Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to
+flow.
+
+"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man,
+a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor,
+especially to the poor of his own people."
+
+Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.
+
+"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English
+courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less
+cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for
+light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs
+with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to
+them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but
+his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live."
+
+Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her
+throat was choking, but she said:
+
+"What was he?"
+
+"A doctor."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and
+answered:
+
+"They called him Joseph Roselli."
+
+Roma half rose from her seat, then sank back, and the lace handkerchief
+dropped from her hand.
+
+"But I heard afterwards--long afterwards--that he was a Roman noble, one
+of the fearless few who had taken up poverty and exile and an unknown
+name for the sake of liberty and justice."
+
+Roma's head had fallen into her bosom, which was heaving with an emotion
+she could not conceal.
+
+"One day a letter came from Italy, telling him that a thousand men were
+waiting for him to lead them in an insurrection that was to dethrone an
+unrighteous king. It was the trick of a scoundrel who has since been
+paid the price of a hero's blood. I heard of this only lately--only
+to-night."
+
+There was silence for a moment. David Rossi had put one arm over his
+eyes.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He was enticed back from England to Italy; an English minister violated
+his correspondence with a friend, and communicated its contents to the
+Italian Government; he was betrayed into the hands of the police, and
+deported without trial."
+
+"Was he never heard of again?"
+
+"Once--only once--by the friend I speak about."
+
+Roma felt dizzy, as if she were coming near to some deep places; but she
+could not stop--something compelled her to go on.
+
+"Who was the friend?" she asked.
+
+"One of his poor waifs--a boy who owed everything to him, and loved and
+revered him as a father--loves and reveres him still, and tries to
+follow in the path he trod."
+
+"What--what was his name?"
+
+"David Leone."
+
+She looked at him for a moment without being able to speak. Then she
+said:
+
+"What happened to him?"
+
+"The Italian courts condemned him to death, and the English police drove
+him from England."
+
+"Then he has never been able to return to his own country?"
+
+"He has never been able to visit his mother's grave except by secret and
+at night, and as one who was perpetrating a crime."
+
+"What became of him?"
+
+"He went to America."
+
+"Did he ever return?"
+
+"Yes! Love of home in him, as in all homeless ones, was a consuming
+passion, and he came back to Italy."
+
+"Where--where is he _now_?"
+
+David Rossi stepped up to her, and said:
+
+"In this room."
+
+She rose:
+
+"Then _you_ are David Leone!"
+
+He raised one hand:
+
+"_David Leone is dead!_"
+
+There was silence for a moment. She could hear the thumping of her
+heart. Then she said in an almost inaudible whisper:
+
+"I understand. David Leone is dead, but David Rossi is alive."
+
+He did not speak, but his head was held up and his face was shining.
+
+"Are you not afraid to tell me this?"
+
+"No."
+
+Her eyes glistened and her lips quivered.
+
+"You insulted and humiliated me in public this morning, yet you think I
+will keep your secret?"
+
+"I _know_ you will."
+
+She felt a sensation of swelling in her throbbing heart, and with a slow
+and nervous gesture she held out her hand.
+
+"May I ... may I shake hands with you?" she said.
+
+There was a moment of hesitation, and then their hands seemed to leap at
+each other and clasp with a clasp of fire.
+
+At the next instant he had lifted her hand to his lips and was kissing
+it again and again.
+
+A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and instantly died
+away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not
+what. But _David Leone is dead_ rang in her ears, and at the same moment
+she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that
+house.
+
+Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly
+away without uttering another word. _She_ could not speak, _he_ could
+not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence
+could they hold their heads.
+
+"Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head
+and trembling limbs she stepped to the door.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a
+voice still soft, but coming more from within:
+
+"I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are
+not the man I thought you were."
+
+"Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you."
+
+A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said:
+
+"Then you had never seen me before?"
+
+And he answered after a moment:
+
+"I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day."
+
+"Forgive me for coming to you," she said.
+
+"I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against
+you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to
+right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a
+mistake--let me ask your forgiveness."
+
+"You mean publicly?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you
+to do that."
+
+"Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once
+started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the
+man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do--tell
+me, tell me."
+
+Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy.
+
+"There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult."
+
+"No matter! Tell me what it is."
+
+[Illustration: THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON A PRECIPICE.]
+
+"I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter."
+
+"Tell me, I beg of you."
+
+He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze
+as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.
+
+"I thought if--if you would come to my house when my friends are there,
+your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have
+injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything.
+But...."
+
+"Is that _all_?" he said.
+
+"Then you are not afraid?"
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.
+
+"I have thought of something else," she said.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the
+Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it...."
+
+"It would be coals of fire on my head."
+
+"You would need to sit to me."
+
+"When shall it be?"
+
+"To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon."
+
+"It will be years on years till then," he said.
+
+She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming
+eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she
+turned her face away.
+
+"Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of
+opening the door.
+
+"I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he
+answered.
+
+"I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and
+bitterness."
+
+"If I ever had such a feeling it is gone."
+
+"Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go.
+
+One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her
+shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look
+seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the
+physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross
+the space that had divided them.
+
+"Let me see you to the door?" he said, and her eyes said openly, "Will
+you?"
+
+They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and
+almost touching.
+
+"I forgot to give you my address--eighteen Trinità de' Monti," she said.
+
+"Eighteen Trinità de' Monti," he repeated.
+
+They had reached the second storey. "I am trying to remember," she said.
+"After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere."
+
+"In a dream, perhaps," he answered.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Perhaps in the dream I spoke about."
+
+They had reached the street, and Roma's carriage, a hired _coupé_, stood
+waiting a few yards from the door.
+
+They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave
+him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light.
+
+"Until to-morrow then," she said.
+
+"To-morrow morning," he replied.
+
+"To-morrow morning," she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between
+them she seemed to say, "Come early, will you not?--there is still so
+much to say."
+
+He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came
+back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door.
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and
+bowed through the glass.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                        PART THREE--ROMA
+
+
+                                I
+
+The Piazza of Trinità de' Monti takes its name from a church and convent
+which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill.
+
+A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height,
+goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna,
+which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their
+stalls around a fountain.
+
+At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all
+winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it,
+the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music
+of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two
+floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and
+entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was
+as a private apartment.
+
+Donna Roma's home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor,
+opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in
+red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by
+lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet.
+Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird
+in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its
+embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which
+looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of
+wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a
+statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides
+her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to
+familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was
+connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round
+with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her
+marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi.
+
+On the morning after Donna Roma's visit to the Piazza Navona a letter
+came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. "The man
+is a treasure and sees nothing," he wrote. And he added in a footnote:
+"Don't look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them
+send to you say nothing."
+
+But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady
+journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in
+literature and love.
+
+"I'm 'Penelope,'" she said. "'Penelope' of the _Day_, you know. Come to
+see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi's speech
+yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if
+you would like to reply through me to Olga's shameful libels.... Haven't
+you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady
+could allow them to pass unnoticed."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Roma, "that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!"
+
+Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove
+up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with
+little twinkling eyes.
+
+"Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of
+the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It's in all the newspapers--I've brought
+them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See--'A
+lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the
+Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.' Most
+damaging, isn't it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny
+the statement. Ah, don't be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets.
+Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy
+your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and
+explain before publishing anything."
+
+Roma said nothing, and the great man backed himself out with the air of
+one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask
+in return.
+
+"It's rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to
+organise a system of secret police--and quite right, too. You remember
+my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from
+Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The
+very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to
+an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma will only say a word for
+him.... Thanks!... What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A
+masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome."
+
+The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was
+in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social
+pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her
+aristocratic customers.
+
+"Trust I am not _de trop_! I knew you wouldn't mind my calling in the
+morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody
+is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn't
+true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved!... By the way, my dear, don't
+trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but ... I'm giving a little
+reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend ... you'll
+mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!"
+
+"Count Mario," announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came
+tripping into the room. He was Roma's landlord and the Italian
+Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
+
+"So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too,
+but I _do_ hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account
+of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!"
+
+Then stepping to the window, "What a lovely view! The finest in Rome,
+and that's the finest in Europe! I'm always saying if it wasn't Donna
+Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here
+myself.... That reminds me of something. I'm ... well, I'm tired of
+Petersburg, and I've written to the Minister asking to be transferred to
+Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me.... How sweet of
+you! Adieu!"
+
+Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the
+person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a
+room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her
+aunt called to her from within.
+
+The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent
+of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded
+mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony
+fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A
+cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its
+ribbon.
+
+"Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!" she said in a
+withering whimper. "I thought you might have looked in last night, and I
+lay awake until after midnight."
+
+"I had a headache and went to bed," said Roma.
+
+"I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me," said the old
+lady, and Roma went over to the window.
+
+"I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite
+that man in spite of all my protests?"
+
+"He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time."
+
+"Just so! It's no use speaking. I don't know what girls are coming to.
+When I was young a man like that wouldn't have been allowed to cross the
+threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in
+prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime
+Minister."
+
+"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I want to ask you a question."
+
+"Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where's
+Natalina?"
+
+"Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left
+home and became an exile?"
+
+"Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was
+broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the
+palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina,
+give me my smelling salts. And why haven't you brought the cushion for
+the cat?"
+
+"Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it
+right...."
+
+"Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only
+son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?"
+
+"I thought they went to the Baron, auntie."
+
+"Roma, aren't you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too,
+in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience.
+He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to
+the mercy of others--and all for what?"
+
+"For country, I suppose."
+
+"For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My
+head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling
+salts? And why will you always forget to...."
+
+Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed
+her down to the studio.
+
+Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy
+demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a
+cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but
+silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face.
+
+She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her
+own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off
+by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had
+roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles
+around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit
+for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but
+it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed
+her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was
+Judas.
+
+Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw
+that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the
+clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more
+until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter.
+
+    "MY DEAR BARON,--Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great
+    comfort in this household if only he can keep the peace with
+    Monsignor Bruno, and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter's
+    Lodge. Senator Tom-tit has been here to suggest some astonishing
+    arrangement about my fountain, and to ask me to mention his
+    nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and proper person to be chief
+    of your new department of secret police. Madame de Trop and Count
+    Signorina have also been, but of their modest messages more anon.
+
+    "As for D. R., my barometer is 'set fair,' but it is likely to be
+    a stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my
+    best bib and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down
+    to his apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had
+    gone to find out all about _him_, I hadn't been ten minutes in his
+    company before he told all about _me_--about my father, at all
+    events, and his life in London. I believe he knew me in that
+    connection and expected to appeal to my filial feelings. Did too,
+    so strong is the force of nature, and then and thereafter, and all
+    night long, I was like somebody who had been shaken in an
+    earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was not until I
+    remembered what my father had been--or rather hadn't--and that he
+    was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the
+    cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from
+    the shock of D. R.'s dynamite.
+
+    "He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this
+    morning!--Affectionately,                                    ROMA.
+
+    "P. S.--My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful
+    voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a
+    woman and has never been in love in his life, he has an
+    astonishing way of getting at one. But I could laugh to think how
+    little execution his fusillade will make in this direction."
+
+"Honourable Rossi!" said Felice's sepulchral voice behind her, and at
+that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio.
+
+
+                                II
+
+In spite of her protestations, Roma was nervous and confused. Putting
+David Rossi to sit in the arm-chair on the platform for sitters, she
+rattled on about everything--her clay, her tools, her sponge, and the
+water they had forgotten to change for her. He must not mind if she
+stared at him--that wasn't nice, but it was necessary--and he must
+promise not to look at her work while it was unfinished--children and
+fools, you know--the proverb was musty.
+
+And while she talked she told herself that Thomas was the apostle he
+must stand for. These anarchists were all doubters, and the chief of
+doubters was the figure that would represent them.
+
+David Rossi did not speak much at first, and he did not join in Roma's
+nervous laughter. Sometimes he looked at her with a steadfast gaze,
+which would have been disconcerting if it had not been so simple and
+childlike. At length he looked out of the window to where the city lay
+basking in the sunshine, and birds were swirling in the clear blue sky,
+and began to talk of serious subjects.
+
+"How beautiful!" he said. "No wonder the English and Americans who come
+to Italy for health and the pleasure of art think it a paradise where
+every one should be content. And yet...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Under the smile of this God-blessed land there is suffering such as can
+hardly be found in any other country of the world. Sometimes I think I
+cannot bear it any longer, and must go away, as others do."
+
+"A little more this way, please--thank you! That doesn't do much for
+them, does it?"
+
+"For them? No! God comfort the poor exiles--their path is a bridge of
+sighs! Poor, friendless, forgotten, huddled together in some dingy
+quarter of a foreign city, one a music-master, another a teacher of
+languages, a third a supernumerary at a theatre, a fourth an organ-man
+or even a beggar in the streets, yet weapons in the hand of God and
+shaking the thrones of the world!"
+
+"_You_ have seen something of that, haven't you?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"In London?"
+
+"Yes. There's an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district.
+It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer
+of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of
+Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty,
+has many bedfellows."
+
+"You lived there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of
+the window. "And your old friend, Doctor Roselli--he lived in Soho?"
+
+"In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and
+had a porch and trees in front of it."
+
+The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She
+took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.
+
+"A little more that way, please--thanks! Do you think your friend had a
+right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of
+his father--he would be broken-hearted."
+
+"He was--I've heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and
+forbade him to call himself his son."
+
+"There!"
+
+"But he would never hear a word against the old man. 'He's my
+father--that's enough,' he would say."
+
+The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma's fingers.
+
+"How stupid! But his mother...."
+
+"That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray
+him to come home. 'You are the best of mothers,' he would answer, 'but I
+cannot do so.'"
+
+"He never saw her again?"
+
+"Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength
+to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be
+merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!'"
+
+Roma's throat was throbbing. "He ... he was married?"
+
+"Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself."
+
+"Eyes the other way, at the window--thank you!... Did she know who he
+was?"
+
+"Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho."
+
+"They ... they were ... happy?"
+
+"As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty
+came...."
+
+"He became poor--very poor?"
+
+"Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then
+his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to
+be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now,
+one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them,
+but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the
+radiance of her sunny soul."
+
+Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ...
+died?"
+
+David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her
+death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very
+cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a
+cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days
+altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed
+her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little
+daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll
+on the floor."
+
+His voice had enough to do to control itself.
+
+"When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a
+blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now--the child
+with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the
+wall."
+
+His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma's eyes the tears
+were gathering.
+
+"We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh,
+the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!"
+
+Roma could not look at him any longer.
+
+"It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the
+grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the
+doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there
+too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed
+at the sights in the streets. Only six--and she had never been in a
+coach before!"
+
+At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the
+Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.
+
+"If you don't mind, I'll not try to do any more to-day," she said in a
+husky voice. "Somehow it isn't coming right this morning. It's like that
+sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow...."
+
+"With pleasure," said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.
+
+She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.
+
+"Not Thomas," she thought. "John--the beloved disciple! That would fit
+him exactly."
+
+As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope
+bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was
+missing.
+
+"He must have followed Mr. Rossi," said Roma, and without ado she read
+the letter.
+
+    "DEAR ROMA,--A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I
+    sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too,
+    for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it
+    to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly.
+    Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your
+    request and not come near you.--Affectionately,
+
+    "BONELLI."
+
+
+                                III
+
+Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.
+
+After coffee she went into the Countess's room as usual. The old lady
+had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.
+
+"Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the
+police?"
+
+"How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have
+expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a
+thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to
+anybody else while there was no judgment against your father."
+
+"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of
+kin."
+
+"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"
+
+"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"
+
+"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm
+tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of
+your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own
+right."
+
+"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and
+somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."
+
+The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and
+said:
+
+"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if
+you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice
+person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up
+for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten
+the baker's shop in London--or was it a pastry cook's, or what?--where
+they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given
+you away?"
+
+"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."
+
+"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches!
+Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"
+
+"I'm not defending my father, but still...."
+
+"Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in
+search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to
+go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and
+now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and
+forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be?
+Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had
+consigned you!"
+
+The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the
+drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had
+occurred.
+
+"Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work,
+work, work!"
+
+The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed.
+
+"Everybody has heard that _he_ is sitting to you, and everybody
+understands. That reminds me--I've a box at the new opera to-morrow
+night:--'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but
+if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular
+Samson...."
+
+"Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the
+room, with the black poodle bounding before him.
+
+"I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It followed
+me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day...."
+
+"Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and
+then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.
+
+The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that
+if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night...."
+
+David Rossi glanced at Roma.
+
+"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...."
+
+"With pleasure, Princess."
+
+"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel.
+Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I
+leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so
+well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer
+from it shockingly. Adieu!"
+
+Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work
+afresh.
+
+"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,"
+she said. "No, that way, please--eyes as before--thank you! About your
+old friend, I mean. He was a good man--I don't doubt that--but he made
+everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has
+anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the
+world?"
+
+"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must
+reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.
+
+"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter,
+for example. She was to lose everything--her father himself at last. How
+could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."
+
+"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except
+the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."
+
+A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
+
+"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all
+his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to
+gather itself up in the child."
+
+The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.
+
+"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house
+with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways--a gleam of the
+sun from our sunny Italy."
+
+She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her
+after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.
+
+"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she
+said.
+
+"He did."
+
+"How could he know what would happen?"
+
+"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant
+fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was
+stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness!
+Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel,
+and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be
+led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he
+did not love her."
+
+Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
+
+"He gave her away, you say?"
+
+"Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist
+it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break
+down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take
+her with him was impossible. A neighbour came--a fellow-countryman--he
+kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm only a poor man,' he
+said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two
+sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your
+heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at
+last."
+
+Roma listened with head aside.
+
+"One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her
+glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and
+would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed
+and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for
+the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets
+happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to
+bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one,
+and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side."
+
+Roma was holding her breath.
+
+"The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was
+playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were
+aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and
+the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The
+doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a
+glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too,
+and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said,
+'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too--you'll
+be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then
+you'll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.' But I could see
+that the doctor was not listening. 'Let us slip away now,' I said, and
+we stole out somehow."
+
+Roma's eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her
+hand.
+
+There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by
+the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns
+and children of Trinità de' Monti were singing their Benediction--_Ora
+pro nobis!_
+
+"I don't think I'll do any more to-day," said Roma. "The light is
+failing me, and my eyes...."
+
+"The day after to-morrow, then," said Rossi, rising.
+
+"But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?"
+
+He looked steadfastly into her face and answered "Yes."
+
+She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to
+atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp
+cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone.
+
+After dinner she replied to the Baron's letter of the day before.
+
+    "DEAR BARON,--I have misgivings about being on the right track,
+    and feel sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime
+    Ministers appoint people at the mere mention of their names by
+    wards, second cousins, and lady friends generally? Wouldn't it
+    have been wise to make inquiries? What was the fault for which
+    Minghelli was dismissed in London?
+
+    "As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He
+    doesn't seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by
+    way of my father was a fluke. At all events, I'm satisfied that it
+    is going in the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail.
+    _Leave him to me alone._--Yours,                           ROMA.
+
+    "P.S.--Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to
+    the new opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he
+    will be seen with me in public!
+
+    "I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so
+    wonderfully good-looking when you look at him closely."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove
+to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre
+was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people
+arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere
+which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when
+he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in
+the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house.
+This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the
+place with her opera-glass.
+
+"Crowded already!" she said. "And every face looking up at my box!
+That's what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the
+most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be,
+though, when your illustrious friend arrives."
+
+At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess
+welcomed him effusively.
+
+"So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you--Honourable Rossi,
+Don Camillo Luigi Murelli."
+
+Roma looked at him--he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as
+comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma--she wore a white gown
+with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful
+white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes
+twinkled.
+
+"Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain
+everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not
+sit back. _You_ can't mind observation--so used to it, you know."
+
+Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and
+then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of
+surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter.
+
+He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it,
+and was taking it as a penance.
+
+Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on
+talking. "These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society
+generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and
+the stalls are filled by all sorts and conditions of people--political
+people, literary people, even trades-people if they're rich enough or
+can pretend to be."
+
+"And the upper circles?" asked Rossi.
+
+"Oh," in a tired voice, "professional people, I think--Collegio Romano
+and University of Rome, you know."
+
+"And the gallery?"
+
+"Students, I suppose." Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below,
+"Gi-gi, there's Lu-lu. Don't forget to ask him to supper.... All the
+beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently
+they'll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes."
+
+The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the
+conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the
+lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a
+constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an
+almost unbroken chatter.
+
+The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera
+had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the
+lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in
+the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each
+other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors
+below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and
+there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful
+young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and
+there was a good deal of gossip and laughter.
+
+The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his
+character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General
+Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess's box.
+
+"So you're taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew
+an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?" said Don Camillo.
+
+"Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him--jaw-bones as well," said
+the General. "The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if
+it was only as a _jettatura_." And then in a low voice to the Princess,
+with a glance at Roma, "Your beautiful young friend doesn't look so well
+to-night."
+
+The Princess shrugged her shoulders. "Of the pains of love one suffers
+but does not die," she whispered.
+
+"You surely cannot mean...."
+
+The Princess put the tip of her fan to his lips and laughed.
+
+Roma was conscious of a strange conflict of feelings. The triumph she
+had promised herself by David Rossi's presence with her in public--the
+triumph over the envious ones who would have rejoiced in her
+downfall--brought her no pleasure.
+
+The third act dealt with the allurements of Delilah, and was received
+with a good deal of laughter.
+
+"Ah, these sweet, round, soft things--they can do anything they like
+with the giants," said Don Camillo.
+
+The Baron, who had dined with the King, came round at the end of the
+next act, wearing a sash diagonally across his breast, with crosses,
+stars, and other decorations. He bowed to David Rossi with ceremonious
+politeness, greeted Don Camillo familiarly, kissed the hand of the
+Princess, and offered his arm to Roma to take her into the corridor to
+cool--she was flushed and overheated.
+
+"I see you are getting on, my child! Excellent idea to bring him here!
+Everybody is saying you cannot be the person he intended, so his trumpet
+has brayed to no purpose."
+
+"You received my letters?" she said in a faltering voice.
+
+"Yes, but don't be uneasy. I'm neither the prophet nor the son of a
+prophet if we are not on the right track. What a fortunate thought about
+the man Minghelli! An inspiration! You asked what his fault was in
+London--forgery, my dear!"
+
+"That's serious enough, isn't it?"
+
+"In a Secretary of Legation, yes, but in a police agent...."
+
+He laughed significantly, and she felt her skin creep.
+
+"Has he found out anything?" she asked.
+
+"Not yet, but he is clearly on the track of great things. It is nearly
+certain that your King David is a person wanted by the law."
+
+Her hand twitched at his arm, but they were turning at the end of the
+corridor and she pretended to trip over her train.
+
+"Some clues missing still, however, and to find them we are sending
+Minghelli to London."
+
+"London? Anything connected with my father?"
+
+"Possibly! We shall see. But there's the orchestra and here's your box!
+You're wonderful, my dear! Already you've undone the mischief he did
+you, and one half of your task is accomplished. Diplomatists! Pshaw!
+We'll all have to go to school to a girl. Adieu!"
+
+All through the next act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where
+the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the
+Princess said:
+
+"Everybody is looking this way, my dear! See what it is to be the most
+talked-of girl in Rome!"
+
+And then she felt David Rossi's hand on the back of her chair, and heard
+his soft voice saying:
+
+"The light is in your eyes, Donna Roma. Let me change places with you
+for a while."
+
+After that everything passed in a kind of confusion. She heard somebody
+say:
+
+"He's putting a good deal of heart into it, poor thing!"
+
+And somebody answered, "Yes, of broken heart apparently."
+
+Then there was a crash and the opera was over, and she was going out in
+a crowd on David Rossi's arm, and feeling as if she would fall if she
+dropped it.
+
+The magnificent English carriage drew up under the portico and all four
+of them got into it.
+
+"Grand Hotel!" cried Don Camillo. Then dropping back to his place he
+laughed and chanted:
+
+"And the dead he slew at his death were more than he slew in his
+life ... and he judged Israel twenty years."
+
+
+                                V
+
+A marshy air from the Campagna shrouded the city as with a fog, and
+pierced through the closed windows of the carriage, but there was warmth
+and glow in the Grand Hotel.
+
+One woman after another came in clothed in diamonds under the fur cloak
+which hung over her bare arms and shoulders, until the room was a
+dazzling blaze of jewels.
+
+People caught each other's eyes through lorgnettes and eye-glasses, and
+there were constant salutations. The men chattered, the women laughed,
+and there was an affectation of baby-talk at nearly every table. Then
+supper was served, glasses were held up as signals, and bright eyes
+began to play about the room, until the atmosphere was tingling with
+electric currents and heated by human passion.
+
+Roma sat facing the Princess. She was still confused and preoccupied,
+but when rallied upon her silence she brightened up for a moment and
+tried to look buoyant and happy. David Rossi, who was on her left, was
+still quiet and collected, but bore the same air as before, of a man
+going through a penance.
+
+This was observed by Don Camillo, who sat on the right of the Princess,
+and led to various little scenes.
+
+"Very good company here, Mr. Rossi. Always sure of seeing some beautiful
+young women," said Don Camillo.
+
+"And beautiful young men, apparently," said David Rossi.
+
+The beautiful young man called Lu-lu was there, and reaching over to Don
+Camillo, and speaking in a whisper between the puff of a cigarette and a
+sip of coffee, he said:
+
+"Why doesn't the Minister buy the man up? Easy enough to buy the press
+these days."
+
+"He's doing better than that," said Don Camillo. "He's drawing him from
+opposition by the allurements of...."
+
+"Office?"
+
+"No, the lady," whispered Don Camillo, but Roma heard him.
+
+She was ashamed. The innuendoes which belittled David Rossi were
+belittling herself as well, and she wanted to get up and fly.
+
+Rossi himself seemed to be unconscious of anything hurtful. Although
+silent, he was calm and cheerful, and his manner was natural and polite.
+The wife of one of the royal aides-de-camp sat next to him, and talked
+constantly of the King.
+
+Roma found herself listening to every word that was said to David Rossi,
+but she also heard a conversation that was going on at the other end of
+the table.
+
+"Wants to be another Cola di Rienzi, doesn't he?" said Lu-lu.
+
+"Another Christ," said Don Camillo. "He'll be asking for a crown of
+thorns by-and-by, and calling on the world to immolate him for the sake
+of humanity. Look! He's talking to the little Baroness, but he is
+fifteen thousand miles above the clouds at this moment."
+
+"Where does he come from, I wonder?" said Lu-lu, and then the two hands
+of Don Camillo played the invisible accordion.
+
+"Madame de Trop says his father was Master of the House to Prince
+Petrolium--vice-prince, you know, and brought up in the little palace,"
+said the Princess.
+
+"Don't believe a word of it," said Don Camillo, "and I'll wager he never
+supped at a decent hotel before."
+
+"I'll ask him! Listen now! Some fun," said the Princess. "Honourable
+Rossi!"
+
+"Yes, Princess," said David Rossi.
+
+The eyes of the little Princess swept the table with a sparkling light.
+
+"Beautiful room, isn't it?"
+
+"Beautiful."
+
+"Never been here before, I suppose?"
+
+David Rossi looked steadfastly into her eyes and answered, "Oh yes,
+Princess. When I first returned to Italy eight years ago I was a waiter
+in this house for a month."
+
+The sparkling face of the little Princess broke up like a snowball in
+the sun, and the two other men dropped their heads.
+
+Roma hardly knew what her own feelings were. Humiliation, shame,
+confusion, but above all, pride--pride in David Rossi's courage and
+strength.
+
+The white mist from the Campagna pierced to the bone as they came out by
+the glass-covered hall, and an old woman with an earthenware scaldino,
+crouching by the marble pillars in the street, held out a chill, damp
+hand and cried:
+
+"A penny for God's sake! May I die unconfessed if I've eaten anything
+since yesterday!... God bless you, my daughter! and the Holy Virgin and
+all the saints!"
+
+At the door of her house Roma parted from the Princess, and said to
+Rossi, as the carriage drove away, "Come early to-morrow. I've not yet
+been able to work properly somehow."
+
+She was restless and feverish, and she would have gone to bed
+immediately, but crossing the drawing-room she heard the fretful voice
+of her aunt saying, "Is that you, Roma?" and she had no choice but to go
+into the Countess's bedroom.
+
+A red lamp burned before the shrine, and the old lady was in an
+embroidered nightdress, but she was wide awake, and her eyes flashed and
+her lips trembled.
+
+"Ah, it's you at last! Sit down! I want to speak to you. Natalina!"
+cried the Countess. "Oh, dear me, the girl has gone to bed. Give me the
+cognac. There it is--on the dressing-table."
+
+She sipped the brandy, fidgeted with her cambric handkerchief, and said:
+
+"Roma, I'm surprised at you! You hadn't used to be so stupid! How? Don't
+you see what that woman is doing? What woman? The Princess, of course.
+Inviting you to share her box at the opera so that you may be seen in
+public with that man. She hates him like poison, but she would swallow
+anything to throw you and this Rossi together. Do you expect the Baron
+to approve of that? His enemy, and you on such terms with the man? Here,
+take back this cognac. I feel as if I would choke--Natalina...."
+
+"You're quite mistaken, Aunt Betsy," said Roma. "The Baron was at the
+opera and came into the box himself, and he approved of everything."
+
+"Tut! Don't tell me! Because he has some respect for himself and keeps
+his own counsel you are simple enough to think he will not be offended."
+
+The old lady's voice was dying down to a choking whisper, but she went
+on without a pause.
+
+"If you've no thought for yourself, you might have some for me. You are
+young, and anything may come to you, but I'm old and I'm tied down to
+this mattress, and what is to happen if the Baron takes offence? The
+income he allows us from your father's estates is under his own control
+still. He can cut it off at any moment, and if he does, what is to
+become of me?"
+
+Roma's bosom was swelling under her heavy breathing, her heart was
+beating violently and her head was dizzy. All the bitterness of the
+evening was boiling in her throat, and it burst out at length in a
+flood.
+
+"So that is all your moral protestations come to, is it?" she said.
+"Because the Baron is necessary to you and you cannot exist without him,
+you expect me to buy and sell myself according to your necessities."
+
+"Roma! What are you saying? Aren't you ashamed...."
+
+"Aren't _you_ ashamed? You've been trying to throw me into the arms of
+the Baron, and you haven't cared what would happen so long as I kept up
+appearances."
+
+"Oh, dear! I see what it is. You want to be the death of me! You will,
+too, before you've done. Natalina! Where is...."
+
+"More than that, you've poisoned my mind against my father, and because
+I couldn't remember him, you've brought me up to think of him as selfish
+and vain and indifferent to his own daughter. But my father wasn't that
+kind of man at all."
+
+"Who told you that, miss?"
+
+"Never mind who told me. My father was a saint and a martyr, and a great
+man, and he loved me with all his heart and soul."
+
+"Oh, my head! My poor head!... A martyr indeed! A socialist, a
+republican, a rebel, an anarchist, you mean!"
+
+"Never mind what his politics were. He was my father--that is
+enough--and you had no right to make _me_ think ill of him, whatever the
+world might do."
+
+Roma was superb at that moment, with her head thrown back, her eyes
+flaming, and her magnificent figure swelling and heaving under her
+clinging gown.
+
+"You'll kill me, I tell you. The cognac ... Natalina...." cried the
+Countess, but Roma was gone.
+
+Before going to bed Roma wrote to the Baron:
+
+    "Certain you are wrong. Why waste time sending Charles Minghelli
+    to London? Why? Why? Why? The forger will find out nothing, and if
+    he does, it will only be by exercise of his Israelitish art of
+    making bricks without straw. Stop him at once if you wish to save
+    public money and spare yourself personal disappointment. Stop him!
+    Stop him! Stop him!
+
+    "P.S.--To show you how far astray your man has gone, D. R.
+    mentioned to-night that he was once a waiter at the Grand Hotel!"
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Next morning David Rossi arrived early.
+
+"Now we must get to work in earnest," said Roma. "I think I see my way
+at last."
+
+It was not John the beloved disciple, John who lay in the bosom of his
+Lord. It was Peter, the devoted, stalwart, brave individual, human,
+erring but glorious Peter. "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my
+church."
+
+"Same position as before. Eyes the other way. Thank you!... Afraid you
+didn't enjoy yourself last night--no?"
+
+"At the theatre? I was interested. But the human spectacle was perhaps
+more to me than the artistic one. I am no artist, you see.... How did
+_you_ become a sculptor?"
+
+"Oh, I studied a little in the studios of Paris, where I went to school,
+you see."
+
+"But you were born in London?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you come to Rome?"
+
+"Rome was the home of my people, you know. And then there was my
+name--Roma!"
+
+"I knew a Roma long ago."
+
+"Really? Another Roma?"
+
+There was a tremor in her voice.
+
+"It was the little daughter of the friend I've spoken about."
+
+"How interest ... No, at the window, please--that will do."
+
+Roma was choking with a sense of duplicity, but save for a turn of the
+head David Rossi gave no sign.
+
+"She was only seven when I saw her last."
+
+"That was long ago, you say?"
+
+"Seventeen years ago."
+
+"Then she will be the same age as...."
+
+"The first time I saw her she was only three, and she was in her
+nightdress ready for bed."
+
+Roma laughed a little, but she knew that every note in her voice was
+confused and false.
+
+"She said her prayers with a little lisp at that time. 'Our Fader oo art
+in heben, alud be dy name.'"
+
+He laughed a little now, as he mimicked the baby voice. They laughed
+together, then they looked at each other, and then with serious eyes
+they turned away.
+
+"You'll think it strange, but I date my first conscious and definite
+aspiration to the memory of that hour."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Ten years afterward, when I was in America, the words of that prayer
+came back to me in Roma's little lisp. 'Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done
+on eard as it is in heben.'"
+
+For some time after that Roma worked on without speaking, feeling
+feverish and restless. But just as the silence was becoming painful, and
+she could bear it no longer, Felice came to announce lunch.
+
+"You'll stay? I want so much to work on while I'm in the mood," she
+said.
+
+"With pleasure," he replied.
+
+She ate hardly at all, for she was troubled by many misgivings. Did he
+know her? He did; he must; every word, every tone seemed to tell her
+that. Then why did he not speak out plainly? Because, having revealed
+himself to her, he was waiting for her to reveal herself to him. And why
+had she not done so? Because she was enmeshed in the nets of the society
+she lived in; because she was ashamed of the errand that had brought
+them together; and most of all because she had not dared to lay bare
+that secret of his life which, like an escaped convict, dragged behind
+it the broken chain of the prison-house.
+
+_David Leone is dead!_ To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact
+that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and
+listening at the grating of the confessional!
+
+No matter! She must do it! She must reveal herself as her heart and
+instinct might direct. She must claim the parentage of the noblest soul
+that ever died for liberty, and David Rossi must trust his secret to the
+bond of blood which would make it impossible for her to betray the
+foster-son of her own father.
+
+Having come to this conclusion, the light seemed to break in her heavy
+sky, but the clouds were charged with electricity. As they returned to
+the studio she was excited and a little hysterical, for she thought the
+time was near. At that moment a regiment of soldiers passed along under
+the ilex trees to the Pincio, with their band of music playing as they
+marched.
+
+"Ah, the dear old days!" said David Rossi. "Everything reminds me of
+them! I remember that when she was six...."
+
+"Roma?"
+
+"Yes--a regiment of troops returned from a glorious campaign, and the
+doctor took us to see the illuminations and rejoicings. We came to a
+great piazza almost as large as the piazza of St. Peter's, with
+fountains and a tall column in the middle of it."
+
+"I know--Trafalgar Square!"
+
+"Dense crowds covered the square, but we found a place on the steps of a
+church."
+
+"I remember--St. Martin's Church. You see, I know London."
+
+"The soldiers came in by the big railway station close by...."
+
+"Charing Cross, isn't it."
+
+"And they marched to the tune of the 'British Grenadiers' and the
+thunder of fifty thousand throats. And as their general rode past, a
+beacon of electric lights in the centre of the square blazed out like an
+aureole about the statue of a great Englishman who had died long ago for
+the cause which had then conquered."
+
+"Gordon!" she cried--she was losing herself every moment.
+
+"'Look, darling!' said the doctor to little Roma. And Roma said, 'Papa,
+is it God?' I was a tall boy then, and stood beside him. 'She'll never
+forget that, David,' he said."
+
+"And she didn't ... she couldn't ... I mean.... Have you ever told me what
+became of her?"
+
+She would reveal herself in a moment--only a moment--after all, it was
+delicious to play with this sweet duplicity.
+
+"Have you?" she said in a tremulous voice.
+
+His head was down. "Dead!" he answered, and the tool dropped out of her
+hand on to the floor.
+
+"I was five years in America after the police expelled me from London,
+and when I returned to England I went back to the little shop in Soho."
+
+She was staring at him and holding her breath. He was looking out of the
+window.
+
+"The same people were there, and their own daughter was a grown-up girl,
+but Roma was gone."
+
+She could hear the breath in her nostrils.
+
+"They told me she had been missing for a week, and then ... her body had
+been found in the river."
+
+She felt like one struck dumb.
+
+"The man took me to the grave. It was the grave of her mother in Kensal
+Green, and under her mother's name I read her own inscription--'Sacred
+also to the memory of Roma Roselli, found drowned in the Thames, aged
+twelve years.'"
+
+The warm blood which had tingled through her veins was suddenly frozen
+with horror.
+
+"Not to-day," she thought, and at that moment a faint sound of the band
+on the Pincio came floating in by the open window.
+
+"I must go," said David Rossi, rising.
+
+Then she recovered herself and began to talk on other subjects. When
+would he come again? He could not say. The parliamentary session opened
+soon. He would be very busy.
+
+When David Rossi was gone Roma went upstairs, and Natalina met her
+carrying two letters. One of them was going to the post--it was from the
+Countess to the Baron. The other was from the Baron to herself.
+
+    "MY DEAREST ROMA,--A thousand thanks for the valuable clue about
+    the Grand Hotel. Already we have followed up your lead, and we
+    find that the only David Rossi who was ever a waiter there gave as
+    reference the name of an Italian baker in Soho. Minghelli has gone
+    to London, and I am sending him this further information. Already
+    he is fishing in strange waters, and I am sure you are dying to
+    know if he has caught anything. So am I, but we must possess our
+    souls in patience.
+
+    "But, my dearest Roma, what is happening to your handwriting? It
+    is so shaky nowadays that I can scarcely decipher some of
+    it.--With love.
+                                                                "B."
+
+
+                                VII
+
+    "DEAR GUARDIAN,--But I'm not--I'm not! I'm not in the least
+    anxious to hear of what Mr. Minghelli is doing in London, because
+    I know he is doing nothing, and whatever he says, either through
+    his own mouth or the mouth of his Italian baker in Soho, I shall
+    never believe a word he utters. As to Mr. Rossi, I am now
+    perfectly sure that he does not identify me at all. He believes my
+    father's daughter is dead, and he has just been telling me a
+    shocking story of how the body of a young girl was picked out of
+    the Thames (about the time you took me away from London) and
+    buried in the name of Roma Roselli. He actually saw the grave and
+    the tombstone! Some scoundrel has been at work somewhere. Who is
+    it, I wonder?--Yours,
+                                                              "R. V."
+
+Having written this letter in the heat and haste of the first moment
+after David Rossi's departure, she gave it to Bruno to post immediately.
+
+"Just so!" said Bruno to himself, as he glanced at the superscription.
+
+Next morning she dressed carefully, as if expecting David Rossi as
+usual, but when he did not come she told herself she was glad of it.
+Things had happened too hurriedly; she wanted time to breathe and to
+think.
+
+All day long she worked on the bust. It was a new delight to model by
+memory, to remember an expression and then try to reproduce it. The
+greatest difficulty lay in the limitation of her beautiful art. There
+were so many memories, so many expressions, and the clay would take but
+one of them.
+
+The next day after that she dressed herself as carefully as before, but
+still David Rossi did not come. No matter! It would give her time to
+think of all he had said, to go over his words and stories.
+
+Did he know her? Certainly he knew her! He must have known from the
+first that she was her father's daughter, or he would never have put
+himself in her power. His belief in her was such a sweet thing. It was
+delicious.
+
+Next day also David Rossi did not come, and she began to torture herself
+with misgivings. Was he indifferent? Had all her day-dreams been
+delusions? Little as she wished to speak to Bruno, she was compelled to
+do so.
+
+Bruno hardly lifted his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer.
+"Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a
+party he has enough to do, you know."
+
+"Ask him to come to-morrow. Say I wish for one more sitting--only one."
+
+"I'll tell him," said Bruno, with a bob of his head over the block of
+marble.
+
+But David Rossi did not come the next day either, and Bruno had no
+better explanation.
+
+"Busy with his new 'Republic' now, and no time to waste, I can tell
+you."
+
+"He will never come again," she thought, and then everything around and
+within her grew dark and chill.
+
+She was sleeping badly, and to tire herself at night she went out to
+walk in the moonlight along the path under the convent wall. She walked
+as far as the Pincio gates, where the path broadens to a circular space
+under a table of clipped ilexes, beneath which there is a fountain and
+a path going down to the Piazza di Spagna. The night was soft and very
+quiet, and standing under the deep shadows of the trees, with only the
+cruel stars shining through, and no sound in the air save the sobbing of
+the fountain, she heard a man's footstep on the gravel coming up from
+below.
+
+It was David Rossi. He passed within a few yards, yet he did not see
+her. She wanted to call to him, but she could not do so. For a moment he
+stood by the deep wall that overlooks the city, and then turned down the
+path which she had come by. A trembling thought that was afraid to take
+shape held her back and kept her silent, but the stars beat kindly in an
+instant and the blood in her veins ran warm. She watched him from where
+she stood, and then with a light foot she followed him at a distance.
+
+It was true! He stopped at the parapet before the church, and looked up
+at her windows. There was a light in one of them, and his eyes seemed to
+be steadfastly fixed on it. Then he turned to go down the steps. He went
+down slowly, sometimes stopping and looking up, then going on again.
+Once more she tried to call to him. "Mr. Rossi." But her voice seemed to
+die in her throat. After a moment he was gone, the houses had hidden
+him, and the church clock was striking twelve.
+
+When she returned to her bedroom and looked at herself in the glass, her
+face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling. She did not want to sleep
+at all that night, for the beating of her heart was like music, and the
+moon and stars were singing a song.
+
+"If I could only be quite, quite sure!" she thought, and next morning
+she tackled Bruno.
+
+Bruno was no match for her now, but he put down his shaggy head, like a
+bull facing a stone fence.
+
+"Tell you the honest truth, Donna Roma," he said, "Mr. Rossi is one of
+those who think that when a man has taken up a work for the world it is
+best if he has no ties of family."
+
+"Really? Is that so?" she answered. "But I don't understand. He can't
+help having father and mother, can he?"
+
+"He can help having a wife, though," said Bruno, "and Mr. Rossi thinks a
+public man should be like a priest, giving up home and love and so
+forth, that others may have them more abundantly."
+
+"So for that reason...."
+
+"For that reason he doesn't throw himself in the way of temptation."
+
+"And you think that's why...."
+
+"I think that's why he keeps out of the way of women."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't care for them--some men don't, you know."
+
+"Care for them! Mr. Rossi is one of the men who think pearls and
+diamonds of women, and if he had to be cast on a desert island with
+anybody, he would rather have one woman than a hundred thousand men."
+
+"Ah, yes, but perhaps there's no 'one woman' in the world for him yet,
+Bruno."
+
+"Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't," said Bruno, and his hammer fell
+on the chisel and the white sparks began to fly.
+
+"_You_ would soon see if there were, wouldn't you, Bruno?"
+
+"Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn't," said Bruno, and then he wagged
+his wise head and growled, "In the battle of love he wins who flies."
+
+"Does _he_ say that, Bruno?"
+
+"He does. One day our old woman was trying to lead him on a bit. 'A
+heart to share your joys and sorrows is something in this world,' says
+she."
+
+"And what did Mr. Rossi say?"
+
+"'A woman's love is the sweetest thing in the world,' he said; 'but if I
+found myself caring too much for anybody I should run away.'"
+
+"Did Mr. Rossi really say that, Bruno?"
+
+"He did--upon my life he did!"
+
+Bruno had the air of a man who had achieved a moral victory, and Roma,
+whose eyes were dancing with delight, wanted to fall on his stupid,
+sulky face and kiss and kiss it.
+
+During the afternoon of the day following, the Princess Bellini came in
+with Don Camillo. "Here's Gi-gi!" she cried. "He comes to say there's to
+be a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow. If you'd like to
+come I'll take you, and if you think Mr. Rossi will come too...."
+
+"If he rides and has time to spare," said Roma.
+
+"Precisely," said Don Camillo. "The worst of being a prophet is that it
+gives one so much trouble to agree with one's self, you know. Rumour
+says that our illustrious Deputy has been a little out of odour with his
+own people lately, and is now calling a meeting to tell the world what
+his 'Creed and Charter' doesn't mean. Still a flight into the country
+might do no harm even to the stormy petrel of politics, and if any one
+could prevail with him...."
+
+"Leave that to Roma, and see to everything else yourself," said the
+Princess. "On the way to that tiresome tea-room in the Corso, my dear.
+'Charity and Work,' you know. Committee for the protection of poor
+girls, or something. But we must see the old aunt first, I suppose. Come
+in, Gi-gi!"
+
+Three minutes afterwards Roma was dressed for the street, and her dog
+was leaping and barking beside her.
+
+"Carriage, Eccellenza?"
+
+"Not to-day, thank you! Down, Black, down! Keep the dog from following
+me, Felice."
+
+As she passed the lodge the porter handed her an envelope bearing the
+seal of the Minister, but she did not stop to open it. With a light step
+she tripped along the street, hailed a _coupé_, cried "Piazza Navona,"
+and then composed herself to read her letter.
+
+When the Princess and Don Camillo came out of the Countess's room Roma
+was gone, and the dog was scratching at the inside of the outer door.
+
+"Now where can she have gone to so suddenly, I wonder? And there's her
+poor dog trying to follow her!"
+
+"Is that the dog that goes to the Deputy's apartment?"
+
+"Certainly it is! His name is Black. I'll hold him while you open the
+door, Felice. There! Good dog! Good Black! Oh, the brute, he has broken
+away from me."
+
+"Black! Black! Black!"
+
+"No use, Felice. He'll he half way through the streets by this time."
+
+And going down the stairs the little Princess whispered to her
+companion: "Now, if Black comes home with his mistress this evening it
+will be easy to see where _she_ has been."
+
+Meantime Roma in her _coupé_ was reading her letter--
+
+    "DEAREST,--Been away from Rome for a few days, and hence the delay
+    in answering your charming message. Don't trouble a moment about
+    the dead-and-buried nightmare. If the story is true, so much the
+    better. R. R. _is_ dead, thank God, and her unhappy wraith will
+    haunt your path no more. But if Dr. Roselli knew nothing about
+    David Rossi, how comes it that David Rossi knows so much about Dr.
+    Roselli? It looks like another clue. Thanks again. A thousand
+    thanks!
+
+    "Still no news from London, but though I pretend neither to
+    knowledge nor foreknowledge, I am still satisfied that we are on
+    the right track.
+
+    "Dinner-party to-night, dearest, and I shall be obliged to you if
+    I may borrow Felice. Your Princess Potiphar, your Don Saint
+    Joseph, your Count Signorina, your Senator Tom-tit, and--will you
+    believe it?--your Madame de Trop! I can deny you nothing, you see,
+    but I am cruelly out of luck that my dark house must lack the
+    light of all drawing-rooms, the sunshine of all Rome!
+
+    "How clever of you to throw dust in the eyes of your aunt herself!
+    And these red-hot prophets in petticoats, how startled they will
+    soon be! Adieu!
+                                                           "BONELLI."
+
+As the _coupé_ turned into the Piazza Navona, Roma was tearing the
+letter into shreds and casting them out of the window.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+While Roma climbed the last flight of stairs to David Rossi's apartment,
+with the slippery-sloppery footsteps of the old Garibaldian going before
+her, Bruno's thunderous voice was rocking through the rooms above.
+
+"Look at him, Mr. Rossi! Republican, democrat, socialist, and rebel!
+Upsets the government of this house once a day regularly--dethrones the
+King and defies the Queen! Catch the piggy-wiggy, Uncle David! Here goes
+for it--one, two, three, and away!"
+
+Then shrieks and squeals of childish laughter, mingled with another
+man's gentler tones, and a woman's frightened remonstrance. And then
+sudden silence and the voice of the Garibaldian in a panting whisper,
+saying, "She's here again, sir!"
+
+"Donna Roma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come in," cried David Rossi, and from the threshold of the open hall
+she saw him, in the middle of the floor, with a little boy pitching and
+heaving like a young sea-lion in his arms.
+
+He slipped the boy to his feet and said, "Run to the lady and kiss her
+hand, Joseph." But the boy stood off shyly, and, stepping into the room,
+Roma knelt to the child and put her arms about him.
+
+"What a big little man, to be sure! His name is Joseph, is it? And
+what's his age? Six! Think of that! Have I seen him before, Mrs. Rocco?
+Yes? Perhaps he was here the day I called before? Was he? So? How stupid
+of me to forget! Ah, of course, now I remember, he was in his
+nightdress and asleep, and Mr. Rossi was carrying him to bed."
+
+The mother's heart was captured in a moment. "Do you love children,
+Donna Roma?"
+
+"Indeed, I do!"
+
+During this passage between the women Bruno had grunted his way out of
+the room, and was now sidling down the staircase, being suddenly smitten
+by his conscience with the memory of a message he had omitted to
+deliver.
+
+"Come, Joseph," said Elena. But Joseph, who had recovered from his
+bashfulness, was in no hurry to be off, and Roma said:
+
+"No, no! I've only called for a moment. It is to say," turning to David
+Rossi, "that there's a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow,
+and to tell you from Don Camillo that if you ride and would care to
+go...."
+
+"_You_ are going?"
+
+"With the Princess, yes! But there will be no necessity to follow the
+hounds all day long, and perhaps coming home...."
+
+"I will be there."
+
+"How charming! That's all I came to say, and so...."
+
+She made a pretence of turning to go, but he said:
+
+"Wait! Now that you are here I have something to show to you."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"Come in," he cried, and, blowing a kiss to the boy, Roma followed Rossi
+into the sitting-room.
+
+"One moment," he said, and he left her to go into the bedroom.
+
+When he came back he had a small parcel in his hands wrapped in a lace
+handkerchief.
+
+"We have talked so much of my old friend Roselli that I thought you
+might like to see his portrait."
+
+"His portrait? Have you really got his portrait?"
+
+"Here it is," and he put into her hands the English photograph which
+used to hang by his bed.
+
+She took it eagerly and looked at it steadfastly, while her lips
+trembled and her eyes grew moist. There was silence for a moment, and
+then she said, in a voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was
+the father of little Roma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is it very like him?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on
+the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she
+lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath,
+and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears
+and said:
+
+"That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my
+little namesake."
+
+David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said
+with another nervous laugh:
+
+"Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best
+father a girl ever had, but she...."
+
+"She was a child," said David Rossi.
+
+"Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...."
+
+"She was only seven, remember."
+
+"Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a
+little selfish?"
+
+"You mustn't abuse my friend Roma."
+
+Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a
+sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best.
+And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father
+had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..."
+
+Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion.
+
+"I want to give you that portrait," he said.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You would like to have it?"
+
+"More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?"
+
+"Beyond anything I possess."
+
+"Then how can I take it from you?"
+
+"There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it,
+and I am contented."
+
+It was impossible to hear the strain any longer without crying out, and
+to give physical expression to her feelings she lifted the portrait to
+her lips again and kissed and kissed it.
+
+He smiled at her, she smiled back; the silence was hard to break, but
+just as they were on the edge of the precipice the big shock-head of the
+little boy looked in on them through the chink of the door and cried:
+
+"You needn't ask me to come in, 'cause I won't!"
+
+By the blessed instinct of the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood
+the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," she said.
+
+"_Would_ you?" said Joseph, and in he came, with a face shining all
+over.
+
+"Hurrah! A piano!" said Roma, leaping up and seating herself at the
+instrument. "What shall I play for you, Joseph?"
+
+Joseph was indifferent so long as it was a song, and with head aside,
+Roma touched the keys and pretended to think. After a moment of sweet
+duplicity she struck up the air she had come expressly to play.
+
+It was the "British Grenadiers." She sang a verse of it. She sang in
+English and with the broken pronunciation of a child--
+
+    "Some talk of Allisander, and some of Hergoles;
+    Of Hector and Eyesander, and such gate names as these..."
+
+Suddenly she became aware that David Rossi was looking at her through
+the glass on the mantel-piece, and to keep herself from crying she began
+to laugh, and the song came to an end.
+
+At the same moment the door burst open with a bang, and the dog came
+bounding into the room. Behind it came Elena, who said:
+
+"It was scratching at the staircase door, and I thought it must have
+followed you."
+
+"Followed Mr. Rossi, you mean. He has stolen my dog's heart away from
+me," said Roma.
+
+"That is what I say about my boy's," said Elena.
+
+"But Joseph is going for a soldier, I see."
+
+"It's a porter he wants to be."
+
+"Then so he shall--he shall be my porter some day," said Roma, whereupon
+Joseph was frantic with delight, and Elena was saying to herself, "What
+wicked lies they tell of her--I wonder they are not ashamed!"
+
+The fire was going down and the twilight was deepening.
+
+"Shall I bring you the lamp, sir?" said Elena.
+
+"Not for me," said Roma. "I am going immediately." But even when mother
+and child had gone she did not go. Unconsciously they drew nearer and
+nearer to each other in the gathering darkness, and as the daylight died
+their voices softened and there were quiet questions and low replies.
+The desire to speak out was struggling in the woman's heart with the
+delight of silence. But she would reveal herself at last.
+
+"I have been thinking a great deal about the story they told you in
+London--of Roma's death and burial, I mean. Had you no reason to think
+it might be false?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"It never occurred to you that it might be to anybody's advantage to say
+that she was dead while she was still alive?"
+
+"How could it? Who was to perpetrate a crime for the sake of the
+daughter of a poor doctor in Soho--a poor prisoner in Elba?"
+
+"Then it was not until afterward that you heard that the poor doctor was
+a great prince?"
+
+"Not until the night you were here before."
+
+"And you had never heard anything of his daughter in the interval?"
+
+"Once I had! It was on the same day, though. A man came here from London
+on an infamous errand..."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"Charles Minghelli."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said Roma Roselli was not dead at all, but worse than dead--that she
+had fallen into the hands of an evil man, and turned out badly."
+
+"Did you ... did you believe that story?"
+
+"Not one word of it! I called the man a liar, and flung him out of the
+house."
+
+"Then you ... you think ... if she is still living...."
+
+"My Roma is a good woman."
+
+Her face burned up to the roots of her hair. She choked with joy, she
+choked with pain. His belief in her purity stifled her. She could not
+speak now--she could not reveal herself. There was a moment of silence,
+and then in a tremulous voice she said:
+
+"Will you not call _me_ Roma, and try to think I am your little friend?"
+
+When she came to herself after that she was back in her own apartment,
+in her aunt's bedroom, and kissing the old lady's angular face. And the
+Countess was breaking up the stupefaction of her enchantment with sighs
+and tears and words of counsel.
+
+"I only want you to preserve yourself for your proper destiny, Roma. You
+are the _fiancée_ of the Baron, as one might say, and the poor maniac
+can't last long."
+
+Before dressing for dinner Roma replied to the Minister:--
+
+    "DEAR BARON BONELLI,--Didn't I tell you that Minghelli would find
+    out nothing? I am now more than ever sure that the whole idea is
+    an error. Take my advice and drop it. Drop it! Drop it! I shall,
+    at all events!--Yours,
+
+    "ROMA VOLONNA.
+
+    "Success to the dinner! Am sending Felice. He will give you this
+    letter.--R. V."
+
+
+                                IX
+
+It was the sweetest morning of the Roman winter. The sun shone with a
+gentle radiance, and the motionless air was fragrant with the odour of
+herbs and flowers. Outside the gate which leads to the old Appian Way
+grooms were waiting with horses, blanketed and hooded, and huntsmen in
+red coats, white breeches, pink waistcoats, and black boots, were
+walking their mounts to the place appointed for the meet. In a line of
+carriages were many ladies, some in riding-habits, and on foot there was
+a string of beggars, most of them deformed, with here and there, at
+little villages, a group of rosy children watching the procession as it
+passed.
+
+The American and English Ambassadors were riding side by side behind a
+magnificent carriage with coachman and tiger in livery of scarlet and
+gold.
+
+"Who would think, to look on a scene like this, that the city is
+seething with dissatisfaction?" said the Englishman.
+
+"Rome?" said the American. "Its aristocratic indifference will not allow
+it to believe that here, as everywhere else in the world, great and
+fatal changes are going on all the time. These lands, for example--to
+whom do they belong? Nominally to the old Roman nobility, but really to
+the merchants of the Campagna--a company of middlemen who grew rich by
+leasing them from the princes and subletting them to the poor."
+
+"And the nobles themselves--how are they faring?"
+
+"Badly! Already they are of no political significance, and the State
+knows them not."
+
+"They don't appear to go into the army or navy--what do they go into?"
+
+"Love!"
+
+"And meantime the Italian people?"
+
+"Meantime the great Italian people, like the great English people, the
+great German people, and the people of every country where the
+privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep
+all this sea-wrack high and dry on to the rocks."
+
+"And this wave of the people," said the Englishman, inclining his head
+toward the carriage in front, "is represented by men like friend Rossi?"
+
+"Would be, if he could keep himself straight," said the American.
+
+"And where is the Tarpeian rock of friend Rossi's politics?"
+
+The American slapped his glossy boot with his whip, lowered his voice,
+and said, "There!"
+
+"Donna Roma?"
+
+"A fortnight ago you heard his speech on the liveries of scarlet and
+gold, and look! He's under them himself already."
+
+"You think there is no other inference?"
+
+The American shook his head. "Always the way with these leaders of
+revolution. It's Samson's strength with Samson's weakness in every
+mother's son of them."
+
+"Good-morning, General Potter!" said a cheerful voice from the carriage
+in front.
+
+It was Roma herself. She sat by the side of the little Princess, with
+David Rossi on the seat before them. Her eyes were bright, there was a
+glow in her cheeks, and she looked lovelier than ever in her
+close-fitting riding-habit.
+
+At the meeting-place there was a vast crowd of on-lookers, chiefly
+foreigners, in cabs and carriages and four-in-hand coaches from the
+principal hotels. The Master of the Hunt was ready, with his impatient
+hounds at his feet, and around him was a brilliant scene. Officers in
+blue, huntsmen in red, ladies in black, jockeys in jackets, a sea of
+feathers and flowers and sunshades, with the neighing of the horses and
+yapping of the dogs, the vast undulating country, the smell of earth and
+herbs, and the morning sunlight over all.
+
+Don Camillo was waiting with horses for his party, and they mounted
+immediately. The horse for Roma was a quiet bay mare with limpid eyes.
+General Potter helped her to the saddle, and she went cantering through
+the long lush grass.
+
+"What has your charming young charge been doing with herself, Princess?"
+said the American. "She was always beautiful, but to-day she's lovely."
+
+"She's like Undine after she had found her soul," said the Englishman.
+
+The little Princess laughed. "Love and a cough cannot be hidden,
+gentlemen," she whispered, with a look toward David Rossi.
+
+"You don't mean...."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Meantime Rossi, in ordinary walking dress, was approaching the horse he
+was intended to ride. It was a high strong-limbed sorrel with wild eyes
+and panting nostrils. The English groom who held it was regarding the
+rider with a doubtful expression, and a group of booted and spurred
+huntsmen were closing around.
+
+To everybody's surprise, the deputy gathered up the reins and leaped
+lightly to the saddle, and at the next moment he was riding at Roma's
+side. Then the horn was sounded, the pack broke into music, the horses
+beat their hoofs on the turf and the hunt began.
+
+There was a wall to jump first, and everybody cleared it easily until it
+came to David Rossi's turn, when the sorrel refused to jump. He patted
+the horse's neck and tried it again, but it shied and went off with its
+head between its legs. A third time he brought the sorrel up to the
+wall, and a third time it swerved aside.
+
+The hunters had waited to watch the result, and as the horse came up for
+a fourth trial, with its wild eyes flashing, its nostrils quivering, and
+its forelock tossed over one ear, it was seen that the bridle had broken
+and Rossi was riding with one rein.
+
+"He'll be lucky if he isn't hurt," said some one.
+
+"Why doesn't he give it the whip over its quarters?" said another.
+
+But David Rossi only patted his horse until it came to the spot where it
+had shied before. Then he reached over its neck on the side of the
+broken rein, and with open hand struck it sharply across the nose. The
+horse reared, snorted, and jumped, and at the next moment it was
+standing quietly on the other side of the wall.
+
+Roma, on her bay mare, was ashen pale, and the American Ambassador
+turned to her and said:
+
+"Never knew but one man to do a thing like that, Donna Roma."
+
+Roma swallowed something in her throat and said: "Who was it, General
+Potter?"
+
+"The present Pope when he was a Noble Guard."
+
+"He can ride, by Jove!" said Don Camillo.
+
+"That sort of stuff has to be in a man's blood. Born in him--must be!"
+said the Englishman.
+
+And then David Rossi came up with a new bridle to his sorrel, and Sir
+Evelyn added: "You handle a horse like a man who began early, Mr.
+Rossi."
+
+"Yes," said David Rossi; "I was a stable-boy two years in New York, your
+Excellency."
+
+At that moment the huntsman who was leading with two English terriers
+gave the signal that the fox was started, whereupon the hounds yelped,
+the whips whistled, and the horses broke into a canter.
+
+Two hours afterwards the poor little creature that had been the origin
+of the holiday was tracked to earth and killed. Its head and tail were
+cut off, and the rest of its body was thrown to the dogs. After that
+flasks were taken out, healths were drunk, cheers were given, and then
+the hunt broke up, and the hunters began to return at an easy trot.
+
+Roma and David Rossi were riding side by side, and the Princess was a
+pace or two behind them.
+
+"Roma!" cried the Princess, "what a stretch for a gallop!"
+
+"Isn't it?" said Roma, and in a moment she was off.
+
+"I believe her mare has mastered her," said the Princess, and at the
+next instant David Rossi was gone too.
+
+"Peace be with them! They're a lovely pair!" said the Princess,
+laughing. "But we might as well go home. They are like Undine, and will
+return no more."
+
+
+                                X
+
+Meantime, with the light breeze in her ears, and the beat of her horse's
+hoofs echoing among the aqueducts and tombs, Roma galloped over the
+broad Campagna. After a moment she heard some one coming after her, and
+for joy of being pursued she whipped up and galloped faster. Without
+looking back she knew who was behind, and as her horse flew over the
+hillocks her heart leaped and sang. When the strong-limbed sorrel came
+up with the quiet bay mare, they were nearly two miles from their
+starting-place, and far out of the track of their fellow-hunters. Both
+were aglow from head to foot, and as they drew rein they looked at each
+other and laughed.
+
+"Might as well go on now, and come out by the English cemetery," said
+Roma.
+
+"Good!" said David Rossi.
+
+"But it's half-past two," said Roma, looking at her little watch, "and
+I'm as hungry as a hunter."
+
+"Naturally," said David Rossi, and they laughed again. There was an
+osteria somewhere in that neighbourhood. He had known it when he was a
+boy. They would dine on yellow beans and macaroni.
+
+Presently they saw a house smoking under a scraggy clump of eucalyptus.
+It was the osteria, half farmstead and half inn. A timid lad took their
+horses, an evil-looking old man bowed them into the porch, and an
+elderly woman, with a frightened expression and a face wrinkled like the
+bark of a cedar, brought them a bill of fare.
+
+They laughed at everything--at the unfamiliar menu, because it was
+soiled enough to have served for a year; at the food, because it was so
+simple; and at the prices, because they were so cheap.
+
+Roma looked over David Rossi's shoulder as he read out the bill of fare,
+and they ordered the dinner together.
+
+"Macaroni--threepence! Right! Trout--fourpence! Shall we have
+fourpennyworth of trout? Good! Lamb--sixpence! We'll take two lambs--I
+mean two sixpenny-worths," and then more laughter.
+
+While the dinner was cooking they went out to walk among the eucalyptus,
+and came upon a beautiful dell surrounded by trees and carpeted with
+wild flowers.
+
+"Carnival!" cried Roma. "Now if there was anybody here to throw a flower
+at one!"
+
+He picked up a handful of violets and tossed them over her head.
+
+"When I was a boy this was where men fought duels," said David Rossi.
+
+"The brutes! What a lovely spot! Must be the place where Pharaoh's
+daughter found Moses in the bulrushes!"
+
+"Or where Adam found Eve in the garden of Eden?"
+
+They looked at each other and smiled.
+
+"What a surprise that must have been to him," said Roma. "Whatever did
+he think she was, I wonder?"
+
+"An angel who had come down in the moonlight and forgotten to go up in
+the morning!"
+
+"Nonsense! He would know in a moment she was a woman."
+
+"Think of it! She was the only woman in the world for him!"
+
+"And fancy! He was the only man!"
+
+The dinner was one long delight. Even its drawbacks were no
+disadvantage. The food was bad, and it was badly cooked and badly
+served, but nothing mattered.
+
+"Only one fork for all these dishes?" asked David Rossi.
+
+"That's the best of it," said Roma. "You only get one dirty one."
+
+Suddenly she dropped knife and fork, and held up both hands. "I forgot!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I was to be little Roma all day to-day."
+
+"Why, so you are, and so you have been."
+
+"That cannot be, or you would call her by her name, you know."
+
+"I'll do so the moment she calls me by mine."
+
+"That's not fair," said Roma, and her face flushed up, for the wine of
+life had risen to her eyes.
+
+In a vineyard below a girl working among the orange trees was singing
+_stornelli_. It was a song of a mother to her son. He had gone away from
+the old roof-tree, but he would come back some day. His new home was
+bright and big, but the old hearthstone would draw him home. Beautiful
+ladies loved him, but the white-haired mother would kiss him again.
+
+They listened for a short dreaming space, and their laughter ceased and
+their eyes grew moist. Then they called for the bill, and the old man
+with the evil face came up with a forced smile from a bank that had
+clearly no assets of that kind to draw upon.
+
+"You've been a long time in this house, landlord," said David Rossi.
+
+"Very long time, Excellency," said the man.
+
+"You came from the Ciociaria."
+
+"Why, yes, I did," said the man, with a look of surprise. "I was poor
+then, and later on I lived in the caves and grottoes of Monte Parioli."
+
+"But you knew how to cure the phylloxera in the vines, and when your
+master died you married his daughter and came into his vineyard."
+
+"Angelica! Here's a gentleman who knows all about us," said the old man,
+and then, grinning from ear to ear, he added:
+
+"Perhaps your Excellency was the young gentleman who used to visit with
+his father at the Count's palace on the hill twenty to thirty years
+ago?"
+
+David Rossi looked him steadfastly in the face and said: "Do you
+remember the poor boy who lived with you at that time?"
+
+The forced smile was gone in a moment. "We had no boy then, Excellency."
+
+"He came to you from Santo Spirito and you got a hundred francs with him
+at first, and then you built this pergola."
+
+"If your Excellency is from the Foundling, you may tell them again, as I
+told the priest who came before, that we never took a boy from there,
+and we had no money from the people who sent him to London."
+
+"You don't remember him, then?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Nor you?"
+
+The old woman hesitated, and the old man made mouths at her.
+
+"No, Excellency."
+
+David Rossi took a long breath. "Here is the amount of your bill, and
+something over. Good-bye!"
+
+The timid lad brought round the horses and the riders prepared to mount.
+Roma was looking at the boy with pitying eyes.
+
+"How long have you been here?" she asked.
+
+"Ten years, Excellency," he replied.
+
+He was just twelve years of age and both his parents were dead.
+
+"Poor little fellow!" said Roma, and before David Rossi could prevent
+her she was emptying her purse into the boy's hand.
+
+They set off at a trot, and for some time they did not exchange a word.
+The sun was sinking and the golden day was dying down. Over the broad
+swell of the Campagna, treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping
+like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath
+of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except
+the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like
+the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of
+cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies.
+Here and there were wretched straw huts, with groups of fever-stricken
+people crouching over the embers of miserable fires, and here and there
+were dirty pothouses, which alternated with wooden crosses of the Christ
+and grass-covered shrines of the Madonna.
+
+The rhythm of the saddles ceased and the horses walked.
+
+"Was that the place where you were brought up?" said Roma.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And those were the people who sold you into slavery, so to speak?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!"
+
+"What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders."
+
+"No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you
+could hate him for what he has made you suffer?"
+
+David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the
+saint who saved me from so much besides. 'Don't try to find out who
+your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out,
+don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world.
+By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for
+what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't.
+Leave him to God!'"
+
+"It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?"
+said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply.
+
+"And then--who knows?--perhaps some day you may discover that your
+father deserved your love and pity after all."
+
+"Perhaps!"
+
+They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus
+trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was
+everywhere in this home of silence.
+
+They went up on to the roof. From that height the whole world around
+seemed to be invaded by silence.
+
+It was the silence of all sacred things, the silence of the mass; and
+the undying paganism in the hearts of the two that stood there had its
+eloquent silence also.
+
+Roma was leaning on the parapet with David Rossi behind her, when
+suddenly she began to weep. She wept violently and sobbed.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, but she did not answer.
+
+After a while she grew calm and dried her eyes, called herself foolish,
+and began to laugh. But the heart-beats were too audible without saying
+something, and at length she tried to speak.
+
+"It was the poor boy at the inn," she said; "the sight of his sweet face
+brought back a scene I had quite forgotten," and then, in a faltering
+voice, turning her head away, she told him everything.
+
+"It was in London, and my father had found a little Roman boy in the
+streets on a winter's night, carrying a squirrel and playing an
+accordion. He wore a tattered suit of velveteens, and that was all that
+sheltered his little body from the cold. His fingers were frozen stiff,
+and he fainted when they brought him into the house. After a while he
+opened his eyes, and gazed around at the fire and the faces about him,
+and seemed to be looking for something. It was his squirrel, and it was
+frozen dead. But he grasped it tight and big tears rolled on to his
+cheeks, and he raised himself as if to escape. He was too weak for that,
+and my father comforted him and he lay still. That was when I saw him
+first; and looking at the poor boy at the inn I thought ... I thought
+perhaps he was another ... perhaps my little friend of long ago...."
+
+Her throat was throbbing, and her faltering voice was failing like a
+pendulum that is about to stop.
+
+"Roma!" he cried over her shoulder.
+
+"David!"
+
+Their eyes met, their hands clasped, their pent-up secret was out, and
+in the dim-lit catacombs of love two souls stood face to face.
+
+"How long have you known it?" she whispered.
+
+"Since the night you came to the Piazza Navona. And you?"
+
+"Since the moment I heard your voice." And then she shuddered and
+laughed.
+
+When they left the house of silence a blessed hush had fallen on them, a
+great wonder which they had never known before, the wonder of the
+everlasting miracle of human hearts.
+
+The sun was sitting behind Rome in a glorious blaze of crimson, with the
+domes of churches glistening in the horizontal rays, and the dark globe
+of St. Peter's hovering over all. The mortal melancholy which had been
+lying over the world seemed to be lifted away, and the earth smiled with
+flowers and the heavens shone with gold.
+
+Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung
+to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and
+then they smiled, but they did not speak.
+
+The sun went down, and there was a far-off ringing of bells. It was Ava
+Maria. They drew up the horses for a moment and dropped their heads.
+Then they started again.
+
+The night chills were coming, and they rode hard. Roma bent over the
+mane of her horse and looked proud and happy.
+
+Grooms were waiting for them at the gate of St. Paul, and, giving up
+their horses, they got into a carriage. When they reached Trinità de'
+Monti the lamplighter was lighting the lamps on the steps of the piazza,
+and Roma said in a low voice, with a blush and a smile:
+
+"Don't come in to-night--not to-night, you know."
+
+She wanted to be alone.
+
+
+                                XI
+
+Felice met Roma at the door of her own apartment, and in more than
+usually sepulchral tones announced that the Countess had wished to see
+her as soon as she came home. Without waiting to change her
+riding-habit, Roma turned into her aunt's room.
+
+The old lady was propped up with pillows, and Natalina was fussing about
+her. Her eyes glittered, her thin lips were compressed, and regardless
+of the presence of the maid, she straightway fell upon Roma with bitter
+reproaches.
+
+"Did you wish to see me, aunt?" said Roma, and the old lady answered in
+a mocking falsetto:
+
+"Did I wish to see you, miss? Certainly I wished to see you, although
+I'm a broken-hearted woman and sorry for the day I saw you first."
+
+"What have I done now?" said Roma, and the radiant look in her face
+provoked the old lady to still louder denunciations.
+
+"What have you done? Mercy me!... Give me my salts, Natalina!"
+
+"Natalina," said Roma quietly, "lay out my studio things, and if Bruno
+has gone, tell Felice to light the lamps and see to the stove
+downstairs."
+
+The old lady fanned herself with her embroidered handkerchief and began
+again.
+
+"I thought you meant to mend your ways when you came in yesterday,
+miss--you were so meek and modest. But what was the fact? You had come
+to me straight from that man's apartments. You had! You know you had!
+Don't try to deny it."
+
+"I don't deny it," said Roma.
+
+"Holy Virgin! She doesn't deny it! Perhaps you admit it?"
+
+"I do admit it."
+
+"Madonna mia! She admits it! Perhaps you made an appointment?"
+
+"No, I went without an appointment."
+
+"Merciful heavens! She is on such terms with the man that she can go to
+his apartments without even an appointment! Perhaps you were alone with
+him, miss?"
+
+"Yes, we were quite alone," said Roma.
+
+The old lady, who was apparently about to faint right away, looked up at
+her little shrine, and said:
+
+"Goodness! A girl! Not even a married woman! And without a maid, too!"
+
+Trying not to lose control of herself, Roma stepped to the door, but her
+aunt followed her up.
+
+"A man like that, too! Not even a gentleman! The hypocrite! The
+impostor! With his airs of purity and pretence!"
+
+"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I was sorry I spoke to you as I did the other
+night, not because anything I said was wrong, but because you are weak
+and bedridden and suffering. Don't provoke me to speak again as I spoke
+before. I did go to Mr. Rossi's rooms yesterday, and if there is any
+fault in that, I alone am to blame."
+
+"Are you indeed?" said the old lady, with a shrill, piping cry. "Holy
+Saints! she admits so much! Do you know what people will call you when
+they hear of it? A hussy! A shameless hussy!"
+
+Roma was flaming up, but she controlled herself and put her hand on the
+door-handle.
+
+"They _will_ hear of it, depend on that," cried the Countess. "Last
+night at dinner the women were talking of nothing else. Felice heard all
+their chattering. That woman let the dog out to follow you, knowing it
+would go straight to the man's rooms. 'Whom did it come home with,
+Felice?' 'Donna Roma, your Excellency.' 'Then it's clear where Donna
+Roma had been.' Ugh! I could choke to think of it. My head is fit to
+split! Is there any cognac...?"
+
+Roma's bosom was visibly stirred by her breathing, but she answered
+quietly:
+
+"No matter! Why should I care what is thought of my conduct by people
+who have no morality of their own to judge me by?"
+
+"Really now?" said the Countess, twisting the wrinkles of her old face
+into skeins of mock courtesy. "Upon my word, I didn't think you were so
+simple. Understand, miss, it isn't the opinion of the Princess Bellini I
+am thinking about, but that of the Baron Bonelli. He has his dignity to
+consider, and when the time comes and he is free to take a wife, he is
+not likely to marry a girl who has been talked of with another man.
+Don't you see what that woman is doing? She has been doing it all along,
+and like a simpleton you've been helping her. You've been flinging away
+your chances with this Rossi and making yourself impossible to the
+Minister."
+
+Roma tossed her head and answered:
+
+"I don't care if I have, Aunt Betsy. I'm not of the same mind as I used
+to be, and I think no longer that the holiest things are to be bought
+and sold like so much merchandise."
+
+The old lady, who had been bending forward in her vehemence, fell back
+on the pillow.
+
+"You'll kill me!" she cried. "Where did you learn such folly? Goodness
+knows I've done my best by you. I have tried to teach you your duty to
+the baron and to society. But all this comes of admitting these
+anarchists into the house. You can't help it, though. It's in your
+blood. Your father before you...."
+
+Crimson and trembling from head to foot, Roma turned suddenly and left
+the room. Natalina and Felice were listening on the other side of the
+door.
+
+But not even this jarring incident could break the spell of Roma's
+enchantment, and when dinner was over, and she had gone to the studio
+and closed the door, the whole world seemed to be shut out, and nothing
+was of the slightest consequence.
+
+Taking the damp cloth from the bust, she looked at her work again. In
+the light of the aurora she now lived in, the head she had wrought with
+so much labour was poor and inadequate. It did not represent the
+original. It was weak and wrong.
+
+She set to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began
+to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was
+audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She was not afraid.
+
+Time passed, but she did not heed it. She was working at lightning
+speed, and with a power she had never felt before.
+
+Night came on, and the old Rome, the Rome of the Popes, repossessed
+itself of the Eternal City. The silent streets, the dark patches, the
+luminous piazzas, the three lights on the loggia of the Vatican, the
+grey ghost of the great dome, the kind stars, the sweet moon, and the
+church bells striking one by one during the noiseless night.
+
+At length she became aware of a streak of light on the floor. It was
+coming through the shutters of the window. She threw them open, and the
+breeze of morning came up from the orange trees in the garden below. The
+day was dawning over the sleepy city. Convent bells were ringing for
+matins, but all else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep.
+
+She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now.
+She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on
+the stars. She was happy, happy, happy!
+
+Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams
+tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome,
+the Rome of the Kings, awoke.
+
+Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his
+work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although
+the sunlight was streaming into the room.
+
+"Been working all night, Donna Roma?"
+
+"Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now."
+
+She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did
+that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet!
+
+She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment,
+when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post,
+and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters.
+
+One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for
+Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his
+translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking
+her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over
+her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an
+immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life.
+
+There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had
+seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made
+her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must!
+
+    "MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail!
+    Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the
+    dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything!
+    Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is _not_ David Rossi,
+    but a _condemned man who has no right to live in Italy_! Prepare
+    for a still greater surprise--_he has no right to live at all_!
+
+    "So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He
+    insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio
+    and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the
+    effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've
+    done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your
+    work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ...
+    let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have begun...."
+
+Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped
+out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the
+sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and
+her face was pale and rigid.
+
+"No, I will _not_ go on!" she thought. "I will _not_ betray him! I will
+_save_ him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I
+love him! I love him!"
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       PART FOUR--DAVID ROSSI
+
+
+                                I
+
+David Rossi was in his bedroom writing his leader for next morning's
+paper. A lamp with a dark shade burned on the desk, and the rest of the
+room was in shadow. It was late, and the house was quiet.
+
+The door opened softly, and Bruno, in shirt-sleeves and slippered feet,
+came on tiptoe into the room. He brought a letter in a large violet
+envelope with a monogram on the front of it, and put it down on the desk
+by Rossi's side. It was from Roma.
+
+    "DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--Without rhyme or reason I have been expecting
+    to see you here to-day, having something to say which it is
+    important that you should hear. May I expect you in the morning?
+    Knowing how busy you are, I dare not bid you come, yet the matter
+    is of great consequence and admits of no delay. It is not a
+    subject on which it is safe or proper to write, and how to speak
+    of it I am at a loss to decide. But you shall help me. Therefore
+    come without delay! There! I have bidden you come in spite of
+    myself. Judge from that how eager is my expectation.--In haste,
+                                                              "ROMA V.
+
+    "P.S.--I open my envelope, to wonder if you can ever forgive me
+    the humiliations you have suffered for my sake. To think that _I_
+    threw you into the way of them! And merely to wipe out an offence
+    that is not worth considering! I am ashamed of myself. I am also
+    ashamed of the people about me. You will remember that I told you
+    they were pitiless and cruel. They are worse--they are heartless
+    and without mercy. But how bravely you bore their insults and
+    innuendoes! I almost cry to think of it, and if I were a good
+    Catholic I should confess and do penance. See? I do confess, and
+    if you want me to do penance you will come yourself and impose it."
+
+It was the first letter that David Rossi had received from Roma, and as
+he read it the air seemed to him to be filled with the sweet girlish
+voice. He could see the play of her large, bright, violet eyes. The
+delicate fragrance of the scented paper rose to his nostrils, and
+without being conscious of what he was doing he raised the letter to his
+lips.
+
+Then he became aware that Bruno was still in the room. The good fellow
+was in the shadow behind him, pushing things about under some pretext
+and trying to make a noise.
+
+"Don't let me keep you up, Bruno."
+
+"Sure you don't want anything, sir?" said Bruno with confusion.
+
+David Rossi rose and walked about the room with his slow step.
+
+"You have something to say to me?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir--yes, I have."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Bruno scratched his shock head and looked about as if for help. His eyes
+fell on the letter lying open in the light on the desk.
+
+"It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the
+monogram."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled
+out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said:
+
+"Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you."
+
+"What are they saying, Bruno?"
+
+"Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'?
+Sun in the eyes--that's what they're saying, sir."
+
+"So they're saying that, are they?"
+
+"They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like
+it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of
+you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing."
+
+David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro.
+
+"'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right,
+sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called
+out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first
+of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week we
+hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet
+they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house
+of a bad woman?"
+
+"Bruno!" cried Rossi in a stern voice, "what right have you to talk to
+me like this?"
+
+Bruno was frightened at what he had said, but he tried to carry it off
+with a look of passion.
+
+"Right? The right of a friend, sir, who can't stand by and see you
+betrayed. Yes, betrayed, that's the word for it. Betrayed! Betrayed!
+It's a plot to ruin the people through the weakness of their leader. A
+woman drawn across a man's trail. The trick is as old as the ages. Never
+heard what we say in Rome?--'The man is fire, the woman is tow; then
+comes the devil and puts them together.'"
+
+David Rossi was standing face to face with Bruno, who was growing hot
+and trying to laugh bitterly.
+
+"Oh, I know what I'm saying, sir. The Prime Minister is at the bottom of
+everything. David Rossi never goes to Donna Roma's house but the Baron
+Bonelli knows all about it. They write to each other every day, and I've
+posted her letters myself. _Her_ house is _his_ house. Carriages,
+horses, servants, liveries--how else could she support it? By her art,
+her sculpture?"
+
+Bruno was frightened to the bottom of his soul, but he continued to talk
+and to laugh bitterly.
+
+"She's deceiving you, sir. Isn't it as plain as daylight? You hit her
+hard, and old Vampire too, in your speech on the morning of the Pope's
+Jubilee, and she's paying you out for both of them."
+
+"That's enough, Bruno."
+
+"All Rome knows it, and everybody will be laughing at you soon."
+
+"You've said enough, I tell you. Go to bed."
+
+"Oh, I know! The heart has its reasons, but it listens to none."
+
+"Go to bed, I tell you! Isn't it sufficient that by your tittle-tattle
+you caused me to wrong the lady?"
+
+"_I_ did?"
+
+"_You_ did."
+
+"I did not."
+
+"You did, and if it hadn't been for the tales you told me before I knew
+her, or had ever seen her, I should never have spoken of her as I did."
+
+"She deserved all you said of her."
+
+"She didn't deserve one word of it, and it was your lies that made me
+slander her."
+
+Bruno's eyes flinched as if a blow had fallen on them. Then he tried to
+laugh.
+
+"Hit me again. The skin of the ass is used to blows. Only don't go too
+far with me, David Rossi."
+
+"Then don't _you_ go too far with your falsehoods and suspicion."
+
+"Suspicion! Holy Virgin! Is it suspicion that she has had you at her
+studio to make a Roman holiday for her friends and cronies? By the
+saints! Suspicion!"
+
+"Go on, if it becomes you."
+
+"If what becomes me?"
+
+"To eat her bread and talk against her."
+
+"That's a lie, David Rossi, and you know it. It's my own bread I'm
+eating. My labour belongs to me, and I sell it to my employer. But my
+conscience belongs to God, and she cannot buy it."
+
+David Rossi's white and angry face broke up like a snow-flake in the
+sun.
+
+"I was wrong when I said that, Bruno, and I ask your pardon."
+
+"Do you say that, sir? And after I've insulted you?"
+
+David Rossi held out his hand, and Bruno clasped it.
+
+"I had no right to be angry with you, Bruno, but you are wrong about
+Donna Roma. Believe me, dear friend, cruelly, awfully, terribly wrong."
+
+"You think she is a good woman."
+
+"I know she is, and if I said otherwise, I take it back and am ashamed."
+
+"Beautiful! If I could only believe in her as you do, sir. But I've
+known her for two years."
+
+"And I've known her for twenty."
+
+"_You_ have?"
+
+"I have. Shall I tell you who she is? She is the daughter of my old
+friend in England."
+
+"The one who died in Elba?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The good man who found you and fed you, and educated you when you were
+a boy in London?"
+
+"That was the father of Donna Roma."
+
+"Then he was Prince Volonna, after all?"
+
+"Yes, and they lied to me when they told me she was dead and buried."
+
+Bruno was silent for a moment, and then in a choking voice he said:
+
+"Why didn't you strike me dead when I said she was deceiving you?
+Forgive me, sir!"
+
+"I do forgive you, Bruno, but not for myself--for her."
+
+Bruno turned away with a dazed expression.
+
+"Forget what I said about going to Donna Roma's, sir."
+
+Rossi sat down and took up his pen.
+
+"No, I cannot forget it," he said. "I _will not_ forget it. I will go to
+her house no more."
+
+Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice:
+
+"I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to
+travel."
+
+Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write.
+
+"Good-night, Bruno."
+
+"Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes.
+
+
+                                II
+
+The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to
+Roma.
+
+    "MY DEAR R.,--You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard
+    to my poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if
+    the penalties had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the
+    cud of my bargain now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a
+    secret motive, and perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should
+    confess too, although not with a view to penance. Apparently, it
+    has come out well, and now that it seems to be all over, both your
+    scheme and mine, now that the wrong I did you is to some extent
+    undone, and my own object is in some measure achieved, I find
+    myself face to face with a position in which it is my duty to you
+    as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.
+
+    "The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason
+    that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much
+    interested, and because there are obstacles between that person
+    and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts
+    it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each
+    other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the
+    feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty
+    that I must give them up altogether.
+
+    "Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we
+    have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the
+    memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part
+    of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot
+    explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may
+    arise. Continue to think of me as your brother--your brother far
+    away--to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and
+    necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there.
+
+    "What you say of an important matter suggests that something has
+    come to your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities;
+    but when a man has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice,
+    the most urgent perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not
+    to be alarmed for my sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of
+    the atmosphere of danger I have always lived in--the glacier I
+    have always walked upon--and 'if it is not now, it is to come; if
+    it is not to come, it will be now--the
+    readiness is all.' Good-bye!--Yours, dear R----,                 D."
+
+
+                                III
+
+Next day brought Roma's reply.
+
+    "MY DEAR D.,--Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of
+    excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and
+    when Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you
+    dear, dear dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or
+    talked.
+
+    "I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you
+    can't mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you
+    can't, or my eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing
+    with delight.
+
+    "Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so
+    indefinite, and I have no right to understand anything. If you
+    cannot write by post, or even send messages by hand, if my man F.
+    is your enemy, and your housemate B. is mine, isn't that precisely
+    the best reason why you should come and talk matters over? Come at
+    once. I bid you come! In a matter of such inconceivable
+    importance, surely a sister has a right to command.
+
+    "In that character, I suppose, I ought to be glad of the news you
+    give me. Well, I _am_ glad! But being a daughter of Eve, I have a
+    right to be curious. I want to ask questions. You say I know the
+    lady, and am, unhappily, too deeply interested in her--who is she?
+    Does she know of your love for her? Is she beautiful? Is she
+    charming? Give me one initial of her name--only one--and I will be
+    good. I am so much in the dark, and I cannot commit myself until I
+    know more.
+
+    "You speak of obstacles, and say they are decisive and
+    insurmountable. That's terrible, but perhaps you are only thinking
+    of what the poets call the 'cruel madness' of love, as if its
+    madness and cruelty were sufficient reason for flying away from
+    it. Or perhaps the obstacles are those of circumstances; but in
+    that case, if the woman is the right one, she will be willing to
+    wait for such difficulties to be got over, or even to find her
+    happiness in sharing them.
+
+    "See how I plead for my unknown sister! Which is sweet of me,
+    considering that you don't tell me who she is, but leave me to
+    find out if she is likely to suit me. But why not let me help you?
+    Come at once and talk things over.
+
+    "Yet how vain I am! Even while I proffer assistance with so loud a
+    voice, I am smitten cold with the fear of an impediment which you
+    know a thousand times better than I do how to measure and to meet.
+    Perhaps the woman you speak of is unworthy of your friendship and
+    love. I can understand that to be an insurmountable obstacle. You
+    stand so high, and have to think about your work, your aims, your
+    people. And perhaps it is only a dream and a delusion, a mirage of
+    the heart, that love lifts a woman up to the level of the man who
+    loves her.
+
+    "Then there may be some fault--some grave fault. I can understand
+    that too. We do not love because we should, but because we must,
+    and there is nothing so cruel as the inequality of man and woman
+    in the way the world regards their conduct. But I am like a bat in
+    the dark, flying at gleams of light from closely-curtained
+    windows. Will you not confide in me? Do! Do! Do!
+
+    "Besides, I have the other matter to talk about. You remember
+    telling me how you kicked out the man M----? He turned spy as the
+    consequence, and has been sent to England. You ought to know that
+    he has been making inquiries about you, and appears to have found
+    out various particulars. Any day may bring urgent news of him, and
+    if you will not come to me I may have to go to you in spite of
+    every protest.
+
+    "To-morrow is the day for your opening of Parliament, and I have a
+    ticket for the Court tribune, so you may expect to see me floating
+    somewhere above you in an atmosphere of lace and perfume.
+    Good-night!--Your poor bewildered sister,               ROMA."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+Next morning David Rossi put on evening dress, in obedience to the
+etiquette of the opening day of Parliament. Before going to the ceremony
+he answered Roma's letter of the night before.
+
+    "DEAR R.,--If anything could add to the bitterness of my regret at
+    ending an intercourse which has brought me the happiest moments of
+    my life, it would be the tone of your sweet and charming letter.
+    You ask me if the woman I love is beautiful. She is more than
+    beautiful, she is lovely. You ask me if she knows that I love her.
+    I have never dared to disclose my secret, and if I could have
+    believed that she had ever so much as guessed at it, I should have
+    found some consolation in a feeling which is too deep for the
+    humiliations of pride. You ask me if she is worthy of my
+    friendship and love. She is worthy of the love and friendship of a
+    better man than I am or can ever hope to be.
+
+    "Yet even if she were not so, even if there were, as you say, a
+    fault in her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? I am not
+    one of those who think that a woman is fallen because
+    circumstances and evil men have conspired against her. I reject
+    the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past, a woman
+    never can. I abhor the judgment of the world by which a woman may
+    be punished because she is trying to be pure, and dragged down
+    because she is rising from the dirt. And if she had sinned as I
+    have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I would pray for
+    strength enough to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we
+    stand or fall together.'
+
+    "But she is sweet, and pure, and true, and brave, and noble-hearted,
+    and there is no fault in her, or she would not be the daughter of
+    her father, who was the noblest man I ever knew or ever expect to
+    know. No, the root of the separation is in myself, in myself only,
+    in my circumstances and the personal situation I find myself in.
+
+    "And yet it is difficult for me to state the obstacle which
+    divides us, or to say more about it than that it is permanent and
+    insurmountable. I should deceive myself if I tried to believe that
+    time would remove or lessen it, and I have contended in vain with
+    feelings which have tempted me to hold on at any price to the only
+    joy and happiness of my life.
+
+    "To go to her and open my heart is impossible, for personal
+    intercourse is precisely the peril I am trying to avoid. How weak
+    I am in her company! Even when her dress touches me at passing, I
+    am thrilled with an emotion I cannot master; and when she lifts
+    her large bright eyes to mine, I am the slave of a passion which
+    conquers all my will.
+
+    "No, it is not lightly and without cause that I have taken a step
+    which sacrifices love to duty. I love her, with all my heart and
+    soul and strength I love her, and that is why she and I, for her
+    sake more than mine, should never meet again.
+
+    "I note what you say about the man M----, but you must forgive me
+    if I cannot be much concerned about it. There is nobody in London
+    who knows me in the character I now bear, and can link it to the
+    one you are thinking of. Good-bye, again! God be with you and keep
+    you always!  D."
+
+Having written this letter, David Rossi sealed it carefully and posted
+it with his own hand on his way to the opening of Parliament.
+
+
+                                V
+
+The day was fine, and the city was bright with many flags in honour of
+the King. All the streets leading from the royal palace to the Hall of
+the Deputies were lined with people. The square in front of the
+Parliament House was kept clear by a cordon of Carabineers, but the open
+windows of the hotels and houses round about were filled with faces.
+
+David Rossi entered the house by the little private door for deputies in
+the side street. The chamber was already thronged, and as full of
+movement as a hive of bees. Ladies in light dresses, soldiers in
+uniform, diplomatists wearing decorations, senators and deputies in
+white cravats and gloves, were moving to their places and saluting each
+other with bows and smiles.
+
+Rossi slipped into the place he usually occupied among the deputies. It
+was the corner seat by the door on the left of the royal canopy,
+immediately facing the section, which had been apportioned to the Court
+tribune. He did not lift his eyes as he entered, but he was conscious of
+a tall, well-rounded yet girlish figure in a grey dress that glistened
+in a ray of sunshine, with dark hair under a large black hat, and
+flashing eyes that seemed to pierce into his own like a shaft of light.
+
+Beautiful ladies with big oriental eyes were about her, and young
+deputies were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised
+curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of
+gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching
+gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom.
+
+The clock over the reporters' gallery showed seven minutes after the
+hour appointed, when the walls of the chamber shook with the vibration
+of a cannon-shot. It was a gun fired at the Castle of St. Angelo to
+announce the King's arrival. At the same moment there came the muffled
+strains of the royal hymn played by the band in the piazza. The little
+gales of gossip died down in an instant, and in dead silence the
+assembly rose to its feet.
+
+A minute afterwards the King entered amid a fanfare of trumpets, the
+shouts of many voices, and the clapping of hands. He was a young man, in
+the uniform of a general, with a face that was drawn into deep lines
+under the eyes by ill-health and anxiety. Two soldiers, carrying their
+brass helmets with waving plumes, walked by his side, and a line of his
+Ministers followed. His Queen, a tall and beautiful girl, came behind,
+surrounded by many ladies.
+
+The King took his seat under the baldacchino, with his Ministers on his
+left. The Queen sat on his right hand, with her ladies beside her. They
+bowed to the plaudits of the assembly, and the drawn face of the young
+King wore a painful smile.
+
+The Baron Bonelli, in court dress and decorations, stood at the King's
+elbow, calm, dignified, self-possessed--the one strong face and figure
+in the group under the canopy. After the cheering and the shouting had
+subsided he requested the assembly, at the command of His Majesty, to
+resume their seats. Then he handed a paper to the King.
+
+It was the King's speech to his Parliament, and he read it nervously in
+a voice that had not learned to control itself. But the speech was
+sufficiently emphatic, and its words were grandiose and even florid.
+
+It consisted of four clauses. In the first clause the King thanked God
+that his country was on terms of amity with all foreign countries, and
+invoked God's help in the preservation of peace. The second clause was
+about the increase of the army.
+
+"The army," said the King, "is very dear to me, as it has always been
+dear to my family. My illustrious grandfather, who granted freedom to
+the kingdom, was a soldier; my honoured father was a soldier, and it is
+my pride that I am myself a soldier also. The army was the foundation of
+our liberty and it is now the security of our rights. On the strength
+and stability of the army rest the power of our nation abroad and the
+authority of our institutions at home. It is my firm resolve to maintain
+the army in the future as my illustrious ancestors have maintained it in
+the past, and therefore my Government will propose a bill which is
+intended to increase still further its numbers and its efficiency."
+
+This was received with a great outburst of applause and the waving of
+many handkerchiefs. It was observed that some of the ladies shed tears.
+
+The third clause was about the growth and spread of anarchism.
+
+"My house," said the King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my
+duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to
+Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but
+throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most
+devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and
+divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the
+most innocent and the most highly placed, which have sent a thrill of
+horror into all humane hearts. My Government asks for an absolute power
+over such criminals, and if we are to bring security to the State, we
+must reinvigorate the authority to which society trusts the high mandate
+of protecting and governing."
+
+A still greater outburst of cheering interrupted the young King, who
+raised his head amid the shouts, the clapping of hands, and the
+fluttering of handkerchiefs, and smiled his painful smile.
+
+"More than that," continued the King, "I have to deplore the spread of
+associations, sodalities, and clubs, which, by an erroneous conception
+of liberty, are disseminating the germs of revolt against the State.
+Under the most noble propositions about the moral and economical
+redemption of the people is hidden a propaganda for the conquest of the
+public powers.
+
+"My aim is to gain the affection of my people, and to interest them in
+the cause of order and public security, and therefore my Government will
+present an urgent bill, which is intended to stop the flowering of these
+parasitic organisations, by revising these laws of the press and of
+public meeting, in whose defects agitators find opportunity for their
+attacks on the doctrines of the State."
+
+A prolonged outburst of applause followed this passage, mingled with a
+tumult of tongues, which went on after the King had begun to read again,
+rendering his last clause--an invocation of God's blessing on the
+deliberations of Parliament--almost inaudible.
+
+The end of the speech was a signal for further cheering, and when the
+King left the hall, bowing as before, and smiling his painful smile, the
+shouts of "Long live the King," the clapping of hands, and the waving of
+handkerchiefs followed him to the street. The entire ceremony had
+occupied twelve minutes.
+
+Then the clamour of voices drowned the sound of the royal hymn outside.
+Deputies were climbing about to join their friends among the ladies,
+whose light laughter was to be heard on every side.
+
+David Rossi rose to go. Without lifting his head, he had been conscious
+that during the latter part of the King's speech many eyes were fixed
+upon him. Playing with his watch-chain, he had struggled to look calm
+and impassive. But his heart was sick, and he wished to get away
+quickly.
+
+A partition, shielding the door of the corridor, stood near to his seat,
+and he was trying to get round it. He heard his name in the air around
+him, mingled with significant trills and unmistakable accents. All at
+once he was conscious of a perfume he knew, and of a girlish figure
+facing him.
+
+"Good-day, Honourable," said a voice that thrilled him like the strings
+of a harp drawn tight.
+
+He lifted his head and answered. It was Roma. Her face was lighted up
+with a fire he had never seen before. Only one glance he dared to take,
+but he could see that at the next instant those flashing eyes would
+burst into tears.
+
+The tide was passing out by the front doors where the carriages and the
+reporters waited, but Rossi stepped round to the back. He was on the way
+to the office of his newspaper, and dipping into the Corso from a lane
+that crossed it, he came upon the King's carriage returning to the
+Quirinal. It was entirely surrounded by soldiers, the military commander
+of Rome on the right, the commander of the Carabineers on the left, and
+the Cuirassiers, riding two deep, before and behind, so that the King
+and Queen were scarcely visible to the cheering crowd. Last in the royal
+procession came an ordinary cab containing two detectives in plain
+clothes.
+
+The office of the _Sunrise_ was in a narrow lane out of the Corso. It
+was a dingy building of three floors, with the machine-rooms on the
+ground-level, the composing-rooms at the top, and the editorial rooms
+between. Rossi's office was a large apartment, with three desks, that
+were intended for the editor and his day and night assistants.
+
+His day assistant received him with many bows and compliments. He was a
+small man with an insincere face.
+
+Rossi drank a cup of coffee and settled to his work. It was an article
+on the day's doings, more fearless and outspoken than he had ever
+published before. Such a day as they had just gone through, with the
+flying of flags and the playing of royal hymns, was not really a day of
+joy and rejoicing, but of degradation and shame. If the people had known
+what they were doing, they would have hung their flags with crape and
+played funeral marches.
+
+"Such a scene as we have witnessed to-day," he wrote, "like all such
+scenes throughout the world, whether in Germany, Russia, and England, or
+in China, Persia, and the darkest regions of Africa, is but proof of the
+melancholy fact that while man, as the individual, has been nineteen
+hundred years converted to Christianity, man, as the nation, remains to
+this day for the most part utterly pagan."
+
+The assistant editor, who had glanced over the pages of manuscript as
+Rossi threw them aside, looked up at last and said:
+
+"Are you sure, sir, that you wish to print this article?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+The man made a shrug of his shoulders, and took the copy upstairs.
+
+The short day had closed in when Rossi was returning home. Screamers in
+the streets were crying early editions of the evening papers, and the
+cafés in the Corso were full of officers and civilians, sipping vermouth
+and reading glowing accounts of the King's enthusiastic reception.
+Pitiful! Most pitiful! And the man who dared to tell the truth must be
+prepared for any consequences.
+
+David Rossi told himself that he _was_ prepared. Henceforth he would
+devote himself to the people, without a thought of what might happen.
+Nothing should come between him and his work--nothing whatever--not
+even ... but, no, he could not think of it!
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Two letters were awaiting David Rossi in his rooms at home.
+
+One was a circular from the President of the Chamber of Deputies
+summoning Parliament for the day after to-morrow to elect officials and
+reply to the speech of the King.
+
+The other was from Roma, and the address was in a large, hurried hand.
+David Rossi broke the seal with nervous fingers.
+
+    "MY DEAR FRIEND,--I know! I know! I know now what the obstacle is.
+    B. gave me the hint of it on one of the days of last week, when I
+    was so anxious to see you and you did not come. It is your
+    unflinching devotion to your mission and to your public duties.
+    You are one of those who think that when a man has dedicated his
+    life to work for the world, he should give up everything
+    else--father, mother, wife, child--and live like a priest, who puts
+    away home, and love, and kindred, that others may have them more
+    abundantly. I can understand that, and see a sort of nobility in
+    it too, especially in days when the career of a statesman is only
+    a path to vainglory of every kind. It is great, it is glorious, it
+    thrills me to think of it.
+
+    "But I am losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in
+    spite of all my pleading. You say she is beautiful--that's well
+    enough, but it comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true,
+    and charming--and I am willing to take it all on trust. But when
+    you say she is noble-hearted I respectfully refuse to believe it.
+    If she were that, you would be sure that she would know that
+    friendship is the surest part of love, and to be the friend of a
+    great man is to be a help to him, and not an impediment.
+
+    "My gracious! What does she think you are? A _cavaliere servente_
+    to dance attendance on her ladyship day and night? Give me the
+    woman who wants her husband to be a man, with a man's work to do,
+    a man's burdens to bear, and a man's triumphs to win.
+
+    "Yet perhaps I am too hard on my unknown sister that is to be, or
+    ought to be, and it is only your own distrust that wrongs her. If
+    she is the daughter of one brave man and really loves another, she
+    knows her place and her duty. It is to be ready to follow her
+    husband wherever he must go, to share his fate whatever it may be,
+    and to live his life, because it is now her own.
+
+    "And since I am in the way of pleading for her again, let me tell
+    you how simple you are to suppose that because you have never
+    disclosed your secret she may never have guessed it. Goodness me!
+    To think that men who can make women love them to madness itself
+    can be so ignorant as not to know that a woman can always tell if
+    a man loves her, and even fix the very day, and hour, and minute
+    when he looked into her eyes and loved her first.
+
+    "And if my unknown sister that ought to be knows that you love
+    her, be sure that she loves you in return. Then trust her. Take
+    the counsel of a woman and go to her. Remember, that if you are
+    suffering by this separation, perhaps she is suffering too, and if
+    she is worthy of the love and friendship of a better man than you
+    are, or ever hope to be (which, without disparaging her ladyship,
+    I respectfully refuse to believe), let her at least have the
+    refusal of one or both of them.
+
+    "Good-night! I go to the Chamber of Deputies again the day after
+    to-morrow, being so immersed in public matters (and public men)
+    that I can think of nothing else at present. Happily my bust is
+    out of hand, and the caster (not B. this time) is hard at work on
+    it.
+
+    "You won't hear anything about the M---- doings, yet I assure you
+    they are a most serious matter. Unless I am much mistaken there is
+    an effort on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely
+    sufficiently alarming. M---- is returning to Rome, and I hear
+    rumours of an intention to bring pressure on some one _here_ in
+    the hope of leading to identification. Think of it, I beg, I
+    pray!--Your friend,
+                                                                 "R."
+
+
+                                VII
+
+Next day Rossi's editorial assistant came with a troubled face. There
+was bad news from the office. The morning's edition of the _Sunrise_ had
+been confiscated by the police owing to the article on the King's speech
+and procession. The proprietors of the paper were angry with their
+editor, and demanded to see him immediately.
+
+"Tell them I'll be at the office at four o'clock, as usual," said Rossi,
+and he sat down to write a letter.
+
+It was to Roma. The moment he took up the pen to write to her the air of
+the room seemed to fill with a sweet feminine presence that banished
+everything else. It was like talking to her. She was beside him. He
+could hear her soft replies.
+
+    "If it were possible to heighten the pain of my feelings when I
+    decided to sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter
+    like your last would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you
+    deal with is not the one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a
+    very real impediment, not altogether disposed of by the sweet and
+    tender womanliness with which you put it aside. In that regard
+    what troubles me most is the hideous inequality between what the
+    man gives and what he gets, and the splendid devotion with which
+    the woman merges her life in the life of the man she marries only
+    quickens the sense of his selfishness in allowing himself to
+    accept so great a prize.
+
+    "In my own case, the selfishness, if I yielded to it, would be
+    greater far than anybody else could be guilty of, and of all men
+    who have sacrificed women's lives to their own career, I should
+    feel myself to be the most guilty and inexcusable. My dear and
+    beloved girl is nobly born, and lives in wealth and luxury, while
+    I am poor--poor by choice, and therefore poor for ever, brought up
+    as a foundling, and without a name that I dare call my own.
+
+    "What then? Shall such a man as I am ask such a woman as she is to
+    come into the circle of his life, to exchange her riches for his
+    poverty, her comfort for his suffering? No.
+
+    "Besides, what woman could do it if I did? Women can be unselfish,
+    they can be faithful, they can be true; but--don't ask me to say
+    things I do not want to say--women love wealth and luxury and
+    ease, and shrink from pain and poverty and the forced marches of a
+    hunted life. And why shouldn't they? Heaven spare them all such
+    sufferings as men alone should bear!
+
+    "Yet all this is still outside the greater obstacle which stands
+    between me and the dear girl from whom I must separate myself now,
+    whatever it may cost me, as an inexorable duty. I entreat you to
+    spare me the pain of explaining further. Believe that for her sake
+    my resolution, in spite of all your sweet and charming pleading,
+    is strong and unalterable.
+
+    "Only one thing more. If it is as you say it may be, that she
+    loves me, though I had no right to believe so, that will only add
+    to my unhappiness in thinking of the wrench that she must suffer.
+    But she is strong, she is brave, she is the daughter of her
+    father, and I have faith in the natural power of her mind, in her
+    youth and the chances of life for one so beautiful and so gifted,
+    to remove the passing impression that may have been made.
+
+    "Good-bye yet again! And God bless you!                       D.
+
+    "P. S.--I am not afraid of M----, and come when he may, I shall
+    certainly stand my ground. There is only one person in Rome who
+    could be used against me in the direction you indicate, and I
+    could trust her with my heart's blood."
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Before two o'clock next day the Chamber of Deputies was already full.
+The royal chair and baldacchino had been removed, and their place was
+occupied by the usual bench of the President.
+
+When the Prime Minister took his place, cool, collected, smiling,
+faultlessly dressed and wearing a flower in his button-hole, he was
+greeted with some applause from the members, and the dry rustle of fans
+in the ladies' tribune was distinctly heard. The leader of the
+Opposition had a less marked reception, and when David Rossi glided
+round the partition to his place on the extreme Left, there was a
+momentary hush, followed by a buzz of voices.
+
+Then the President of the Chamber entered, with his secretaries about
+him, and took his seat in a central chair under a bust of the young
+King. Ushers, wearing a linen band of red, white, and green on their
+arms, followed with portfolios, and with little trays containing
+water-bottles and glasses. Conversation ceased, and the President rang a
+hand-bell that stood by his side, and announced that the sitting was
+begun.
+
+The first important business of the day was the reply to the speech of
+the King, and the President called on the member who had been appointed
+to undertake this duty. A young Deputy, a man of letters, then made his
+way to a bar behind the chairs of the Ministers and read from a printed
+paper a florid address to the sovereign.
+
+Having read his printed document, the Deputy proceeded to move the
+adoption of the reply.
+
+With the proposal of the King and the Government to increase the army he
+would not deal. It required no recommendation. The people were patriots.
+They loved their country, and would spend the last drop of their blood
+to defend it. The only persons who were not with the King in his desire
+to uphold the army were the secret foes of the nation and the
+dynasty--persons who were in league with their enemies.
+
+"That," said the speaker, "brings us to the next clause of our reply to
+His Majesty's gracious speech. We know that there exists among the
+associations aimed at a compact between strangely varying
+forces--between the forces of socialism, republicanism, unbelief, and
+anarchy, and the forces of the Church and the Vatican."
+
+At this statement there was a great commotion. Members on the Left
+protested with loud shouts of "It is not true," and in a moment the
+tongues and arms of the whole assembly were in motion. The President
+rang his bell, and the speaker concluded.
+
+"Let us draw the teeth of both parties to this secret conspiracy, that
+they may never again use the forces of poverty and discontent to disturb
+public order."
+
+When the speaker sat down, his friends thronged around him to shake
+hands with him and congratulate him.
+
+Then the eyes of the House and of the audience in the gallery turned to
+David Rossi. He had sat with folded arms and head down while his
+followers screamed their protests. But passing a paper to the President,
+he now rose and said:
+
+"I ask permission to propose an amendment to the reply to the King's
+speech."
+
+"You have the word," said the President.
+
+David Rossi read his amendment. At the feet of His Majesty it humbly
+expressed an opinion that the present was not a time at which fresh
+burdens should be laid upon the country for the support of the army,
+with any expectation that they could be borne. Misfortune and suffering
+had reached their climax. The cup of the people was full.
+
+At this language some of the members laughed. There were cries of
+"Order" and "Shame," and then the laughter was resumed. The President
+rang his bell, and at length silence was secured. David Rossi began to
+speak, in a voice that was firm and resolute.
+
+"If," he said, "the statement that members of this House are in alliance
+with the Pope and the Vatican is meant for me and mine, I give it a flat
+denial. And, in order to have done with this calumny once and for ever,
+permit me to say that between the Papacy and the people, as represented
+by us, there is not, and never can be, anything in common. In temporal
+affairs, the theory of the Papacy rejects the theory of the democracy.
+The theory of the democracy rejects the theory of the Papacy. The one
+claims a divine right to rule in the person of the Pope because he is
+Pope. The other denies all divine right except that of the people to
+rule themselves."
+
+This was received with some applause mingled with laughter, and certain
+shouts flung out in a shrill hysterical voice. The President rang his
+bell again, and David Rossi continued.
+
+"The proposal to increase the army," he said, "in a time of tranquillity
+abroad but of discord at home, is the gravest impeachment that could be
+made of the Government of a country. Under a right order of things
+Parliament would be the conscience of the people, Government would be
+the servant of that conscience, and rebellion would be impossible. But
+this Government is the master of the country and is keeping the people
+down by violence and oppression. Parliament is dead. For God's sake let
+us bury it!"
+
+Loud shouts followed this outburst, and some of the Deputies rose from
+their seats, and crowding about the speaker in the open space in front,
+yelled and screamed at him like a pack of hounds. He stood calm, playing
+with his watch-chain, while the President rang his bell and called for
+silence. The interruptions died down at last, and the speaker went on:
+
+"If you ask me what is the reason of the discontent which produces the
+crimes of anarchism, I say, first, the domination of a Government which
+is absolute, and the want of liberty of speech and meeting. In other
+countries the discontented are permitted to manifest their woes, and are
+not punished unless they commit deeds of violence; but in Italy alone,
+except Russia, a man may be placed outside the law, torn from his home,
+from the bedside of his nearest and dearest, and sent to _domicilio
+coatto_ to live or die in a silence as deep as that of the grave. Oh, I
+know what I am saying. I have been in the midst of it. I have seen a
+father torn from his daughter, and the motherless child left to the
+mercy of his enemies."
+
+This allusion quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead
+silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the
+President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters
+rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised,
+pointing at the same time to the ladies' tribune.
+
+One of the ladies had cried out. David Rossi heard the voice, and, when
+he began again, his own voice was softer and more tremulous.
+
+"Next, I say that the cause of anarchism in Italy, as everywhere else,
+is poverty. Wait until the 1st of February, and you shall see such an
+army enter Rome as never before invaded it. I assert that within three
+miles of this place, at the gates of this capital of Christendom, human
+beings are living lives more abject than that of savage man.
+
+"Housed in huts of straw, sleeping on mattresses of leaves, clothed in
+rags or nearly nude, fed on maize and chestnuts and acorns, worked
+eighteen hours a day, and sweated by the tyranny of the overseers, to
+whom landlords lease their lands while they idle their days in the
+_salons_ of Rome and Paris, men and women and children are being treated
+worse than slaves, and beaten more than dogs."
+
+At that there was a terrific uproar, shouts of "It's a lie!" and
+"Traitor!" followed by a loud outbreak of jeers and laughter. Then, for
+the first time, David Rossi lost control of himself, and, turning upon
+Parliament with flaming eyes and quivering voice, he cried:
+
+"You take these statements lightly--you that don't know what it is to be
+hungry, you that have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest
+it. But _I_ know these things by bitter knowledge--by experience. Don't
+talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and
+comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a
+poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the
+miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the
+Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At
+the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living
+lives of moral anæmia and physical atrophy more terrible by far than
+those which made the pagan poet say two thousand years ago--_Paucis
+vivit humanum genus_--the human race exists for the benefit of the few."
+
+The silence was breathless while the speaker made this personal
+reference, and when he sat down, after a denunciation of the militarism
+which was consuming the heart of the civilised world, the House was too
+dazed to make any manifestation.
+
+In the dead hush that followed, the President put the necessary
+questions, but the amendment fell through without a vote being taken,
+and the printed reply was passed.
+
+Then the Minister of War rose to give notice of his bill for increased
+military expenditure, and proposed to hand it over to the general
+committee of the budget.
+
+The Baron Bonelli rose next as Minister of the Interior, and gave notice
+of his bill for the greater security of the public, and the remodelling
+of the laws of the press and of association.
+
+He spoke incisively and bitterly, and he was obviously excited, but he
+affected his usual composure.
+
+"After the language we have heard to-day," he said, "and the knowledge
+we possess of mass meetings projected, it will not surprise the House
+that I treat this measure as urgent, and propose that we consider it on
+the principle of the three readings, taking the first of them in four
+days."
+
+At that there were some cries from the Left, but the Minister continued:
+
+"It will also not surprise the House that, to prevent the obstruction of
+members who seem ready to sing their Miserere without end, I will ask
+the House to take the readings without debate."
+
+Then in a moment the whole House was in an uproar and members were
+shaking their fists in each other's faces. In vain the President rang
+his bell for silence. At length he put on his hat and left the Chamber,
+and the sitting was at an end.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma.
+
+    "MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,--It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown
+    and invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and
+    oughtn't to be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell
+    me that she is good and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would
+    have me believe that she loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and
+    that she could not give them up even for the sweetest thing that
+    ever comes into a woman's life. Out on her! What does she think a
+    wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be dressed up and danced
+    on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is, I know what I
+    should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and the point
+    of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have it
+    out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any
+    more about the bravery of a woman like that.
+
+    "The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what
+    that means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless
+    lengths of friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between
+    him and her, and differences of class do not exist for either of
+    them. Her pride died the instant love looked out of her eyes at
+    him, and if people taunt her with his poverty, or his birth, she
+    answers and says: 'It's true he is poor, but his glory is, that he
+    was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or mother to care for him,
+    and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him, and not all the
+    wealth of the world shall take me away.'
+
+    "One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be,
+    and that is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that
+    she is going to reconcile herself to your separation while she is
+    kept in the dark as to the cause of it. It is all very well for
+    you to pay compliments to her beauty and youth and the natural
+    strength of her mind to remove passing impressions, but perhaps
+    the impressions are the reverse of passing ones, and if you go out
+    of her life, what is to become of her? Have you thought of that?
+    Of course you haven't.
+
+    "No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In
+    my darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am
+    she and she is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't
+    for nothing I was a daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for
+    her and beaten you out and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go
+    to her?' You will--I know you will.
+
+    "My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine,
+    but I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul
+    was not there, and I was injuring the face at every touch.
+
+    "No further news of M----, and my heart's blood is cold at the
+    silence. But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?--Your
+    friend's friend,                                           R."
+
+
+                                X
+
+Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma.
+
+    "My Dearest,--Bruno will take this letter, and I will charge him
+    on his soul to deliver it safely into your hands. When you have
+    read it, you will destroy it immediately, both for your sake and
+    my own.
+
+    "From this moment onward I throw away all disguises. The
+    duplicities of love are sweet and touching, but I cannot play
+    hide-and-seek with you any longer.
+
+    "You are right--it is you that I love, and little as I understand
+    and deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and
+    strength. I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is
+    madness to do so, for the obstacles to our union are just as
+    insurmountable as before.
+
+    "It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that
+    separates us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only
+    the inequality of our birth and social conditions, though that is
+    an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a
+    barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death.
+
+    "Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by
+    disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even
+    while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and
+    most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of
+    life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for
+    him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every
+    embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss
+    the chill breath of the tomb.
+
+    "Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her
+    miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of
+    God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things
+    well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable,
+    without hope or dreams.
+
+    "Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here
+    first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt
+    at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported
+    without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them
+    in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of
+    the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death.
+
+    "I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's
+    name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws
+    of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have
+    never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me
+    still, and though the court which condemned me was a military
+    court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I
+    see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in
+    five, ten, twenty years in a cell.
+
+    "What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor
+    consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late,
+    conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging
+    myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel,
+    it would be wrong and wicked.
+
+    "No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or
+    liberty is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament
+    and in public life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter
+    that you have written to me shows plainly that you know it. And
+    when you say your heart's blood runs cold at the thought of what
+    may happen when Minghelli returns from England, you betray the
+    weakness, the natural weakness, the tender and womanly weakness,
+    which justifies me in saying that, as long as we love each other,
+    you and I should never meet again.
+
+    "Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that
+    hangs over me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In
+    every true cause some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the
+    right, for humanity, to lay down all you hold most dear for the
+    sake of the poor and the weak and the down-trodden and God's holy
+    justice--it is a magnificent duty, a privilege! And I am ready. If
+    my death is enough, let me give the last drop of my blood, and be
+    dragged through the last degrees of infamy. Only don't let me drag
+    another after me, and endanger a life that is a thousand times
+    dearer to me than my own.
+
+    "I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is
+    certain; it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be
+    there; _it may come to me to-morrow_, or next day, or next year,
+    but it is coming, I feel it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly
+    away. But if I go on until my beloved is my bride, and my name is
+    stamped all over her, and she has taken up my fate, and we are
+    one, and the world knows no difference, what then? Then death with
+    its sure step will come in to separate us, and after death for me,
+    danger, shame, poverty for you, all the penalties a woman pays for
+    her devotion to a man who is down and done.
+
+    "I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It
+    would turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the
+    grave itself.
+
+    "Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting
+    myself with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams
+    like other men--dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man
+    for his support--the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm
+    and tempest, and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman
+    is equal to a lot like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all
+    women safe from it!
+
+    "Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on
+    reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied
+    at last that the obstacles to our union are permanent and
+    insuperable. The time is come when I am forced to tell you the
+    secrets which I have never before revealed to any human soul. You
+    know them now. _They are in your keeping, and it is enough._
+
+    "Heaven be over you! And when you are reconciled to our
+    separation, and both of us are strong, remember that if you want
+    me I will come, and that as long as I live, as long as I am at
+    liberty, I shall be always ready, always waiting, always near. God
+    bless you, my dear one! Adieu!
+                                                        "DAVID LEONE."
+
+During the afternoon of the following day a letter came by a flying
+messenger on a bicycle. It was written in pencil in large and straggling
+characters.
+
+    "DEAR MR. ROSSI,--Your letter has arrived and been read, and, yes,
+    it has been destroyed, too, according to your wish, although the
+    flames that burnt it burnt my hand also, and scorched my heart as
+    well.
+
+    "No doubt you have done wisely. You know better than I do what is
+    best for both of us, and I yield, I submit. Only--and therefore--I
+    must see you immediately. There is a matter of some consequence on
+    which I wish to speak. It has nothing to do with the subject of
+    your letter--nothing directly, at all events--or yet is it in any
+    way related to the Minghelli mischief-making. So you may receive
+    me without fear. And you will find me with a heart at ease.
+
+    "Didn't I tell you that if you wouldn't come to me I must go to
+    you? Expect me this evening about Ave Maria, and arrange it that I
+    may see you alone.
+                                                             "ROMA V."
+
+
+                                XI
+
+As Ave Maria approached, David Rossi became still more agitated. The sky
+had darkened, but there was no wind; the air was empty, and he listened
+with strained attention for every sound from the staircase and the
+street. At length he heard a cab stop at the door, and a moment
+afterwards a light hurrying footstep in the outer room seemed to beat
+upon his heart.
+
+The door opened and Roma came in quickly, with a scarcely audible
+salutation. He saw her with her golden complexion and her large violet
+eyes, wearing a black hat and an astrachan coat, but his head was going
+round and his pulses were beating violently, and he could not control
+his eyes.
+
+"I have come for a minute only," she said. "You received my letter?"
+
+Rossi bent his head.
+
+"David, I want the fulfilment of your promise."
+
+"What promise?"
+
+"The promise to come to me when I stand in need of you. I need you now.
+My fountain is practically finished, and to-morrow afternoon I am to
+have a reception to exhibit it. Everybody will be there, and I want you
+to be present also."
+
+"Is that necessary?" he asked.
+
+"For my purposes, yes. Don't ask me why. Don't question me at all. Only
+trust me and come."
+
+She was speaking in a firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that
+her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly
+flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that
+before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only
+answered, after a brief pause:
+
+"Very well, I will be there."
+
+"That's all. I might have written, but I was afraid you might object,
+and I wished to make quite certain. Adieu!"
+
+He had only bowed to her as she entered, and now she was going away
+without offering her hand.
+
+"Roma," he said, in a voice that sounded choked.
+
+She stopped but did not speak, and he felt himself growing hot all over.
+
+"I'm relieved--so much relieved--to hear that you agree with what I said
+in my letter."
+
+"The last--in which you wish me to forget you?"
+
+"It is better so--far better. I am one of those who think that if either
+party to a marriage"--he was talking in a constrained way--"entertains
+beforehand any rational doubt about it, he is wiser to withdraw, even at
+the church door, rather than set out on a life-long voyage under doubtful
+auspices."
+
+"Didn't we promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then
+their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself
+and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery.
+
+"Roma," he said again, "if you want me in the future you must write."
+
+Her face clouded over.
+
+"For your own sake, you know...."
+
+"Oh, that! That's nothing at all--nothing now."
+
+"But people are insulting me about you, and...."
+
+"Well--and you?"
+
+The colour rushed to his cheeks and he smote the back of a chair with
+his clenched fist.
+
+"I tell them...."
+
+"I understand," she said, and her eyes began to shine again. But she
+only turned away, saying: "I'm sorry you are angry that I came."
+
+"Angry!" he cried, and at the sound of his voice as he said the word
+their love for each other went thrilling through and through them.
+
+The rain had begun to fall, and it was beating with smart strokes on the
+window panes.
+
+"You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again
+there is something you ought to hear."
+
+She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on
+to her shoulders.
+
+The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was
+bubbling like a lake.
+
+"The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the
+matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that
+you should hear it now."
+
+Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her
+lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy
+hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty.
+
+Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed
+himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is,"
+he thought. "What is the meaning of it?"
+
+He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet.
+
+"Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked.
+
+"That is all I do remember about my father. Why?"
+
+"It is here in this cylinder."
+
+She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again.
+
+"Tell me," she said.
+
+"When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner
+at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The
+legal term of _domicilio coatto_ is from one year to five, but excuses
+were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come
+and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the
+world outside."
+
+"Did he ever hear of me?"
+
+"Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David
+Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised
+David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send
+me a message."
+
+"Was it about...."
+
+"Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out
+by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a
+way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to
+one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet
+at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were
+certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the
+time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the
+cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to."
+
+With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular
+cardboard-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust,"
+and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only--to
+be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him."
+
+The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying
+fire he could see that her face had turned white.
+
+"And this contains my father's voice?" she said.
+
+"His last message."
+
+"He is dead--two years dead--and yet...."
+
+"Can you bear to hear it?"
+
+"Go on," she said, hardly audibly.
+
+He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the
+instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain,
+lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the
+machine began.
+
+He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm.
+
+Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a
+clear, full voice:
+
+"David Leone--your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying
+message...."
+
+The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking
+whisper, Roma said:
+
+"Wait! Give me one moment."
+
+She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a
+ghostly presence.
+
+She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast.
+
+"I am better now. Go on," she said.
+
+The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came
+as before:
+
+"My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled
+faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was
+meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long
+a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was
+the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies,
+nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England _as_
+Volonna--nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma."
+
+The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim.
+
+"Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has
+happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter
+which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the
+police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for
+his treachery."
+
+"The Baron?"
+
+Rossi had stopped the phonograph.
+
+"Can you bear it?" he said.
+
+The pale young face flushed with resolution.
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and
+husky than before.
+
+"After he had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity
+prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all
+hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the
+streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the
+guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to
+the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the
+name of my beloved child."
+
+The hand on Rossi's arm trembled feebly, and slipped down to his own
+hand. It was cold as ice. The voice from the phonograph was growing
+faint.
+
+"She is now in Rome, living in the name that was mine in Italy, amid an
+atmosphere of danger and perhaps of shame. My son, save her from it. The
+man who betrayed the father may betray the daughter also. Take her from
+him. Rescue her. It is my dying prayer."
+
+The hand in Rossi's hand was holding it tightly, and his blood was
+throbbing at his heart.
+
+"David," the voice from the phonograph was failing rapidly, "when this
+shall come to your hands the darkness of the grave will be over me....
+In my great distress of mind I torture myself with many terrors.... Do
+not trifle with my request. But whatever you decide to do ... be gentle
+with the child.... I dream of her every night, and send my heart's heart
+to her on the swelling tides of love.... Adieu, my son. The end is near.
+God be with you in all you do that I did ill or left undone. And if
+death's great sundering does not annihilate the memory of those who
+remain on earth, be sure you have a helper and an advocate in heaven."
+
+The voice ceased, the whirring of the instrument came to an end, and an
+invisible spirit seemed to fade into the air. The pattering of the rain
+had stopped, and there was the crackle of cab wheels on the pavement
+below. Roma had dropped Rossi's hand, and was leaning forward on her
+knees with both hands over her face. After a moment, she wiped her eyes
+with her handkerchief and began to put on her hat.
+
+"How long is it since you received this message?" she said.
+
+"On the night you came here first."
+
+"And when I asked you to come to my house on that ... that useless
+errand, you were thinking of ... of my father's request as well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You have known all this about the Baron for a month, yet you have said
+nothing. _Why_ have you said nothing?"
+
+"You wouldn't have believed me at first, whatever I had said against
+him."
+
+"But afterwards?"
+
+"Afterwards I had another reason."
+
+"Did it concern me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Now that I have to part from you I am compelled to tell you what he
+is."
+
+"But if you had known that all this time he has been trying to use
+somebody against you...."
+
+"That would have made no difference."
+
+She lifted her head, and a look of fire, almost of fierceness, came into
+her face, but she only said, with a little hysterical cry, as if her
+throat were swelling:
+
+"Come to me to-morrow, David! Be sure you come! If you don't come I
+shall never, never forgive you! But you will come! You will! You will!"
+
+And then, as if afraid of breaking out into sobs, she turned quickly and
+hurried away.
+
+"She can never fall into that man's hands now," he thought. And then he
+lit his lamp and sat down to his work, but the light was gone, and the
+night had fallen on him.
+
+
+                                XII
+
+Next morning David Rossi had not yet risen when some one knocked at his
+door. It was Bruno. The great fellow looked nervous and troubled, and he
+spoke in a husky whisper.
+
+"You're not going to Donna Roma's to-day, sir?"
+
+"Why not, Bruno?"
+
+"Have you seen her bust of yourself?"
+
+"Hardly at all."
+
+"Just so. My case, too. She has taken care of that--locking it up every
+night, and getting another caster to cast it. But I saw it the first
+morning after she began, and I know what it is."
+
+"What is it, Bruno?"
+
+"You'll be angry again, sir."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Judas--that's what it is, sir; the study for Judas in the fountain for
+the Municipality."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All?... But it's a caricature, a spiteful caricature! And you sat four
+days and never even looked at it! I tell you it's disgusting, sir.
+Simply disgusting. It's been done on purpose, too. When I think of it I
+forget all you said, and I hate the woman as much as ever. And now she
+is to have a reception, and you are going to it, just to help her to
+have her laugh. Don't go, sir! Take the advice of a fool, and don't
+go!"
+
+"Bruno," said Rossi, lying with his head on his arm, "understand me once
+for all. Donna Roma may have used my head as a study for Judas--I cannot
+deny that since you say it is so--but if she had used it as a study for
+Satan, I would believe in her the same as ever."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes, by God! So now, like a good fellow, go away and leave her alone."
+
+The streets were more than usually full of people when Rossi set out for
+the reception. Thick groups were standing about the hoardings, reading a
+yellow placard, which was still wet with the paste of the bill-sticker.
+It was a proclamation, signed by the Minister of the Interior, and it
+ran:
+
+    "ROMANS,--It having come to the knowledge of the Government that a
+    set of misguided men, the enemies of the throne and of society,
+    known to be in league with the republican, atheist, and anarchist
+    associations of foreign countries, are inciting the people to
+    resist the just laws made by their duly elected Parliament, and
+    sanctioned by their King, thus trying to lead them into outbreaks
+    that would be unworthy of a cultivated and generous race, and
+    would disgrace us in the view of other nations--the Government
+    hereby give notice that they will not allow the laws to be
+    insulted with impunity, and therefore they warn the public against
+    the holding of all such mass meetings in public buildings,
+    squares, and streets, as may lead to the possibility of serious
+    disturbances."
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+The little Piazza of Trinità de' Monti was full of carriages, and Roma's
+rooms were thronged. David Rossi entered with the calmness of a man who
+is accustomed to personal observation, but Roma met him with an almost
+extravagant salutation.
+
+"Ah, you have come at last," she said in a voice that was intended to be
+heard by all. And then, in a low tone, she added, "Stay near me, and
+don't go until I say you may."
+
+Her face had the expression that had puzzled him the day before, but
+with the flushed cheeks, the firm mouth and the shining eyes, there was
+now a strange look of excitement, almost of hysteria.
+
+The company was divided into four main groups. The first of them
+consisted of Roma's aunt, powdered and perfumed, propped up with
+cushions on an invalid chair, and receiving the guests by the door, with
+the Baron Bonelli, silent and dignified, but smiling his icy smile, by
+her side. A second group consisted of Don Camillo and some ladies of
+fashion, who stood by the window and made little half-smothered trills
+of laughter. The third group included Lena and Olga, the journalists,
+with Madame Sella, the modiste; and the fourth group was made up of the
+English and American Ambassadors, Count Mario, and some other
+diplomatists.
+
+The conversation was at first interrupted by the little pauses that
+follow fresh arrivals; and after it had settled down to the dull buzz of
+a beehive, when the old brood and her queen are being turned out, it
+consisted merely of hints, giving the impression of something in the air
+that was scandalous and amusing, but could not be talked about.
+
+"Have you heard that" ... "Is it true that" ... "No?" "Can it be
+possible?" "How delicious!" and then inaudible questions and low
+replies, with tittering, tapping of fans, and insinuating glances.
+
+But Roma seemed to hear everything that was said about her, and
+constantly broke in upon a whispered conversation with disconcerting
+openness.
+
+"That man here!" said one of the journalists at Rossi's entrance. "In
+the same room with the Prime Minister!" said another. "After that
+disgraceful scene in the House, too!"
+
+"I hear that he was abominably rude to the Baron the other day," said
+Madame Sella.
+
+"Rude? He has blundered shockingly, and offended everybody. They tell me
+the Vatican is now up in arms against him, and is going to denounce him
+and all his ways."
+
+"No wonder! He has made himself thoroughly disagreeable, and I'm only
+surprised that the Prime Minister...."
+
+"Oh, leave the Prime Minister alone. He has something up his sleeve....
+Haven't you heard why we are invited here to-day? No? Not heard that...."
+
+"Really! So that explains ... I see, I see!" and then more tittering and
+tapping of fans.
+
+"Certainly, he is an extraordinary man, and one of the first statesmen
+in Europe."
+
+"It's so unselfish of you to say that," said Roma, flashing round
+suddenly, "for the Minister has never been a friend of journalists, and
+I've heard him say that there wasn't one of them who wouldn't sell his
+mother's honour if he thought he could make a sensation."
+
+"Love?" said the voice of Don Camillo in the silence that followed
+Roma's remark. "What has marriage to do with love except to spoil it?"
+And then, amidst laughter, and the playful looks of the ladies by whom
+he was surrounded, he gave a gay picture of his own poverty, and the
+necessity of marrying to retrieve his fortunes.
+
+"What would you have? Look at my position! A great name, as ancient as
+history, and no income. A gorgeous palace, as old as the pyramids, and
+no cook!"
+
+"Don't be so conceited about your poverty, Gi-gi," said Roma. "Some of
+the Roman ladies are as poor as the men. As for me, Madame Sella could
+sell up every stick in my house to-morrow, and if the Municipality
+should throw up my fountain...."
+
+"Senator Palomba," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door.
+
+The suave, oily little Mayor came in, twinkling his eyes and saying:
+
+"Did I hear my name as I entered?"
+
+"I was saying," said Roma, "that if the Municipality should throw up my
+fountain...."
+
+The little man made an amusing gesture, and the constrained silence was
+broken by some awkward laughter.
+
+"Roma," said the testy voice of the Countess, "I think I've done my duty
+by you, and now the Baron will take me back. Natalina! Where's
+Natalina?"
+
+But half-a-dozen hands took hold of the invalid chair, and the Baron
+followed it into the bedroom.
+
+"Wonderful man!" "Wonderful!" whispered various voices as the Minister's
+smile disappeared through the door.
+
+The conversation had begun to languish when the Princess Bellini
+arrived, and then suddenly it became lively and general.
+
+"I'm late, but do you know, my dear," she said, kissing Roma on both
+cheeks, "I've been nearly torn to pieces in coming. My carriage had to
+plough its way through crowds of people."
+
+"Crowds?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, and the streets are nearly impassable. Another
+demonstration, I suppose! The poor must always be demonstrating."
+
+"Ah! yes," said Don Camillo. "Haven't you heard the news, Roma?"
+
+"I've been working all night and all day, and I have heard nothing,"
+said Roma.
+
+"Well, to prevent a recurrence of the disgraceful scene of yesterday,
+the King has promulgated the Public Security Act by royal decree, and
+the wonderful crisis is at an end."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Now the Prime Minister is master of the situation, and has begun by
+proclaiming the mass meeting which was to have been held in the
+Coliseum."
+
+"Good thing too," said Count Mario. "We've heard enough of liberal
+institutions lately."
+
+"And of the scandalous speeches of professional agitators," said Madame
+Sella.
+
+"And of the liberty of the press," said Senator Palomba. And then the
+effeminate old dandy, the fashionable dressmaker, and the oily little
+Mayor exchanged significant nods.
+
+"Wait! Only wait!" said Roma, in a low voice, to Rossi, who was standing
+in silence by her side.
+
+"Unhappy Italy!" said the American Ambassador. "With the largest array
+of titled nobility and the largest army of beggars. The one class
+sipping iced drinks in the piazzas during the playing of music, and the
+other class marching through the streets and conspiring against
+society."
+
+"You judge us from a foreign standpoint, dear friend," said Don Camillo,
+"and forget our love of a pageant. The Princess says our poor are always
+demonstrating. We are all always demonstrating. Our favourite
+demonstration is a funeral, with drums beating and banners waving. If we
+cannot have a funeral we have a wedding, with flowers and favours and
+floods of tears. And when we cannot have either, we put up with a
+revolution, and let our Radical orators tell us of the wickedness of
+taxing the people's bread."
+
+"Always their bread," said the Princess, with a laugh.
+
+"In America, dear General, you are so tragically sincere, but in Italy
+we are a race of actors. The King, the Parliament, the Pope himself...."
+
+"Shocking!" said the little Princess. "But if you had said as much of
+our professional agitators...."
+
+"Oh, they are the most accomplished and successful actors, Princess.
+But we are all actors in Italy, from the greatest to the least, and the
+'curtain' is to him who can score off everybody else."
+
+"So," began the American, "to be Prime Minister in Rome...."
+
+"Is to be the chief actor in Europe, and his leading part is that in
+which he puts an end to his adversary amidst a burst of inextinguishable
+laughter."
+
+"What is he driving at?" said the English to the American Ambassador.
+
+"Don't you know? Haven't you heard what is coming?" And then some
+further whispering.
+
+"Wait, only wait!" said Roma.
+
+"Gi-gi," said the Princess, "how stupid you are! You're all wrong about
+Roma. Look at her now. To think that men can be so blind! And the Baron
+is no better than the rest of you. He's too proud to believe what I tell
+him, but he'll learn the truth some day. He is here, of course? In the
+Countess's room, isn't he?... How do you like my dress?"
+
+"It's perfect."
+
+"Really? The black and the blue make a charming effect, don't they? They
+are the Baron's favourite colours. How agitated our hostess is! She
+seems to have all the world here. When are we to see the wonderful work?
+What's she waiting for? Ah, there's the Baron coming out at last!"
+
+"They're all here, aren't they?" said Roma, looking round with flushed
+cheeks and flaming eyes at the jangling, slandering crew, who had
+insulted and degraded David Rossi.
+
+"Take care," he answered, but she only threw up her head and laughed.
+
+Then the company went down the circular iron staircase to the studio.
+Roma walked first with her rapid step, talking nervously and laughing
+frequently.
+
+The fountain stood in the middle of the floor, and the guests gathered
+about it.
+
+"Superb!" they exclaimed one after another. "Superb!" "Superb!"
+
+The little Mayor was especially enthusiastic. He stood near the Baron,
+and holding up both hands he cried:
+
+"Marvellous! Miraculous! Fit to take its place beside the masterpieces
+of old Rome!"
+
+"But surely this is 'Hamlet' without the prince," said the Baron. "You
+set out to make a fountain representing Christ and His twelve apostles,
+and the only figure you leave unfinished is Christ Himself."
+
+He pointed to the central figure above the dish, which was merely shaped
+out and indicated.
+
+"Not only one, your Excellency," said Don Camillo. "Here is another
+unfinished figure--intended for Judas, apparently."
+
+"I left them to the last on purpose," said Roma. "They were so
+important, and so difficult. But I have studies for both of them in the
+boudoir, and you shall give me your advice and opinion."
+
+"The saint and the satyr, the God and the devil, the betrayed and the
+betrayer--what subjects for the chisel of the artist!" said Don Camillo.
+
+"Just so," said the Mayor. "She must do the one with all the emotions of
+love, and the other with all the faculties of hate."
+
+"Not that art," said Don Camillo, "has anything to do with life--that is
+to say, real life...."
+
+"Why not?" said Roma sharply. "The artist has to live in the world, and
+he isn't blind. Therefore, why shouldn't he describe what he sees around
+him?"
+
+"But is that art? If so, the artist is at liberty to give his views on
+religion and politics, and by the medium of his art he may even express
+his private feelings--return insults and wreak revenge."
+
+"Certainly he may," said Roma; "the greatest artists have often done
+so." Saying this, she led the way upstairs, and the others followed with
+a chorus of hypocritical approval.
+
+"It's only human, to say the least." "Of course it is!" "If she's a
+woman and can't speak out, or fight duels, it's a lady-like way, at all
+events." And then further tittering, tapping of fans, and significant
+nods at Rossi when his back was turned.
+
+Two busts stood on pedestals in the boudoir. One of them was covered
+with a damp cloth, the other with a muslin veil. Going up to the latter
+first, Roma said, with a slightly quavering voice:
+
+"It was so difficult to do justice to the Christ that I am almost sorry
+I made the attempt. But it came easier when I began to think of some one
+who was being reviled and humiliated and degraded because he was poor
+and wasn't ashamed of it, and who was always standing up for the weak
+and the down-trodden, and never returning anybody's insult, however
+shameful and false and wicked, because he wasn't thinking of himself at
+all. So I got the best model I could in real life, and this is the
+result."
+
+With that she pulled off the muslin veil and revealed the sculptured
+head of David Rossi, in a snow-white plaster cast. The features
+expressed pure nobility, and every touch was a touch of sympathy and
+love.
+
+A moment of chilling silence was followed by an under-breath of gossip.
+"Who is it?" "Christ, of course." "Oh, certainly, but it reminds me of
+some one." "Who can it be?" "The Pope?" "Why, no; don't you see who it
+is?" "Is it really?" "How shameful!" "How blasphemous!"
+
+Roma stood looking on with a face lighted up by two flaming eyes. "I'm
+afraid you don't think I've done justice to my model," she said. "That's
+quite true. But perhaps my Judas will please you better," and she
+stepped up to the bust that was covered by the wet cloth.
+
+"I found this a difficult subject also, and it was not until yesterday
+evening that I felt able to begin on it."
+
+Then, with a hand that trembled visibly, she took from the wall the
+portrait of her father, and offering it to the Minister, she said:
+
+"Some one told me a story of duplicity and treachery--it was about this
+poor old gentleman, Baron--and then I knew what sort of person it was
+who betrayed his friend and master for thirty pieces of silver, and
+listened to the hypocrisy, and flattery, and lying of the miserable
+group of parasites who crowded round him because he was a traitor, and
+because he kept the purse."
+
+With that she threw off the damp cloth, and revealed the clay model of a
+head. The face was unmistakable, but it expressed every
+baseness--cunning, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality.
+
+The silence was freezing, and the company began to turn away, and to
+mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the
+Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A
+scarecrow!"
+
+Roma watched them for a moment, and then said: "You don't like my Judas?
+Neither do I. You're right--it _is_ disgusting."
+
+And taking up in both hands a piece of thin wire, she cut the clay
+across, and the upper part of it fell face downward with a thud on to
+the floor.
+
+The Princess, who stood by the side of the Baron, offered him her
+sympathy, and he answered in his icy smile:
+
+"But these artists are all slightly insane, you know. That is an evil
+which must be patiently endured, without noticing too much the ludicrous
+side of it."
+
+Then, stepping up to Roma, and handing back the portrait, the Baron
+said, with a slight frown:
+
+"I must thank you for a very amusing afternoon, and bid you good-day."
+
+The others looked after him, and interpreted his departure according to
+their own feelings. "He is done with her," they whispered. "He'll pay
+her out for this." And without more ado they began to follow him.
+
+Roma, flushed and excited, bowed to them as they went out one by one,
+with a politeness that was demonstrative to the point of caricature. She
+was saying farewell to them for ever, and her face was lighted up with a
+look of triumphant joy. They tried to bear themselves bravely as they
+passed her, but her blazing eyes and sweeping curtseys made them feel as
+if they were being turned out of the house.
+
+When they were all gone, she shut the door with a bang, and then turning
+to David Rossi, who alone remained, she burst into a flood of hysterical
+tears, and threw herself on to her knees at his feet.
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+"David!" she cried.
+
+"Don't do that. Get up," he answered.
+
+His thoughts were in a whirl. He had been standing aside, trembling for
+Roma as he had never trembled for himself in the hottest moments of his
+public life. And now he was alone with her, and his blood was beating in
+his breast in stabs.
+
+"Haven't I done enough?" she cried. "You taunted me with my wealth, but
+I am as poor as you are now. Every penny I had in the world came from
+the Baron. He allowed me to use part of the revenues of my father's
+estates, but the income was under his control, and now he will stop it
+altogether. I am in debt. I have always been in debt. That was my
+benefactor's way of reminding me of my dependence on his bounty. And now
+all _I_ have will be sold to satisfy my creditors, and I shall be turned
+out homeless."
+
+"Roma...." he began, but her tears and passion bore down everything.
+
+"House, furniture, presents, carriages, horses, everything will go soon,
+and I shall have nothing whatever! No matter! You said a woman loved
+ease and wealth and luxury. Is that all a woman loves? Is there nothing
+else in the world for any of us? Aren't you satisfied with me at last?"
+
+"Roma," he answered, breathing hard, "don't talk like that. I cannot
+bear it."
+
+But she did not listen. "You taunted me with being a woman," she said
+through a fresh burst of tears. "A woman was incapable of friendship and
+sacrifices. She was intended to be a man's plaything. Do you think I
+want to be my husband's mistress? I want to be his wife, to share his
+fate, whatever it may be, for good or bad, for better or worse."
+
+"For God's sake, Roma!" he cried. But she broke in on him again.
+
+"You taunted me with the dangers you had to go through, as if a woman
+must needs be an impediment to her husband, and try to keep him back. Do
+you think I want my husband to do nothing? If he were content with that
+he would not be the man I had loved, and I should despise him and leave
+him."
+
+"Roma!..."
+
+"Then _you_ taunted me with the death that hangs over you. When you were
+gone I should be left to the mercy of the world. But that can never
+happen. Never! Do you think a woman can outlive the man she loves as I
+love you?... There! I've said it. You've shamed me into it."
+
+He could not speak now. His words were choking in his throat, and she
+went on in a torrent of tears:
+
+"The death that threatens you comes from no fault of yours, but only
+from your fidelity to my father. Therefore I have a right to share it,
+and I will not live when you are dead."
+
+"If I give way now," he thought, "all is over."
+
+And clenching his hands behind his back to keep himself from throwing
+his arms around her, he began in a low voice:
+
+"Roma, you have broken your promise to me."
+
+"I _don't_ care," she interrupted. "I would break ten thousand
+promises. I deceived you. I confess it. I pretended to be reconciled to
+your will, and I was not reconciled. I wanted you to see me strip myself
+of all I had, that you might have no answer and excuse. Well, you have
+seen me do it, and now ... what are you going to do _now_?"
+
+"Roma," he began again, trembling all over, "there have been two men in
+me all this time, and one of them has been trying to protect you from
+the world and from yourself, while the other ... the other has been
+wanting you to despise all his objections, and trample them under your
+feet.... If I could only believe that you know all you are doing, all
+the risk you are running, and the fate you are willing to share ... but
+no, it is impossible."
+
+"David," she cried, "you love me! If you didn't love me, I should know
+it now--at this moment. But I am braver than you are...."
+
+"Let me go. I cannot answer for myself."
+
+"I am braver than you are, for I have not only stripped myself of all my
+possessions, and of all my friends ... I have even compromised myself
+again and again, and been daring and audacious, and rude to everybody
+for your sake.... I, a woman ... while you, a man ... you are afraid ...
+yes, afraid ... you are a coward--that's it, a coward!... No, no, no!
+What am I saying?... David Leone!"
+
+And with a cry of passion and remorse she flung both arms about his
+neck.
+
+He had stood, during this fierce struggle of love and pain, holding
+himself in until his throbbing nerves could bear the strain no longer.
+
+"Come to me, then--come to me," he cried, and at the moment when she
+threw herself upon him he stretched out his arms to receive her.
+
+"You do love me?" she said.
+
+"Indeed, yes! And you?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!"
+
+He clasped her in his arms with redoubled ardour, and pressed her to his
+breast and kissed her. The love so long pent up was bursting out like a
+liberated cataract that sweeps the snow and the ice before it.
+
+All at once the girl who had been so brave in the great battle of her
+love became weak and womanish in the moment of her victory. Under the
+warmth of his tenderness she dropped her head on to his breast to
+conceal her face in her shame.
+
+"You will never think the worse of me?" she faltered.
+
+"The worse of you! For loving me?"
+
+"For telling you so and forcing myself into your life?"
+
+"My darling, no!"
+
+She lifted her head, and he kissed away the tears that were shining in
+her eyes.
+
+"But tell me," he said, "are you sure--quite sure? Do you know what is
+before you?"
+
+"I only know I love you."
+
+He folded her afresh in his strong embrace, and kissed her head as it
+lay on his breast.
+
+"Think again," he said. "A man's enemies can be merciless. They may
+watch you and put pressure upon you, and even humiliate you for my
+sake."
+
+"No matter, I am not afraid," she answered, and again he tightened his
+arms about her in a passionate embrace, and covered her hair and her
+neck and her hands and her finger-tips with kisses.
+
+They did not speak for a long time after that. There was no need for
+words. He was conquered, yet he was conqueror, and she was happy and at
+peace. The long fight was over, and everything was well.
+
+He put her to sit in a chair, and sat himself on the arm of it, with his
+face to her face, and her arms still round his neck. It was like a
+dream. She could scarcely believe it. He whom she had looked up to with
+adoration was caressing her. She was like a child in her joy, blushing
+and half afraid.
+
+He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead. She threw back
+her head that she might put her lips to his forehead in return, and he
+kissed her full, round throat.
+
+Then they exchanged rings as the sign of their eternal union. When she
+put her diamond ring, set in gold, on to his finger, he looked grave and
+even sad; but when he put his plain silver one on to hers, she lifted up
+her glorified hand to the light, and kissed and kissed it.
+
+They began to talk in low tones, as if some one had been listening. It
+was the whispering of their hearts, for the angel of happy love has no
+voice louder than a whisper. She asked him to say again that he loved
+her, but as soon as he began to say it she stopped his mouth with a
+kiss.
+
+They talked of their love. She was sure she had loved him before he
+loved her, and when he said that he had loved her always, she protested
+in that case he did not love her at all.
+
+They rose at length to close the windows, and side by side, his arm
+about her waist, her head leaning lightly on his shoulder, they stood
+for a moment looking out. The mother of cities lay below in its
+lightsome whiteness, and over the ridge of its encircling hills the glow
+of the departing sun was rising in vaporous tints of amber and crimson
+into the transparent blue, with the dome of St. Peter's, like a balloon
+ready to rise into a celestial sky.
+
+"A storm is coming," he said, looking at the colours in the sunset.
+
+"It has come and gone," she whispered, and then his arm folded closer
+about her waist.
+
+It took him half-an-hour to say adieu. After the last kiss and the last
+handshake, their arms would stretch out to the utmost limit, and then
+close again for another and another and yet another embrace.
+
+
+                                XV
+
+When at length Rossi was gone, Roma ran into her bedroom to look at her
+face in the glass. The golden complexion was heightened by a bright spot
+on either cheek, and a teardrop was glistening in the corner of each of
+her eyes.
+
+She went back to the boudoir. David Rossi was no longer there, but the
+room seemed to be full of his presence. She sat in the chair again, and
+again she stood by the window. At length she opened her desk and wrote a
+letter:--
+
+    "DEAREST,--You are only half-an-hour gone, and here I am sending
+    this letter after you, like a handkerchief you had forgotten. I
+    have one or two things to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple
+    things, but I cannot think of them sensibly for joy of the
+    certainty that you love me. Of course I knew it all the time, but
+    I couldn't be at ease until I had heard it from your own lips; and
+    now I feel almost afraid of my great happiness. How wonderful it
+    seems! And, like all events that are long expected, how suddenly
+    it has happened in the end. To think that a month ago--only a
+    little month--you and I were both in Rome, within a mile of each
+    other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed
+    by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it!
+
+    "Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said
+    so savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your
+    anxiety about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of
+    the women who think that a wife should further a man's aims in
+    life if she can; and if she can't do that, she should stand aside
+    and not impede him. So go on, dear heart, without fear for me. I
+    will take care of myself, whatever occurs. Don't let one hour or
+    one act of your life be troubled by the thought of what would
+    happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am your beloved, but I
+    am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow where my captain
+    calls:
+
+        "'Teach me, only teach, Love!
+          As I ought
+        I will speak thy speech, Love!
+          Think thy thought.'
+
+    "And if I was not half afraid that you would think it bolder than
+    is modest in your bride to be, I would go on with the next lines
+    of my sweet quotation.
+
+    "Another thing. You went away without saying you forgive me for
+    the wicked duplicity I practised upon you. It was very wrong, I
+    suppose, and yet for my life I cannot get up any real contrition
+    on the subject. There's always some duplicity in a woman. It is
+    the badge of every daughter of Eve, and it must come out
+    somewhere. In my case it came out in loving you to all the lengths
+    and ends of love, and drawing you on to loving me. I ought to be
+    ashamed, but I'm not--I'm glad.
+
+    "I _did_ love first, and, of course, I knew you from the
+    beginning, and when you wrote about being in love with some one
+    else, I knew quite well you meant me. But it was so delicious to
+    pretend not to know, to come near and then to sheer off again, to
+    touch and then to fly, to tempt you and then to run away, until a
+    strong tide rushed at me and overwhelmed me, and I was swooning in
+    your arms at last.
+
+    "Dearest, don't think I made light of the obstacles you urged
+    against our union. I knew all the time that the risks of marriage
+    were serious, though perhaps I am not in a position even yet to
+    realise how serious they may be. Only I knew also that the dangers
+    were greater still if we kept apart, and that gave me courage to
+    be bold and to defy conventions.
+
+    "Which brings me to my last point, and please prepare to be
+    serious, and bend your brow to that terrible furrow which comes
+    when you are fearfully in earnest. What you said of your enemies
+    being merciless, and perhaps watching me and putting pressure upon
+    me to injure you, is only too imminent a danger. The truth is that
+    I have all along known more than I had courage to tell, but I was
+    hoping you would understand, and now I tremble to think how I have
+    suffered myself to be silent.
+
+    "The Minghelli matter is an alarming affair, for I have reason to
+    believe that the man has lit on the name you bore in England, and
+    that when he returns to Rome he will try to fix it upon you by
+    means of me. This is fearful to contemplate, and my heart quakes
+    to think of it. But happily there is a way to checkmate such a
+    devilish design, and it is within your own power to save me from
+    life-long remorse.
+
+    "I don't think the laws of any civilized country compel a man's
+    _wife_ to compromise him, and thinking of this gives me courage to
+    be unmaidenly and say: Don't let it be long, dearest! I could die
+    to bring it to pass in a moment. With all my great, great
+    happiness, I shall have the heartache until it is done, and only
+    when it is over shall I begin to live.
+
+    "There! You didn't know what a forward hussy I could be if I
+    tried, and really I have been surprised at myself since I began to
+    be in love with you. For weeks and weeks I have been thin and
+    haggard and ugly, and only to-day I begin to be a little
+    beautiful. I couldn't be anything but beautiful to-day, and I've
+    been running to the glass to look at myself, as the only way to
+    understand why you love me at all. And I'm glad--so glad for your
+    sake.
+
+    "Good-bye, dearest! You cannot come to-morrow or the next day, and
+    what a lot I shall have to live before I see you again! Shall I
+    look older? No, for thinking of you makes me feel younger and
+    younger every minute. How old are you? Thirty-four? I'm twenty-four
+    and a half, and that is just right, but if you think I ought to be
+    nearer your age I'll wear a bonnet and fasten it with a bow.
+
+    "ROMA.
+
+    "P.S.--Don't delay the momentous matter. Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+She dined alone that night that she might be undisturbed in her thoughts
+of Rossi. Ordinary existence had almost disappeared from her
+consciousness, and every time Felice spoke as he served the dishes his
+voice seemed to come from far away.
+
+She went to bed early, but it was late before she slept. For a long time
+she lay awake to think over all that had happened, and, when the night
+was far gone, and she tried to fall asleep in order to dream of it also,
+she could not do so for sheer delight of the prospect. But at last amid
+the gathering clouds of sleep she said "Good-night," with the ghost of a
+kiss, and slept until morning.
+
+When she awoke it was late, and the sun was shining into the room. She
+lay on her back and stretched out both arms for sheer sweetness of the
+sensation of health and love. Everything was well, and she was very
+happy. Thinking of yesterday, she was even sorry for the Baron, and told
+herself she had been too bold and daring.
+
+But that thought was gone in a moment. Body and soul were suffused with
+joy, and she leapt out of bed with a spring.
+
+A moment afterwards Natalina came with a letter. It was from the Baron
+himself, and it was dated the day before:--
+
+    "Minghelli has returned from London, and therefore I must see you
+    to-morrow at eleven o'clock. Be so good as to be at home, and give
+    orders that for half-an-hour at least we shall be quite undisturbed."
+
+Then the sun went out, the air grew dull, and darkness fell over all the
+world.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                   PART FIVE--THE PRIME MINISTER
+
+
+                                I
+
+It was Sunday. The storm threatened by the sunset of the day before had
+not yet come, but the sun was struggling through a veil of clouds, and a
+black ridge lay over the horizon.
+
+At eleven o'clock to the moment the Baron arrived. As usual, he was
+faultlessly dressed, and he looked cool and tranquil.
+
+"I am to show you into this room, Excellency," said Felice, leading the
+way to the boudoir.
+
+"Thanks!... Anything to tell me, Felice?"
+
+"Nothing, Excellency," said Felice. Then, pointing to the plaster bust
+on its pedestal in the corner, he added in a lower tone, "_He_ remained
+last night after the others had gone, and...."
+
+But at that moment there was the rustle of a woman's dress outside, and,
+interrupting Felice, the Baron said in a high-pitched voice:
+
+"Certainly; and please tell the Countess I shall not forget to look in
+upon her before I go."
+
+Roma came into the room with a gloomy and firm-set face. The smile that
+seemed always to play about her mouth and eyes had given place to a
+slight frown and an air of defiance. But the Baron saw in a moment that
+behind the lips so sternly set, and the straight look of the eyes, there
+was a frightened expression which she was trying to conceal. He greeted
+her with his accustomed calm and naturalness, kissed her hand, offered
+her the flower from his button-hole, put her to sit in the arm-chair
+with its back to the window, took his own seat on the couch in front of
+it, and leisurely drew off his spotless gloves.
+
+Not a word about the scene of yesterday, not a look of pain or reproof.
+Only a few casual pleasantries, and then a quiet gliding into the
+business of his visit.
+
+"What an age since we were here alone before! And what changes you've
+made! Your pretty nest is like a cell! Well, I've obeyed your mandate,
+you see. I've stayed away for a month. It was hard to do--bitterly
+hard--and many a time I've told myself it was imprudent. But you were a
+woman. You were inexorable. I was forced to submit. And now, what have
+you got to tell me?"
+
+"Nothing," she answered, looking straight before her.
+
+"Nothing whatever?"
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+She did not move or turn her face, and he sat for a moment watching her.
+Then he rose, and began to walk about the room.
+
+"Let us understand each other, my child," he said gently. "Will you
+forgive me if I recall facts that are familiar?"
+
+She did not answer, but looked fixedly into the fire, while he leaned on
+the stove and stood face to face with her.
+
+"A month ago, a certain Deputy, an obstructionist politician, who has
+for years made the task of government difficult, uttered a seditious
+speech, and brought himself within the power of the law. In that speech
+he also attacked me, and--shall I say?--grossly slandered you.
+Parliament was not in session, and I was able to order his arrest. In
+due course, he would have been punished, perhaps by imprisonment,
+perhaps by banishment, but you thought it prudent to intervene. You
+urged reasons of policy which were wise and far-seeing. I yielded, and,
+to the bewilderment of my officials, I ordered the Deputy's release. But
+he was not therefore to escape. You undertook his punishment. In a
+subtle and more effectual way, you were to wipe out the injury he had
+done, and requite him for his offence. The man was a mystery--you were
+to find out all about him. He was suspected of intrigue--you were to
+discover his conspiracies. Within a month, you were to deliver him into
+my hands, and I was to know _the inmost secrets of his soul_."
+
+It was with difficulty that Roma maintained her calmness while the Baron
+was speaking, but she only shook a stray lock of hair from her forehead,
+and sat silent.
+
+"Well, the month is over. I have given you every opportunity to deal
+with our friend as you thought best. Have you found out anything about
+him?"
+
+She put on a bold front and answered, "No."
+
+"So your effort has failed?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Then you are likely to give up your plan of punishing the man for
+defaming and degrading you?"
+
+"I have given it up already."
+
+"Strange! Very strange! Very unfortunate also, for we are at this moment
+at a crisis when it is doubly important to the Government to possess the
+information you set out to find. Still, your idea was a good one, and I
+can never be sufficiently grateful to you for suggesting it. And
+although _your_ efforts have failed, you need not be uneasy. You have
+given us the clues by which _our_ efforts are succeeding, and you shall
+yet punish the man who insulted you so publicly and so grossly."
+
+"How is it possible for me to punish him?"
+
+"By identifying David Rossi as one who was condemned in contumacy for
+high treason sixteen years ago."
+
+"That is ridiculous," she said. "Sixteen months ago I had never heard
+the name of David Rossi."
+
+The Baron stooped a little and said:
+
+"Had you ever heard the name of David Leone?"
+
+She dropped back in her chair, and again looked straight before her.
+
+"Come, come, my child," said the Baron caressingly, and moving across
+the room to look out of the window, he tapped her lightly on the
+shoulder:
+
+"I told you that Minghelli had returned from London."
+
+"That forger!" she said hoarsely.
+
+"No doubt! One who spends his life ferreting out crime is apt to have
+the soul of a criminal. But civilisation needs its scavengers, and it
+was a happy thought of yours to think of this one. Indeed, everything
+we've done has been done on your initiative, and when our friend is
+finally brought to justice, the deed will really be due to you, and you
+alone."
+
+The defiant look was disappearing from her eyes, and she rose with an
+expression of pain.
+
+"Why do you torture me like this?" she said. "After what has happened,
+isn't it quite plain that I am his friend, and not his enemy?"
+
+"Perhaps," said the Baron. His face assumed a death-like rigidity. "Sit
+down and listen to me."
+
+She sat down, and he returned to his place by the stove.
+
+"I say you gave us the clues we have worked upon. Those clues were
+three. First, that David Rossi knew the life-story of Doctor Roselli in
+London. Second, that he knew the story of Doctor Roselli's daughter,
+Roma Roselli. Third, that he was for a time a waiter at the Grand Hotel
+in Rome. Two minor clues came independently, that David Rossi was once a
+stable-boy in New York, that his mother drowned herself in the Tiber,
+and he was brought up in a Foundling. By these five clues the
+authorities have discovered eight facts. Permit me to recite them."
+
+Leaning his elbow on the stove and opening his hand, the Baron ticked
+off the facts one by one on his fingers.
+
+"Fact one. Some thirty odd years ago a woman carrying a child presented
+herself at the office in Rome for the registry of births. She gave the
+name of Leonora Leone, and wished her child, a boy, to be registered as
+David Leone. But the officer in attendance discovered that the woman's
+name was Leonora Rossi, and that she had been married according to the
+religious rites of the Church, but not according to the civil
+regulations of the State. The child was therefore registered as David
+Rossi, son of Leonora Rossi and of a father unknown."
+
+"Shameful!" cried Roma. "Shameful! shameful!"
+
+"Fact two," said the Baron, without the change of a tone. "One night a
+little later the body of a woman found drowned in the Tiber was
+recognised as the body of Leonora Rossi, and buried in the pauper part
+of the Campo Verano under that name. The same night a child was placed
+by an unknown hand in the _rota_ of Santo Spirito, with a paper attached
+to its wrist, giving particulars of its baptism and its name. The name
+given was David Leone."
+
+The Baron ticked off the third of his fingers and continued:
+
+"Fact three. Fourteen years afterwards a boy named David Leone, fourteen
+years of age, was living in the house of an Italian exile in London. The
+exile was a Roman prince under the incognito of Doctor Roselli; his
+family consisted of his wife and one child, a daughter named Roma, four
+years of age. David Leone had been adopted by Doctor Roselli, who had
+picked him up in the street."
+
+Roma covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Fact four. Four years later a conspiracy to assassinate the King of
+Italy was discovered at Milan. The chief conspirator turned out to be,
+unfortunately, the English exile known as Doctor Roselli. By the good
+offices of a kinsman, jealous of the honour of his true family name, he
+was not brought to public trial, but deported by one of the means
+adopted by all Governments when secrecy or safety is in question. But
+his confederates and correspondents were shown less favour, and one of
+them, still in England, being tried in contumacy by a military court
+which sat during a state of siege, was condemned for high treason to the
+military punishment of death. The name of that confederate and
+correspondent was David Leone."
+
+Roma's slippered foot was beating the floor fast, but the Baron went on
+in his cool and tranquil tone.
+
+"Fact five. Our extradition treaty excluded the delivery of political
+offenders, but after representations from Italy, David Leone left
+England. He went to America. There he was first employed in the stables
+of the Tramway Company in New York, and lived in the Italian quarter of
+the city, but afterwards he rose out of his poverty and low position and
+became a journalist. In that character he attracted attention by a new
+political and religious propaganda. Jesus Christ was lawgiver for the
+nation as well as for the individual, and the redemption of the world
+was to be brought to pass by a constitution based on the precepts of the
+Lord's Prayer. The creed was sufficiently sentimental to be seized upon
+by fanatics in that country of countless faiths, but it cut at the roots
+of order, of poverty, even of patriotism, and being interpreted into
+action, seemed likely to lead to riot."
+
+The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache, and said, with a smile,
+"David Leone disappeared from New York. From that time forward no trace
+of him has yet been found. He was as much gone as if he had ceased to
+exist. _David Leone was dead._"
+
+Roma's hands had come down from her face, and she was picking at the
+buttons of her blouse with twitching fingers.
+
+"Fact six," said the Baron, ticking off the thumb of his other hand.
+"Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David
+Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving
+the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a
+baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor
+Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to Italy. They
+told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried."
+
+Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on
+a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster.
+
+"Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the
+Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer,
+propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New
+York, and exciting the same interest."
+
+"Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David
+Rossi is David Rossi--there is no more in it than that."
+
+The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and
+said, in a slightly exalted tone:
+
+"Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the
+Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the
+woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The
+pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but
+the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been
+buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his
+knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At
+length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away."
+
+Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her
+chair.
+
+"That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it
+worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the
+mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?--David
+Rossi! Who was David Rossi?--David Leone! The circle had closed around
+him--the evidence was complete."
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+Roma had leapt up and was moving about the room. Her lips were
+compressed with scorn, her eyes were flashing, and she burst into a
+torrent of words, which spluttered out of her quivering lips.
+
+"Oh, to think of it! To think of it! You are right! The man who spends
+his life looking for crime must have the soul of a criminal! He has no
+conscience, no humanity, no mercy, no pity. And when he has tracked and
+dogged a man to his mother's grave--_his mother's grave_--he can dine,
+he can laugh, he can go to the theatre! Oh, I hate you! There, I've
+told you! Now, do with me as you please!"
+
+The death-like rigidity in the Baron's face decomposed into an expression
+of intense pain, but he only passed his hand over his brow, and said,
+after a moment of silence:
+
+"My child, you are not only offending me, you are offending the theory
+and principle of Justice. Justice has nothing to do with pity. In the
+vocabulary of Justice there is but one word--duty. Duty called upon me
+to fix this man's name upon him, that his obstructions, his slanders,
+and his evil influence might be at an end. And now Justice calls upon
+you to do the same."
+
+The Baron leaned against the stove, and spoke in a calm voice, while
+Roma in her agitation continued to walk about the room.
+
+"Being a Deputy, and Parliament being in session, David Rossi can only
+be arrested by the authorisation of the Chamber. In order to obtain that
+authorisation, it is necessary that the Attorney-General should draw up
+a statement of the case. The statement must be presented by the
+Attorney-General to the Government, by the Government to the President,
+by the President to a Committee, and by the Committee to Parliament.
+Towards this statement the police have already obtained important
+testimony, and a complete chain of circumstantial evidence has been
+prepared. But they lack one link of positive proof, and until that link
+is obtained the Attorney-General is unable to proceed. It is the
+keystone of the arch, the central fact, without which all other facts
+fall to pieces--the testimony of somebody who can swear, if need be,
+that she knew both David Leone and David Rossi, and can identify the one
+with the other."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The Baron, who had stopped, continued in a calm voice: "My dear Roma,
+need I go on? Dead as a Minister is to all sensibility, I had hoped to
+spare you. There is only one person known to me who can supply that
+link. That person is yourself."
+
+Roma's eyes were red with anger and terror, but she tried to laugh over
+her fear.
+
+"How simple you are, after all!" she said. "It was Roma Roselli who knew
+David Leone, wasn't it? Well, Roma Roselli is dead and buried. Oh, I
+know all the story. You did that yourself, and now it cuts the ground
+from under you."
+
+"My dear Roma," said the Baron, with a hard and angry face, "if I did
+anything in that matter, it was done for your welfare, but whatever it
+was, it need not disturb me now. Roma Roselli is _not_ dead, and it
+would be easy to bring people from England to say so."
+
+"You daren't! You know you daren't! It would expose them to persecution
+for perpetrating a crime."
+
+"In England, not in Italy."
+
+Roma's red eyes fell, and the Baron began to speak in a caressing voice:
+
+"My child, don't fence with me. It is so painful to silence you.... It
+is perhaps natural that you should sympathise with the weaker side. That
+is the sweet and tender if illogical way of all women. But you must not
+imagine that when David Rossi has been arrested he will be walked off to
+his death. As a matter of fact, he must go through a new trial, he must
+be defended, his sentence would in any case be reduced to imprisonment,
+and it may even be wiped out altogether. That's all."
+
+"All? And you ask me to help you to do that?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I won't!"
+
+"Then you could if you would?"
+
+"I can't!"
+
+"Your first word was the better one, my child."
+
+"Very well, I won't! I won't! Aren't you ashamed to ask me to do such a
+thing? According to your own story, David Leone was my father's friend,
+yet you wish me to give him up to the law that he may be imprisoned,
+perhaps for life, and at least turned out of Parliament. Do you suppose
+I am capable of treachery like that? Do you judge of everybody by
+yourself?... Ah, I know that story too! For shame! For shame!"
+
+The Baron was silent for a moment, and then said in an impassive voice:
+
+"I will not discuss that subject with you now, my child--you are
+excited, and don't quite know what you are saying. I will only point out
+to you that even if David Leone was your father's friend, David Rossi
+was your own enemy."
+
+"What of that? It's my own affair, isn't it? If I choose to forgive him,
+what matter is it to anybody else? I _do_ forgive him! Now, whose
+business is it except my own?"
+
+"My dear Roma, I might tell you that it's mine also, and that the
+insult that went through you was aimed at me. But I will not speak of
+myself.... That you should change your plans so entirely, and setting
+out a month ago to ... to ... shall I say betray ... this man Rossi, you
+are now striving to save him, is a problem which admits of only one
+explanation, and that is that ... that you...."
+
+"That I love him--yes, that's the truth," said Roma boldly, but flushing
+up to the eyes and trembling with fear.
+
+There was a death-like pause in the duel. Both dropped their heads, and
+the silent face in the bust seemed to be looking down on them. Then the
+Baron's icy cheeks quivered visibly, and he said in a low, hoarse voice:
+
+"I'm sorry! Very sorry! For in that case I may be compelled to justify
+your conclusion that a Minister has no humanity and no pity. If David
+Rossi cannot be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament, he must be
+arrested when Parliament is not in session, and then his identity will
+have to be established in a public tribunal. In that event you will be
+forced to appear, and having refused to make a private statement in the
+secrecy of a magistrate's office, you will be compelled to testify in
+the Court of Assize."
+
+"Ah, but you can't make me do that!" cried Roma excitedly, as if seized
+by a sudden thought.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Never mind why not. You can't do it, I tell you," she cried excitedly.
+
+He looked at her as if trying to penetrate her meaning, and then said:
+
+"We shall see."
+
+At that moment the fretful voice of the Countess was heard calling to
+the Baron from the adjoining room.
+
+
+                                II
+
+Roma went to her bedroom when the Baron left her, and remained there
+until late in the afternoon. In spite of the bold front she had put on,
+she was quaking with terror and tortured by remorse. Never before had
+she realised David Rossi's peril with such awful vividness, and seen her
+own position in relation to him in its hideous nakedness.
+
+Was it her duty to confess to David Rossi that at the beginning of their
+friendship she had set out to betray him? Only so could she be secure,
+only so could she be honest, only so could she be true to the love he
+gave her and the trust he reposed in her.
+
+Yet why should she confess? The abominable impulse was gone. Something
+sweet and tender had taken its place. To confess to him now would be
+cruel. It would wound his beautiful faith in her.
+
+And yet the seeds she had sown were beginning to fructify. They might
+spring up anywhere at any moment, and choke the life that was dearer to
+her than her own. Thank God, it was still impossible to injure him
+except by her will and assistance. But her will might be broken and her
+assistance might be forced, unless the law could be invoked to protect
+her against itself. It could and it should be invoked! When she was
+married to David Rossi no law in Italy would compel her to witness
+against him.
+
+But if Rossi hesitated from any cause, if he delayed their marriage, if
+he replied unfavourably to the letter in which she had put aside all
+modesty and asked him to marry her soon--what then? How was she to
+explain his danger? How was she to tell him that he must marry her
+before Parliament rose, or she might be the means of expelling him from
+the Chamber, and perhaps casting him into prison for life? How was she
+to say: "I was Delilah; I set out to betray you, and unless you marry me
+the wicked work is done!"
+
+The afternoon was far spent; she had eaten nothing since morning, and
+was lying face down on the bed, when a knock came to the door.
+
+"The person in the studio to see you," said Felice.
+
+It was Bruno in Sunday attire, with little Joseph in top-boots, and more
+than ever like the cub of a young lion.
+
+"A letter from him," said Bruno.
+
+It was from Rossi. She took it without a word of greeting, and went back
+to her bedroom. But when she returned a moment afterwards her face was
+transformed. The clouds had gone from it and the old radiance had
+returned. All the brightness and gaiety of her usual expression were
+there as she came swinging into the drawing-room and filling the air
+with the glow of health and happiness.
+
+"_That's_ all right," she said. "Tell Mr. Rossi I shall expect to see
+him soon ... or no, don't say that ... say that as he is over head and
+ears in work this week, he is not to think it necessary.... Oh, say
+anything you like," she said, and the pearly teeth and lovely eyes
+broke into an aurora of smiles.
+
+Bruno, whose bushy face and shaggy head had never once been raised since
+he came into the room, said:
+
+"He's busy enough, anyway--what with this big meeting coming off on
+Wednesday, and the stairs to his room as full of people as the Santa
+Scala."
+
+"So you've brought little Joseph to see me at last?" said Roma.
+
+"He has bothered my life out to bring him ever since you said he was to
+be your porter some day."
+
+"And why not? Gentlemen ought to call on the ladies, oughtn't they,
+Joseph?"
+
+And Joseph, whose curly poll had been hiding behind the leg of his
+father's trousers, showed half of a face that was shining all over.
+
+"See! See here--do you know who _this_ is? This gentleman in the bust?"
+
+"Uncle David," said the boy.
+
+"What a clever boy you are, Joseph!"
+
+"Doesn't want much cleverness to know that, though," said Bruno. "It's
+wonderful! it's magnificent! And it will shut up all their damned ...
+excuse me, miss, excuse _me_."
+
+"And Joseph still intends to be a porter?"
+
+"Dead set on it, and says he wouldn't change his profession to be a
+king."
+
+"Quite right, too! And now let us look at something a little birdie
+brought me the other day. Come along, Joseph. Here it is. Down on your
+knees, gentleman, and help me to drag it out. One--two--and away!"
+
+From the knee-hole of the desk came a large cardboard box, and Joseph's
+eyes glistened like big black beads.
+
+"Now, what do you think is in this box, Joseph? Can't guess? Give it up?
+Sure? Well, listen! Are you listening? Which do you think you would like
+best--a porter's cocked hat, or a porter's long coat, or a porter's mace
+with a gilt hat and a tassel?"
+
+Joseph's face, which had gleamed at every item, clouded and cleared,
+cleared and clouded at the cruel difficulty of choice, and finally
+looked over at Bruno for help.
+
+"Choose now--which?"
+
+But Joseph only sidled over to his father, and whispered something which
+Roma could not hear.
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He says it is his birthday on Wednesday," said Bruno.
+
+"Bless him! He shall have them all, then," said Roma, and Joseph's legs
+as well as his eyes began to dance.
+
+The cords were cut, the box was opened, the wonderful hat and coat and
+mace were taken out, and Joseph was duly invested. In the midst of this
+ceremony Roma's black poodle came bounding into the room, and when
+Joseph strutted out of the boudoir into the drawing-room the dog went
+leaping and barking beside him.
+
+"Dear little soul!" said Roma, looking after the child; but Bruno, who
+was sitting with his head down, only answered with a groan.
+
+"What is the matter, Bruno?" she asked.
+
+Bruno brushed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, set his teeth, and said
+with a savage fierceness:
+
+"What's the matter? Treason's the matter, telling tales and taking away
+a good woman's character--that's what is the matter! A man who has been
+eating your bread for years has been lying about you, and he is a rascal
+and a sneak and a damned scoundrel, and I would like to kick him out of
+the house."
+
+"And who has been doing all this, Bruno?"
+
+"Myself! It was I who told Mr. Rossi the lies that made him speak
+against you on the day of the Pope's Jubilee, and when you asked him to
+come here, I warned him against you, and said you were only going to pay
+him back and ruin him."
+
+"So you said that, did you?"
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"And what did Mr. Rossi say to you?"
+
+"Say to me? 'She's a good woman,' says he, 'and if I have ever said
+otherwise, I take it all back, and am ashamed.'"
+
+Roma, who had turned to the window, heaved a sigh and said: "It has all
+come out right in the end, Bruno. If you hadn't spoken against me to Mr.
+Rossi, he wouldn't have spoken against me in the piazza, and then he and
+I should never have met and known each other and been friends. All's
+well that ends well, you know."
+
+"Perhaps so, but the miracle doesn't make the saint, and you oughtn't to
+keep me any longer."
+
+"Do you mean that I ought to dismiss you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Bruno," said Roma, "I am in trouble just now, and I may be in worse
+trouble by-and-by. I don't know how long I may be able to keep you as a
+servant, but I may want you as a friend, and if you leave me now...."
+
+"Oh, put it like that, miss, and I'll never leave you, and as for your
+enemies...."
+
+Bruno was doubling up the sleeve of his right arm, when Joseph and the
+poodle came back to the room. Roma received them with a merry cry, and
+there was much noise and laughter. At length the gorgeous garments were
+taken off, the cardboard box was corded, and Bruno and the boy prepared
+to go.
+
+"You'll come again, won't you, Joseph?" said Roma, and the boy's face
+beamed.
+
+"I suppose this little man means a good deal to his mother, Bruno?"
+
+"Everything! I do believe she'd die, or disappear, or drown herself if
+anything happened to that boy."
+
+"And Mr. Rossi?"
+
+"He's been a second father to the boy ever since the young monkey was
+born."
+
+"Well, Joseph must come here sometimes, and let me try and be a second
+mother to him too.... What is he saying now?"
+
+Joseph had dragged down his father's head to whisper something in his
+ear.
+
+"He says he's frightened of your big porter downstairs."
+
+"Frightened of _him_! He is only a man, my precious! Tell him you are a
+little Roman boy, and he'll _have_ to let you up. Will you remember? You
+will? That's right! By-bye!"
+
+Before going to sleep that night, Roma switched on the light that hung
+above her head and read her letter again. She had been hoarding it up
+for that secret hour, and now she was alone with it, and all the world
+was still.
+
+                                                      "_Saturday Night._
+
+    "MY DEAR ONE,--Your sweet letter brought me the intoxication of
+    delight, and the momentous matter you speak of is under way. It is
+    my turn to be ashamed of all the great to-do I made about the
+    obstacles to our union when I see how courageous you can be. Oh,
+    how brave women are--every woman who ever marries a man! To take
+    her heart into her hands, and face the unknown in the fate of
+    another being, to trust her life into his keeping, knowing that if
+    he falls she falls too, and will never be the same again! What
+    _man_ could do it? Not one who was ever born into the world. Yet
+    some woman does it every day, promising some man that she
+    will--let me finish your quotation--
+
+        "'Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and
+        spirit In thy hands.'
+
+    "Don't think I am too much troubled about the Minghelli matter,
+    and yet it is pitiful to think how merciless the world can be even
+    in the matter of a man's name. A name is only a word, but it is
+    everything to the man who bears it--honour or dishonour, poverty
+    or wealth, a blessing or a curse. If it is a good name, everybody
+    tries to take it away from him, but if it's a bad name and he has
+    attempted to drop it, everybody tries to fix it on him afresh.
+
+    "The name I was compelled to leave behind me when I returned to
+    Italy was a bad name in nothing except that it was the name of my
+    father, and if the spies and ferrets of authority ever fix it upon
+    me God only knows what mischief they may do. But one thing _I_
+    know--that if they do fix my father's name upon me, and bring me
+    to the penalties which the law has imposed on it, it will not be
+    by help of my darling, my beloved, my brave, brave girl with the
+    heart of gold.
+
+    "Dearest, I wrote to the Capitol immediately on receiving your
+    letter, and to-morrow morning I will go down myself to see that
+    everything is in train. I don't yet know how many days are
+    necessary to the preparations, but earlier than Thursday it would
+    not be wise to fix the event, seeing that Wednesday is the day of
+    the great mass meeting in the Coliseum, and, although the police
+    have proclaimed it, I have told the people they are to come. There
+    is some risk at the outset, which it would be reckless to run, and
+    in any case the time is short.
+
+    "Good-night! I can't take my pen off the paper. Writing to you is
+    like talking to you, and every now and then I stop and shut my
+    eyes, and hear your voice replying. Only it is myself who make the
+    answers, and they are not half so sweet as they would be in
+    reality. Ah, dear heart, if you only knew how my life was full of
+    silence until you came into it, and now it is full of music!
+    Good-night, again!                                           "D. R.
+
+                                                    "_Sunday Morning._
+
+    "Just returned from the Capitol. The legal notice for the
+    celebration of a marriage is longer than I expected. It seems that
+    the ordinary term must be twelve days at least, covering two
+    successive Sundays (on which the act of publication is posted on
+    the board outside the office) and three days over. Only twelve
+    days more, my dear one, and you will be mine, mine, mine, and
+    all the world will know!"
+
+It took Roma a good three-quarters of an hour to read this letter, for
+nearly every word seemed to be written out of a lover's lexicon, which
+bore secret meanings of delicious import, and imperiously demanded their
+physical response from the reader's lips. At length she put it between
+the pillow and her cheek, to help the sweet delusion that she was cheek
+to cheek with some one and had his strong, protecting arms about her.
+Then she lay a long time, with eyes open and shining in the darkness,
+trying in vain to piece together the features of his face. But in the
+first dream of her first sleep she saw him plainly, and then she ran,
+she raced, she rushed to his embrace.
+
+Next day brought a message from the Baron:
+
+    "DEAR ROMA,--Come to the Palazzo Braschi to-morrow (Tuesday)
+    morning at eleven o'clock. Don't refuse, and don't hesitate. If
+    you do not come, you will regret it as long as you live, and
+    reproach yourself for ever afterwards.--Yours,
+                                                        "BONELLI."
+
+
+                                III
+
+The Palazzo Braschi is a triangular palace, whereof one front faces to
+the Piazza Navona and the two other fronts to side streets. It is the
+official palace of the Minister of the Interior, usually the President
+of the Council and Prime Minister of Italy.
+
+Roma arrived at eleven o'clock, and was taken to the Minister's room
+immediately, by way of an outer chamber, in which colleagues and
+secretaries were waiting their turn for an interview. The Baron was
+seated at a table covered with books and papers. There was a fur rug
+across his knees, and at his right hand lay a small ivory-handled
+revolver. He rose as Roma entered, and received her with his great but
+glacial politeness.
+
+"How prompt! And how sweet you look to-day, my child! On a cheerless
+morning like this you bring the sun itself into a poor Minister's gloomy
+cabinet. Sit down."
+
+"You wished to see me?" said Roma.
+
+The Baron rested his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand,
+looked at her with his never-varying smile, and said:
+
+"I hear you are to be congratulated, my dear."
+
+She changed colour slightly.
+
+"Are you surprised that I know?" he asked.
+
+"Why should I be surprised?" she answered. "You know everything.
+Besides, this is published at the Capitol, and therefore common
+knowledge."
+
+His smiling face remained perfectly impassive.
+
+"Now I understand what you meant on Sunday. It is a fact that a wife
+cannot be called as a witness against her husband."
+
+She knew he was watching her face as if looking into the inmost recesses
+of her soul.
+
+"But isn't it a little courageous of you to think of marriage?"
+
+"Why courageous?" she asked, but her eyes fell and the colour mounted to
+her cheek.
+
+"_Why_ courageous?" he repeated.
+
+He allowed a short time to elapse, and then he said in a a low tone,
+"Considering the past, and all that has happened...."
+
+Her eyelids trembled and she rose to her feet.
+
+"If this is all you wish to say to me...."
+
+"No, no! Sit down, my child. I sent for you in order to show you that
+the marriage you contemplate may be difficult, perhaps impossible."
+
+"I am of age--there can be no impediment."
+
+"There may be the greatest of all impediments, my dear."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean ... But wait! You are not in a hurry? A number of gentlemen are
+waiting to see me, and if you will permit me to ring for my
+secretary.... Don't move. Colleagues merely! They will not object to
+_your_ presence. My ward, you know--almost a member of my own household.
+Ah, here is the secretary. Who now?"
+
+"The Minister of War, the Prefect, Commendatore Angelelli, and one of
+his delegates," replied the secretary.
+
+"Bring the Prefect first," said the Baron, and a severe-looking man of
+military bearing entered the room.
+
+"Come in, Senator. You know Donna Roma. Our business is urgent--she will
+allow us to go on. I am anxious to hear how things stand and what you
+are doing."
+
+The Prefect began on his report. Immediately the new law was promulgated
+by royal decree, he had sent out a circular to all the Mayors in his
+province, stating the powers it gave the police to dissolve associations
+and forbid public meetings.
+
+"But what can we expect in the provincial towns, your Excellency, while
+in the capital we are doing nothing? The chief of all subversive
+societies is in Rome, and the directing mind is at large among
+ourselves. Listen to this, sir."
+
+The Prefect took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read:
+
+    "ROMANS,--The new law is an attempt to deprive us of liberties
+    which our fathers made revolutions to establish. It is, therefore,
+    our duty to resist it, and to this end we must hold our meeting on
+    the 1st of February according to our original intention. Only thus
+    can we show the Government and the King what it is to oppose the
+    public opinion of the world.... Meet in the Piazza del Popolo at
+    sundown and walk to the Coliseum by way of the Corso. Be peaceful
+    and orderly, and God put it into the hearts of your rulers to avert
+    bloodshed."
+
+"That is from the _Sunrise_?"
+
+"Yes, sir, the last of many manifestoes. And what is the result? The
+people are flocking into Rome from every part of the province."
+
+"And how many political pilgrims are here already?"
+
+"Fifty thousand, sixty, perhaps a hundred thousand. It cannot be allowed
+to go on, your Excellency."
+
+"It is a _levée-en-masse_ certainly. What do you advise?"
+
+"That the enemies of the Government and the State, whose erroneous
+conceptions of liberty have led to this burst of anarchist feelings, be
+left to the operation of the police laws."
+
+The Baron glanced at Roma. Her face was flushed and her eyes were
+flashing.
+
+"That," he said, "may be difficult, considering the number of the
+discontented. What is the strength of your police?"
+
+"Seven hundred in uniform, four hundred in plain clothes, and five
+hundred and fifty municipal guards. Besides these, sir, there are three
+thousand Carabineers and eight thousand regular troops."
+
+"Say twelve thousand five hundred armed men in all?"
+
+"Precisely, and what is that against fifty, a hundred, perhaps a hundred
+and fifty thousand people?"
+
+"You want the army at call?"
+
+"Exactly! but above everything else we want the permission of the
+Government to deal with the greater delinquents, whether Deputies or
+not, according to the powers given us by the statute."
+
+The Baron rose and held out his hand. "Thanks, Senator! The Government
+will consider your suggestions immediately. Be good enough to send in my
+colleague, the Minister of War."
+
+When the Prefect left the room Roma rose to go.
+
+"You cannot suppose this is very agreeable to me?" she said in an
+agitated voice.
+
+"Wait! I shall not be long ... Ah, General Morra! Roma, you know the
+General, I think. Sit down, both of you.... Well, General, you hear of
+this _levée-en-masse_?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"The Prefect is satisfied that the people are moved by a revolutionary
+organisation, and he is anxious to know what force we can put at his
+service to control it."
+
+The General detailed his resources. There were sixteen thousand men
+always under arms in Rome, and the War Office had called up the
+old-timers of two successive years--perhaps fifty thousand in all.
+
+"As a Minister of State and your colleague," said the General, "I am at
+one with you in your desire to safeguard the cause of order and protect
+public institutions, but as a man and a Roman I cannot but hope that you
+will not call upon me to act without the conditions required by law."
+
+"Indeed, no," said the Baron; "and in order to make sure that our
+instructions are carried out with wisdom and humanity, let these be the
+orders you issue to your staff: First, that in case of disturbance
+to-morrow night, whether at the Coliseum or elsewhere, the officers must
+wait for the proper signal from the delegate of police."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"Next, that on receiving the order to fire, the soldiers must be careful
+that their first volley goes over the heads of the people."
+
+"Excellent!"
+
+"If that does not disperse the crowds, if they throw stones at the
+soldiers or otherwise resist, the second volley--I see no help for
+it--the second volley, I say, must be fired at the persons who are
+leading on the ignorant and deluded mob."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The General hesitated, and Roma, whose breathing came quick and short,
+gave him a look of tenderness and gratitude.
+
+"You agree, General Morra?"
+
+"I'm afraid I see no alternative. But if the blood of their leader only
+infuriates the people, is the third volley...."
+
+"That," said the Baron, "is a contingency too terrible to contemplate.
+My prediction would be that when their leader falls, the poor, misguided
+people will fly. But in all human enterprises the last word has to be
+left to destiny. Let us leave it to destiny in the present instance.
+Adieu, dear General! Be good enough to tell my secretary to send in the
+Chief of Police."
+
+The Minister of War left the room, and once more Roma rose to go.
+
+"You cannot possibly imagine that a conversation like this...." she
+began, but the Baron only interrupted her again.
+
+"Don't go yet. I shall be finished presently. Angelelli cannot keep me
+more than a moment. Ah, here is the Commendatore."
+
+The Chief of Police came bowing and bobbing at every step, with the
+extravagant politeness which differentiates the vulgar man from the
+well-bred.
+
+"About this meeting at the Coliseum, Commendatore--has any authorisation
+been asked for it?"
+
+"None whatever, your Excellency."
+
+"Then we may properly regard it as seditious?"
+
+"Quite properly, your Excellency."
+
+"Listen! You will put yourself into communication with the Minister of
+War immediately. He will place fifty thousand men at the disposition of
+your Prefect. Choose your delegates carefully. Instruct them well. At
+the first overt act of resistance, let them give the word to fire. After
+that, leave everything to the military."
+
+"Quite so, your Excellency."
+
+"Be careful to keep yourself in touch with me until midnight to-morrow.
+It may be necessary to declare a state of siege, and in that event the
+royal decree will have to be obtained without delay. Prepare your own
+staff for a general order. Ask for the use of the cannon of St. Angelo
+as a signal, and let it be understood that if the gun is fired to-morrow
+night, every gate of the city is to be closed, every outward train is to
+be stopped, and every telegraph office is to be put under control. You
+understand me?"
+
+"Perfectly, Excellency."
+
+"After the signal has been given let no one leave the city, and let no
+telegraphic message of any kind be despatched. In short, let Rome from
+that hour onward be entirely under the control of the Government."
+
+"Entirely, your Excellency."
+
+"The military have already received their orders. After the call of the
+delegate of police, the first volley is to be fired over the heads of
+the people, and the second at the ringleaders. But if any of these
+should escape...."
+
+The Baron paused, and then repeated in a low tone with the utmost
+deliberation:
+
+"I say, _if_ any of these should escape, Commendatore...."
+
+"They shall not escape, your Excellency."
+
+There was a moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt herself to be
+suffocating, and could scarcely restrain the cry that was rising in her
+throat.
+
+"Let me go," she said, when the Chief of Police had backed and bowed
+himself out; but again the Baron pretended to misunderstand her.
+
+"Only one more visitor! I shall be finished in a few minutes," and then
+Charles Minghelli was shown into the room.
+
+The man's watchful eyes blinked perceptibly as he came face to face
+with Roma, but he recovered himself in a moment, and began to brush with
+his fingers the breast of his frockcoat.
+
+"Sit down, Minghelli. You may speak freely before Donna Roma. You owe
+your position to her generous influence, you may remember, and she is
+abreast of all our business. You know all about this meeting at the
+Coliseum?"
+
+Minghelli bent his head.
+
+"The delegates of police have received the strictest orders not to give
+the word to the military until an overt act of resistance has been
+committed. That is necessary as well for the safety of our poor deluded
+people as for our own credit in the eyes of the world. But an act of
+rebellion in such a case is a little thing, Mr. Minghelli."
+
+Again Minghelli bent his head.
+
+"A blow, a shot, a shower of stones, and the peace is broken and the
+delegate is justified."
+
+A third time Minghelli bent his head.
+
+"Unfortunately, in the sorrowful circumstances in which the city is
+placed, an overt act of resistance is quite sure to be committed."
+
+Minghelli flecked a speck of dust from his spotless cuff and said:
+
+"Quite sure, your Excellency."
+
+There was another moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt her
+heart beat violently.
+
+"Adieu, Mr. Minghelli. Tell my secretary as you pass out that I wish to
+dictate a letter."
+
+The letter was to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
+
+"Dear colleague," dictated the Baron, "I entirely approve of the
+proposal you have made to the Governments of Europe and America to
+establish a basis on which anarchists should be suppressed by means of
+an international net, through which they can hardly escape. My
+suggestion would be the universal application of the Belgian clause in
+all existing extradition treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide
+may be dealt with as common murderers. In any case please say that the
+Government of Italy intends to do its duty to the civilised world, and
+will look to the Governments of other countries to allow it to follow up
+and arrest the criminals who are attempting to reconstruct society by
+burying it under ruins."
+
+Notwithstanding all her efforts to appear calm, Roma felt as if she must
+go out into the streets and scream. Now she knew why she had been sent
+for. It was in order that the Baron might talk to her in parables--in
+order that he might show her by means of an object lesson, as palpable
+as pitiless, what was the impediment which made her marriage with David
+Rossi impossible.
+
+The marriage could not be celebrated until after eleven days, but the
+meeting at the Coliseum must take place to-morrow, and as surely as it
+did so it must result in riot and David Rossi must be shot.
+
+The secretary gathered up his note-book and left the room, and then the
+Baron turned to Roma with beaming eyes and lips expanding to a smile.
+
+"Finished at last! A thousand apologies, my dear! Twelve o'clock
+already! Let us go out and lunch somewhere."
+
+"Let me go home," said Roma.
+
+She was trembling violently, and as she rose to her feet she swayed a
+little.
+
+"My dear child! you're not well. Take this glass of water."
+
+"It's nothing. Let me go home."
+
+The Baron walked with her to the head of the staircase.
+
+"I understand you perfectly," she said in a choking voice, "but there is
+something you have not counted upon, and you are quite mistaken."
+
+And making a great call on her resolution, she threw up her head and
+walked firmly down the stairs.
+
+Immediately on reaching home she wrote to David Rossi:
+
+    "I _must_ see you to-night. Where can it be? To-night! Mind,
+    to-night. To-morrow will be too late.                  ROMA."
+
+Bruno delivered the note by hand, and brought back an answer:
+
+    "DEAREST,--Come to the office at nine o'clock. Sorry I cannot
+    go to you. It is impossible.                           D. R.
+
+    "P.S.--You have converted Bruno, and he would die for you. As for
+    the 'little Roman boy,' he is in the seventh heaven over your
+    presents, and says he must go up to Trinità de' Monti to begin
+    work at once."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+The office of the _Sunrise_ at nine o'clock that night tingled with
+excitement. A supplement had already gone to press, and the machines in
+the basement were working rapidly. In the business office on the first
+floor people were constantly coming and going, and the footsteps on the
+stairs of the composing-room sounded through the walls like the
+irregular beat of a hammer.
+
+The door of the editor's room was frequently swinging open, as reporters
+with reports, messengers with telegrams, and boys with proofs came in
+and laid them on the desk at which the sub-editor sat at work.
+
+David Rossi stood by his desk at the farther end of the room. This was
+the last night of his editorship of the _Sunrise_, and by various silent
+artifices the staff were showing their sympathy with the man who had
+made the paper and was forced to leave it.
+
+The excitement within the office of the _Sunrise_ corresponded to the
+commotion outside. The city was in a ferment, and from time to time
+unknown persons, the spontaneous reporters of tumultuous days, were
+brought in from the outer office to give the editor the latest news of
+the night. Another trainful of people had arrived from Milan! Still
+another from Bologna and Carrara! The storm was growing! Soon would be
+heard the crash of war! Their faces were eager and their tone was one of
+triumph. They pitched their voices high, so as to be heard above the
+reverberation of the machines, whose deep thud in the rooms below made
+the walls vibrate like the side of a ship at sea.
+
+David Rossi did not catch the contagion of their joy. At every fresh
+announcement his face clouded. The unofficial head of the surging and
+straining democracy, which was filling itself hourly with hopes and
+dreams, was unhappy and perplexed. He was trying to write his last
+message to his people, and he could not get it clear because his own
+mind was confused.
+
+"_Romans_," he wrote first, "_your rulers are preparing to resist your
+right of meeting, and you will have nothing to oppose to the muskets and
+bayonets of their soldiers but the bare breasts of a brave but peaceful
+people. No matter. Fifty, a hundred, five hundred of you killed at the
+first volley, and the day is won! The reactionary Government of
+Italy--all the reactionary Governments of Europe--will be borne down lay
+the righteous indignation of the world._"
+
+It would not do! He had no right to lead the people to certain
+slaughter, and he tore up his manifesto and began again.
+
+"_Romans_," he wrote the second time, "_when reforms cannot be effected
+without the spilling of blood, the time for them has not yet come, and
+it is the duty of a brave and peaceful people to wait for the silent
+operation of natural law and the mighty help of moral forces. Therefore
+at the eleventh hour I call upon you, in the names of your wives and
+children...._"
+
+It was impossible! The people would think he was afraid, and the
+opportune moment would be lost.
+
+One man in the office of the _Sunrise_ was entirely outside the circle
+of its electric currents. This was the former day-editor, who had been
+appointed by the proprietors to take Rossi's place, and was now walking
+about with a silk hat on his head, taking note of everything and
+exercising a premature and gratuitous supervision.
+
+David Rossi was tearing up the second of his manifestoes when this
+person came to say that a lady in the outer office was asking to see
+him.
+
+"Show her into the private waiting-room," said Rossi.
+
+"But may I suggest," said the man, "that considering who the lady is, it
+would perhaps be better to see her elsewhere?"
+
+"Show her into the private room, sir," said Rossi, and the man shrugged
+his shoulders and disappeared.
+
+As David Rossi opened the door of a small room at his right hand,
+something rustled lightly in the corridor outside, and a moment
+afterwards Roma glided into his arms. She was pale and nervous, and
+after a moment she began to cry.
+
+"Dear one," said Rossi, pressing her head against his breast, "what has
+happened? Tell me! Something has frightened you. You look anxious."
+
+"No wonder," she said, and then she told him of her summons to the
+Palazzo Braschi, and of the business she saw done there.
+
+There was to be a riot at the meeting at the Coliseum, because, if need
+be, the Government itself would provoke violence. The object was to
+kill _him_, not the people, and if he stayed in Rome until to-morrow
+night there would be no possibility of escape.
+
+"You must fly," she said. "You are the victim marked out by all these
+preparations--you, you, nobody but you."
+
+"It is the best news I've heard for days," he said. "If I am the only
+one who runs a risk...."
+
+"Risk! My dearest, don't you understand? Your life is aimed at, and you
+must fly before it is quite impossible."
+
+"It is already impossible," he answered.
+
+He drew off one of her white gloves and kissed her finger-tips. "My dear
+one," he said, "if there were nothing else to think of, do you suppose I
+could go away and leave you behind me? That is just what somebody
+expected me to do when he permitted you to witness his preparations. But
+he was mistaken. I cannot and I will not leave you."
+
+Her pale face was suddenly overspread by a burning blush, and she threw
+both arms about his neck.
+
+"Very well," she said, "I will go with you."
+
+"Darling!" he cried, and he clasped her to his breast again. "But no!
+That is impossible also. Our marriage cannot take place for ten days."
+
+"No matter! I'll go without it."
+
+"My dear child, you don't know what you are saying. You are too good,
+too pure...."
+
+"Hush! Our marriage is nothing to anybody but ourselves, and if we
+choose to go without it...."
+
+"My dear girl!"
+
+"I can't hear you," she said. Loosening her hands from his neck, she had
+covered her ears.
+
+"Dearest, I know what you are thinking of, but it must not be."
+
+"I can't hear a word you're saying," she said, beating her hands over
+her ears. "I'm ready to go now, this very minute--and if you don't take
+me, it is because you love other things better than you love me."
+
+"My darling, don't tempt me. If you only knew what it costs me ... but I
+would rather die...."
+
+"I don't want you to die. That's just it! I want you to live, and I am
+willing to risk everything--everything...."
+
+Her warm and lovely form was quivering in his arms, and his heart was
+labouring wildly.
+
+"Dearest," he whispered over her head, "you are so good, so pure, so
+noble, that you don't know how evil tongues can wag at a woman because
+she is brave and true. But I must remember my mother--and if your poor
+father is to rest in his grave...."
+
+His voice broke and he stopped.
+
+"See how much I love you," he whispered again, "when I would rather lose
+you than see you lower yourself in your own esteem.... And then think of
+my people! my poor people who trust me and look up to me so much more
+than I deserve. I called them and they have come. They are here now,
+tens of thousands of them. And they will be here to-morrow wherever I
+may be. Shall I desert them in their hour of need, thinking of my own
+safety, my own happiness? No! You cannot wish it! You do not wish it! I
+know you too well!"
+
+She lifted her head from his breast. "You are right," she said. "You
+must stay."
+
+"My sweet girl!"
+
+"Can you ever forgive me for being frightened at the first note of
+danger and telling you to fly?"
+
+"I will always love you for it."
+
+"And you will never think the worse of me for offering to go with you?"
+
+"I will love you for that too."
+
+"I must be brave," she said, drawing herself up proudly, though her lips
+were trembling, her voice was breaking, and her eyes were wet. "Whether
+you are right or wrong in what you are doing it is not for me to decide,
+but if your heart tells you to do it you _must_ do it, and I must be
+your soldier, ready and waiting for my captain's call."
+
+"My brave girl!"
+
+"It is not for nothing that I am my father's daughter. _He_ risked
+everything and so will I, and if they come to me to-morrow night and say
+that ... that you ... that you are...."
+
+The proud face had fallen on his breast again. But after a moment it was
+raised afresh, and then it was shining all over.
+
+"That's right! How beautiful your face is when it smiles, Roma! Roma, do
+you know what I'm going to do when this is all over? I'm going to spend
+my life in making you smile all the time."
+
+She gave him a sudden kiss, and then broke out of his arms.
+
+"I must be going. I've stayed too long. I may not see you before the
+meeting, but I won't say 'good-bye.' I've thought of something, and now
+I know what I'm going to do."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Don't ask me."
+
+She opened the door.
+
+"Come to me to-morrow night--I shall expect you," she whispered, and
+waving her glove to him over her head she disappeared from the room.
+
+He stood a moment where she had left him, trying to think what she
+intended to do, and then he returned to his desk in the outer office.
+His successor was there, looking sour and stubborn.
+
+"Mr. Rossi," he said, "this afternoon I was told at the Press Club that
+the authorities were watching for a plausible excuse for suppressing the
+paper; and considering the relations of this lady to the Minister of the
+Interior, and the danger of spies...."
+
+"Listen to this carefully, sir," interrupted Rossi. "When you come into
+possession of the chair I occupy, you may do as you think well, but
+to-night it is mine, and I shall conduct the paper as I please."
+
+"Still, you will allow me to say...."
+
+"Not one word."
+
+"Permit me to protest...."
+
+"Leave the room immediately."
+
+When the man was gone, David Rossi wrote a third and last version of his
+manifesto:
+
+"_Romans.--Have no fear. Do not allow yourselves to be terrified by the
+military preparations of your Government. Believe a man who has never
+deceived you--the soldiers will not fire upon the people! Violate no
+law. Assail no enemy. Respect property. Above all, respect life. Do not
+allow yourself to be pushed into the doctrine of physical force. If any
+man tries to provoke violence, think him an agent of your enemies and
+pay no heed. Be brave, be strong, be patient, and to-morrow night you
+will send up such a cry as will ring throughout the world. Romans,
+remember your fathers and be great._"
+
+Rossi was handing his manuscript to the sub-editor, that it might be
+sent upstairs, when all at once the air seemed to become empty and the
+world to stand still. The machine in the basement had ceased to work.
+There was a momentary pause, such as comes on a steamship at sea when
+the engines are suddenly stopped, and then a sound of frightened voices
+and the noise of hurrying feet. Somebody ran along the corridor outside
+and rapped sharply at the door.
+
+At the next moment the door opened and four men entered the room. One of
+them was an inspector, another was a delegate, and the others were
+policemen in plain clothes.
+
+"The journal is sequestered," said the inspector to David Rossi. And
+turning to one of his men, he said, "Go up to the composing-room and
+superintend the distribution of the type."
+
+"Allow no one to leave the building," said the delegate to the other
+policeman.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the inspector, "we are charged to make a perquisition,
+and must ask you for the keys of your desks."
+
+"What is this?" said the delegate, taking the manifesto out of Rossi's
+fingers, and proceeding to read it.
+
+At that moment the editor-elect came rushing into the room with a face
+like the rising sun.
+
+"I demand to see a list of the things sequestered," he cried.
+
+"You shall do so at the police-office," said the inspector.
+
+"Does that mean that we are all arrested?"
+
+"Not all. The Honourable Rossi, being a Deputy, is at liberty to leave."
+
+"Thought as much," said the new editor, with a contemptuous snort. And
+turning to Rossi, and showing his teeth in a bitter smile, he said:
+"What did I say would happen? Has it followed quickly enough to satisfy
+you?"
+
+The inspector and the delegate opened the editors' desks and were
+rummaging among their papers when David Rossi put on his hat and went
+home.
+
+At the door of the lodge the old Garibaldian was waiting in obvious
+excitement.
+
+"Old John has been here, sir," he said. "Something to tell you. Wouldn't
+tell me. But Bruno got it out of him at last. Must be something serious,
+for the big booby has been drinking ever since. Hear him in the café,
+sir. I'll send him up."
+
+Half-an-hour afterwards Bruno staggered into Rossi's room. He had a
+tearful look in his drink-deadened eyes, and was clearly struggling
+with a desire to put his arms about Rossi's neck and weep over him.
+
+"D'ye know wha'?" he mumbled in a maudlin voice. "Ole Vampire is a
+villain! Ole John--'member ole John?--well, ole John heard his grandson,
+the d'ective, say that if you go to the Coliseum to-morrow night...."
+
+"I know all about it, Bruno. You may go to bed."
+
+"Stop a minute, sir," said Bruno, with a melancholy smile. "You don't
+unnerstand. They're going t' shoot you. See? Ole John--'member ole John?
+Well, ole John...."
+
+"I know, Bruno. But I'm going nevertheless."
+
+Bruno fought with the vapour in his brain, and said: "You don' mean t'
+say you inten' t' let yourself be a target...."
+
+"That's what I do mean, Bruno."
+
+Bruno burst into a loud laugh. "Well, I'll be ... wha' the devil.... But
+you sha'n't go. I'll ... I'll see you damned first!"
+
+"You're drunk, Bruno. Go and put yourself to bed."
+
+The drink-deadened eyes flashed, and to grief succeeded rage. "Pu' mysel
+t' bed! D'ye know wha' I'd like t' do t' you for t' nex' twenty-four
+hours? I'd jus' like--yes, by Bacchus--I'd jus' like to punch you in t'
+belly and put _you_ t' bed."
+
+And straightening himself up with drunken dignity, Bruno stalked out of
+the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Baron Bonelli in the Piazza Leone was rising from his late and
+solitary dinner when Felice entered the shaded dining-room and handed
+him a letter from Roma. It ran:
+
+    "This is to let you know that I intend to be present at the
+    meeting in the Coliseum to-morrow night. Therefore, if any shots
+    are to be fired by the soldiers at the crowd or their leader, you
+    will know beforehand that they must also be fired at me."
+
+As the Baron held the letter under the red shade of the lamp, the usual
+immobility of his icy face gave way to a rapturous expression.
+
+"The woman is magnificent! And worth fighting for to the bitter end."
+
+Then, turning to Felice, he told the man to ring up the Commendatore
+Angelelli and tell him to send for Minghelli without delay.
+
+
+                                V
+
+Next day began with heavy clouds lying low over the city, a cold wind
+coming down from the mountains, and the rumbling of distant thunder.
+Nevertheless the people who had come to Rome for the demonstration at
+the Coliseum seemed to be in the streets the whole day long. From early
+morning they gathered in the Piazza Navona, inquired for David Rossi,
+stood by the fountains, and looked up at his windows.
+
+As the day wore on the crowds increased.
+
+All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad,
+ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen
+began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the
+principal streets with a band that played the royal march.
+
+Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable
+and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many
+and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows
+what might happen!
+
+Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out
+of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she
+did so it was only on indifferent subjects.
+
+Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was
+very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him.
+
+Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking
+for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up.
+
+"Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the
+soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look.
+
+Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi
+spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters
+and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but
+he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and
+characters on his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the
+flames.
+
+It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton
+handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him
+with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that
+Bruno had told his story.
+
+"Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your
+stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know."
+
+After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed
+little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted
+lip beginning to smile.
+
+"Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for
+the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it
+is his birthday."
+
+"Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David.
+
+Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something
+in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were
+produced.
+
+"Joseph will promise not to go out to-day; won't you, Joseph?"
+
+And Joseph rolled his fists into his eyes and was understood to say
+"Yes."
+
+At four o'clock Bruno came home, looking grim and resolute.
+
+"I was pretty drunk last night, sir," he said, "but if there's shooting
+to be done this evening I'm going to be there."
+
+The time came for the two men to go, and everybody saw them to the door.
+
+"Adieu!" said Rossi. "Thank you for all you've done for me, and may God
+bless you! Take care of my little Roman boy. Kiss me, Joseph! Again! For
+the last time! Adieu!"
+
+"Ah, God is a good old saint. He'll take care of you, my son," said the
+old woman.
+
+"Adieu, Uncle David! Adieu, papa!" cried Joseph over the banisters, and
+the brave little voice, with its manly falsetto, was the last the men
+heard as they descended the stairs.
+
+The Piazza del Popolo was densely crowded, and seemed to be twice as
+large as usual. Bruno elbowed a way through for himself and Rossi until
+they came to the obelisk in the centre of the great circle. On the steps
+of the obelisk a company of artillery was stationed with a piece of
+cannon which commanded the three principal thoroughfares of the city,
+the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babunio, which branch off from that
+centre like the ribs from the handle of a fan. Without taking notice of
+the soldiers, the people ranged themselves in order and prepared for
+their procession. At the ringing of Ave Maria the great crowd linked in
+files and turned their faces towards the Corso.
+
+Bruno walked first, carrying from his stalwart breast a standard, on
+which was inscribed, under the title of the "Republic of Man," the
+words, "Give us this day our daily bread." Rossi had meant to walk
+immediately behind Bruno, but he found himself encircled by a group of
+his followers. No sovereign was ever surrounded by more watchful guards.
+
+By the spontaneous consent of the public, traffic in the street was
+suspended, and crowds of the people of the city had turned out to look
+on. The four tiers of the Pincian Hill were packed with spectators, and
+every window and balcony in the Corso was filled with faces. All the
+shops were shut, and many of them were barricaded within and without. A
+regiment of infantry was ranged along the edge of the pavement, and the
+people passed between two lines of rifles.
+
+As the procession went on it was constantly augmented, and the column,
+which had been four abreast when it started from the Popolo, was eight
+abreast before it reached the end of the Corso. There were no bands of
+music, and there was no singing, but at intervals some one at the head
+of the procession would begin to clap, and then the clapping of hands
+would run down the street like the rattle of musketry.
+
+Going up the narrow streets beyond the Venezia, the people passed into
+the Forum--out of the living city of the present into the dead city of
+the past, with its desolation and its silence, its chaos of broken
+columns and cornices, of corbels and capitals, of wells and
+watercourses, lying in the waste where they had been left by the
+earthquake which had passed over them, the earthquake of the ages--and
+so on through the arch of Titus to the meeting-place in the Coliseum.
+
+All this time David Rossi's restless eyes had passed nervously from side
+to side. Coming down the Corso he had been dimly conscious of eyes
+looking at him from windows and balconies. He was struggling to be calm
+and firm, but he was in a furnace of dread, and beneath his breath he
+was praying from time to time that God would prevent accident and avert
+bloodshed. He was also praying for strength of spirit and feeling like a
+guilty coward. His face was deadly pale, the fire within seemed to
+consume the grosser senses, and he walked along like a man in a dream.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Half-an-hour before Ave Maria, Roma had put on an inconspicuous cloak, a
+plain hat, and a dark veil, and walked down to the Coliseum. Soldiers
+were stationed on all the high ground about the circus, and large
+numbers of persons were already assembled inside. The people were poor
+and ill-clad, and they smelt of garlic and uncleanness. "_His_ people,
+though," thought Roma, and so she conquered her repulsion.
+
+Three tiers encircle the walls of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a
+great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of
+Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the
+soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement
+beneath their jesting was deep and strong.
+
+The low cloud which had hung over the city from early morning seemed to
+lie like a roof over the topmost circle of the amphitheatre, and as
+night came on the pit below grew dark and chill. Then torches were lit
+and put in prominent places--long pitch sticks covered with rags or
+brown paper. The people were patient and good-humoured, but to beguile
+the tedium of waiting they sang songs. They were songs of labour
+chiefly, but one man started the _Te Deum_, and the rest joined in with
+one voice. It was like the noise the sea makes on a heavy day when it
+breaks on a bank of sand.
+
+After a while there was a deep sound from outside. The procession was
+approaching. It came on like a great tidal wave and flowed into the vast
+place in the gathering darkness with the light of a hundred fresh
+torches.
+
+In less than half-an-hour the ruined amphitheatre was a moving mass of
+heads from the ground to its upmost storey. Long sinuous trails of blue
+smoke swept across the people's faces, and the great brown mass of
+circular stones was lit up in fitful gleams.
+
+Roma was lifted off her feet by the breaker of human beings that surged
+around. At one moment she was conscious of some one behind who was
+pressing the people back and making room for her. At the next moment she
+was aware that through the multitudinous murmur of voices that rumbled
+as in a vault somebody near her was trying to speak.
+
+The speaking ceased and there was a sharp crackle of applause which had
+the effect of producing silence. In this silence another voice, a clear,
+loud, vibrating voice, said, "Romans and brothers," and then there was a
+prolonged shout of recognition from ten thousand throats.
+
+In a moment a dozen torches were handed up, and the speaker was in a
+circle of light and could be seen by all. It was Rossi. He was standing
+bareheaded on a stone, with a face of unusual paleness. He was wearing
+the loose cloak of the common people of Rome, thrown across his breast
+and shoulder. Bruno stood by his left side holding a standard above
+their heads. At his right hand were two other men who partly concealed
+him from the crowd. Roma found herself immediately below them, and
+within two or three paces.
+
+After a moment the shouting died down, and there was no sound in the
+vast place but a soft, quick, indrawn hiss that was like the palpitating
+breath of an immense flock of sheep. Then Rossi began again.
+
+"First and foremost," he said, "let me call on you to preserve the
+peace. One false step to-night and all is lost. Our enemies would like
+to fix on us the name of rebels. Rebels against whom? There is no
+rebellion except rebellion against the people. The people are the true
+sovereigns, and the only rebels are the classes who oppress them."
+
+A murmur of assent broke from the crowd. Rossi paused, and looked around
+at the soldiers.
+
+"Romans," he said, "do not let the armed rebels of the State provoke you
+to violence. It is to their interest to do so. Defeat them. You have
+come here in the face of their rifles and bayonets to show that you are
+not afraid of death. But I ask you to be afraid of doing an unrighteous
+thing. It is on my responsibility that you are here, and it would be an
+undying remorse to me if through any fault of yours one drop of blood
+were shed.
+
+"I call on you as earnestly as if my nearest and dearest were among you,
+liable to be shot down by the rifles of the military, not to give any
+excuse for violence."
+
+Roma turned to look at the soldiers. As far as she could see in the
+uncertain light, they were standing passively in their circle, with
+their rifles by their sides.
+
+"Romans," said Rossi again, "a month ago we protested against an
+iniquitous tax on the first necessary of life. The answer is sixty
+thousand men in arms around us. Therefore we are here to-night to appeal
+to the mightiest force on earth, mightier than any army, more powerful
+than any parliament, more absolute than any king--the force of moral
+sympathy and public opinion throughout the world."
+
+At this there were shouts of "Bravo!" and some clapping of hands.
+
+"Romans, if your bread is moistened by tears to-day, think of the power
+of suffering and be strong. Think of the history of these old walls.
+Think of the words of Christ, 'Which of the prophets have not your
+fathers stoned?' The prophets of humanity have all been martyrs, and God
+has marked you out to be the martyr nation of the world. Suffering is
+the sacred flame that sanctifies the human soul. Pray to God for
+strength to suffer, and He will bless you from the heights of Heaven."
+
+People were weeping on every hand.
+
+"Brothers, you are hungry, and I say these things to you with a beating
+heart. Your children are starving, and I swear before God that from this
+day forward I will starve with them. If I have eaten two meals a day
+hitherto, for the future I will eat but one. But leave it to the powers
+that are over you to do their worst. If they imprison you for resisting
+their tyrannies, others will take your place. If they kill your leader,
+God will raise up another who will be stronger than he. Swear to me in
+this old Coliseum, sacred to the martyrs, that, come what may, you will
+not yield to injustice and wrong."
+
+There was something in Rossi's face at that last moment that seemed to
+transcend the natural man. He raised his right arm over his head and in
+a loud voice cried, "Swear!"
+
+The people took the oath with uplifted hands and a great shout. It was
+terrible.
+
+Rossi stepped down, and the excitement was overwhelming. The vast crowd
+seemed to toss to and fro under the smoking lights like a tumultuous
+sea. The simple-hearted Roman populace could not contain themselves.
+
+The crowd began to break up, and the people went off singing. Rossi and
+his group of friends had disappeared when Roma turned to go. She found
+herself weeping and singing, too, but for another reason. The danger was
+passed, and all was over!
+
+Going out by one of the arches, she was conscious of somebody walking
+beside her. Presently a voice said:
+
+"You don't recognise me in the darkness, Donna Roma?"
+
+It was Charles Minghelli. He had been told to take care of her. Could he
+offer her his escort home?
+
+"No, thank you," she replied, and she was surprised at herself that she
+experienced no repulsion.
+
+Her heart was light, a great weight had been lifted away, and she felt a
+large and generous charity. At the top of the hill she found a cab, and
+as it dipped down the broad avenue that leads out of the circle of the
+dead centuries into the world of living men, she turned and looked back
+at the Coliseum. It was like a dream. The moving lights--the shadows of
+great heads on the grim old walls--the surging crowds--the cheers from
+hoarse throats. But the tinkle of the electric tram brought her back to
+reality, and then she noticed that it had begun to snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruno ploughed a way for David Rossi, and they reached home at last.
+
+Elena was standing at the door of David Rossi's rooms, with an agitated
+face.
+
+"Have you seen anything of Joseph?" she asked.
+
+"Joseph?"
+
+"I opened the window to look if you were coming, and in a moment he was
+gone. On a night like this, too, when it isn't too safe for anybody to
+be in the streets."
+
+"Has he still got the clothes on?" said Bruno.
+
+"Yes, and the naughty boy has broken his promise and must be whipped."
+
+The men looked into each other's faces.
+
+"Donna Roma?" said Rossi.
+
+"I'll go and see," said Bruno.
+
+"I must have a rod, whatever you say. I really must!" said Elena.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+Roma reached home in a glow of joy. She told herself that Rossi would
+come to her in obedience to her command. He must dine with her to-night.
+Seven was now striking on all the clocks outside, and to give him time
+to arrive she put back the dinner until eight. Her aunt would dine in
+her own room, so they would be quite alone. The conventions of life had
+fallen absolutely away, and she considered them no more.
+
+Meantime she must dress and perhaps take a bath. A certain sense of
+soiling which she could not conquer had followed her up from that
+glorious meeting. She felt a little ashamed of it, but it was there, and
+though she told herself "They were _his_ people, poor things," she was
+glad to take off the clothes she had worn at the Coliseum.
+
+She combed out the curls of her glossy black hair, put herself into a
+loose tea gown and red slippers, took one backward glance at herself in
+the glass, and then going into the drawing-room, she stood by the window
+to dream and wait. The snow still fell in thin flakes, but the city was
+humming on, and the piazza down below was full of people.
+
+After a while the electric bell of the outer door was rung, and her
+heart beat against her breast. "It's he," she thought, and in the
+exquisite tumult of the moment she lifted her arms and turned to meet
+him.
+
+But when the door was opened it was the Baron Bonelli who was shown into
+the room. He was in evening dress, with black tie and studs which had a
+chilling effect, and his manner was as cold and calm as usual.
+
+"I regret," he said, "that we must enter on a painful interview."
+
+"As you please," she answered, and sitting on a stool by the fire she
+rested her elbows on her knees, and looked straight before her.
+
+"Your letter of last night, my dear, produced the result you desired. I
+sent for Commendatore Angelelli, invented some plausible excuses, and
+reversed my orders. I also sent for Minghelli and told him to take care
+of you on your reckless errand. The matter has thus far ended as you
+wished, and I trust you are satisfied."
+
+She nodded her head without turning round, and bore herself with a
+certain air of defiance.
+
+"But it is necessary that we should come to an understanding," he
+continued. "You have driven me hard, my child. With all the tenderness
+and sympathy possible, I am compelled to speak plainly. I wished to
+spare your feelings. You will not permit me to do so."
+
+The incisiveness of his speech cut the air like ice dropping from a
+glacier, and Roma felt herself turning pale with a sense of something
+fearful whirling around her.
+
+"According to your own plans, Rossi is to marry you within a week,
+although a month ago he spoke of you in public as an unworthy woman.
+Will you be good enough to tell me how this miracle has come to pass?"
+
+She laughed, and tried to carry herself bravely.
+
+"If it is a miracle, how can I explain it?" she said.
+
+"Then permit me to do so. He is going to marry you because he no longer
+thinks as he thought a month ago; because he believes he was wrong in
+what he said, and would like to wipe it out entirely."
+
+"He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly;
+"that's why he is going to marry me."
+
+At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed
+before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her
+own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as
+from a tomb.
+
+"Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he
+could scarcely be heard.
+
+"Told him what?" she said.
+
+"The truth--the fact."
+
+She caught her breath and was silent.
+
+"My child, you are doing wrong. There is a secret between you already.
+That is a bad basis to begin life upon, and the love that is raised on
+it will be a house built on the sand."
+
+Her heart was beating violently, but she turned on him with a burning
+glance.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said, while the colour increased in her cheeks
+and forehead. "I am a good woman. You know I am."
+
+"To me, yes! The best woman in the world."
+
+She had risen to her feet, and was standing by the chimney-piece.
+
+"Understand me, my child," he said affectionately. "When I say you are
+doing wrong, it is only in keeping a secret from the man you intend to
+marry. Between you and me ... there is no secret."
+
+She looked at him with haggard eyes.
+
+"For me you are everything that is sweet and good, but for another who
+knows? When a man is about to marry a woman, there is one thing he can
+never forgive. Need I say what that is?"
+
+The glow that had suffused her face changed to the pallor of marble, and
+she turned to the Baron and stood over him with the majesty of a statue.
+
+"Is it you that tell me this?" she said. "You--you? Can a woman never be
+allowed to forget? Must the fault of another follow her all her life?
+Oh, it is cruel! It is merciless.... But no matter!" she said in another
+voice; and turning away from him she added, as if speaking to herself:
+"He believes everything I tell him. Why should I trouble?"
+
+The Baron followed her with a look that pierced to the depths of her
+soul.
+
+"Then you have told him a falsehood?" he said.
+
+She pressed her lips together and made no answer.
+
+"That was foolish. By-and-by somebody may come along who will tell him
+the truth."
+
+"What can any one tell him that he has not heard already? He has heard
+everything, and put it all behind his back."
+
+"Could nobody bring conviction to his mind? Nobody whatever? Not even
+one who had no interest in slandering you?"
+
+"You don't mean that you...."
+
+"Why not? He has come between us. What could be more natural than that I
+should tell him so?"
+
+A look of dismay came over her face, and it was followed by an
+expression of terror.
+
+"But you wouldn't do that," she stammered. "You couldn't do it. It is
+impossible. You are only trying me."
+
+His face remained perfectly passive, and she seized him by the arm.
+
+"Think! Only think! You would do no good for yourself. You might stop
+the marriage--yes! But you wouldn't carry out your political purpose.
+You couldn't! And while you would do no good for yourself, think of the
+harm you would do for me. He loves me, and you would hurt his beautiful
+faith in me, and I should die of grief and shame."
+
+"You are cruel, my child," said the Baron, speaking with dignity. "You
+think _I_ am hard and unrelenting, but _you_ are selfish and cruel. You
+are so concerned about your own feelings that you don't even suspect
+that perhaps you are wounding mine."
+
+"Ah, yes, it is too bad," she said, dropping to her knees at his feet.
+"After all, you have been very good to me thus far, and it was partly my
+own fault if matters ended as they did. Yes, I confess it. I was vain
+and proud. I wanted all the world. And when you gave me everything,
+being so tied yourself, I thought I might forgive you.... But I was
+wrong--I was to blame--nothing in the world could excuse you--I saw that
+the moment afterwards. I really hadn't thought at all until then--but
+then my soul awoke. And then...."
+
+She turned her head aside that he might not see her face.
+
+"And then love came, and I was like a woman who had married a man thirty
+years older than herself--married without love--just for the sake of her
+pride and vanity. But love, real love, drove all that away. It is gone
+now; I only wish to lead a good life, however simple and humble it may
+be. Let me do so!... Do not take him away from me! Do not...."
+
+She stammered and stopped, with a sudden consciousness of what she was
+doing.
+
+"What a fool I am!" she said, leaping to her feet. "What fresh story can
+you tell him that he is likely to believe?"
+
+"I can tell him that, according to the law of nature and of reason, you
+belong to me," said the Baron.
+
+"Very well! It will be your word against mine, will it not? Tell him,
+and he will fling your insult in your face."
+
+The Baron rose and began to walk about the room, and there were some
+moments in which nothing could be heard but the slight creaking of his
+patent-leather boots. Then he said:
+
+"In that case I should be compelled to challenge him."
+
+"Challenge him!" She repeated the words with scorn. "Is it likely? Do
+you forget that duelling is a crime, that you are a Minister, that you
+would have to resign, and expose yourself to penalties?"
+
+"If a man insults me grievously in my affections and my honour, I will
+challenge him," said the Baron.
+
+"But he will not fight--it would be contrary to his principles," said
+Roma.
+
+"In that event he will never be able to lift his head in Italy again.
+But make no mistake on that point, my child. The man who is told that
+the woman he is going to marry is secretly the wife of another must
+either believe it or he must not. If he believes it, he casts her off
+for ever. If he does not believe it, he fights for her name and his own
+honour. If he does neither, he is not a man."
+
+Roma had returned to the stool, and was resting her elbows on her knees
+and gazing into the fire.
+
+"Have you thought of that?" said the Baron. "If the man fights a duel,
+it will be in defence of what you have told him. In the blindness of his
+belief in your word he will be ready to risk his life for it. Are you
+going to stand by and see him fight for a lie?"
+
+Roma hid her face in her hands.
+
+"Say he is wounded--it will be for a lie! Say he wounds his
+adversary--that will be for a lie too! Say that David Rossi kills
+me--what then? He must fly from Italy, and his career is at an end. If
+he is alone, he is a miserable exile who has earned what he may not
+enjoy. If you are with him, you are both miserable, for a lie stands
+between you. Every hour of your life is poisoned by the secret you
+cannot share with him. You are afraid of blurting it out in your sleep.
+At last you go to him and confess everything. What then? The idol he
+worshipped has turned to clay. What he thought an act of retribution is
+a crime. The dead man had told the truth, and he committed murder on the
+word of a woman who was a deceiver--a drab."
+
+Roma raised her hands to her head as if to avert a blow.
+
+"Stop! stop!" she cried in a choking voice, and lifting her face,
+distorted with suffering, tears rose in her eyes. To see Roma cry
+touched the only tenderness of which his iron nature was capable. He
+patted the beautiful head at his feet, and said in a caressing tone:
+
+"Why will you make me seem so hard, my child? There is really no need to
+talk of these things. They will not occur. How can I have any desire to
+degrade you since I must degrade myself at the same time? I have no wish
+to tell any one the secret which belongs only to you and me. In that
+matter you were not to blame either. It was all my doing. I was
+sweltering under the shameful law which tied me to a dead body, and I
+tried to attach you to me. And then your beauty--your loveliness...."
+
+At that moment Felice announced Commendatore Angelelli. Roma walked over
+to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still
+falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone
+here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and
+drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost hoped he would not.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Behind her the Prime Minister, who had apologised for turning her house
+into a temporary Ministry of the Interior, was talking to his Chief of
+Police.
+
+"You were there yourself?"
+
+"I was, Excellency. I went up into a high part and looked down. It was a
+strange and wild sight."
+
+"How many would there be?"
+
+"Impossible to guess. Inside and outside, Romans, country people,
+perhaps a hundred thousand."
+
+"And Rossi's speech?"
+
+"The usual appeal to the passions of the people, Excellency. An
+extraordinary exhibition of the art of flying between wind and water. We
+couldn't have found a word that was distinctly seditious, even if we
+hadn't had your Excellency's order to let the man go on."
+
+"You have stopped the telegraph wires?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When the meeting was over, Rossi went home?"
+
+"He did, Excellency."
+
+"And the hundred thousand?"
+
+"In their excitement they began to sing and to march through the
+streets. They are still doing so. After going down to the Piazza Navona,
+they are coming up by the Piazza del Popolo and along the Babuino with
+banners and torches."
+
+"Men only?"
+
+"Men, women, and children."
+
+"You would say that their attitude is threatening?"
+
+"Distinctly threatening, your Excellency."
+
+"Let your delegates give the legal warning and say that the gathering of
+great mobs at this hour will be regarded as open rebellion. Allow three
+minutes' grace for the sake of the women and children, and then ... let
+the military do their duty."
+
+"Quite so, your Excellency."
+
+"After that you may carry out the instructions I gave you yesterday."
+
+"Certainly, your Excellency."
+
+"Keep in touch with all the leaders. Some of them will find that the air
+of Rome is a little dangerous to their health to-night, and may wish to
+fly to Switzerland or England, where it would be impossible to follow
+them."
+
+Roma heard behind her the thin cackle as of a hen over her nest, which
+always came when Angelelli laughed.
+
+"Their meeting itself was illegal, and our license has been abused."
+
+"Grossly abused, your Excellency."
+
+"The action of the Government was too conciliatory, and has rendered
+them audacious, but the new law is clear in prohibiting the carrying of
+seditious flags and emblems."
+
+"We'll deal with them according to Articles 134 and 252 of the Penal
+Code, your Excellency."
+
+"You can go. But come back immediately if anything happens. I must
+remain here for the present, and in case of riot I may have to send you
+to the King."
+
+Angelelli's thin voice fell to a whisper of awe at the mention of
+Majesty, and after a moment he bowed and backed out of the room.
+
+Roma did not turn round, and the Minister, who had touched the bell and
+called for pen and paper, spoke to her from behind.
+
+"I daresay you thought I was hard and inhuman at the Palazzo Braschi
+yesterday, but I was really very merciful. In letting you see the
+preparations to enclose your friend as in a net, I merely wished you to
+warn him to fly from the country. He has not done so, and now he must
+take the consequences."
+
+Felice brought the writing materials, and the Baron sat down at the
+table. There was a long silence in which nothing could be heard but the
+scratching of the Minister's pen, the snoring of the poodle, and the
+deadened sound through the wall of the Countess's testy voice scolding
+Natalina.
+
+Roma stepped into the boudoir. The room was dark, and from its unlit
+windows she could see more plainly into the streets. Masses of shadow
+lay around, but the untrodden steps were white with thin snow, and the
+piazza were alive with black figures which moved on the damp ground like
+worms on an upturned sod.
+
+She was leaning her hot forehead against the glass and looking out with
+haggard eyes, when a deep rumble as of a great multitude came from
+below. The noise quickly increased to a loud uproar, with shouts, songs,
+whistles, and shrill sounds blown out of door-keys. Before she was aware
+of his presence the Baron was standing behind her, between the window
+and the pedestal with the plaster bust of Rossi.
+
+"Listen to them," he said. "The proletariat indeed!... And this is the
+flock of bipeds to whom men in their senses would have us throw the
+treasures of civilisation and hand over the delicate machinery of
+government."
+
+He laughed bitterly, and drew back the curtain with an impatient hand.
+
+"Democracy! _Christian_ Democracy! _Vox Populi vox Dei!_ The sovereignty
+and infallibility of the people! Pshaw! I would as soon believe in the
+infallibility of the Pope!"
+
+The crowds increased in the piazza until the triangular space looked
+like the rapids of a swollen river, and the noise that came up from it
+was like the noise of falling cliffs and uprooted trees.
+
+"Fools! Rabble! Too ignorant to know what you really want, and at the
+mercy of every rascal who sows the wind and leaves you to reap the
+whirlwind."
+
+Roma crept away from the Baron with a sense of physical repulsion, and
+at the next moment, from the other window, she heard the blast of a
+trumpet. A dreadful silence followed the trumpet blast, and then a clear
+voice cried:
+
+"In the name of the law I command you to disperse."
+
+It was the voice of a delegate of the police. Roma could see the man on
+the lowest stage of the steps with his tricoloured scarf of office about
+him. A second blast came from the trumpet, and again the delegate cried:
+
+"In the name of the law I command you to disperse."
+
+At that moment somebody cried, "Long live the Republic of Man!" and
+there was great cheering. In the midst of the cheering the trumpet
+sounded a third time, and then a loud voice cried "Fire!"
+
+At the next moment a volley was fired from somewhere, a cloud of white
+smoke was coiling in front of the window at which Roma stood, and women
+and children in the vagueness below were uttering acute cries.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"Don't be afraid, my child. Nothing has happened yet. The police had
+orders to fire first over the people's heads."
+
+In her fear and agitation Roma ran back to the outer room, and a moment
+afterwards Angelelli opened the door and stood face to face with her.
+
+"What have you done?" she demanded.
+
+"An unfortunate incident, Excellency," said Angelelli, as the Baron
+appeared. "After the warning of the delegate the mob laughed and threw
+stones, and the Carabineers fired. They were in the piazza and fired up
+the steps."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Unluckily there were a few persons on the upper flights at the moment,
+and some of them are wounded, and a child is dead."
+
+Roma muttered a low moan and sank on to the stool.
+
+"Whose child is it?"
+
+"We don't yet know, but the father is there, and he is raging like a
+madman, and unless he is arrested he will provoke the people to frenzy,
+and there will be riot and insurrection."
+
+The Baron took from the table a letter he had written and sealed.
+
+"Take this to the Quirinal instantly. Ask for an immediate audience with
+the King. When you receive his written reply, call up the Minister of
+War and say you have the royal decree to declare a state of siege."
+
+Angelelli was going out hurriedly.
+
+"Wait! Send to the Piazza Navona and arrest Rossi. Be careful! You will
+arrest the Deputy under Articles 134 and 252 on a charge of using the
+great influence he has acquired over the people to urge the masses by
+speeches and writings to resist public authority and to change violently
+the form of government and the constitution of the State."
+
+"Good!"
+
+Angelelli disappeared, the acute cries outside died away, the scurrying
+of flying feet was no more heard, and Roma was still on the stool before
+the fire, moaning behind the hands that covered her face. The Baron came
+near to her and touched her with a caressing gesture.
+
+"I'm sorry, my child, very sorry. Rossi is a dreamer, not a statesman,
+but he is none the less troublesome on that account No wonder he has
+fascinated you, as he has fascinated the people, but time will wipe away
+an impression like that. The best thing that can happen for both of you
+is that he should be arrested to-night. It will save you so many ordeals
+and so much sorrow."
+
+At that moment a cannon-shot boomed through the darkness outside, and
+its vibration rattled the windows and walls.
+
+"The signal from St. Angelo," said the Baron. "The gates are closed and
+the city is under siege."
+
+
+                                IX
+
+When, in the commotion of the household caused by the near approach of
+the crowd which brought Rossi home from the Coliseum, little Joseph
+slipped down the stairs and made a dash for the street, he chuckled to
+himself as he thought how cleverly he had eluded his mother, who had
+been looking out of the bedroom window, and those two old watch-dogs,
+his grandfather and grandmother, who were nearly always at the door.
+
+It was not until he was fairly plunged into the great sea of the city,
+and had begun to be a little dazed by more lights than he ever saw when
+he closed his eyes in bed, that he remembered that he had disobeyed
+orders and broken his promise not to go out. But even then, he told
+himself, he was not responsible. He was Donna Roma's porter now.
+Therefore, he couldn't be Joseph, could he?
+
+So, with his magic mace in hand, the serious man of seven marched on,
+and reconciled himself to his disobedience by thinking nothing more
+about it. People looked at him and smiled as he passed through the
+Piazza Madama, where the Senate House stands, and that made him lift his
+head and walk on proudly, but as he went through the Piazza of the
+Pantheon a boy who was coming out of a cookshop with a tray on his head
+cried, "Helloa, kiddy! playing Pulcinello?" and that dashed his
+worshipful dignity for several minutes.
+
+It began to snow, and the white flakes on his gold braid clouded his
+soul at first, but when he remembered that porters had to work in all
+weathers, he wagged his sturdy head and strode on. He was going to Donna
+Roma's according to her invitation, and he found his way by his
+recollection of what he had seen when he made the same journey on
+Sunday--here a tramcar coming round a corner, there a line of posts
+across a narrow thoroughfare, and there a fat man with a gruff voice
+shouting something at the door of a trattoria.
+
+At the corner of a lane there was a shop window full of knives and
+revolvers. He didn't care for knives--they cut people's fingers--but he
+liked guns, and when he grew up to be a man he would buy one and kill
+somebody.
+
+Coming to the Piazza Monte Citorio, he remembered the soldiers at the
+door of the House of Parliament, and the cellar full of long guns with
+knives (bayonets) stuck on the ends of their muzzles. One of the
+soldiers laughed, called him "Uncle," and asked him something about
+enlisting, but he only struck his mace firmly on the flags and marched
+on.
+
+At the corner of the Piazza Colonna he had to wait some time before he
+could cross the Corso, for the crowds were coming both ways and the
+traffic frightened him. He had made various little sorties and had been
+driven back, when a soft hand was slipped into his fat palm and he was
+piloted across in safety. Then he looked up at his helper. It was a girl
+with big white feathers in her hat, and her face painted pink and white
+like the face of the little Jesus in the cradle in church at Christmas.
+She asked him what his name was, and he told her; also where he was
+going, and he told her that too. It was dark by this time, and the great
+little man was beginning to be glad of company.
+
+"Aren't you tired of carrying that heavy stick?" she said.
+
+It wasn't a stick, and he wasn't a bit tired of carrying it.
+
+"But aren't you tired _yourself_?" she said, and he admitted that
+perhaps it was so.
+
+So she picked him up, and carried him in her arms, while he carried the
+mace, and for some minutes both were satisfied. But presently some one
+in the Via Tritone cried out, "Helloa! here comes the Blessed Bambino,"
+whereupon his worshipful dignity was again wounded, and he wriggled to
+the ground.
+
+It began to thunder and there were some flashes of lightning, whereupon
+Joseph shuddered and crept closer to the girl's side.
+
+"Are you afraid of lightning, Joseph?" she asked.
+
+He wasn't. He often saw it at home when he went to bed. His mother held
+his hand and he covered up his head in the clothes, and then he liked
+it.
+
+The girl took the wee, fat hand again, and the little feet toddled on.
+
+After vain efforts to snatch a kiss, which were defeated by a proper
+withdrawal of the manly head in the cocked hat, the girl with the
+feathers and the doll's face left him in the Via due Macelli under a
+bright electric lamp that hung over the door of a café-chantant.
+
+Joseph knew then that he was not far from Donna Roma's, and he began to
+think of what he would do when he got there. If the big porter at the
+door tried to stop him he would say, "I'm a little Roman boy," and the
+man would _have_ to let him go up. Then he would take charge of the
+hall, and when he had not to open the door he would play with the dog,
+and sometimes with Donna Roma.
+
+With sound practical sense he thought of his wages. Would it be a penny
+a week or twopence? He thought it would be twopence. Men didn't work for
+nothing nowadays. He had heard his father say so.
+
+Then he remembered his mother, and his lip began to drop. But it rose
+again when he told himself that of course she would come every night to
+put him to bed as usual. "Good-night, mamma! See you in the morning," he
+would say, and when he opened his eyes it would be to-morrow.
+
+He was feeling sleepy now, and do what he would he could hardly keep his
+eyes from closing. But he was in the Piazza di Spagna by this time, and
+his little feet in their top-boots began to patter up the snowy steps.
+
+There are three principal landings to the Spanish Steps, and the great
+little man of seven had reached the second of them when a noise in the
+streets below made him stop and turn his head.
+
+A great crowd, carrying hundreds of torches, was marching into the
+piazza. They were singing, shouting, and blowing whistles and trumpets.
+It was like _Befana_ in the Piazza Navona, and when Joseph blinked his
+eyes he almost thought he was at home in bed.
+
+All at once silence--then soldiers--then a jump all over his body like
+that which came to him when he was falling asleep--then a sense of
+something warm--then a buzzing noise--then a boom like that of the gun
+of St. Angelo at dinner-time ... then a deep, familiar voice calling and
+calling to him, and his eyes opened for a moment and saw his father's
+face.
+
+"Good-night, papa! So sleepy! See you in the morning!"
+
+And then nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Elena waited for Bruno's return with little Joseph, she went up
+and downstairs between David Rossi's apartment and her own on all manner
+of invented errands. Meantime she tried to keep down her anxiety by
+keeping up her anger. Joseph was so worrisome. When he came home he
+would have to be whipped and sent to bed without his supper. It was true
+his _verdura_ was already on the stove, but he must not be allowed to
+touch it. You really must be strict with children. They would like you
+all the better for it when they grew up to be men and women.
+
+But every moment broke down this brave severity, until the desire to
+punish Joseph for his disobedience was all gone. She stood at the head
+of the stairs and listened for his voice and his little pattering feet.
+If she had heard them, her anxious expression would have given way to a
+cross look and she would have scolded both father and son all the way up
+to bed. But they did not come, and she turned to the dining-room with a
+downcast face.
+
+"Where can the boy be? If I could only have him back! I will never let
+him out of my sight again. Never!"
+
+David Rossi, who was walking in the sitting-room to calm his nerves
+after a trying time, tried to comfort her. It would be all right. Depend
+upon it, Joseph had gone up to Donna Roma's. She was to remember what
+Bruno told them on Sunday. "The little Roman boy." Joseph had thought of
+nothing else for three days, and this being his birthday....
+
+"You think so? You really think...."
+
+"I'm sure of it. Bruno will be back presently, carrying Joseph on his
+back. Or perhaps Donna Roma will send the boy home in the carriage, and
+the great little man will come upstairs like the Mayor. Meantime she has
+kept him to play with, and...."
+
+"Yes, that must be it," said Elena, with shining eyes. "The Signorina
+must have kept him to play with! He must be playing now with the
+Signorina!"
+
+At that moment through the open door there came the sound of a heavy
+tread on the stairs, mingled with various voices. Elena's shining face
+suddenly clouded, and Rossi, who read her thought, went out on to the
+landing. Bruno was coming up the staircase with something in his arms,
+and behind him were the Garibaldian and his old wife and a line of
+strangers.
+
+Rossi ran down two flights of stairs and met them. He saw everything as
+by a flash of lightning. The boy lay in his father's arms. He was white
+and cold, with his head fallen back, and his hair matted with flakes of
+snow. His gay coat was open, and his little stained shirt was torn out
+at the breast. A stranger behind was carrying the cocked hat and mace.
+
+Elena, who was at the head of the stairs by this time, was screaming.
+
+"Keep her away, sir," said Bruno. The poor fellow was trying to be brave
+and strong, but his voice was like a voice from the other side of an
+abyss.
+
+They took the boy into the dining-room, and laid him on a sofa. There
+was no keeping the mother back. She forced her way through and laid hold
+of the child.
+
+"Get away, he's mine," she cried fiercely.
+
+And then she dropped on her knees before the boy, threw her arms about
+him and called on him by his name.
+
+"Joseph! Speak to me! Open your eyes and speak!... What have you been
+doing with my child? He is ill. Why don't you send for a doctor? Don't
+stand there like fools. Go for a doctor, I tell you ... Joseph! Only a
+word!... Have you carried him home without his hat on? And it's snowing
+too! He'll get his death of cold ... what's this? Blood on his shirt?
+And a wound? Look at this red spot. Have they shot him? No, no, it's
+impossible! A child! Joseph! Joseph! Speak to me!... Yes, his heart is
+beating." She was pressing her ear to the boy's breast. "Or is it only
+the beating in my head? Oh, where is the doctor? Why don't you send for
+him?"
+
+They could not tell her that it was useless, that a doctor had seen the
+child already, and that all was over. All they could do was to stand
+round her with awe in their faces. She understood them without words.
+Her hair fell from its knot, and her eyes began to blaze like the eyes
+of a maniac.
+
+"They've killed my child!" she cried. "He's dead! My little boy is dead!
+Only seven, and it was his birthday! O God! My child! What had he done
+that they should kill him?"
+
+And then Bruno, who was standing by with a wild lustre in his eyes, said
+between his teeth, "Done? Done nothing but live under a Government of
+murderers and assassins."
+
+The room filled with people. Neighbours who had never before set foot in
+the rooms came in without fear, for death was among them. They stood
+silent for the most part, only handing round the table the little cocked
+hat and the mace, with sighs and deep breathing. But some one speaking
+to Rossi told him what had happened. It was at the Spanish Steps. The
+delegate gave the word, and the Carabineers fired over the people's
+heads. But they hit the child and made him cold. His little heart had
+burst.
+
+"And I was going to whip him," said Elena. "Not a minute before I was
+talking about the rod, and not giving him his supper. O God! I can never
+forgive myself."
+
+And then the blessed tears came and she wept bitterly.
+
+David Rossi put his arms about her, and her head fell on his breast. All
+barriers were broken down, and she clung to him and cried.
+
+Just then cries came from the piazza--"Hurrah for the Revolution!" and
+"Down with the destroyers of the people!"--the woolly tones of voices
+shouting in the snow. Somebody on the stairs explained that a young man
+was going about waving a bloody handkerchief, and that the sight of it
+was exasperating the people to frenzy. Women were marching through the
+streets, and the entire city was on the point of insurrection.
+
+In the dining-room the stricken ones still stood around the couch.
+Presently there was a sound of singing outside. A great crowd was coming
+into the piazza, singing the Garibaldi Hymn. Bruno heard it, and the
+wild lustre in his eyes gave place to a look of savage joy. An awful
+oath burst from his lips, and he ran out of the house. At the next
+moment he was heard in the street, singing in a thundering voice:
+
+    "The tombs are uncovered,
+    The dead arise,
+    The martyrs are rising
+    Before our eyes."
+
+The old Garibaldian threw up his head like a warhorse at the call of
+battle, and his rickety limbs were going towards the door.
+
+"Stay here, father," said Rossi, and the old man obeyed him.
+
+Elena was quieter by this time. She was sitting by the child and
+stroking his little icy hand.
+
+David Rossi, who had hardly spoken, went into his bedroom. His lips were
+tightly pressed together, his eyes were bloodshot, and his breath was
+labouring hard in his heaving breast.
+
+He took up his dagger paper-knife, tried its point on his palm with two
+or three reckless thrusts and threw it back on the desk. Then he went
+down on his hands and knees and rummaged among the newspapers lying in
+heaps under the window. At last he found what he looked for. It was the
+six-chambered revolver which had been sent to him as a present. "I'll
+kill the man like a dog," he thought.
+
+He loaded the revolver, put it in his breast-pocket, went back to the
+sitting-room, and made ready to go out.
+
+
+                                X
+
+Ten was striking on the different clocks of the city. Felice had lit the
+stove in the boudoir and the wood was burning in fitful blue and red
+flames. There was no other light in the room, and Roma lay with her body
+on the floor, and her face buried in the couch.
+
+The world outside was full of fearful and unusual noises. Snow was still
+falling, and the voices heard through it had a peculiar sound of
+sobbing. The soft rolling of thunder came from a long way off, like the
+boom of a slow wave on a distant beach. At intervals there was the
+crackle of musketry, like the noise of rockets sent up in the night, and
+sometimes there were pitiful cries, smothered by the unreverberating
+snow, like the cries of a drowning man on a foundering ship at sea.
+
+Roma, face downward, heard these sounds in the lapses of a terrible
+memory. She was seeing, as in a nightmare, the incidents of a night that
+was hardly six weeks past. One by one the facts flashed back upon her
+with a burning sense of shame, and she felt herself to be a sinner and a
+criminal.
+
+It was the night of the royal ball at the Quirinal. The blaze of lights,
+the glitter of jewels, the brilliant throng of handsome men and lovely
+women, the clash of music, the whirl of dancing, and finally the smiles
+and compliments of the King. Then going home in the carriage in the
+early morning, swathed in furs over her thin white silk, with the
+Baron, in his decorations worn diagonally over his white breast, and
+through the glass the waning moon, the silent stars, the empty streets.
+
+Then this room, this couch, sinking down on it, very tired, with eyes
+smiling and half closed, and nearly gone already into the mists of
+sleep. And then the Baron at her feet, pressing his lips to her wrist
+where the pulse was beating, kissing her arms and shoulders.... "Oh,
+dear! You are mad! I must not listen to you." And then burning words of
+love and passion: "My wife! My wife that is to be!" And then the call of
+her aunt from the adjoining chamber, "Roma!"
+
+The sobbing sounds from outside broke in on Roma's nightmare, and when
+the chain of memory linked on again it was morning in her vision, and
+the Countess was comforting her in a whimpering voice:
+
+"After all, God is merciful, and things that happen to everybody can be
+atoned for by prayer and penance. Besides, the Baron is a man of honour,
+and the poor maniac cannot last much longer."
+
+The sobbing sounds in the snow, the cries far away, the crackle of the
+rifle-shots, the rumble of the thunder broke in again, and the elements
+outside seemed to whirl round her in the tempest of her trouble. For a
+moment she lifted her head and heard voices in the next room.
+
+The Baron was still there, and from time to time, as he wrote his
+despatches, messengers came to take them away, to bring replies, and to
+deliver the latest news of the night. The populace had risen in all
+parts of the city, and the soldiers had charged them. There had been
+several misadventures and many arrests. The large house of detention by
+St. Andrea delle Frate was already full, but the people continued to
+hold out. They had disconnected the gas at the gasometer and cut the
+electric wires, and the city was plunged in darkness.
+
+"Tell the electric light company to turn on the flashlight from Monte
+Mario," said the Baron.
+
+And when the voices ceased in the drawing-room there came the deadened
+sound of the Countess's frightened treble behind the wall.
+
+"O Holy Virgin, full of grace, save me! It would be a sin to let me die
+to-night! Holy Virgin, see! I have given thee two more candles. Art
+thou not satisfied? Save me from murder, Mother of God."
+
+Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face,
+which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto
+the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of
+her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was
+compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to
+confess.
+
+Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw
+herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the
+deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She
+had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was
+waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she
+had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and
+alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented.
+
+"No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound
+of her voice, the Baron came into the room.
+
+"My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall
+never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear
+you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful
+eyes and be calm."
+
+She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with
+one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she
+said:
+
+"I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment
+for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps
+this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ...
+it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but
+there is no help for it."
+
+The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her
+throat.
+
+"The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also.
+He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love
+for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him.
+Perhaps he is in prison by this time."
+
+Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron
+tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very
+natural and very womanly. But time was the great remedy for human ills.
+It would heal everything.
+
+"Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the
+only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you
+the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over
+and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...."
+
+"I can never forget and I don't want to be great. I only want to be
+good. Leave me!"
+
+"You _are_ good. You have always been good. What happened was my fault
+alone, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I found you
+growing up to be a great woman, and passing out of my legal control,
+while I was bound down to a poor, helpless, living corpse. Some day you
+would meet a younger, freer man, and you would be lost to me for good.
+Wasn't it human to try to hold you to me until the time came when I
+could claim you altogether? And if meanwhile this man has
+interposed...."
+
+He pointed to the bust on the pedestal. She looked up at it, and then
+dropped her head.
+
+"Put the man out of your mind, my dear, and all will be well. Probably
+he is in the hands of the authorities already. God grant it may be so!
+No trouble about his arrest this time! It cannot be complicated by the
+danger of scandal. Nobody else's name and character will be concerned in
+it. And if it serves to dispose of a dangerous man and a subversive
+politician, I am willing to let everything else sleep."
+
+He paused a moment, and then added in his most incisive accents: "But if
+not, the law must take its course, and Roma Roselli must complete what
+Roma Volonna has begun."
+
+At that moment Felice's dark form stood against the light in the open
+door.
+
+"Commendatore Angelelli and Charles Minghelli, Excellency."
+
+As the Baron went back to the drawing-room Roma returned to the window.
+Scales of snow adhered to the glass, and it was difficult to see
+anything outside. But the masses of shadow and sheets of light were
+gone, and the city lay in utter darkness. The sobbing sounds, the
+crackle of musketry and the rumble of thunder were all gone, and the air
+was empty and void.
+
+At one moment there was a soft patter as of a flock of sheep passing
+under the window in the darkness. It was a company of riflemen going at
+a quick march over the snow, with torches and lanterns.
+
+Voices came from the next room, and Roma found herself listening.
+
+"Apparently the insurrection is suppressed, your Excellency."
+
+"I congratulate you."
+
+"The soldiers are patrolling the streets, and all is quiet."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"We have some hundreds of rioters in the house of detention, and the
+military courts will begin to sit to-morrow morning."
+
+"Excellent!"
+
+"The misadventures have been few and unimportant, the child I spoke of
+being the only one killed."
+
+"You have discovered whose child it was?"
+
+"Yes. Unluckily...."
+
+Roma felt dizzy. A thought had flashed upon her.
+
+"It is the child of Donna Roma's man, Bruno Rocco, and apparently...."
+
+A choking cry rang through the room. Was it herself who made it?
+
+"Go on, Commendatore. Apparently...."
+
+"The child was dressed in some carnival costume, and apparently he was
+on his way to this house."
+
+Roma's dizziness increased, and to save herself from falling she caught
+at a side-table that stood under the bust.
+
+On this table were some sculptor's tools--a chisel and a small mallet,
+with which she had been working.
+
+There was an interval in which the voices were deadened and confused.
+Then they became clear and sharp as before.
+
+"But the most important fact you have not yet given me. I trust you are
+only saving it up for the last. The Deputy Rossi is arrested?"
+
+"Unfortunately ... Excellency...."
+
+"No?"
+
+"He left home immediately after the outbreak and has not been seen
+since. Presently the flashlight will be turned on by a separate battery
+from Monte Mario, and every corner of the city shall be searched. But we
+fear he is gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Perhaps by the train that left just before the signal."
+
+Roma felt a cry rising to her throat again, but she put up her hand to
+keep it down.
+
+"No matter! Commendatore, send telegrams after the train to all stations
+up to the frontier, with orders that nobody is to alight until every
+carriage has been overhauled. Minghelli, go to the Consulta immediately,
+and ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to despatch a portrait of Rossi
+to every foreign Government."
+
+"But no portrait exists, Excellency. It was a difficulty I found in
+England."
+
+"Yes, there is a portrait. Come this way."
+
+Roma felt the room going round as the Baron came into it and switched on
+the light.
+
+"_There_ is the only portrait of the illustrious Deputy, and our hostess
+will lend it to be photographed."
+
+"Never!" said Roma, and taking up the mallet she struck the bust a heavy
+blow, and it fell in fragments to the floor.
+
+Half-an-hour afterwards Roma was sitting amid the wreck of her work when
+the Baron, wearing his fur-lined overcoat and pulling on his gloves,
+came into the boudoir.
+
+"I am compelled," he said, "to inflict my presence upon you for a moment
+longer in order to tell you what my attitude in the future is to be, and
+what feelings are to guide you. I shall continue to think of you as my
+wife according to the law of nature, and of the man who has come between
+us as your lover. I will not give you up to him, whatever happens; and
+if he tries to take you away, or if you try to go to him, you must be
+prepared to find that I offer every resistance. Two passions are now
+engaged against the man, and I will not shrink from any course that
+seems necessary to subdue either him or you, or both."
+
+A moment afterwards she heard the patrol challenging him on the piazza.
+Then "Pardon, Excellency," and the soft swish of carriage wheels in the
+snow.
+
+
+                                XI
+
+When Rossi left home he was like a raging madman. He made straight for
+the Palazzo Braschi at the other side of the piazza, and going up the
+marble staircase on limbs that could scarcely support him, his thoughts
+went back in a broken maze to the scene he had left behind.
+
+"Our little boy dead! Dead in his mother's arms! O God! let me meet the
+man face to face!... Our innocent darling! The light of our eyes put out
+in a moment! Our sweet little Joseph!... Shall there be no retribution?
+God forbid! The man who has been the chief cause of this crime shall be
+the first to suffer punishment. No use wasting time on the hounds who
+executed his orders. They are only delegates of police, and over them is
+this Minister of the Interior. He alone is responsible, and he is here!"
+
+When he reached the green baize door to the hall, he stopped to wipe
+away the perspiration which stood on his forehead although his face was
+flecked with snow. The messengers looked scared when he stepped inside,
+and they answered his questions with obvious hesitation. The Minister
+was not in his cabinet. He had not been there that night. It was
+possible the Honourable might find his Excellency at home.
+
+Rossi turned on his heel instantly, and went hurriedly downstairs. He
+would go to the Palazzo Leone. There was no time to lose. Presently the
+man would hide himself in the darkness like a toad under a stone.
+
+As he left the Ministry of the Interior he heard the singing of the
+Garibaldi Hymn in the distance, and turning into the Corso Victor
+Emmanuel, he came upon crowds of people and some noisy and tumultuous
+scenes.
+
+One group had broken into a gun-shop and seized rifles and cartridges;
+another group had taken possession of two electric tram-cars, and
+tumbled them on their sides to make a barricade across the street; and a
+third group was tearing up the street itself to use the stones for
+missiles. "Our turn now," they were shouting, and there were screams of
+delirious laughter.
+
+As Rossi crossed the bridge of St. Angelo the cannon was fired from the
+Castle, and he knew that it was meant for a signal. "No matter!" he
+thought. "It will be too late when the soldiers arrive."
+
+Notwithstanding the tumult in the city the Piazza of St. Peter's was
+silent and deserted. Not the sound of a footfall, not the rattle of a
+carriage-wheel; only the swish-swish of the fountains, whose waters were
+playing in the lamplight through the falling snow, and the echoing
+hammer of the clock of the Basilica.
+
+The porter of the Palazzo Leone was asleep in his lodge, and Rossi
+passed upstairs.
+
+"I'll bring the man to justice now," he thought. "He imagined we were
+only tame cats and would submit to anything. He was wrong. We'll show
+him we know how to punish tyrants. Haven't we always done so, we Romans?
+He has a sharp tongue for the people, but I have a sharper one here for
+him."
+
+And he felt for the revolver in his breast-pocket to make certain it was
+there.
+
+The lackey in knee-breeches and yellow stockings who answered the inside
+bell was almost speechless at the sight of the white face which
+confronted him at the door. No, the Baron was not at home. He had not
+been there since early in the evening. Had he gone to the Prefettura?
+Possibly. Or the Consulta? Perhaps.
+
+"Which, man, which?" said Rossi, and to say something the lackey
+stammered "The Consulta," and closed the door.
+
+Rossi set his face towards the Foreign Office. There was a light in the
+stained-glass windows of the Pope's private chapel--the Holy Father was
+at his prayers. A canvas-covered barrow containing a man who had been
+injured by the soldiers was being wheeled into the Hospital of Santo
+Spirito, and a woman and a child were walking and crying beside it.
+
+The streets were covered with broken tiles which had been thrown on to
+the heads of the cavalry as they galloped through the principal
+thoroughfares. Carabineers, with revolvers in hand, were dragging
+themselves on their stomachs along the roofs, trying to surprise the
+rioters who were hiding behind chimney-stacks. Some one shouted: "Cut
+the electric wires," and men were clambering up the tall posts and
+breaking the electric lamps.
+
+The Consulta, the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stands in
+the Piazza of the Quirinal, and when Rossi reached it the great square
+of the King was as silent as the great square of the Pope had been.
+
+Two sentries were in boxes on either side of the royal gate, and one
+Carabineer was in the doorway. The gardens down the long corridor lay
+dark in the shadows, but the fountain with sculptured horses, the
+splashing water, and the front of the building were white under the
+electric lamps as if from a dazzling moon.
+
+Before turning into the silent courtyard of the Consulta, Rossi paused
+and listened to the noises that came from the city. Men were singing and
+women were screaming. The rattle of musketry mingled with the cries of
+children. And over all were the steady downfall of the snow and the dull
+rumble of distant thunder.
+
+Rossi held his head between his hands to prevent his senses from leaving
+him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble.
+Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the
+Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the
+Prime Minister might not be there.
+
+The porter was not sure. The Baron's carriage had just gone. Let him ask
+on the telephone.... No, there had been a messenger from the Minister of
+the Interior, but the Minister himself had not been there that night.
+
+Rossi took a long breath of relief and went away. He had returned to the
+bright side of the piazza when the lights seemed to be wiped out as
+though by an invisible wing, and the whole city was plunged in darkness.
+At the next moment a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the Quirinal,
+and the gates of the royal palace and of the Consulta were closed.
+
+Midnight struck.
+
+For two hours the soldiers had been charging the crowds by the light of
+lanterns and torches. They had arrested hundreds of persons. Chained
+together, two and two, the insurgents had been taken to the places of
+detention, amid the cries of their women and children. "Who knows
+whether we shall see each other again?" said the prisoners, as they
+passed into the "House of Pain." One old woman went on her knees to the
+soldiers and begged them to have pity on the people. "They are your
+brothers, my sons," she cried.
+
+One o'clock struck.
+
+The streets were still dark, but a searchlight from Monte Mario was
+sweeping over the city like a flash of a supernatural eye. With
+tottering limbs and his head on his breast, David Rossi was walking down
+the Via due Macelli towards the column of the Immaculate Conception,
+when a young girl spoke to him.
+
+"Honourable," she said, "is it true that the little boy is dead?... It
+is? Oh, dear! I met him in the Corso, and brought him up as far as the
+Variétés, and if I had only taken him all the way.... Oh, I shall never
+forgive myself!"
+
+The city was quiet and all was hushed on every side when Rossi found
+himself on a flight of steps at the back of Roma's apartment. From these
+steps a door opened into the studio. One panel of the door was glazed,
+and a light was shining from within. Going cautiously forward, Rossi
+looked into the room. Roma was seated on a stool with her hands clasped
+in her lap and her hair hanging loose. She was very pale. Her face
+expressed unutterable sadness.
+
+Rossi listened for a moment, but there was not a sound to be heard
+except that of the different clocks chiming the quarter. Then he tapped
+lightly on the glass.
+
+"Roma!" he said in a low tone. "Roma!"
+
+She rose up and shrank back. Then coming to the door, and shielding her
+eyes from the light, she put her face close to the pane. At the next
+moment she threw the door open.
+
+"Is it you?" she said in a tremulous voice, and taking his hand she drew
+him hurriedly into the house.
+
+
+                                XII
+
+After the Baron was gone, Roma had sat a long time in the dark among the
+ruins of the broken bust. When twelve o'clock struck she was feeling hot
+and feverish, and, in spite of the coldness of the night, she rose and
+opened the window. The snow had ceased to fall, the thunder was gone,
+and the city was quiet.
+
+At that moment the revolving searchlight on Monte Mario passed over the
+room. The white flash lit up the broken fragments at her feet, and
+brought a new train of reflections. The bust she destroyed had been only
+the plaster cast; the piece-mould remained, and might be a cause of
+danger.
+
+She closed the window, took a candle, and went down to the studio to put
+the mould out of the way. She had done so, and was sitting to rest and
+to think when Rossi's knock came at the door. In a moment all her dreams
+were gone. She was clasped in his arms and had put up her mouth to be
+kissed.
+
+"Is it you?"
+
+"Roma!"
+
+It was not at first that she realised what was happening, but after a
+moment she recovered from her bewilderment, and extinguished the candle
+lest Rossi should be seen from outside.
+
+They were in the dark, save at intervals when the revolving light in its
+circuit of the city swept across the studio, and lit up their faces as
+by a flash of lightning. He seemed to be dazed. His weary eyes looked as
+if their light were almost extinct.
+
+"You are safe? You are well?" she asked.
+
+"O God! what sights!" he said. "You have heard what has happened?"
+
+"Yes, yes! But you are not injured?"
+
+"The people were peaceful and meant no evil, but the soldiers were
+ordered to fire, and our little boy is dead."
+
+"Don't let us speak of it.... The police were told to arrest you, but
+you have escaped thus far, and now...."
+
+"Bruno is taken, and hundreds of others are in prison."
+
+"But you are safe? You are well? You are uninjured?"
+
+"Yes," he answered between his teeth, and then he covered his face with
+his hands. "God knows I did my best to prevent this bloodshed--I would
+have laid down my life to prevent it."
+
+"God _does_ know it."
+
+"Take this."
+
+He drew something from his breast-pocket and put it into her hands.
+
+It was the revolver.
+
+"I cannot trust myself any longer."
+
+"You haven't used it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"I should have done so if I could have met the man face to face."
+
+"The Baron?"
+
+"I searched for him everywhere, and couldn't find him. God kept him out
+of my way to save me from sin and shame."
+
+With a frightened cry she put down the revolver and clasped her hands
+about his neck. He began to recover his dazed senses and to smooth the
+hair on her damp forehead.
+
+"My poor Roma! You didn't think we were to part like this?"
+
+Her arms slackened, and she dropped her head on to his shoulder.
+
+"Last night you told me to fly, and I wouldn't do so. There was no man
+in Rome I was afraid of then. But to-night there is some one I am afraid
+of. I am afraid of myself."
+
+"You intend to go?"
+
+"Yes! I shall feel like a captain who deserts his sinking ship. Would to
+God I could have gone down with her!... Yet no! She is not lost yet.
+Everything is in God's hands. Perhaps there is work for me abroad, now
+that the paths are closed to me at home. Let us wait and see."
+
+They were both silent for a while.
+
+"Then it's all over," she said, gulping down a sob.
+
+"God forbid! This black night in Rome is only the beginning of the end.
+It will be the dawn of the resurrection everywhere."
+
+"But it is all over between you and me."
+
+"Indeed, no. No, no! I cannot take you with me. That is impossible. I
+couldn't see you suffer hunger and thirst and the privations of exile,
+but...."
+
+"Our marriage cannot be celebrated now, and that being so...."
+
+"The banns are good for half a year, Roma, and before that time I shall
+be back. Have no fear! The immortality stirring beneath the ruins of
+this old city will give us victory all over Italy. I will return and we
+shall be very happy. How happy we shall be!"
+
+"Yes, yes," she brought out at intervals.
+
+"Be brave, my girl, be brave!"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+The revolving searchlight flashed through the room at that moment, and
+she dropped her face again.
+
+"Dearest," she said faintly, "if I should not be here when you come
+back...."
+
+He started and seized her arm.
+
+"Roma, you cannot intend to submit to the will of that man?"
+
+She shook her head as it rested on his shoulder.
+
+"The man is a monster. He may put pressure upon you."
+
+"It is not that."
+
+"He may even make you suffer for my sake."
+
+"Nor that either."
+
+"By-and-by he may require everybody to take an oath of allegiance to the
+King."
+
+"I have taken mine already--to _my_ king."
+
+"Roma, if you wish me to stay I will do so in spite of everything."
+
+"I wish you to go, dearest."
+
+"Then what is it you fear?"
+
+"Nothing--only...."
+
+"But you are sad. Why is it?"
+
+"A foreboding. I feel as if we were parting for ever."
+
+He passed his hands through her hair. "It may be so. Only God can tell."
+
+"It was too sweet dreaming. I was too happy for a little while."
+
+"If it must be, it must be. But let us be brave, dear! We, who take up a
+life like this, must learn renunciation.... Crying, Roma?"
+
+"No! Oh, no! But renunciation! That's it--renunciation." She could feel
+the beating of her heart against his breast. "Love comes to every one,
+but to some it comes too late, and then it comes in vain." She was
+striving to keep down her sobs. "They have only to conquer it and
+renounce it, and to pray God to unite them to their loved ones in
+another life." She was choking, but she struggled on. "Sometimes I think
+it must be my lot to be like that. Other women may dream of love and
+home and children...."
+
+"Don't unman me, Roma."
+
+"Dearest, promise me that whatever happens you will think the best of
+me."
+
+"Roma!"
+
+"Promise me that whoever says anything to the contrary you will always
+believe I loved you."
+
+"Why should we talk of what can never happen?"
+
+"If we are parting for ever ... if we are saying a long farewell to all
+earthly affections, promise me...."
+
+"For God's sake, Roma!"
+
+"Promise me!"
+
+"I promise!" he said. "And you?"
+
+"I promise too--I promise that as long as I live, and wherever I am and
+whatever becomes of me, I will ... yes, because I cannot help it ... I
+will love you to the last."
+
+Saying this in passionate tones, she drew down his head and he met her
+kiss with his lips.
+
+"It is our marriage, David. Others are married in church and by the
+hand, and with a ring. We are married in our spirits and our souls."
+
+A long time passed, during which they did not speak. The searchlight
+flashed in on them again and again with its supernatural eye, and as
+often as it did so Rossi looked at her with strange looks of pity and of
+love.
+
+Meantime, she cut a lock from her hair, tied it with a piece of ribbon,
+and put it in his pocket with his watch. Then she dried her eyes with
+her handkerchief and pushed it in his breast.
+
+The night went on, and nothing was to be heard but the chiming of clocks
+outside. At length through the silence there came a muffled rumble from
+the streets.
+
+"You must go now," she said, and when the next flash came round she
+looked up at him with a steadfast gaze, as if trying to gather into her
+eyes her last memories of his face.
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"It is still dark, but the streets are patrolled and every gate is
+closed, and how are you to escape?"
+
+"If the soldiers had wished to take me they could have done so a hundred
+times."
+
+"But the city is stirring. Be careful for my sake. Adieu!"
+
+"Roma," said Rossi, "if I do not take you with me it is partly because I
+want your help in Rome. Think of the poor people I leave behind me in
+poverty and in prison. Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning,
+alone with her terrible grief. Some one should be here to represent me
+for a time at all events--to take the messages I must send, the
+instructions I shall have to give. It will be a dangerous task, Roma, a
+task that can only be undertaken by some one who loves me, some one
+who...."
+
+"That is enough. Tell me what I can do," she said.
+
+They arranged a channel of correspondence, and then Roma began her
+farewells afresh.
+
+"Roma," said Rossi again, "since I must go away before our civil
+marriage can be celebrated, is it not best that our spiritual one should
+have the blessing of the Church?"
+
+Roma looked at him and trembled.
+
+"When I am gone God knows what may happen. The Baron may be a free man
+any day, and he may put pressure on you to marry him. In that case it
+will be strength and courage to you to know that in God's eyes you are
+married already. It will be happiness and comfort to me, too, when I am
+far away from you and alone."
+
+"But it is impossible."
+
+"Not so. A declaration before a parish priest is all that is necessary.
+'Father, this is my wife.' 'This is my husband.' That is enough. It will
+have no value in the eye of the law, but it will be a religious marriage
+for all that."
+
+"There is no time. You cannot wait...."
+
+"Hush!" The clocks were striking three. "At three o'clock there is mass
+at St. Andrea delle Frate. That is your parish church, Roma. The priest
+and his acolytes are the only witnesses we require."
+
+"If you think ... that is to say ... if it will make you happy, and be a
+strength to me also...."
+
+"Run for your cloak and hat, dearest--in ten minutes it will be done."
+
+"But think again." She was breathing audibly. "Who knows what may happen
+before you return? Will you never repent?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"But ... but there is something ... something I ought to tell
+you--something painful. It is about the past."
+
+"The past is past. Let us think of the future."
+
+"You do not wish to hear it."
+
+"If it is painful to you--no!"
+
+"Will nothing and nobody divide us?"
+
+"Nothing and nobody in the world."
+
+She gulped down another choking sob and threw both arms about his neck.
+
+"Take me, then. I am your wife before God and man."
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+It was still dark overhead, and the streets with their thin covering of
+snow were as silent as a catacomb. Through the door of the church, when
+the leather covering was lifted, there came the yellow light of the
+candles burning on the altar. The priest in his gold vestments stood
+with his face to the glistening shrine, and his acolytes knelt beside
+him. There was only one worshipper, an old woman who was kneeling before
+a chair in the gloom of a side chapel. The tinkle of the acolytes' bell
+and the faint murmur of the priest's voice were the only sounds that
+broke the stillness.
+
+Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass
+and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled
+and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice
+of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They
+parted at the church door.
+
+"You will write when you cross the frontier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Adieu then, until we meet again!"
+
+"If I am long away from you, Roma...."
+
+"You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always."
+
+She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a
+dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice.
+
+He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. "If the
+result of this night's work is that I am arrested and brought back and
+imprisoned...."
+
+"I can wait for you," she said.
+
+"If I am banished for life...."
+
+"I can follow you."
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst, and one way or another death itself
+should be the fate that falls to me...."
+
+"I can follow you there, too."
+
+"If we meet again we can laugh at all this, Roma."
+
+"Yes, we can laugh at all this," she faltered.
+
+"If not ... Adieu!"
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+She disengaged her clinging arms with one last caress; there was an
+instant of unconsciousness, and when she recovered herself he was gone.
+
+At the next moment there came through the darkness the measured tramp,
+tramp, tramp of the patrol. With a quivering heart Roma stood and
+listened. There was a slight movement among the soldiers, a scarcely
+perceptible pause, and then the tramp, tramp, tramp as before. Rossi
+looked back as he turned the corner, and saw Roma, in her light cloak,
+gliding across the silent street like a ghost.
+
+Three or four hundred yards inside the gate of St. John Lateran in one
+of the half-finished tenement houses on the outskirts of Rome, there is
+a cellar used as a resting-place and eating-house by the carriers from
+the country who bring wine into the city. This cellar was the only place
+that seemed to be awake when Rossi walked towards the city walls. Some
+eight or nine men, in the rude dress of wine-carriers, lay dozing or
+talking on the floor. They had been kept in Rome overnight by the
+closing of the gate, and were waiting for it to be opened in the
+morning.
+
+Without a moment's hesitation David Rossi stepped down and spoke to the
+men.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "you know who I am. I am Rossi. The police have
+orders to arrest me. Will you help me to get out of Rome?"
+
+"What's that?" shouted a drowsy voice from the smoky shadows of the
+cellar.
+
+"It's the Honourable Rossi," said a lad who had shambled up. "The
+oysters are after him, and will we help him to escape?"
+
+"Will we? It's not _will_ we; it's _can_ we, Honourable," said a
+thick-set man, who lifted his head from an upturned horse-saddle.
+
+In a moment the men were all on their feet, asking questions and
+discussing chances. The gate was to be opened at six, and the first
+train north was to go out at half-past nine. But the difficulty was that
+everybody in Rome knew Rossi. Even if he got through the gate he could
+not get on to the train within ten miles of the city without the
+certainty of recognition.
+
+"I have it!" said the thick-set man with the drowsy voice. "There's
+young Carlo. He got a scratch in the leg last night from one of the wet
+nurses of the Government, and he'll have to lie upstairs for a week at
+least. Why can't he lend his clothes to the Honourable? And why can't
+the Honourable drive Carlo's cart back to Monte Rotondo, and then go
+where he likes when he gets there?"
+
+"That will do," said Rossi, and so it was settled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the train which left Rome for Florence and Milan at 9.30 in the
+morning arrived at the country station of Monte Rotondo, eighteen miles
+out, a man in top-boots, blue trousers, a white waistband and a
+red-lined overcoat got into the people's compartment. The train was
+crowded with foreigners who were flying from the risks of insurrection,
+and even the third-class carriages were filled with well-dressed
+strangers. They were talking bitterly of their experiences the night
+before. Most of them had been compelled to barricade their bedroom doors
+at the hotels, and some had even passed the night at the railway
+station.
+
+"It all comes of letting men like this Rossi go at large," said a young
+Englishman with the voice of a pea-hen. "For my part, I would put all
+these anarchists on an uninhabited island and leave them to fight it out
+among themselves."
+
+"Say, Rossi isn't an anarchist," said a man with an American intonation.
+
+"What is he?"
+
+"A dreamer of dreams."
+
+"Bad dreams, then," said the voice of the pea-hen, and there was general
+laughter.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                    PART SIX--THE ROMAN OF ROME
+
+
+                                I
+
+Roma awoke next morning with a feeling of joy. The dangers of last night
+were over and David Rossi had escaped. Where would he be by this time?
+She looked at her little round watch and reckoned the hours that had
+passed against the speed of the train.
+
+Natalina came with the tea and the morning newspaper. The maid's tongue
+went faster than her hands as she rattled on about the terrors of the
+night and the news of the morning. Meantime Roma glanced eagerly over
+the columns of the paper for its references to Rossi. He was gone. The
+authorities were unable to say what had become of him.
+
+With boundless relief Roma turned to the other items of intelligence.
+The journal was the organ of the Government, and it contained an extract
+from the Official Gazette and the text of a proclamation by the Prefect.
+The first announced that the riot was at an end and Rome was quiet; the
+second notified the public that by royal decree the city was declared to
+be in a state of siege, and that the King had nominated a Royal
+Commissioner with full powers.
+
+Besides this news there was a general account of the insurrection. The
+ringleaders were anarchists, socialists, and professed atheists,
+determined on the destruction of both throne and altar by any means,
+however horrible. Their victims had been drawn, without seeing where
+they were going, into a vortex of disorder, and the soldiers had
+defended society and the law. Happily the casualties were few. The only
+fatal incident had been the death of a child, seven years of age, the
+son of a workman. The people of Rome had to congratulate themselves on
+the promptness of a Government which had reinstated authority with so
+small a loss of blood.
+
+Roma remembered what Rossi had said about Elena--"Think of Elena when
+she awakes in the morning, alone with her terrible grief"--and putting
+on a plain dark cloth dress she set off for the Piazza Navona.
+
+It was eleven o'clock, and the sun was shining on the melting snow. Rome
+was like a dead city. The breath of revolution had passed over it.
+Broken tiles lay on the pavement of the slushy streets, and here and
+there were the remains of abandoned barricades. The shops, which are the
+eyes of a city, were nearly all closed and asleep.
+
+At a flower-shop, which was opened to her knock, Roma bought a wreath of
+white chrysanthemums. A group of men and women stood at the door in the
+Piazza Navona, and she received their kisses on her hands. The
+Garibaldian followed her up the stairs, and his old wife, who stood at
+the top, called her "Little Sister," and then burst into tears.
+
+The boy lay on the couch, just where Roma had first seen him, when David
+Rossi was lifting him up asleep. He might have been asleep now, so
+peaceful was his expression under the mysterious seal of death. The
+blinds were drawn, and the sun came through them with a yellow light.
+Four candles were burning on chairs at the head and two at the feet. The
+little body was still dressed in the gay clothes of the festival, and
+the cocked hat and gilt-headed mace lay beside it. But the chubby hands
+were clasped over a tiny crucifix, and the hair of the shock head was
+brushed smooth and flat.
+
+"There he is," said Elena, in a cracked voice, and she went down on her
+knees between the candles.
+
+Roma, who could not speak, put the wreath of chrysanthemums on the brave
+little breast, and knelt by the mother's side. At that they all broke
+down together.
+
+The old Garibaldian wiped his rheumy eyes and began to talk of David
+Rossi. He was as fond of Joseph as if the boy had been his own son. But
+what had become of the Honourable? Before daybreak the police had made a
+domiciliary perquisition in the apartment, carried off his papers and
+sealed up his rooms.
+
+"Have no fear for him," said Roma, and then she asked about Bruno. All
+they knew was that Bruno had been arrested and locked up in the prison
+called Regina C[oe]li.
+
+"Poor Bruno! He'll be dying to know what is happening here," said Elena.
+
+"I'll see him," said Roma.
+
+It was well she had come early. In the stupefaction of their sorrow the
+three poor souls were like helpless children and had done nothing. Roma
+sent the Garibaldian to the sanitary office for the doctor who was to
+verify the death, to the office of health to register it, and to the
+municipal office to arrange for the funeral. It was to be a funeral of
+the third category, with a funeral car of two horses and a coach with
+liveried coachmen. The grave was to be one of the little vaults, the
+Fornelli, set apart for children. The priest was to be instructed to buy
+many candles and order several Frati. The expense would be great, but
+Roma undertook to bear it, and when she left the house the old people
+kissed her hands again and loaded her with blessings.
+
+
+                                II
+
+The Roman prison with the extraordinary name, "The Queen of Heaven," is
+a vast yellow building on the Trastevere side of the river. Behind it
+rises the Janiculum, in front of it runs the Tiber, and on both sides of
+it are narrow lanes cut off by high walls.
+
+On the morning after the insurrection a great many persons had gathered
+at the entrance of this prison. Old men, who were lame or sick or nearly
+blind, stood by a dead wall which divides the street from the Tiber, and
+looked on with dazed and vacant eyes. Younger men nearer the entrance
+read the proclamations posted up on the pilasters. One of these was the
+proclamation of the Prefect announcing the state of siege; another was
+the proclamation of the Royal Commissioner calling on citizens to
+consign all the arms in their possession to the Chief of Police under
+pain of imprisonment.
+
+In the entrance-hall there was a crowd of women, each carrying a basket
+or a bundle in a handkerchief. They were young and old, dressed
+variously as if from different provinces, but nearly all poor, untidy,
+and unkempt.
+
+An iron gate was opened, and an officer, two soldiers, and a warder came
+out to take the food which the women had brought for their relatives
+imprisoned within. Then there was a terrible tumult. "Mr. Officer,
+please!" "Please, Mr. Officer!" "Be kind to Giuseppe, and the saints
+bless you!" "My turn next!" "No, mine!" "Don't push!" "You're pushing
+yourself!" "You're knocking the basket out of my hands!" "Getaway!" "You
+cat! You...."
+
+"Silence! Silence! Silence!" cried the officer, shouting the women down,
+and meantime the men in the street outside curled their lips and tried
+to laugh.
+
+Into this wild scene, full of the acrid exhalations of human breath, and
+the nauseating odour of unclean bodies, but moved, nevertheless, by the
+finger of God Himself, the cab which brought Roma to see Bruno
+discharged her at the prison door.
+
+The officer on the steps saw her over the heads of the women with their
+outstretched arms, and judging from her appearance that she came on
+other business, he called to a Carabineer to attend to her.
+
+"I wish to see the Director," said Roma.
+
+"Certainly, Excellency," said the Carabineer, and with a salute he led
+the way by a side door to the offices on the floor above.
+
+The Governor of Regina C[oe]li was a middle-aged man with a kindly face,
+but under the new order he could do nothing.
+
+"Everything relating to the political prisoners is in the hands of the
+Royal Commissioner," he said.
+
+"Where can I see him, Cavaliere?"
+
+"He is with the Minister of War to-day, arranging for the military
+tribunals, but perhaps to-morrow at his office in the Castle of St.
+Angelo...."
+
+"Thanks! Meantime can I send a message into the prison?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And may I pay for a separate cell for a prisoner, with food and light,
+if necessary?"
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+Roma undertook the expense of these privileges and then scribbled a note
+to Bruno.
+
+    "DEAR FRIEND,--Don't lose heart! Your dear ones shall be cared for
+    and comforted. He whom you love is safe and your darling is in
+    heaven. Sleep well! These days will pass.
+                                                               "R. V."
+
+
+                                III
+
+That night Roma wrote the first part of a letter to David Rossi:
+
+    "David--my David! It is early days to call you by a dearer name,
+    but the sweet word is on the tip of my pen, and I can hardly help
+    myself from scribbling it. You wished me to tell you what is
+    happening in Rome, and here I am beginning to write already,
+    though when and how and where this letter is to reach you, I must
+    leave it to Fate and to yourself to determine. Fancy! Only
+    eighteen hours since we parted! It seems inconceivable! I feel as
+    if I had lived a lifetime.
+
+    "Do you know, I did not go to bed when you left me. I had so many
+    things to think about. And, tired as I was, I slept little, and
+    was up early. The morning dawned beautifully. It was perfectly
+    tragic. So bright and sunny after that night of slaughter. No
+    rattle of cars, no tinkle of trams, no calls of the water-carriers
+    and of the pedlars in the streets. It was for all the world like
+    that awful quiet of the sea the morning after a tempest, with the
+    sun on its placid surface and not a hint of the wrecks beneath.
+
+    "I remembered what you said about Elena, and went down to see her.
+    The poor girl has just parted with her dead child. She did it with
+    a brave heart, God pity her! taking comfort in the Blessed Virgin,
+    as the mother in heaven who knows all our sorrows and asks God to
+    heal them. Ah, what a sweet thing it must be to believe that! Do
+    you believe it?"
+
+    Here she wanted to say something about her great secret. She
+    tried, but she could not do it.
+
+    "I couldn't see Bruno to-day, but I hope to do so to-morrow, and
+    meantime I have ordered food to be supplied to him. If I could
+    only do something to some purpose! But five hundred of your
+    friends are in Regina C[oe]li, and my poor little efforts are a drop
+    of water in a mighty ocean.
+
+    "Rome is a deserted city to-day, and but for the soldiers, who are
+    everywhere, it would look like a dead one! The steps of the Piazza
+    di Spagna are empty, not a model is to be seen, not a flower is to
+    be bought, and the fountain is bubbling in silence. After sunset a
+    certain shiver passes over the world, and after an insurrection
+    something of the same kind seems to pass over a city. The churches
+    and the hospitals are the only places open, and the doctors and
+    their messengers are the only people moving about.
+
+    "Just one of the newspapers has been published to-day, and it is
+    full of proclamations. Everybody is to be indoors by nine o'clock
+    and the cafés are to be closed at eight. Arms are to be consigned
+    at the Questura, and meetings of more than four persons are
+    strictly forbidden. Rewards of pardon are offered to all rioters
+    who will inform on the ringleaders of the insurrection, and of
+    money to all citizens who will denounce the conspirators. The
+    military tribunals are to sit to-morrow and domiciliary
+    visitations are already being made. Your own apartments have been
+    searched and sealed and the police have carried off papers.
+
+    "Such are the doings of this evil day, and yet--selfish woman that
+    I am--I cannot for my life think it is all evil. Has it not given
+    me you? And if it has taken you away from me as well, I can wait,
+    I can be patient. Where are you now, I wonder? And are you
+    thinking of me while I am thinking of you? Oh, how splendid! Think
+    of it! Though the train may be carrying you away from me every
+    hour and every minute, before long we shall be together. In the
+    first dream of the first sleep I shall join you, and we shall be
+    cheek to cheek and heart to heart. Good-night, my dear one!"
+
+Again she tried to say something about her secret. But no! "Not
+to-night," she thought, and after switching off the light and kissing
+her hand in the darkness to the stars that hung over the north, she
+laughed at her own foolishness and went to bed.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+Roma awoke next day with a sense of pain. Thus far she had beaten the
+Baron--yes! But David Rossi? Had she sinned against God and against her
+husband? She must confess. There was no help for it. And there must be
+no hesitation and no delay.
+
+Natalina came into the bedroom and threw open the shutters. She was
+bringing a telegram, and Roma almost snatched it out of her hands. It
+was from Rossi and had been sent off from Chiasso. "Crossed frontier
+safe and well."
+
+Roma made a cry of joy and leapt out of bed. All day long that telegram
+was like wings under her heels and made her walk with an elastic step.
+
+While taking her coffee she remembered the responsibilities she had
+undertaken the day before--for the boy's funeral and Bruno's
+maintenance--and for the first time in her life she began to consider
+ways and means. Her ready money was getting low, and it was necessary to
+do something.
+
+Then Felice came with a sheaf of papers. They were tradesmen's bills and
+required immediate payment. Some of the men were below and refused to go
+away without the cash.
+
+There was no help for it. She opened her purse, discharged her debts,
+swept her debtors out of the house, and sat down to count what remained.
+
+Very little remained. But what matter? The five words of that telegram
+were five bright stars which could light up a darker sky than had fallen
+on her yet.
+
+In this high mood she went down to the studio--silent now in the absence
+of the humorous voice that usually rang in it, and with Bruno's chisels
+and mallet lying idle, with his sack on a block of half-hewn marble.
+Uncovering her fountain, she looked at it again. It was good work; she
+knew it was good; she could be certain it was good. It should justify
+her yet, and some day the stupid people who were sheering away from her
+now would come cringing to her feet afresh.
+
+That suggested thoughts of the Mayor. She would write to him and get
+some money with which to meet the expenses of yesterday as well as the
+obligations which she might perhaps incur to-day or in the future.
+
+"Dear Senator Palomba," she wrote, "no doubt you have often wondered why
+your much-valued commission has not been completed before. The fact is
+that it suffered a slight accident a few days ago, but a week or a
+fortnight ought to see it finished, and if you wish to make arrangements
+for its reception you may count on its delivery in that time. Meantime
+as I am pressed for funds at the moment, I shall be glad if you can
+instruct your treasurer at the Municipality to let me have something on
+account. The price mentioned, you remember, was 15,000 francs, and as I
+have not had anything hitherto, I trust it may not be unreasonable to
+ask for half now, leaving the remainder until the fountain is in its
+place."
+
+Having despatched this challenge by Felice, not only to the Mayor, but
+also to herself, her pride, her poverty, and to the great world
+generally, she put on her cloak and hat and drove down to the Castle of
+St. Angelo.
+
+When she returned, an hour afterwards, there was a dry glitter in her
+eyes, which increased to a look of fever when she opened the
+drawing-room door and saw who was waiting there. It was the Mayor
+himself. The little oily man in patent-leather boots, holding upright
+his glossy silk hat, was clearly nervous and confused. He complimented
+her on her appearance, looked out of the window, extolled the view, and
+finally, with his back to his hostess, began on his business.
+
+"It is about your letter, you know," he said awkwardly. "There seems to
+be a little misunderstanding on your part. About the fountain, I mean."
+
+"None whatever, Senator. You ordered it. I have executed it. Surely the
+matter is quite simple."
+
+"Impossible, my dear. I may have encouraged you to an experimental
+trial. We all do that. Rome is eager to discover genius. But a simple
+member of a corporate body cannot undertake ... that is to say, on his
+own responsibility, you know...."
+
+Roma's breath began to come quickly. "Do you mean that you didn't
+commission my fountain?"
+
+"How could I, my child? Such matters must go through a regular form. The
+proper committee must sanction and resolve...."
+
+"But everybody has known of this, and it has been generally understood
+from the first."
+
+"Ah, understood! Possibly! Rumour and report perhaps."
+
+"But I could bring witnesses--high witnesses--the very highest if needs
+be...."
+
+The little man smiled benevolently.
+
+"Surely there is no witness of any standing in the State who would go
+into a witness-box and say that, without a contract, and with only a few
+encouraging words...."
+
+The dry glitter in Roma's eyes shot into a look of anger. "Do you call
+your letters to me a few encouraging words only?" she said.
+
+"My letters?" the glossy hat was getting ruffled.
+
+"Your letters alluding to this matter, and enumerating the favours you
+wished me to ask of the Prime Minister."
+
+"My dear," said the Mayor after a moment, "I'm sorry if I have led you
+to build up hopes, and though I have no authority ... if it will end
+matters amicably ... I think I can promise ... I might perhaps promise a
+little money for your loss of time."
+
+"Do you suppose I want charity?"
+
+"Charity, my dear?"
+
+"What else would it be? If I have no right to everything I will have
+nothing. I will take none of your money. You can leave me."
+
+The little man shuffled his feet, and bowed himself out of the room,
+with many apologies and praises which Roma did not hear. For all her
+brave words her heart was breaking, and she was holding her breath to
+repress a sob. The great bulwark she had built up for herself lay
+wrecked at her feet. She had deceived herself into believing that she
+could be somebody for herself. Going down to the studio, she covered up
+the fountain. It had lost every quality which she had seen in it before.
+Art was gone from her. She was nobody. It was very, very cruel.
+
+But that glorious telegram rustled in her breast like a captive
+song-bird, and before going to bed she wrote to David Rossi again.
+
+"Your message arrived before I was up this morning, and not being
+entirely back from the world of dreams, I fancied that it was an angel's
+whisper. This is silly, but I wouldn't change it for the greatest
+wisdom, if, in order to be the most wise and wonderful among women, I
+had to love you less.
+
+"Business first and other things afterwards. Most of the newspapers have
+been published to-day, and some of them are blowing themselves out of
+breath in abuse of you, and howling louder than the wolves of the
+Capitol before rain. The military courts began this morning, and they
+have already polished off fifty victims. Rewards for denunciations have
+now deepened to threats of imprisonment for non-denunciation. General
+Morra, Minister of War, has sent in his resignation, and there is
+bracing weather in the neighbourhood of the Palazzo Braschi. An editor
+has been arrested, many journals and societies have been suppressed, and
+twenty thousand of the contadini who came to Rome for the meeting in the
+Coliseum have been despatched to their own communes. Finally, the Royal
+Commissioner has written to the Pope, calling on him to assist in the
+work of pacifying the people, and it is rumoured that the Holy Office is
+to be petitioned by certain of the Bishops to denounce the 'Republic of
+Man' as a secret society (like the Freemasons) coming within the ban of
+the Pontifical constitutions.
+
+"So much for general news, and now for more personal intelligence. I
+went down to the Castle of St. Angelo this morning, and was permitted to
+speak to the Royal Commissioner. Recognised him instantly as a regular
+old-timer at the heels of the Baron, and tackled him on our ancient
+terms. The wretch--he squints, and he smoked a cigarette all through the
+interview--couldn't allow me to see Bruno during the private preparation
+of the case against him, and when I asked if the instruction would take
+long he said, 'Probably, as it is complicated by the case of some one
+else who is not yet in custody.' Then I asked if I might employ separate
+counsel for the defence, and he shuffled and said it was unnecessary.
+This decided me, and I walked straight to the office of the great lawyer
+Napoleon Fuselli, promised him five hundred francs by to-morrow morning,
+and told him to go ahead without delay.
+
+"But heigh-ho, nonny! Coming home I felt like the witches in 'Macbeth.'
+'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' It was
+Senator Tom-tit, the little fat Mayor of Rome. His great ambition is to
+wear the green ribbon of St. Maurice and Lazarus, as none know better
+than myself. Wanting money on my fountain, I had written to the old
+wretch, but the moment we met I could see what was coming, so I braved
+it out, bustled about and made a noise. It was a mistake! There had been
+no commission at all! But if a little money would repay me for a loss of
+time....
+
+"It wasn't so much that I cared about the loss of the fees, badly as I
+needed them. It was mainly that I had allowed the summer flies who
+buzzed about me for the Baron's sake to flatter me into the notion that
+I was an artist, when I was really nobody for myself at all.
+
+"This humour lasted all afternoon, and spoiled my digestion for dinner,
+which was a pity, for there was some delicious wild asparagus. But then
+I thought of you and your work, and the future when you will come back
+with all Rome at your feet, and my vexation disappeared and I was
+content to be nothing and nobody except somebody whom you loved and who
+loved you, and that was to be everything and everybody in the world.
+
+"I don't care a rush about the matter now, but what do you think I've
+done? Sold my carriage and horses! Actually! The little job-master, with
+his tight trousers, close-cropped head, and chamois-leather waistcoat,
+has just gone off after cheating me abominably. No matter! What do I
+want with a grand carriage while you are going about as an exile and an
+outcast? I want nothing you have not got, and all I have I wish you to
+have too, including my heart and my soul and everything that is in
+them...."
+
+She stopped. This was the place to reveal her great secret. But she
+could not find her way to begin. "To-morrow will do," she thought, and
+so laid down the pen.
+
+
+                                V
+
+Early next morning Roma received a visit from the lawyer who conducted
+the business of her landlord. He was a middle-aged man in
+pepper-and-salt tweeds, and his manner was brusque and aggressive.
+
+"Sorry to say, Excellency, that I've had a letter from Count Mario at
+Paris saying that he will require this apartment for his own use. He
+regrets to be compelled to disturb you, but having frequently apprised
+you of his intention to live here himself...."
+
+"When does he want to come?" said Roma.
+
+"At Easter."
+
+"That will do. My aunt is ill, but if she is fit to be moved...."
+
+"Thanks! And may I perhaps present...."
+
+A paper in the shape of a bill came from the breast-pocket of the
+pepper-and-salt tweeds. Roma took it, and, without looking at it,
+replied:
+
+"You will receive your rent in a day or two."
+
+"Thanks again. I trust I may rely on that. And meantime...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"As I am personally responsible to the Count for all moneys due to him,
+may I ask your Excellency to promise me that nothing shall be removed
+from this apartment until my arrears of rent have been paid?"
+
+"I promise that you shall receive what is due from me in two days. Is
+not that enough?"
+
+The pepper-and-salt tweeds bowed meekly before Roma's flashing eyes.
+
+"Good-morning, sir."
+
+"Good-morning, Excellency."
+
+The man was hardly out of the house when a woman was shown in. It was
+Madame Sella, the fashionable modiste.
+
+"So unlucky, my dear! I'm driven to my wits' end for money. The people I
+deal with in Paris are perfect demons, and are threatening all sorts of
+pains and penalties if I don't send them a great sum straight away. Of
+course if I could get my own money in, it wouldn't matter. But the dear
+ladies of society are so slow, and naturally I don't like to go to their
+gentlemen, although really I've waited so long for their debts that
+if...."
+
+"Can you wait one day longer for mine?"
+
+"Donna Roma! And we've always been such friends, too!"
+
+"You'll excuse me this morning, won't you?" said Roma, rising.
+
+"Certainly. I'm busy, too. So good of you to see me. Trust I've not been
+_de trop_. And if it hadn't been for those stupid bills of mine...."
+
+Roma sat down and wrote a letter to one of the _strozzini_ (stranglers),
+who lend money to ladies on the security of their jewels.
+
+"I wish to sell my jewellery," she wrote, "and if you have any desire to
+buy it, I shall be glad if you can come to see me for this purpose at
+four o'clock to-morrow."
+
+"Roma!" cried a fretful voice.
+
+She was sitting in the boudoir, and her aunt was calling to her from the
+adjoining room. The old lady, who had just finished her toilet, and was
+redolent of perfume and scented soap, was propped up on pillows between
+the mirror and her Madonna, with her cat purring on the cushion at the
+foot of her bed.
+
+"Ah, you do come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her
+embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the
+carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it
+unless you tell me so yourself."
+
+"It is quite true, Aunt Betsy. I wanted money for various purposes, and
+among others to pay my debts," said Roma.
+
+"Goodness! It's true! Give me my salts. There they are--on the
+card-table beside you.... So it's true! It's really true! You've done
+some extraordinary things already, miss, but this ... Mercy me! Selling
+her horses! And she isn't ashamed of it!... I suppose you'll sell your
+clothes next, or perhaps your jewels."
+
+"That's just what I want to do, Aunt Betsy."
+
+"Holy Virgin! What are you saying, girl? Have you lost all sense of
+decency? Sell your jewels! Goodness! Your ancestral jewels! You must
+have grown utterly heartless as well as indifferent to propriety, or you
+wouldn't dream of selling the treasures that have come down to you from
+your own mother's breast, as one might say."
+
+"My mother never set eyes on any of them, auntie, and if some of them
+belonged to my grandmother, she must have been a good woman because she
+was the mother of my father, and she would rather see me sell them all
+than live in debt and disgrace."
+
+"Go on! Go on with your English talk! Or perhaps it's American, is it?
+You want to kill me, that's what it is! You will, too, and sooner than
+you expect, and then you'll be sorry and ashamed ... Go away! Why do you
+come to worry me? Isn't it enough ... Natalina! Nat-a-_lina_!"
+
+Late that night Roma resumed her letter to David Rossi:
+
+    "DEAREST,--You are always the last person I speak to before I go
+    to bed, and if only my words could sail away over Monte Mario in
+    the darkness while I sleep, they would reach you on the wings of
+    the morning.
+
+    "You want to know all that is happening, and here goes again. The
+    tyrannies of military rule increase daily, and some of its
+    enormities are past belief. Military court sat all day yesterday
+    and polished off eighty-five poor victims. Ten of them got ten
+    years, twenty got five years, and about fifty got periods of one
+    month to twelve.
+
+    "Lawyer Napoleon F. was here this afternoon to say that he had
+    seen Bruno and begun work in his defence. Strangely enough he
+    finds a difficulty in a quarter from which it might least be
+    expected. Bruno himself is holding off in some unaccountable way
+    which gives Napoleon F. an idea that the poor soul is being got
+    at. Apparently--you will hardly credit it--he is talking
+    doubtfully about you, and asking incredible questions about his
+    wife. Lawyer Napoleon actually inquired if there was 'anything in
+    it,' and the thing struck me as so silly that I laughed out in his
+    face. It was very wrong of me not to be jealous, wasn't it? Being
+    a woman, I suppose I ought to have leapt at the idea, according to
+    all the natural laws of love. I didn't, and my heart is still
+    tranquil. But poor Bruno was more human, and Napoleon has an idea
+    that something is going on inside the prison. He is to go there
+    again to-morrow and to let me know.
+
+    "Such doings at home too! I've been two years in debt to my
+    landlord, and at the end of every quarter I've always prayed like
+    a modest woman to be allowed to pass by unnoticed. Celebrity has
+    fallen on me at last, though, and I'm to go at Easter. Madame de
+    Trop, too, has put the screw on, and everybody else is following
+    suit. Yesterday, for example, I had the honour of a call from
+    every one in the world to whom I owed twopence. Remembering how
+    hard it used to be to get a bill out of these people, I find their
+    sudden business ardour humorous. They do not deceive me
+    nevertheless. I see the die is cast, the fact is known. I have
+    fallen from my high estate of general debtor to everybody and
+    become merely an honest woman.
+
+    "Do I suffer from these slings of fortune? Not an atom. When I was
+    rich, or seemed to be so, I was often the most miserable woman in
+    the world, and now I'm happy, happy, happy!
+
+    "There is only one thing makes me a little unhappy. Shall I tell
+    you what it is? Yes, I _will_ tell you because your heart is so
+    true, and like all brave men you are so tender to all women. It is
+    a girl friend of mine--a very close and dear friend, and she is in
+    trouble. A little while ago she was married to a good man, and
+    they love each other dearer than life, and there ought to be
+    nothing between them. But there is, and it is a very serious thing
+    too, although nobody knows about it but herself and me. How shall
+    I tell you? Dearest, you are to think my head is on your breast
+    and you cannot see my face while I tell you my poor friend's
+    secret. Long ago--it seems long--she was the victim of another
+    man. That is really the only word for it, because she did not
+    consent. But all the same she feels that she has sinned and that
+    nothing on earth can wash away the stain. The worst fact is that
+    her husband knows nothing about it. This fills her with
+    measureless regret and undying remorse. She feels that she ought
+    to have told him, and so her heart is full of tears, and she
+    doesn't know what it is her duty to.
+
+    "I thought I would ask you to tell me, dearest. You are kind, but
+    you mustn't spare her. I didn't. She wanted to draw a veil over
+    her frailty, but I wouldn't let her. I think she would like to
+    confess to her husband, to pour out her heart to him, and begin
+    again with a clean page, but she is afraid. Of course she hasn't
+    really been faithless, and I could swear on my life she loves her
+    husband only. And then her sorrow is so great, and she is
+    beginning to look worn with lying awake at nights, though some
+    people still think she is beautiful. I dare say you will say,
+    serve her right for deceiving a good man. So do I sometimes, but I
+    feel strangely inconsistent about my poor friend, and a woman has
+    a right to be inconsistent, hasn't she? Tell me what I am to say
+    to her, and please don't spare her because she is a friend of
+    mine."
+
+She lifted her pen from the paper. "He'll understand," she thought.
+"He'll remember our other letters and read between the lines. Well, so
+much the better, and God be good to me!"
+
+    "Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! I feel like a child--as if
+    the years had gone back with me, or rather as if they had only
+    just begun. You have awakened my soul and all the world is
+    different. Nearly everything that seemed right to me before seems
+    wrong to me now, and _vice versa_. Life? That wasn't life. It was
+    only existence. I fancy it must have been some elder sister of
+    mine who went through everything. Think of it! When you were
+    twenty and I was only ten! I'm glad there isn't as much difference
+    now. I'm catching up to you--metaphorically, I mean. If I could
+    only do so physically! But what nonsense I'm talking! In spite of
+    my poor friend's trouble I can't help talking nonsense to-night."
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Two days later Natalina, coming into Roma's bedroom, threw open the
+shutters and said:
+
+"Letter with a foreign postmark, Excellency--'Sister Angelica, care of
+the Porter.' It was delivered at the Convent, and the porter sent it
+over here."
+
+"Give it to me," said Roma eagerly. "It's quite right. I know whom it is
+for, and if any more letters come for the same person bring them to me
+immediately."
+
+Almost before the maid had left the room Roma had torn the letter open.
+It was dated from a street in Soho.
+
+    "MY DEAR WIFE,--As you see, I have reached London, and now I am
+    thinking of you always, wondering what sufferings are being
+    inflicted upon you for my sake and how you meet and bear them. To
+    think of you there, in the midst of our enemies, is a spur and an
+    inspiration. Only wait! If my absence is cruel to you it is still
+    more hard to me. I will see your lovely eyes again before long,
+    and there will be an end of all our sadness. Meantime continue to
+    love me, and that will work miracles. It will make all the slings
+    and slurs of life seem to be a long way off and of no account.
+    Only those who love can know this law of the human heart, but how
+    true it is and how beautiful!
+
+    "We reached London in the early morning, when the grey old city
+    was beginning to stir after its sleepless rest. I had telegraphed
+    the time of my arrival to the committee of our association, and
+    early as it was some hundreds of our people were at Charing Cross
+    to meet me. They must have been surprised to see a man step out of
+    the train in the disguise of driver of a wine-cart on the
+    Campagna, but perhaps that helped them to understand the position
+    better, and they formed into procession and marched to Trafalgar
+    Square as if they had forgotten they were in a foreign country.
+
+    "To me it was a strange and moving spectacle. The mist like a
+    shroud over the great city, some stars of leaden hue paling out
+    overhead, the day dawning over the vast square, the wide silence
+    with the far-off hum of awakening life, the English workmen
+    stopping to look at us as they went by to their work, and our
+    company of dark-bearded men, emigrants and exiles, sending their
+    hearts out in sympathy to their brothers in the south. As I spoke
+    from the base of the Gordon statue and turned towards St. Martin's
+    Church, I could fancy I saw your white-haired father on the steps
+    with his little daughter in his arms.
+
+    "I will write again in a day or two, telling you what we are
+    doing. Meantime I enclose a Proclamation to the People, which I
+    wish you to get printed and posted up. Take it to old Albert
+    Pelegrino in the Stamperia by the Trevi. Tell him to mention the
+    cost and the money shall follow. Call at the Piazza Navona and see
+    what is happening to Elena. Poor girl! Poor Bruno! And my poor
+    dear little darling!
+
+    "Take care of yourself, my dear one. I am always thinking of you.
+    It is a fearful thing to have taken up the burden of one who is
+    branded as an outcast and an outlaw. I cannot help but reproach
+    myself. There was a time when I saw my duty to you in another way,
+    but love came like a hurricane out of the skies and swept all
+    sense of duty away. My wife! my Roma! You have hazarded everything
+    for me, and some day I will give up everything for you.     D. R."
+
+
+                                VII
+
+    "DEAREST,--Your letter to Sister Angelica arrived safely, and
+    worked more miracles in her cloistered heart than ever happened to
+    the 'Blessed Bambino.' Before it came I was always thinking,
+    'Where is he now? Is he having his breakfast? Or is it dinner,
+    according to the difference of time and longitude?' All I knew was
+    that you had travelled north, and though the sun doesn't
+    ordinarily set in that direction, the sky over Monte Mario used to
+    glow for my special pleasure like the gates of the New Jerusalem.
+
+    "Your letters are so precious that I will ask you not to fill them
+    with useless things. Don't tell me to love you. The idea! Didn't I
+    say I should think of you always? I do! I think of you when I go
+    to bed at night, and that is like opening a jewel-case in the
+    moonlight. I think of you when I am asleep, and that is like an
+    invisible bridge which unites us in our dreams; and I think of you
+    when I wake in the morning, and that is like a cage of song-birds
+    that sing in my breast the whole day long.
+
+    "But you are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so
+    your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off
+    against those official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so
+    my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box.
+    Let me bring my despatches up to date.
+
+    "Military rule severer than ever, and poverty and misery on all
+    sides. Families of reserve soldiers starving, and meetings of
+    chief citizens to succour them. Donation from the King and from
+    the 'Black' Charity Circle of St. Peter. Even the clergy are
+    sending francs, so none can question their sincerity. Bureau of
+    Labour besieged by men out of work, and offices occupied by
+    Carabineers. People eating maize in polenta and granturco with the
+    certainty of sickness to follow. Red Cross Society organised as in
+    time of war, and many sick and wounded hidden in houses.
+
+    "And now for more personal matters. The proclamation is in hand,
+    and paid for, and will be posted first thing in the morning. From
+    the printer's I went on to the Piazza Navona and found a
+    wilderness of woe. Elena has gone away, leaving an ambiguous
+    letter behind her, saying that she wished her Madonna to be given
+    to me, as she would have no need of it in the place she was going
+    to. This led the old people to believe that for the loss of her
+    son and husband she had become demented and had destroyed herself.
+    I pretended to think differently, and warned them to say nothing
+    of their daughter's disappearance, thinking that Bruno might hear
+    of it, and find food for still further suspicions.
+
+    "Lawyer Napoleon F. has seen the poor soul again, and been here
+    this evening to tell me the result. It will seem to you
+    incredible. Bruno will do nothing to help in his own defence.
+    Talks of 'treachery' and the 'King's pardon.' Napoleon F. thinks
+    the Camorra is at work with him, and tells how criminals in the
+    prisons of Italy have a league of crime, with captains, corporals,
+    and cadets. My own reading of the mystery is different. I think
+    the Camorra in this case is the Council, and the only design is to
+    entrap by treachery one of the 'greater delinquents not in
+    custody.' I want to find out where Charles Minghelli is at
+    present. Nobody seems to know.
+
+    "As for me, what do you suppose is my last performance? I've sold
+    my jewels! Yesterday I sent for one of the _strozzini_, and the
+    old Shylock came this evening and cheated me unmercifully. No
+    matter! What do I want with jewellery, or a fine house, and
+    servants to follow me about as if I were a Cardinal? If _you_ can
+    do without them so can I. But you need not say you are anxious
+    about what is happening to me. I'm as happy as the day is long. I
+    am happy because I love you, and that is everything.
+
+    "Only one thing troubles me--the grief of the poor girl I told you
+    of. She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel
+    as if I were possessed by her secret. In fact, I'm afraid I'll
+    blab it out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her.
+    She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not
+    consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women
+    are always saying, isn't it? They draw this distinction when it is
+    too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I
+    gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time,
+    and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a
+    minute of weakness--mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue,
+    but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen
+    she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.
+
+    "Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I
+    felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so
+    sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so
+    shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the
+    best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There _is_
+    something in that, isn't there?
+
+    "One thing I must say for the poor girl--she has been a different
+    woman since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking
+    thing to say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in
+    the convent, and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized
+    and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to
+    read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of 'the
+    drunkenness of sin' were the instants of salvation. Who knows?
+    Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as
+    bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend,
+    she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares
+    nothing for the world and its vanities.
+
+    "Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands--why can't I
+    do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level,
+    and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite
+    blind. I'm not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all
+    events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to
+    say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that's
+    where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful!
+                                                               ROMA."
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her
+immediately.
+
+"I must have a doctor," she said. "It's perfectly heartless to keep me
+without one all this time."
+
+"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "you know quite well that but for your own
+express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along."
+
+"For mercy's sake, don't nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it
+be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now."
+
+Fedi was the Pope's physician, and therefore the most costly and
+fashionable doctor in Rome.
+
+Dr. Fedi came with an assistant who carried a little case of
+instruments. He examined the Countess, her breast, her side, and the
+glands under her arms, shot out a solemn under-lip, put two fingers
+inside his collar, twisted his head from side to side, and announced
+that the patient must have a nurse immediately.
+
+"Do you hear that, Roma? Doctor says that I must have a nurse. Of course
+I must have a nurse. I'll have one of the English nursing Sisters.
+Everybody has them now. They're foreigners, and if they talk they can't
+do much mischief."
+
+The Sister was sent for. She was a mild and gentle creature, in blue and
+white, but she talked perpetually of her Mother Superior, who had been
+bedridden for fifteen years, yet smiled sweetly all day long. That
+exasperated the Countess and fretted her. When the doctor came again the
+patient was worse.
+
+"Your aunt must have dainties to tempt her appetite and so keep up her
+strength."
+
+"Do you hear, Roma?"
+
+"You shall have everything you wish for, auntie."
+
+"Well, I wish for strawberries. Everybody eats them who is ill at this
+season."
+
+The strawberries were bought, but the Countess scarcely touched them,
+and they were finally consumed in the kitchen.
+
+When the doctor came a third time the patient was much emaciated and her
+skin had become sallow and earthy.
+
+"It would not be right to conceal from you the gravity of your
+condition, Countess," he said. "In such a case we always think it best
+to tell a patient to make her peace with God."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, doctor," whimpered the poor withered creature on
+the bed.
+
+"But while there's life there's hope, you know; and meantime I'll send
+you an opiate to relieve the pain."
+
+When the doctor was gone, the Countess sent for Roma.
+
+"That Fedi is a fool," she said. "I don't know what people see in him. I
+should like to try the Bambino of Ara C[oe]li. The Cardinal Vicar had
+it, and why shouldn't I? They say it has worked miracles. It may be
+dear, but if I die you will always reproach yourself. If you are short
+of money you can sign a bill at six months, and before that the poor
+maniac woman will be gone and you'll be the wife of the Baron."
+
+"If you really think the Bambino will...."
+
+"It will! I know it will."
+
+"Very well, I will send for it."
+
+Roma sent a letter to the Superior of the Franciscans at the Friary of
+Ara C[oe]li asking that the little figure of the infant Christ, which is
+said to restore the sick, should be sent to her aunt, who was near to
+death.
+
+At the same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli,
+requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little
+beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to see
+everything except Roma herself.
+
+"I wish to sell up my furniture," said Roma.
+
+"All of it?"
+
+"Except what is in my aunt's room and the room of her nurse, and such
+things in the kitchen, the servants' apartments, and my own bedroom as
+are absolutely necessary for present purposes."
+
+"Quite right. When?"
+
+"Within a week if possible."
+
+The Bambino came in a carriage with two horses, and the people in the
+street went down on their knees as it passed. One of the friars in
+priest's surplice carried it in a box with the lid open, and two friars
+in brown habits walked before it with lifted candles. But as the painted
+image in its scarlet clothes and jewels entered the Countess's bedroom
+with its grim and ghostly procession, and was borne like a baby mummy to
+the foot of her bed, it terrified her, and she screamed.
+
+"Take it away!" she shrieked. "Do you want to frighten me out of my
+life? Take it away!"
+
+The grim and ghostly procession went out. Its visit had lasted thirty
+seconds and cost a hundred francs.
+
+When the doctor came again the outline of the Countess's writhing form
+had shrunk to the lines of a skeleton under the ruffled counterpane.
+
+"It's not the Bambino you want--it's the priest," he said, and then the
+poor mortal who was still afraid of dying began to whimper.
+
+"And, Sister," said the doctor, "as the Countess suffers so much pain,
+you may increase the opiate from a dessert-spoonful to a tablespoonful,
+and give it twice as frequently."
+
+That evening the Sister went home for a few hours' leave, and Roma took
+her place by the sick-bed. The patient was more selfish and exacting
+than ever, but Roma had begun to feel a softening towards the poor
+tortured being, and was trying her best to do her duty.
+
+It was dusk, and the Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the
+increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma
+brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's
+foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's
+toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by
+the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she
+began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with
+death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then
+the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils
+were pencilled with the rosy hues of health and youth.
+
+Roma had turned on the electric light, but the glare oppressed the
+patient, and she switched it off again. The night had now closed in, and
+the only light in the room came from the little red oil-lamp which
+burned before the shrine.
+
+The drug began to operate, and its first effect was to loosen the old
+lady's tongue. She began to talk of priests in a tone of contempt and
+braggadocio.
+
+"I hate priests," she said, "and I can't bear to have them about me. Why
+so? Because they are always about the dead. Their black cassocks make me
+think of funerals. The sight of a graveyard makes me faint. Besides,
+priests and confessions go together, and why should a woman confess if
+she can avoid it? When people confess they have to give up the thing
+they confess to, or they can't get absolution. Fedi's a fool. Give it up
+indeed! I might as well talk of giving up the bed that's under me."
+
+Roma sat on a stool by the bedside, listening intently, yet feeling she
+had no right to listen. The drug was rapidly intoxicating the Countess,
+who went on to talk as if some one else had been in the room.
+
+"A priest would be sure to ask questions about that girl. I would have
+to tell him why the Baron put me here to look after her, and then he
+would prate about the Sacraments and want me to give up everything."
+
+The Countess laughed a hard, evil laugh, and Roma felt an icy shudder
+pass over her.
+
+"'I'm tied,' said the Baron. 'But you must see that she waits for me.
+Everything depends upon you, and if all comes out well....'"
+
+The old woman's tongue was thickening, and her eyes in the dull red
+light were glazed and stupid.
+
+Roma sat motionless and silent, watching with her own dilated eyes the
+grinning sinner, as she poured out the story of the plot for her capture
+and corruption. At that moment she hated her aunt, the unclean,
+malignant, unpitying thing who had poisoned her heart against her father
+and tried to break down every spiritual impulse of her soul.
+
+The diabolical horse-laughter came again, and then the devil who had
+loosened the tongue of the dying woman in the intoxication of the drug
+made her reveal the worst secret of her tortured conscience.
+
+"Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about
+the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband
+was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror."
+
+The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow
+with a roaring in her ears.
+
+"It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the
+Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me."
+
+The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible.
+The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues,
+her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the
+innocence of sleep.
+
+Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with
+sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly
+rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her
+to the depths of abasement.
+
+The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now
+different.
+
+"Roma! Is that you?"
+
+"Yes, aunt."
+
+"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You
+know that quite well."
+
+Roma turned on the lights.
+
+"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"
+
+Roma tried to prevaricate.
+
+"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug
+to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was
+all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a
+lie, I tell you...."
+
+The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did
+not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing
+so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table
+by her bed.
+
+Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one,
+some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother,
+and her tears had begun to fall.
+
+It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the
+prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.
+
+"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of
+death--Amen!"
+
+When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying
+and was comforted.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps
+labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces
+of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were
+posted outside the street door announcing a sale of "Old and New Objects
+of Art" in the "Appartamento Volonna." Then came the "Grand
+Esposizione"--it was on Sunday morning--and the following day the
+auction.
+
+Roma built herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the
+apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room
+combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people
+assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing
+at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore
+Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of
+servility in his long face prevailed over the look of arrogance.
+
+"Good-morning, Donna Roma. May I perhaps...."
+
+"Come in."
+
+The lanky person settled himself comfortably and began on a confidential
+communication.
+
+"The Baron, sincerely sorry to hear of your distresses, sends me to say
+that you have only to make a request and this unseemly scene shall come
+to an end. In fact, I have authority to act on his behalf--as an unknown
+friend, you know--and stop these proceedings even at the eleventh hour.
+Only a word from you--one word--and everything shall be settled
+satisfactorily."
+
+Roma was silent for a moment, and the Commendatore concluded that his
+persuasions had prevailed. Somebody else knocked at the door.
+
+"Come in," said the Commendatore largely.
+
+This time it was the auctioneer. "Time to begin the sale, Signorina. Any
+commands?" He glanced from Roma to Angelelli with looks of
+understanding.
+
+"I think her Excellency has perhaps something to say," said Angelelli.
+
+"Nothing whatever. Go on," said Roma.
+
+The auctioneer disappeared through the door, and Angelelli put on his
+hat.
+
+"Then you have no answer for his Excellency?"
+
+"None."
+
+"_Bene_," said the Commendatore, and he went off whistling softly.
+
+The auction began. At a table on a platform where the piano used to
+stand sat the chief auctioneer with his ivory hammer. Beneath him at a
+similar table sat an assistant. As the men in red caps brought up the
+goods the two auctioneers took the bidding together, repeating each
+other in the manner of actor and prompter at an Italian theatre.
+
+The English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her niece
+immediately. The invalid, now frightfully emaciated and no longer able
+to sit up, was lying back on her lace-edged pillows. She was plucking
+with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma
+entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath. But the
+sound that came from her throat was like a voice shouted on a windy
+headland, and hardly louder than the muffled voices of the auctioneers
+as they found their way through the walls.
+
+Roma sat down on the stool by the bedside, stroked the cat with the
+gold cross suspended from its neck, and listened to the words within the
+room and without as they fell on her ear alternately.
+
+"Roma, you are treating me shamefully. While I am lying here helpless
+you are having an auction--actually an auction--at the door of my very
+room."
+
+"Camera da letto della Signorina! Bed in _noce_, richly ornamented with
+fruit and flowers." "Shall I say fifty?" "Thank you, fifty." "Fifty."
+"Fifty-five." "Fifty-five." "No advance on fifty-five?" "Gentlemen,
+gentlemen! The beautiful bed of a beautiful lady, and only fifty-five
+offered for it!..."
+
+"If you wanted money you had only to ask the Baron, and if you didn't
+wish to do that, you had only to sign a bill at six months, as I told
+you before. But no! You wanted to humble and degrade me. That's all it
+is. You've done it, too, and I'm dying in disgrace...."
+
+"Secretaire in walnut! Think, ladies, of the secrets this writing-desk
+might whisper if it would! How much shall I say?" "Sixty lire." "Sixty."
+"Sixty-five." "Sixty-five." "Writing-desk in walnut with the love
+letters hardly out of it, and only sixty-five lire offered!..."
+
+"This is what comes of a girl going her own way. Society is not so very
+exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the
+respectabilities. And quite right, too! Pity they could not be the only
+ones to suffer, but they can't. Their friends and relations are the real
+sufferers; and as for me...."
+
+The Countess's voice broke down into a maudlin whimper. Without a word
+Roma rose up to go. As she did so she met Natalina coming into the room
+with the usual morning plate of forced strawberries. They had cost four
+francs the pound.
+
+Some time afterwards, from her writing-table in the boudoir-bedroom,
+Roma heard a shuffling of feet on the circular iron stairs. The people
+were going down to the studio. Presently the auctioneer's voice came up
+as from a vault.
+
+"And now what am I offered for this large and important work of modern
+art?"
+
+There was a ripple of derisive laughter.
+
+"A fountain worthy, when finished, to rank with the masterpieces of
+ancient Rome."
+
+More derisive laughter.
+
+"Now is the time for anti-clericals. Gentlemen, don't all speak at once.
+Every day is not a festa. How much? Nothing at all? Not even a soldo?
+Too bad. Art is its own reward."
+
+Still more laughter, followed by the shuffling of feet coming up the
+iron stairs, and a familiar voice on the landing--it was the Princess
+Bellini's--"Madonna mia! what a fright it is, to be sure!"
+
+Then another voice--it was Madame Bella's--"I thought so the day of the
+private view, when she behaved so shockingly to the dear Baron."
+
+Then a third voice--it was the voice of Olga the journalist--"I said the
+Baron would pay her out, and he has. Before the day is over she'll not
+have a stick left or a roof to cover her."
+
+Roma dropped her head on to the table. Try as she might to keep a brave
+front, the waves of shame and humiliation were surging over her.
+
+Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Natalina with a telegram:
+"Letter received; my apartment is paid for to end of June; why not take
+possession of it?"
+
+From that moment onward nothing else mattered. The tumultuous noises in
+the drawing-room died down, and there was no sound but the voices of the
+auctioneer and his clerk, which rumbled like a drum in the empty
+chamber.
+
+It was four o'clock. Opening the window, Roma heard the music of a band.
+At that a spirit of defiance took possession of her, and she put on her
+hat and cloak. As she passed through the empty drawing-room, the
+auctioneer, who was counting his notes with the dry rustle of a
+winnowing machine, looked up with his beady eyes and said:
+
+"It has come out fairly well, Madame--better than we might have
+expected."
+
+On reaching the piazza she hailed a cab. "The Pincio!" she cried, and
+settled in her seat. When she returned an hour afterwards she wrote her
+usual letter to David Rossi.
+
+    "High doings to-day! Have had a business on my own account, and
+    done a roaring trade! Disposed of everything in the shop except
+    what I wanted for myself. It isn't every trades-woman who can say
+    that much, and I'm only a beginner to boot!
+
+    "Soberly, I've sold up. Being under notice to leave this
+    apartment, I didn't want all this useless furniture, so I thought
+    I might as well get done with it in good time. Besides, what right
+    had I to soft beds and fine linen while you were an exile,
+    sleeping Heaven knows where? And then my aunt, who is very ill and
+    wants all sorts of luxuries, is rather expensive. So for the past
+    week my drawing-room has been as full of fluting as a frog-pond at
+    sunset, and on Sunday morning people were banging away at my poor
+    piano as if it had been a hurdy-gurdy at an osteria.
+
+    "But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I
+    was selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have
+    laughed to hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was
+    so silly that I could have cried, but just at the moment when I
+    felt a wee bit badly, down came your telegram like an angel from
+    Heaven--and what do you think I did? The old Adam, or say the new
+    Eve, took possession of me, and the minute the people were gone I
+    hired a cab--a common garden cab, Roman variety, with a horse on
+    its last legs and a driver in ragged tweeds--and drove off to the
+    Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk that I _wasn't_ done, and
+    I did! They were all there, my dear friends and former
+    flatterers--every one of them who has haunted my house for years,
+    asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of
+    sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all
+    together for my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature
+    escape.
+
+    "Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and
+    between them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and
+    I might have been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the
+    consciousness they betrayed of my presence. Was I humiliated?
+    Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was proud. I knew the day would
+    come, the day was near, when they must try to forget all this and
+    to persuade themselves it had never been, when for my own sake,
+    even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they would come
+    back humble, so humble and afraid.
+
+    "So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them.
+    And when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band
+    stopped, and we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy
+    and unashamed. Oh, David Rossi! If you could have been there!
+
+    "I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news.
+    Lawyer Napoleon, who continues to go to Regina C[oe]li to see the
+    bewildering Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes!
+    If the God who settles the question of sex had only remembered to
+    make your wife the procurator-general, think how different the
+    history of the world would have been! The worst of it is he
+    mightn't have remembered to make you a woman; and in any case,
+    things being so nicely settled as they are, I don't think I want
+    to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the wind. It's
+    ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm.                    "ROMA.
+
+    "P.S.--My poor friend is still in trouble. Although not a
+    religious woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night
+    on going to bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would
+    commit suicide, so frightful are the visions that enter her head
+    sometimes. I've told her how wrong it would be to do away with
+    herself, if only for the sake of her husband, who is away. Didn't
+    I tell you he was away at present? It would hurt you dreadfully if
+    _I_ were to die before _you_ return, wouldn't it? But I'm dying
+    already to hear what you think of her. Write! Write! Write!"
+
+
+                                X
+
+When the King of Terrors could no longer be beaten back the Countess
+sent for the priest. Before he arrived she insisted on making her toilet
+and receiving him in the dressing-gown which she used to wear when
+people made ante-camera to her in the days of her gaiety and strength.
+
+During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room
+with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something
+personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the
+indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a
+sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs.
+
+The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of
+the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said,
+"she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the
+Apostolic Blessing."
+
+He went away to prepare for these offices, and the English Sister came
+to see Roma. "The Countess is like another woman already," she said, but
+Roma did not go into the sickroom.
+
+The priest returned in half-an-hour. He had now two assistants, one
+carrying the cross and banner, the other a vessel of holy water and the
+volume of the Roman ritual. The Sister and Felice met them at the door
+with lighted candles.
+
+"Peace be to this house!" said the priest.
+
+And the assistants said, "And to all dwelling in it."
+
+Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice
+and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The
+little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as
+an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table,
+her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with
+various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two
+o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were
+drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned
+like stars.
+
+The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the
+house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the
+perfumed couch.
+
+Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English
+Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her.
+
+"It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another
+woman."
+
+"Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that
+she had.
+
+Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of
+joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face.
+
+"All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I
+have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to
+God."
+
+Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a
+high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner.
+
+"You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner,
+but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am
+sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate
+your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your
+soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain."
+
+But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her
+worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral.
+
+"Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little,
+certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for
+the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me
+on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church
+floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the
+best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo."
+
+Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart
+felt sore.
+
+Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured
+body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more
+and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular
+face was snapping all round.
+
+The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset,
+but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A
+band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with
+the petitions of the "breathing forth."
+
+Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was
+on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.
+
+The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it
+fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesù,
+Gesù, Gesù!"
+
+The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and
+the priest was praying fast and loud:
+
+"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into
+the bosom of Abraham."
+
+At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her
+diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the
+counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her
+head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in
+her chest. At last she became delirious.
+
+"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill
+it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.
+
+The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to
+his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the
+soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may
+live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life
+she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe
+out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."
+
+The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped.
+A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted,
+and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the
+room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an
+end.
+
+Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.
+
+The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down
+behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.
+
+"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last.
+How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the
+deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor,
+unhappy fellow-sinner.
+
+"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was
+pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death
+made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy
+in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets
+off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self
+forgiven!...
+
+"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for
+you next time, great and serious news."
+
+
+                                XI
+
+Roma fulfilled her promise. The funeral pomps, if the Countess could
+have seen them, would have satisfied her vain little mind. On going to
+the parish church the procession covered the entire length of the
+street. First the banner with skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass, then a
+confraternity of lay people, then twenty paid mourners in evening dress,
+then fifty Capuchins at two francs a head with yellow candles at three
+francs each, then the cross, then the secular clergy two and two, then
+the parish priest in surplice and black stole with servitors and
+acolytes, then a stately funeral car with four horses richly harnessed,
+and finally four coaches with coachmen and footmen in gala livery. The
+bier was loaded with flowers and streamers, and the cost of the cortège
+was nearly a thousand francs.
+
+As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her.
+It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black
+band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features
+hard as iron, made a painful impression.
+
+"Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo," he said, and then he added
+something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear.
+
+"I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving
+your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person
+whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I
+would earnestly counsel you not to commit it."
+
+She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped
+her to enter it, and then said: "Remember, my attitude is the same as
+ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of
+need."
+
+When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the
+cortège was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages.
+Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The
+parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes
+so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins
+for to-morrow.
+
+The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church
+of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches
+discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of
+the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess's friends, like
+herself, disliked the sight of churchyards.
+
+The House of Deposit, a low-roofed chamber under a chapel, contained
+tressels for every kind and condition of the dead. One place was
+labelled "Reserved for distinguished corpses." The coffin of the
+Countess was put to rest there until the buriers should come to bury it
+in the morning, the wreaths and flowers and streamers were laid over it,
+the priest sprinkled it again with holy water, and then the funeral was
+at an end.
+
+"I will not go back yet," said Roma, and thereupon the priest and his
+assistants stepped into the carriages. The drivers lit cigarettes and
+started off at a brisk trot.
+
+It had been a gorgeous funeral, and the soul of the Countess would have
+been satisfied. But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the
+time, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
+
+Roma bought a wreath of wild flowers at a stall outside the cemetery
+gates, and by help of a paper given to her in the office she found the
+grave of little Joseph. It was in a shelf of vaults like ovens, each
+with its marble door, and a photograph on the front. They were all
+photographs of children, sweet smiling faces, a choir of little angels,
+now singing round the throne in heaven. The sun was shining on them, and
+the tall cypress trees were singing softly in the light wind overhead.
+Here and there a mother was trimming an oil-lamp that hung before her
+baby's face, and listening to the little voice that was not dead but
+speaking to her soul's soul.
+
+Roma hung her wreath on Joseph's vault and turned away. Going out of the
+gates she met a great concourse of people. At their head was a Capuchin
+carrying a black wooden cross with sponge, spear, hammer and nails
+attached. Two boys in blue and white carried candles by his side. The
+crowd behind were of the poorest, chiefly women and girls with shawls
+and handkerchiefs on their heads. It was Friday, and they were going to
+the Church of San Lorenzo to make the procession of the Stations of the
+Cross. Scarcely knowing why she did so, Roma followed them.
+
+The people filled the Basilica. Their devotion was deep and touching. As
+they followed the friar from station to station they sang in monotonous
+tones the strophes of the _Stabat Mater_.
+
+"Ah, Mother, fountain of love, make me feel the strength of sorrow that
+I may mourn with thee."
+
+Their prayer seemed hardly needful. They were the starving wives and
+daughters of men in prison, men in hospital, and reserve soldiers. Poor
+wrecks on life's shore, thrown up by the tide, they had turned to
+religion for consolation, and were sending up their cry to God.
+
+When they had finished their course and ended their canticles of grief
+they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was
+a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross
+and a rosary hung from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their
+lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through,
+and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the
+silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their
+sufferings upon them for their sins, that they must confess their sins,
+in order that their holy mother, the Church, might save them from their
+sins, there was a deep hum in the air like the reverberation in a great
+shell.
+
+A line of confessional boxes stood in each of the church aisles, and as
+the preacher described the sorrows of the man-God, His passion, His
+agony, His blood, the women and girls, weeping audibly, got up one by
+one and went over to confess. No sooner had one of them arisen than
+another took her place, and each as she rose to her feet looked calm and
+comforted.
+
+The emotion of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she
+could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the
+trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes
+had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it
+she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face.
+She had seen it before somewhere--perhaps in the Pope's procession.
+
+At that moment a poor girl with a handkerchief on her head, who had
+knelt down crying, was getting up with shining eyes. Roma was shaken by
+violent tremors. An overpowering desire had come upon her to confess.
+For a moment she held on to a chair, lest she should fall to the floor.
+Then by a sudden impulse, in a kind of delirium, scarcely knowing what
+she was doing until it was done, she flung herself in the place the girl
+had risen from, and with a palpitating heart said in a tremulous voice
+through the little brass grating:
+
+"Father, I am a great sinner--hear me, hear me!"
+
+The measured breathing inside the confessional was arrested, and the
+peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic cheeks and blazing
+eyes.
+
+"Wait, my daughter, do not agitate yourself. Say the Confiteor."
+
+She tried to speak, but her words were hardly audible or coherent.
+
+"I confess ... I confess ... I cannot, Father."
+
+A pinch of snuff dropped from the old man's fingers.
+
+"Are you not a Christian?"
+
+"I have not been baptized, but I was educated in a convent, and...."
+
+"Then I cannot hear your confession. Baptism is the door of the Church,
+and without it...."
+
+"But I am in great trouble. For Our Lady's sake, listen to me. Oh,
+listen to me, Father, only listen to me."
+
+Although accustomed to the sufferings of the human heart, a measureless
+pity came over the old priest, and he said in a kind and tender voice:
+
+"Go on, my daughter. I cannot give you absolution, for you are not a
+child of the Church; but I am an old man, and if I can help your poor
+soul to bear its burden, God forbid that I should turn you away."
+
+In a torrent of hot words Roma poured out her trouble, hiding nothing,
+extenuating nothing, and naming and blaming no one. At length the
+throbbing breath and quivering voice died down, and there was a moment's
+silence, in which the dull rumble in the church seemed to come from far
+away. Then the voice behind the grating said in tender tones:
+
+"My daughter, you have committed no sin in this case and have nothing to
+repent of. That you should be troubled by scruples shows that your soul
+is pure and that you are living in communion with God. Your bodily
+health is reduced by nervousness and anxiety, and it is natural that you
+should imagine that you have sinned where you have not sinned. That is
+the sweet grace of most women, but how few men! What sin there has been
+is not yours; therefore go home, and God comfort you."
+
+"But, dear Father ... it is so good of you, but have you forgotten...."
+
+"Your husband? No! Whether you should tell him it is beyond my power to
+say. In itself I should be against it, for why should you disturb his
+conscience and endanger the peace of a family? Your scruples about
+Nature coming to convict you, being without grounds of reason, are
+temptations of the devil and should be put behind your back. But that
+your marriage was a religious one only, that the other person (you did
+right not to name him, my child) may use that circumstance to separate
+you, and that your confession to your husband, if it came too late,
+would come prejudiced and worse than in vain, these are facts that make
+it difficult to advise you for your safety and peace of mind. Let me
+consult some one wiser than myself. Let me, perhaps, take your secret to
+a high place, a kindly ear, a saintly heart, a venerable and holy head.
+Come again, or leave me your name if you will, and if that holy person
+has anything to say you shall hear of it. Meantime go home in peace and
+content, my daughter, and may God bring you into His true fold at last."
+
+When Roma got up from the grating of the confessional she felt like one
+who had passed through a great sickness and was now better. Her whole
+being was going through a miraculous convalescence. A great weight had
+been lifted off; she was renewed as with a new soul and her very body
+felt light as air.
+
+The preacher was still preaching in his tremulous tones, and the women
+and girls were still crying, as Roma passed out of the church, but now
+she heard all as in a dream. It was not until she reached the portico,
+and a blind beggar rattled his can in her face, that the spell was
+broken, so sudden and mysterious was the transition when she came back
+from heaven to earth.
+
+
+                                XII
+
+By the first post next morning "Sister Angelica" received a letter from
+David Rossi.
+
+    "Dearest,--Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and
+    perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when
+    I think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read
+    between the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some
+    of your happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from
+    rushing back to you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some
+    day, my dear one. I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did
+    on that glorious day in the Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are
+    still young and we shall live.
+
+    "Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done
+    amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees,
+    correspondence early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest,
+    and you shall hear all about it presently. I am proud that I
+    judged rightly of the moral grandeur of your nature, and that it
+    is possible to tell you everything.
+
+    "We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our
+    organisation. Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united
+    action. Europe seems to be ready for a complete change, but the
+    first great act must be done in Rome. I find encouragement
+    everywhere. The brotherly union of the peoples is going on. A
+    power stronger than brute force is sweeping through the world.
+
+    "Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put
+    upon him to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am
+    troubled. It would be a lasting grief to me if his mind were
+    poisoned. Charles Minghelli being in prison in the disguise of a
+    prisoner means that anything may happen. When the man came to me
+    after his dismissal in London, it was to ask help to assassinate
+    the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the other side. The
+    secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public trial is a
+    hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been abolished
+    in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and jails
+    of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which
+    helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not
+    a trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent
+    to incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put
+    upon treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from
+    himself and the people whose only occupation in life is to secure
+    convictions.
+
+    "And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more
+    guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast
+    had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself
+    any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the
+    only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save
+    her from a disease of the soul.
+
+    "As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one
+    opinion. I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the
+    sin, where it exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has
+    been pardoned in secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in
+    David. Christ pardoned it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the
+    concealment, the lying and duplicity, these cannot be pardoned
+    until they have been confessed.
+
+    "Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought
+    of. There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your
+    friend. If he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he
+    may intimidate her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband.
+    This would make her miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her
+    will being broken, it might even make her yield. Or the man may
+    really tell her husband in order to insult and outrage both of
+    them. _If he does so, where is she? Is her husband to believe her
+    story then?_
+
+    "To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her
+    husband's love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will
+    think, 'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will
+    love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every
+    man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But
+    his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She
+    loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be
+    struck at her it must go through me.'
+
+    "My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it
+    was very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of
+    you to be severe with her too, and to make her go through
+    purgatorial fires. That is what good women always do with the
+    injured of their own sex. It is a kind of pledge and badge of
+    their purity, and it is a safeguard and shield, whatever the
+    unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to the poor
+    soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your
+    tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation
+    of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of
+    gold. Until we meet again, my darling,                       D. R."
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+     "MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--All day long I've been carrying your
+     letter round like a reliquary, taking a peep at it in cabs, and
+     even, when I dare, in omnibuses and the streets.
+
+    "What you say about Bruno has put me in a fever, and I have
+    written to the Director-General for permission to visit the
+    prison. Even Lawyer Napoleon is of opinion that Bruno is being
+    made a victim of that secret inquisition. No Holy Inquisition was
+    ever more unscrupulous. Lawyer N. says the authorities in Italy
+    have inherited the traditions of a bad régime. To do evil to
+    prevent others from doing it is horrible. But in this case it is
+    doing evil to prevent others from doing good. I am satisfied that
+    Bruno is being tempted to betray you. If I could only take his
+    place! _Would their plots have any effect upon me?_ I should die
+    first.
+
+    "And now about my friend. I can hardly hold my pen when I write of
+    her. What you say is so good, so noble. I might have known what
+    you would think, and yet....
+
+    "Dearest, how can I go on? Can't you divine what I wish to tell
+    you? Your letter compels me to confess. Come what may, I can hold
+    off no longer. Didn't you guess who my poor friend was? I thought
+    you would remember our former correspondence when you pretended to
+    love somebody else. You haven't thought of it apparently, and that
+    is only another proof--a bitter sweet one this time--of your love
+    and trust. You put me so high that you never imagined that I could
+    be speaking of myself. I was, and my poor friend is my poor self.
+
+    "It has made me suffer all along to see what a pedestal of purity
+    you placed me on. The letters you wrote before you told me you
+    loved me, when you were holding off, made me ashamed because I
+    knew I was not worthy. More than once when you spoke of me as so
+    good, I couldn't look into your eyes. I felt an impulse to cry,
+    'No, no, no,' and to smirch the picture you were painting. Yet how
+    could I do it? What woman who loves a man can break the idol in
+    his heart? She can only struggle to lift herself up to it. That
+    was what I tried to do, and it is not my fault that it is not
+    done.
+
+    "I have been much to blame. There were moments when duty should
+    have made me speak. One such moment was before we married. Do you
+    remember that I tried to tell you something? You were kind, and
+    you would not listen. 'The past is past,' you said, and I was only
+    too happy to gloss it over. You didn't know what I wished to say,
+    or you would not have silenced me. I knew, and I have suffered
+    ever since. I _had_ to speak, and you see how I have spoken. And
+    now I feel as if I had tricked you. I have got you to commit
+    yourself to opinions and to a line of conduct. Forgive me! I will
+    not hold you to anything. Take it all back, and I shall have no
+    right to complain.
+
+    "Besides, there are features in my own case which I did not
+    present to you in my friend's. One of them was the fear of being
+    found out. Dearest, I must not shield myself behind the sweet
+    excuse you find for me. I _did_ think of the other man. It wasn't
+    that I was afraid that he would intimidate me, and so corrupt my
+    love. Not all the tyrannies of the world could do that now. But if
+    from revenge or a desire to wrest me away from you by making you
+    cast me off he told you his story before I had told you mine! That
+    was a day-long and night-long terror, and now I confess it lest
+    you should think me better than I am.
+
+    "Another thing you did not know. Dearest, I would give my life to
+    spare you the explanation, but I must tell you everything. You
+    know who the man is, and it is true before God that he alone was
+    to blame. But my own fault came afterwards. Instead of cutting him
+    off, I continued to be on good terms with him, to take the income
+    he allowed me from my father's estate, and even to think of him as
+    my future husband. And when your speech in the piazza seemed to
+    endanger my prospects I set out to destroy you.
+
+    "It is terrible. How can I tell you and not die of shame? Now you
+    know how much I deceived you, and the infamy of my purpose makes
+    me afraid to ask for pardon. To think that I was no better than a
+    Delilah when I met you first! But Heaven stepped in and saved you.
+    How you worked upon me! First, you re-created my father for me,
+    and I saw him as he really was, and not as I had been taught to
+    think of him. Then you gave me my soul, and I saw myself. Darling,
+    do not hate me. Your great heart could not be capable of a cruelty
+    like that if you knew what I suffered.
+
+    "Last of all love came, and I wanted to hold on to it. Oh, how I
+    wanted to hold on to it! That was how it came about that I went on
+    and on without telling you. It was a sort of gambling, a kind of
+    delirium. Everything that happened I took as a penance. Come
+    poverty, shame, neglect, what matter? It was only wiping out a
+    sinful past, and bringing me nearer to you. But when at last he
+    who had injured me threatened to injure you _through me_, I was in
+    despair. You could never imagine what mad notions came to me then.
+    I even thought of killing myself, to end and cover up everything.
+    But no, I could not break your heart like that. Besides, the very
+    act would have told you something, and it was terrible to think
+    that when I was dead you might find out all this pitiful story.
+
+    "Now you know everything, dearest. I have kept nothing back. As
+    you see, I am not only my poor friend, but some one worse--myself.
+    Can you forgive me? I dare not ask it. But put me out of suspense.
+    Write. Or better still, telegraph. One word--only one. It will be
+    enough.
+
+    "I would love to send you my love, but to-night I dare not. I have
+    loved you from the first, and I can never do anything but love
+    you, whatever happens. I think you would forgive me if you could
+    realise that I am in the world only to love you, and that the
+    worst of my offences comes of loving you more than reason or
+    honour itself. Whatever you do, I am yours, and I can only
+    consecrate my life to you.
+
+    "It is daybreak, and the cross of St. Peter's is hanging spectral
+    white above the mists of morning. Is it a symbol of hope, I
+    wonder? The dawn is coming up from the south-east. It would travel
+    quicker to the north-west if it loved you as much as I do. I have
+    been writing this letter over and over again all night long. Do
+    you remember the letter you made me burn, the one containing all
+    your secrets? Here is a letter containing mine--but how much
+    meaner and more perilous! Your poor unhappy girl,           ROMA."
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+Next day Roma removed into her new quarters. A few trunks containing her
+personal belongings, the picture of her father and Elena's Madonna, were
+all she took with her. A broker glanced at the rest of her goods and
+gave a price for the lot. Most of the plaster casts in the studio were
+broken up and carted away. The fountain, being of marble, had to be put
+in a dark cellar under the lodge of the old Garibaldian. Only one part
+of it was carried upstairs. This was the mould for the bust of Rossi and
+the block of stone for the head of Christ.
+
+Except for her dog, Roma went alone to the Piazza Navona, Felice having
+returned to the Baron and Natalina being dismissed. The old woman was to
+clean and cook for her and Roma was to shop for herself. It didn't take
+the neighbours long to sum up the situation. She was Rossi's wife. They
+began to call her Signora.
+
+Coming to live in Rossi's home was a sweet experience. The room seemed
+to be full of his presence. The sitting-room with its piano, its
+phonograph, and its portraits brought back the very tones of his voice.
+The bedroom was at first a sanctuary, and she could not bring herself to
+occupy it until she had set upon the little Madonna. Then it became a
+bower, and to sleep in it brought a tingling sense which she had never
+felt before.
+
+Living in the midst of Rossi's surroundings, she felt as if she were
+discovering something new about him every minute. His squirrels on the
+roof made her think of him as a boy, and his birds, which were nesting,
+and therefore singing from their little swelling throats the whole day
+long, made her thrill and think of both of them. His presents from other
+women were a source of almost feverish interest. Some came from England
+and America, and were sent by women who had never even seen his face.
+They made her happy, they made her proud, they made her jealous.
+
+It was Rossi, Rossi, always Rossi! Every night on going to bed in her
+poor quarters her last thought was a love-prayer in the darkness, very
+simple and foolish and childlike, that he would love her always,
+whatever she was, and whatever the world might say or evil men might do.
+
+This mood lasted for a week and then it began to break. At the back of
+her happiness there lay anxiety about her letter. She counted up the
+hours since she posted it, and reckoned the time it would take to
+receive a reply. If Rossi telegraphed she might hear from him in three
+days. She did not hear.
+
+"He thinks it better to write," she told herself. Of course he would
+write immediately, and in five days she would receive his reply. On the
+fifth day she called on the porter at the convent. He had nothing for
+"Sister Angelica."
+
+"There must be snow on the Alps, and therefore the mails are delayed,"
+she thought, and she went down to Piale's, where they post up telegrams.
+There _was_ snow in Switzerland. It was just as she imagined, and her
+letter would be delivered in the morning. It was not delivered in the
+morning.
+
+"How stupid of me! It would be Sunday when my letter reached London."
+She had not counted on the postal arrangements of the English Sabbath.
+One day more, only one, and she would hear from Rossi and be happy.
+
+But one day went by, then another and another, and still no letter came.
+Her big heart began to fail and the rainbow in the sky of her life to
+pale away. The singing of the birds on the roof pained her now. How
+could they crack their little throats like that? It was raining and the
+sky was dark.
+
+Then the Garibaldian and his old wife came upstairs with scared looks
+and with papers in their hands. They were summoned to give evidence at
+Bruno's trial. It was to take place in three days.
+
+"Well, I'm deaf, praise the saints! and they can't make much of me,"
+said the old woman.
+
+Roma put on her simple black straw hat with a quill through it and set
+off for the office of the lawyer, Napoleon Fuselli.
+
+"Just writing to you, dear lady," said the great man, dropping back in
+his chair. "Sorry to say my labour has been in vain. It is useless to go
+further. Our man has confessed."
+
+"Confessed?" Roma clutched at the lapel of her coat.
+
+"Confessed, and denounced his accomplices."
+
+"His accomplices?"
+
+"Rossi in particular, whom he has implicated in a serious conspiracy."
+
+"What conspiracy?"
+
+"That is not yet disclosed. We shall hear all about it the day after
+to-morrow."
+
+"But why? With what object?"
+
+"Pardon! Apparently they have promised the clemency of the court, and
+hence in one sense our object is achieved. It is hardly necessary to
+defend the man. The authorities will see to that for us."
+
+"What will be the result?"
+
+"Probably a trial in contumacy. As soon as Parliament rises for Easter
+Rossi will be summoned to present himself within ten days. But you will
+be the first to know all about it, you know."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"The summons will be posted upon the door of the house he lived in, and
+on the door of any other house he is known to have frequented."
+
+"But if he never hears of it, or if he takes no heed?"
+
+"He will be tried all the same, and when he is a condemned man his
+sentence will be printed in black and posted up in the same places."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then Rossi's life in Rome will be at an end. He will be interdicted
+from all public offices and expelled from Parliament."
+
+"And Bruno?"
+
+"He will be a free man the following morning."
+
+Roma went home dazed and dejected. A letter was waiting for her. It was
+from the Director of the Roman prisons. Although the regulations
+stipulated that only relations should visit prisoners, except under
+special conditions, the Director had no objection to Bruno Rocco's
+former employer seeing him at the ordinary bi-monthly hour for visitors
+to-morrow, Sunday afternoon.
+
+At two o'clock next day Roma set off for Regina C[oe]li.
+
+
+                                XV
+
+The visiting-room of Regina C[oe]li is constructed on the principle of a
+rat-trap. It is an oblong room divided into three compartments
+longitudinally, the partition walls being composed of wire and
+resembling cages. The middle compartment is occupied by the armed warder
+in charge who walks up and down; the compartment on the prison side is
+divided into many narrow boxes each occupied by a prisoner, and the
+compartment on the world side is similarly divided into sections each
+occupied by a visitor.
+
+When Roma entered this room she was deafened by a roar of voices. Thirty
+prisoners and as many of their friends were trying to talk at the same
+time across the compartment in the middle, in which the warder was
+walking. Each batch of friends and prisoners had fifteen minutes for
+their interview, and everybody was shouting so as to be heard above the
+rest.
+
+A feeling of moral and physical nausea took possession of Roma when she
+was shown into this place. After some minutes of the hellish tumult she
+had asked to see the Director. The message was taken upstairs, and the
+Director came down to speak to her.
+
+"Do you expect me to speak to my friend in this place and under these
+conditions?" she asked.
+
+"It is the usual place, and these are the usual conditions," he
+answered.
+
+"If you are unable to allow me to speak to him in some other place under
+some other conditions, I must go to the Minister of the Interior."
+
+The Director bowed. "That will be unnecessary," he said. "There is a
+room reserved for special circumstances," and, calling a warder, he gave
+the necessary instructions. He was a good man in the toils of a vicious
+system.
+
+A few minutes afterwards Roma was alone in a small bare room with Bruno,
+except for two warders who stood in the door. She was shocked at the
+change in him. His cheeks, which used to be full and almost florid,
+were shrunken and pale; a short grizzly beard had grown over his chin,
+and his eyes, which had been frank and humorous, were fierce and
+evasive. Six weeks in prison had made a different man of him, and, like
+a dog which has been changed by sickness and neglect, he knew it and
+growled.
+
+"What do you want with me?" he said angrily, as Roma looked at him
+without speaking.
+
+She flushed and begged his pardon, and at that his jaw trembled and he
+turned his head away.
+
+"I trust you received the note I sent in to you, Bruno?"
+
+"When? What note?"
+
+"On the day after your arrest, saying your dear ones should be cared for
+and comforted."
+
+"And were they?"
+
+"Yes. Then you didn't receive it?"
+
+"I was under punishment from the first."
+
+"I also paid for a separate cell with food and light. Did you get that?"
+
+"No, I was nearly all the time on bread and water."
+
+His sulkiness was breaking down and he was showing some agitation. She
+lifted her large dark eyes on him and said in a soft voice:
+
+"Poor Bruno! No wonder they have made you say things."
+
+His jaw trembled more than ever. "No use talking of that," he said.
+
+"Mr. Rossi will be the first to feel for you."
+
+He turned his head and looked at her with a look of pity. "She doesn't
+know," he thought. "Why should I tell her? After all, she's in the same
+case as myself. What hurts me will hurt her. She has been good to me.
+Why should I make her suffer?"
+
+"If they've told you falsehoods, Bruno, in order to play on your
+jealousy and inspire revenge...." "Where's Rossi?" he said sharply.
+
+"In England."
+
+"And where's Elena?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He wagged his poor head with a wag of wisdom, and for a moment his
+clouded and stupefied brain was proud of itself.
+
+"It was wrong of Elena to go away without saying where she was going to,
+and Mr. Rossi is in despair about her."
+
+"You believe that?"
+
+"Indeed I do."
+
+These words staggered him, and he felt mean and small compared to this
+woman. "If she can believe in them why can't I?" he thought. But after a
+moment he smiled a pitiful smile and said largely, "You don't know,
+Donna Roma. But _I_ do, and they don't hoodwink me. A poor fellow
+here--a convict, he works on the Gazette and hears all the news--he told
+me everything."
+
+"What's his name?" said Roma.
+
+"Number 333, penal part. He used to occupy the next cell."
+
+"Then you never saw his face?"
+
+"No, but I heard his voice, and I could have sworn I knew it."
+
+"Was it the voice of Charles Minghelli?"
+
+"Charles Ming...."
+
+"Time's up," said one of the warders at the door.
+
+"Bruno," said Roma, rising, "I know that Charles Minghelli, who is now
+an agent of the police, has been in this prison in the disguise of a
+prisoner. I also know that after he was dismissed from the embassy in
+London he asked Mr. Rossi to assist him to assassinate the Prime
+Minister."
+
+"Right about," cried the warder, and with a bewildered expression the
+prisoner turned to go. Roma followed him through the open courtyard, and
+until he reached the iron gate he did not lift his head. Then he faced
+round with eyes full of tears, but full of fire as well, and raising one
+arm he cried in a resolute voice:
+
+"All right, sister! Leave it to me, damn me! I'll see it through."
+
+The private visiting-room had one disadvantage. Every word that passed
+was repeated to the Director. Later the same day the Director wrote to
+the Royal Commissioner:
+
+"Sorry to say the man Rocco has asked for an interview to retract his
+denunciation. I have refused it, and he has been violent with the chief
+warder. But inspired by a sentiment of justice I feel it my duty to warn
+you that I have been misled, that my instructions have been badly
+interpreted, and that I cannot hold myself responsible for the document
+I sent you."
+
+The Commissioner sent this letter on to the Minister of the Interior,
+who immediately called up the Chief of Police.
+
+"Commendatore," said the Baron, "what was the offence for which young
+Charles Minghelli was dismissed from the embassy in London?"
+
+"He was suspected of forgery, your Excellency."
+
+"The warrant for his arrest was drawn out but never executed?"
+
+"That is so, and we still hold it at the office...."
+
+"Commendatore!"
+
+"Your Excellency?"
+
+"Let the papers that were taken at the domiciliary visitation in the
+apartments of Deputy Rossi and his man Bruno be gone through again--let
+Minghelli go through them. You follow me?"
+
+"Perfectly, Excellency."
+
+"Let your Delegate see if there is not a letter among them from Rossi to
+Bruno's wife--you understand?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"If such a letter can be found let it be sent to the Under Prefect to
+add to his report for to-morrow's trial, and let the Public Prosecutor
+read it to the prisoner."
+
+"It shall be done, your Excellency."
+
+
+                                XVI
+
+At eight o'clock the next morning Roma was going into the courtyard of
+the Castle of St. Angelo when she met the carriage of the Prime Minister
+coming out. The coachman was stopped from inside, and the Baron himself
+alighted.
+
+"You look tired, my child," he said.
+
+"I _am_ tired," she answered.
+
+"Hardly more than a month, yet so many things have happened!"
+
+"Oh, that! That's nothing--nothing whatever."
+
+"Why should you pass through these privations? Roma, if I allowed these
+misfortunes to befall you it was only to let you feel what others could
+do for you. But I am the same as ever, and you have only to stretch out
+your hand and I am here to lighten your lot."
+
+"All that is over now. It is no use speaking as you spoke before. You
+are talking to another woman."
+
+"Strange mystery of a woman's love! That she who set out to destroy her
+slanderer should become his slave! If he were only worthy of it!"
+
+"He is worthy of it."
+
+"If you should hear that he is not worthy--that he has even been untrue
+to you?"
+
+"I should think it is a falsehood, a contemptible falsehood."
+
+"But if you had proof, substantial proof, the proof of his own pen?"
+
+"Good-morning! I must go."
+
+"My child, what have I always told you? You will give the man up at last
+and carry out your first intention."
+
+With a deep bow and a scarcely perceptible smile the Baron turned to the
+open door of his carriage. Roma flushed up angrily and went on, but the
+poisoned arrow had gone home.
+
+The military tribunal had begun its session. A ticket which Roma
+presented at the door admitted her to the well of the court where the
+advocates were sitting. The advocate Fuselli made a place for her by his
+side. It was a quiet moment and her entrance attracted attention. The
+judges in their red armchairs at the green-covered horse-shoe table
+looked up from their portfolios, and there was some whispering beyond
+the wooden bar where the public were huddled together. One other face
+had followed her, but at first she dared not look at that. It was the
+face of the prisoner in his prison clothes sitting between two
+Carabineers.
+
+The secretary read the indictment. Bruno was charged not only with
+participation in the riot of the 1st of February, but also with being a
+promoter of associations designed to change violently the constitution
+of the state. It was a long document, and the secretary read it slowly
+and not very distinctly.
+
+When the indictment came to an end the Public Prosecutor rose to expound
+the accusation, and to mention the clauses of the Code under which the
+prisoner's crime had to be considered. He was a young captain of
+cavalry, with restless eyes and a twirled-up moustache. His long cloak
+hung over his chair, his light gloves lay on the table by his side, and
+his sword clanked as he made graceful gestures. He was an elegant
+speaker, much preoccupied about beautiful phrases, and obviously anxious
+to conciliate the judges.
+
+"Illustrious gentlemen of the tribunal," he began, and then went on
+with a compliment to the King, a flourish to the name of the Prime
+Minister, a word of praise to the army, and finally a scathing satire on
+the subversive schemes which it was desired to set up in place of
+existing institutions. The most crushing denunciation of the delirious
+idea which had led to the unhappy insurrection was the crude explanation
+of its aims. A universal republic founded on the principles enunciated
+in the Lord's Prayer! Thrones, armies, navies, frontiers, national
+barriers, all to be abolished! So simple! So easy! So childlike! But
+alas, so absurd! So entirely oblivious of the great principles of
+political economy and international law, and of impulses and instincts
+profoundly sculptured in the heart of man!
+
+After various little sallies which made his fellow-officers laugh and
+the judges smile, the showy person wiped his big moustache with a silk
+handkerchief, and came to Bruno. This unhappy man was not one of the
+greater delinquents who, by their intelligence, had urged on the
+ignorant crowd. He was merely a silly and perhaps drunken person, who if
+taken away from the wine-shop and put into uniform would make a valiant
+soldier. The creature was one of the human dogs of our curious species.
+His political faith was inscribed with one word only--Rossi. He would
+not ask for severe punishment on such a deluded being, but he would
+request the court to consider the case as a means of obtaining proof
+against the dark if foolish minds (fit subjects for Lombroso) which are
+always putting the people into opposition with their King, their
+constitution, and the great heads of government.
+
+The sword clanked again as the young soldier sat down. Then for the
+first time Roma looked over at Bruno. His big rugged face was twisted
+into an expression of contempt, and somehow the "human dog of our
+curious species," sitting in his prison clothes between the soldiers,
+made the elegant officer look like a pet pug.
+
+"Bruno Rocco, stand up," said the president. "You are a Roman, aren't
+you?"
+
+"Yes, I am--I'm a Roman of Rome," said Bruno.
+
+The witnesses were called. First a Carabineer to prove Bruno's violence.
+Then another Carabineer, and another, and another, with the same object.
+After each of the Carabineers had given his evidence the president asked
+the prisoner if he had any questions to ask the witnesses.
+
+"None whatever. What they say is true. I admit it," he said.
+
+At last he grew impatient and cried out, "I admit it, I tell you. What's
+the good of going on?"
+
+The next witness was the Chief of Police. Commendatore Angelelli was
+called to prove that the cause of the revolt was not the dearness of
+bread but the formation of subversive associations, of which the
+"Republic of Man" was undoubtedly the strongest and most virulent. The
+prisoner, however, was not one of the directing set, and the police knew
+him only as a sort of watch-dog for the Honourable Rossi.
+
+"The man's a fool. Why don't you go on with the trial?" cried Bruno.
+
+"Silence," cried the usher of the court, but the prisoner only laughed
+out loud.
+
+Roma looked at Bruno again. There was something about the man which she
+had never seen before, something more than the mere spirit of defiance,
+something terrible and tremendous.
+
+"Francesca Maria Mariotti," cried the usher, and the old deaf mother of
+Bruno's wife was brought into court. She wore a coloured handkerchief on
+her head as usual, and two shawls over her shoulders. Being a relative
+of the prisoner, she was not sworn.
+
+"Your name and your father's name?" said the president.
+
+"Francesca Maria Mariotti," she answered.
+
+"I said your father's name."
+
+"Seventy-five, your Excellency."
+
+"I asked you for your father's name."
+
+"None at all, your Excellency."
+
+A Carabineer explained that the woman was nearly stone deaf, whereupon
+the president, who was irritated by the laughter his questions had
+provoked, ordered the woman to be removed.
+
+"Tommaso Mariotti," said the president, after the preliminary
+interrogations, "you are porter at the Piazza Navona, and will be able
+to say if meetings of political associations were held there, if the
+prisoner took part in them, and who were the organising authorities. Now
+answer me, were meetings ever held in your house?"
+
+The old man turned his pork-pie hat in his hand, and made no answer.
+
+"Answer me. We cannot sit here all day doing nothing."
+
+"It's the Eternal City, Excellency--we can take our time," said the old
+man.
+
+"Answer the president instantly," said the usher. "Don't you know he can
+punish you if you don't?"
+
+At that the Garibaldian's eyes became moist, and he looked at the
+judges. "Generals," he said, "I am only an old man, not much good to
+anybody, but I was a soldier myself once. I was one of the 'Thousand,'
+the 'Brave Thousand' they called us, and I shed my blood for my country.
+Now I am more than threescore years and ten, and the rest of my days are
+numbered. Do you want me for the sake of what is left of them to betray
+my comrades?"
+
+"Next witness," said the president, and at the same moment a thick,
+half-stifled voice came from the bench of the accused.
+
+"Why the ---- don't you go on with the trial?"
+
+"Prisoner," said the president, "if you continue to make these
+interruptions I shall stop the trial and order you to be flogged."
+
+Bruno answered with a peal of laughter. The president--he was a
+bald-headed man with the heavy jaw of a bloodhound--looked at him
+attentively for a moment, and then said to the men below:
+
+"Go on."
+
+The next witness was the Director of Regina C[oe]li. He deposed that the
+prisoner had made a statement to him which he had taken down in writing.
+This statement amounted to a denunciation of the Deputy David Rossi as
+the real author of the crime of which he with others was charged.
+
+After the denunciation had been read the president asked the prisoner if
+he had any questions to put to the witness, and thereupon Bruno cried in
+a loud voice:
+
+"Of course I have. It is exactly what I've been waiting for."
+
+He had risen to his feet, kicked over a chair which stood in front of
+him, and folded his arms across his breast.
+
+"Ask him," said Bruno, "if he sent for me late at night and promised my
+pardon if I would denounce David Rossi."
+
+"It was not so," said the Director. "All I did was to advise him not to
+observe a useless silence which could only condemn him to further
+imprisonment if by speaking the truth he could save himself and serve
+the interests of justice."
+
+"Ask him," said Bruno, "if the denunciation he speaks of was not
+dictated by himself."
+
+"The prisoner," said the Director, "made the denunciation voluntarily,
+and I rose from my bed to receive it at his urgent request."
+
+"Ask him if I said one word to denounce David Rossi."
+
+"The prisoner had made statements to a fellow-prisoner, and these were
+embodied in the document he signed."
+
+The advocate Fuselli interposed. "Then the Court is to understand that
+the Director who dictated this denunciation knew nothing from the
+prisoner himself?"
+
+The Director hesitated, stammered, and finally admitted that it was so.
+"I was inspired by a sentiment of justice," he said. "I acted from
+duty."
+
+"This man fed me on bread and water," cried Bruno. "He put me in the
+punishment cells and tortured me in the strait-waistcoat with pains and
+sufferings like Jesus Christ's, and when he had reduced my body and
+destroyed my soul he dictated a denunciation of my dearest friend and my
+unconscious fingers signed it."
+
+"Don't shout so loud," said the president.
+
+"I'll shout as loud as I like," said Bruno, and everybody turned to look
+at him. It was useless to protest. Something seemed to say that no power
+on earth could touch a man in a mood like that.
+
+The next witness was the chief warder. He deposed that he was present at
+the denunciation, that it was made voluntarily, and that no pressure
+whatever was put upon the prisoner.
+
+"Ask him," cried Bruno, "if on Sunday afternoon, when I went into his
+cabinet to withdraw the denunciation, he refused to let me."
+
+"It is not true," said the witness.
+
+"You liar," cried Bruno, "you know it is true; and when I told you that
+you were making me drag an innocent man to the galleys I struck you, and
+the mark of my fist is on your forehead still. There it is, as red as a
+Cardinal, while the rest of your face is as white as a Pope."
+
+The president no longer tried to restrain Bruno. There was something in
+the man's face that was beyond reproof. It was the outraged spirit of
+Justice.
+
+The chief warder went on to say that at various times he had received
+reports that Rocco was communicating important facts to a
+fellow-prisoner.
+
+"Where is this fellow-prisoner? Is he at the disposition of the court?"
+said the president.
+
+"I'm afraid he has since been set at liberty," said the witness,
+whereupon Bruno laughed uproariously, and pointing to some one in the
+well, he shouted:
+
+"There he is--there! The dandy in cuffs and collar. His name is
+Minghelli."
+
+"Call him," said the president, and Minghelli was sworn and examined.
+
+"Until recently you were a prisoner in Regina C[oe]li, and have just
+been pardoned for public services?"
+
+"That is true, your Excellency."
+
+"It's a lie," cried Bruno.
+
+Minghelli leaned on the witness's chair, caressed his small moustache,
+and told his story. He had occupied the next cell to the prisoner, and
+talked with him in the usual language of prisoners. The prisoner had
+spoken of a certain great man and then of a certain great act, and that
+the great man had gone to England to prepare for it. He understood the
+great man to be the Deputy Rossi, and the great act to be the overthrow
+of the constitution and the assassination of the King.
+
+"You son of a priest," cried Bruno, "you lie!"
+
+"Bruno Rocco," said the president, "do not agitate yourself. You are
+under the protection of the law. Be calm and tell us your own story."
+
+
+                                XVII
+
+"Your Excellency," said Bruno, "this man is a witness by profession, and
+he was put into the next cell to torture me and make me denounce my
+friends. I didn't see his face, and I didn't know who he was until
+afterwards, and so he tore me to pieces. He said he was a proof-reader
+on the Official Gazette and heard everything. When my heart was bleeding
+for the death of my poor little boy--only seven years of age, such a
+curly-headed little fellow, like a sunbeam in a fog, killed in the
+riot, your Excellency--he poisoned my mind about my wife, and said she
+had run away with Rossi. It was a lie, but I was brought down by
+flogging and bread and water and I believed it, because I was mad and my
+soul was exhausted and dead. But when I found out who he was I tried to
+take back my denunciation, and they wouldn't let me. Your Excellency, I
+tell you the truth. Everybody should tell the truth here. I alone am
+guilty, and if I have accused anybody else I ask pardon of God. As for
+this man, he is an assassin and I can prove it. He used to be at the
+embassy in London, and when he was sacked he came to Mr. Rossi and
+proposed to assassinate the Prime Minister. Mr. Rossi flung him out of
+the house, and that was the beginning of everything."
+
+"This is not true," said Minghelli, red as the gills of a turkey.
+
+"Isn't it? Give me the cross, and let me swear the man a liar," cried
+Bruno.
+
+Roma was breathing hard and rising to her feet, but the advocate Fuselli
+restrained her and rose himself. In six sentences he summarised the
+treatment of Bruno in prison, and denounced it as worthy of the
+cruellest epochs of tyrannical domination, in which men otherwise
+honourable could become demons in order to save the dynasty and the
+institutions and to make their own careers.
+
+"Mr. President," he cried, "I call on you in the name of humanity to say
+that justice in Italy has nothing to do with a barbarous system which
+aims at obtaining denunciations through jealousy and justice through
+revenge."
+
+The president was deeply moved. "I have made a solemn promise under the
+shadow of that venerable image"--he pointed to the effigy above him--"to
+administer justice in this case, and to the last I will do my duty."
+
+The Public Prosecutor rose again and obtained permission to interrogate
+the prisoner.
+
+"You say the witness Minghelli told you that your wife had fled with the
+Honourable Rossi?"
+
+"He did, and it was a lie, like all the rest of it."
+
+"How do you know it was a lie?"
+
+Bruno made no answer, and the young officer took up a letter from his
+portfolio.
+
+"Do you know the Honourable Rossi's handwriting?"
+
+"Do I know my own ugly fist?"
+
+"Is that the Honourable Rossi's writing?" said the officer, handing the
+envelope to the usher to be shown to Bruno.
+
+"It is," said Bruno.
+
+"Sure of it?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You see it is a letter addressed to your wife?"
+
+"I see. But you needn't go on washing the donkey's head, Mister--I know
+what you are getting at."
+
+"You must not speak like that to him, Rocco," said the president.
+"Remember, he is the honourable representative of the law."
+
+"Mustn't I, Excellency? Then tell his honourableness that David Rossi
+and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of
+that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs."
+
+Saying this, Bruno flung the letter back on to the table.
+
+"Don't you want to read it?"
+
+"Not I! It's somebody else's correspondence, and I'm not an honourable
+representative of the law."
+
+"Then permit me to read it to you," said the Public Prosecutor, and
+taking the letter out of the envelope he began in a loud voice:
+
+"'Dearest Elena....'"
+
+"That's nothing," Bruno interrupted. "They're like brother and sister, I
+tell you."
+
+The Public Prosecutor went on reading:
+
+"'I continue to be overwhelmed with grief for the death of our poor
+little Joseph.'"
+
+"That's right! That's David Rossi. He loved the boy the same as if he
+had been his own son. Go on."
+
+"'... Our child--your child--my child, Elena.'"
+
+"Nothing wrong there. Don't try to make mischief of that," cried Bruno.
+
+"'But now that the boy is gone, and Bruno is in prison, perhaps for
+years, the obstacles must be removed which have hitherto prevented you
+from joining your life to mine and living for me, as I have always lived
+for you. Come to me then, my dear one, my beloved....'"
+
+Here Bruno, who had been stepping forward at every word, snatched the
+letter out of the Public Prosecutor's hand.
+
+"Stop that! Don't go reading out of the back of your head," he cried.
+
+No one protested, everybody felt that whatever he did this injured man
+must be left alone. Roma felt a roaring in her ears, and for some
+minutes she could scarcely command herself. In a vague way she was
+conscious of the same struggle in her own heart as was going on in the
+heart of Bruno. This, then, was what the Baron referred to when he spoke
+of Rossi being untrue to her, and of the proof of his disloyalty in his
+own handwriting.
+
+Bruno, who was running his eyes over the letter, read parts of it aloud
+in a low husky voice:
+
+"'And now that the boy is gone and Bruno is in prison ... perhaps for
+years ... the obstacles must be removed....'"
+
+He stopped, looked up, and stared about him. His face had undergone an
+awful change. Then he returned to the letter, and in jerky sentences he
+read again:
+
+"'Come to me then ... my dear one ... my beloved....'"
+
+Until that moment an evil spirit in Roma had been saying to her, in
+spite of herself: "Can it be possible that while you have been going
+through all those privations for his sake he has been consoling himself
+with another woman?" Impossible! The letter was a manifest imposture.
+She wouldn't believe a word of it.
+
+But Bruno was still in the toils of his temptation. "Look here," he
+said, lifting a pitiful face. "What with the bread and water and the
+lashes I don't know that my head isn't light, and I'm fancying I see
+things...."
+
+The paper of the letter was crackling in his hand, and his husky voice
+was breaking. Save for these sounds and the tramp--tramp--tramp of the
+soldiers drilling outside, there was a dead silence in the court.
+
+"You are not fancying at all, Rocco," said the Public Prosecutor. "We
+are all sorry for you, and I am sure the illustrious gentlemen of the
+tribunal pity you. Your comrade, your master, the man you have followed
+and trusted, is false to you. He is a traitor to his friend, his
+country, and his King. The denunciation you made in prison is true in
+substance and in fact. I advise you to adhere to it, and to cast
+yourself on the clemency of the court."
+
+"Here--you--shut up your head and let a man think," said Bruno.
+
+Roma tried to rise. She could not. Then she tried to cry out something,
+but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Would Bruno break down at
+the last moment?
+
+Bruno, whose face was convulsed with agony, began to laugh in a
+delirious way. "So my friend is false to me, is he? Very well, I'll be
+revenged."
+
+He reeled a little and the letter dropped from his hand, floated a
+moment in the air, and fell to the ground a pace or two farther on.
+
+"Yes, by God, I'll be revenged," he cried, and he laughed again.
+
+He stopped, lifted one leg, seemed to pull at his boot, and again stood
+erect.
+
+"I always knew the hour would come when I should find myself in a tight
+place, and I've always kept something about me to help me to get out of
+it. Here it is now."
+
+In an instant, before any one could be aware of what he was doing, he
+had uncorked a small bottle which he held in his hand and swallowed the
+contents.
+
+"Long live David Rossi!" he cried, and he flung the empty bottle over
+his head.
+
+Everybody was on his feet in a moment. It was too late. In thirty
+seconds the poison had begun its work, and Bruno was reeling in the arms
+of the Carabineers. Somebody called for a doctor. Somebody else called
+for a priest.
+
+"That's all right," said Bruno. "God is a good old saint. He'll look
+after a poor devil like me." Then he began to sing:--
+
+    "The tombs are uncovered,
+      The dead arise,
+    The martyrs are rising
+      Before our eyes."
+
+"Long live David Rossi!" he cried again, and at the next moment he was
+being carried out of court.
+
+In the tumult that ensued everybody was standing in the well of the
+judges' horse-shoe table. The deaf old woman, with her shawls slipping
+off her shoulders, was wringing her hands and crying. "God will think of
+this," she said. The Garibaldian was gazing vacantly out of his rheumy
+eyes and saying nothing. Roma, who had recovered control of herself, was
+looking at the letter, which she had picked up from the floor.
+
+[Illustration: "GOD WILL LOOK AFTER A POOR DEVIL LIKE ME."]
+
+"Mr. President," she cried over the heads of the others, "this letter is
+not in Mr. Rossi's handwriting. It is a forgery. I am ready to prove
+it."
+
+At that moment one of the Carabineers came back to tell the judges that
+all was over.
+
+"Gone!" said one after another, more often with a motion of the mouth
+than with the voice.
+
+The president was deeply agitated. "This court stands adjourned," he
+said, "but I take the Almighty to witness that I intend to ascertain all
+responsibility in this case and to bring it home to the guilty ones,
+whosoever and whatsoever they may be."
+
+
+                                XVIII
+
+    "MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--You will know all about it before this
+    letter reaches you. It is one of those scandals of the law that
+    are telegraphed to every part of the civilised world. Poor Bruno!
+    Yet no, not poor--great, glorious, heroic Bruno! He ended like an
+    old Roman, and killed himself rather than betray his friend. When
+    they played upon his jealousy, and tempted him by a forged
+    letter, he cried, 'Long live David Rossi!' and died. Oh, it was
+    wonderful. The memory of that moment will be with me always like
+    the protecting and strengthening hand of God. I never knew until
+    to-day what human nature is capable of. It is divine.
+
+    "But how mean and little I feel when I think of all I went through
+    in the court this morning! I was really undergoing the same
+    tortures as Bruno, the same doubt and the same agony. And even
+    when I saw through the whole miserable machination of lying and
+    duplicity I was actually in terror for Bruno lest he should betray
+    you in the end. Betray you! His voice when he uttered that last
+    cry rings in my ears still. It was a voice of triumph--triumph
+    over deception, over temptation, over jealousy, and over self.
+
+    "Don't think, David Rossi, that Bruno died of a broken heart, and
+    don't think he went out of the world believing that you were
+    false. I feel sure he came to that court with the full intention
+    of doing what he did. All through the trial there was something in
+    his bearing which left the impression of a purpose unrevealed.
+    Everybody felt it, and even the judges ceased to protest against
+    his outbursts. The poor prisoner in convict clothes, with
+    dishevelled hair and bare neck, made every one else look paltry
+    and small. Behind him was something mightier than himself. It was
+    Death. Then remember his last cry, and ask yourself what he meant
+    by it. He meant loyalty, love, faith, fidelity. He intended to
+    say, 'You've beaten me, but no matter; I believe in him, and
+    follow him to the last.'
+
+    "As you see, I am here in your own quarters, but I keep in touch
+    with 'Sister Angelica,' and still have no answer to my letter. I
+    invent all manner of excuses to account for your silence. You are
+    busy, you are on a journey, you are waiting for the right moment
+    to reply to me at length. If I could only continue to think so,
+    how happy I should be! But I cannot deceive myself any longer.
+
+    "It is perhaps natural that you should find it hard to forgive me,
+    but you might at least write and put me out of suspense. I think
+    you would do so if you knew how much I suffer. Your great soul
+    cannot intend to torture me. To-night the burden of things is
+    almost more than I can bear, and I am nearly heartbroken. It is my
+    dark hour, dearest, and if you had to say you could never forgive
+    me, I think I could easier reconcile myself to that. I have been
+    so happy since I began to love you; I shall always love you even
+    if I have to lose you, and I shall never, never be sorry for
+    anything that has occurred.
+
+    "Not receiving any new letters from you, I am going back on the
+    old ones, and there is a letter of only two months ago in which
+    you speak of just such a case as mine. May I quote what you say?
+
+    "'Yet even if she were not so (i.e. worthy of your love and
+    friendship), even if there were, as you say, a fault in her, who
+    am I that I should judge her harshly? ... I reject the monstrous
+    theory that while a man may redeem the past a woman never can....
+    And if she has sinned as I have sinned, and suffered as I have
+    suffered, I will pray for strength to say, 'Because I love her we
+    are one, and we stand or fall together.'
+
+    "It is so beautiful that I am even happy while my pen copies the
+    sweet, sweet words, and I feel as I did when the old priest spoke
+    so tenderly on the day I confessed, telling me I had committed no
+    sin and had nothing to repent of. Have I never told you about
+    that? My confessor was a Capuchin, and perhaps I should have
+    waited for his advice before going farther. He was to consult his
+    General or his Bishop or some one, and to send for me again.
+
+    "But all that is over now, and everything depends upon you. In any
+    case, be sure of one thing, whatever happens. Bruno has taught me
+    a great lesson, and there is not anything your enemies can do to
+    me that will touch me now. They have tried me already with
+    humiliation, with poverty, with jealousy, and even with the shadow
+    of shame itself. There is nothing left but death. _And death
+    itself shall find me faithful to the last._ Good-bye! Your poor
+    unforgiven girl,                                           ROMA."
+
+The morning after writing this letter Roma received a visit from one of
+the Noble Guard. It was the Count de Raymond.
+
+"I am sent by the Holy Father," he said, "to say that he wishes to see
+you."
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       PART SEVEN--THE POPE
+
+
+                                I
+
+On the morning appointed for the visit to the Vatican, Roma dressed in
+the black gown and veil prescribed by etiquette for ladies going to an
+audience with the Pope.
+
+The young Noble Guard in civilian clothes was waiting for her in the
+sitting-room. When she came out of the bedroom he was standing with a
+solemn face before the bust of David Rossi, which she had lately cast
+afresh and was beginning to point in marble.
+
+"This is wonderful," he said. "Perfectly wonderful! A most astonishing
+study."
+
+Roma smiled and bowed to him.
+
+"Christ of course, and such reality, such feeling, such love! But shall
+I tell you what surprises me most of all?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"What surprises me most is the extraordinary resemblance between your
+Christ and the Pope."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Indeed yes! Didn't you know it? No? It is almost incredible. Younger
+certainly, but the same features, the same expression, the same
+tenderness, the same strength! Even the same vertical lines over the
+nose which make the shako dither on one's head when something goes wrong
+and His Holiness is indignant."
+
+Roma's smile was dying off her face like the sun off a field of corn,
+and she was looking sideways out of the window.
+
+"Has the Pope any relations?" she asked.
+
+"None whatever, not a soul. The only son of an only son. You must have
+been thinking of the Holy Father himself, and asking yourself what he
+was like thirty years ago. Come now, confess it!"
+
+Roma laughed. The soldier laughed. "Shall we go?" she said.
+
+A carriage was waiting for them, and they drove by the Tor di Nona, a
+narrow lane which skirts the banks of the Tiber, across the bridge of
+St. Angelo, and up the Borgo.
+
+Roma was nervous and preoccupied. Why had she been sent for? What could
+the Pope have to say to her?
+
+"Isn't it unusual," she asked, "for the Pope to send for any
+one--especially a woman, and a non-Catholic?"
+
+"Most unusual. But perhaps Father Pifferi...."
+
+"Father Pifferi?"
+
+"He is the Holy Father's confessor."
+
+"Is he a Capuchin?"
+
+"Yes. The General at San Lorenzo."
+
+"Ah, now I understand," said Roma. Light had dawned on her and her
+spirits began to rise.
+
+"The Pope is very tender and fatherly, isn't he?"
+
+"Fatherly? He is a saint on earth, that's what he is! Impetuous,
+perhaps, but so sweet and generous and forgiving. Makes you shake in
+your shoes if you've done anything amiss, but when all is over and he
+puts his arm on your shoulder and tells you to think no more about it,
+you're ready to die for him even at the stake."
+
+Roma's spirits were rising every minute, and her nervousness was fading
+away. Since things had fallen out so, she could take advantage of her
+opportunities. She would tell the Pope everything, and he would advise
+with her and counsel her. She would speak about David Rossi, and the
+Pope would tell her what to do.
+
+The great clock of the Basilica was striking ten with a solemn boom as
+the carriage rattled over the stones of the Piazza of St. Peter's--wet
+with the play of the fountains and bright with the rainbows made by the
+sun.
+
+They alighted at the bronze gate, ascended the grand staircase, crossed
+a courtyard, passed through many gorgeous chambers, and arrived finally
+at an apartment hung with tapestries and occupied by a Noble Guard, who
+wore a brass helmet and held a drawn sword. The next room was the throne
+room, and beyond it were the Pope's private apartments.
+
+A chaplain of the Pope's household came to say that by request of Father
+Pifferi the lady was to step into an anteroom; and Roma followed him
+into a small adjoining chamber, carpeted with cocoanut matting and
+furnished with a marble-topped table and two wooden chest-seats, bearing
+the papal arms. The little room opened on to a corridor overlooking a
+courtyard, a secret way to the Pope's private rooms, and it had a door
+to the throne room also.
+
+"The Father will be here presently," said the chaplain, "and His
+Holiness will not be long."
+
+Roma, who was feeling some natural tremors, tried to reassure herself by
+asking questions about the Pope. The chaplain's face began to gleam. He
+was a little man, with round red cheeks and pale grey eyes, and the
+usual tone of his voice was a hushed and reverent whisper.
+
+"Faint? Yes, ladies do faint sometimes--often, I may say--and they
+nearly always cry. But the Holy Father is so gentle, so sweet."
+
+The door to the throne room opened and there was a gleam of violet and
+an indistinct buzz of voices. The chaplain disappeared, and at the next
+moment a man in the dress of a waiter came from the corridor carrying a
+silver soup dish.
+
+"You're the lady the Holy Father sent for?"
+
+Roma smiled and assented.
+
+"I'm Cortis--Gaetano Cortis--the Pope's valet, you know--and of course I
+hear everything."
+
+Roma smiled again and bowed.
+
+"I bring the Holy Father a plate of soup every morning at ten, but I'm
+afraid it is going to get cold this morning."
+
+"Will he be angry?"
+
+"Angry? He's an angel, and couldn't be angry with any one."
+
+"He must indeed be good; everybody says so."
+
+"He is perfect. That's about the size of it. None of your locking up his
+bedroom when he goes into the garden and putting the key into the pocket
+of his cassock, same as in the old Pope's days. I go in whenever I like,
+and he lets me take whatever I please. At Christmas some rich Americans
+wanted a skull-cap to save a dying man, and I got it for the asking. Now
+an old English lady wants a stocking to cure her rheumatism, and I'll
+get that too. I've saved a little hair from the last cutting, and if you
+hear of anybody...."
+
+The valet's story of his perquisites was interrupted by the opening of
+the door of the throne room and the entrance of a friar in a brown
+habit. It was Father Pifferi.
+
+"Don't rise, my daughter," he said, and closing the door behind the
+valet, he gathered up the skirts of his habit and sat down on the
+chest-seat in front of her.
+
+"When you came to me with your confidence, my child, and I found it
+difficult to advise with you for your peace of mind, I told you I wished
+to take your case to a wiser head than mine. I took it to the Pope
+himself. He was touched by your story, and asked to see you for
+himself."
+
+"But, Father...."
+
+"Don't be afraid, my daughter. Pius the Tenth as a Pope may be lofty to
+sternness, but as a man he is humble and simple and kind. Forget that he
+is a sovereign and a pontiff, and think of him as a tender and loving
+friend. Tell him everything. Hold nothing back. And if you must needs
+reveal the confidences of others, remember that he is the Vicar of Him
+who keeps all our secrets."
+
+"But, Father...."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He is so high, so holy, so far above the world and its temptations...."
+
+"Don't say that, my daughter. The Holy Father is a man like other men.
+Shall I tell you something of his life? The world knows it only by
+hearsay and report. You shall hear the truth, and when you have heard it
+you will go to him as a child goes to its father, and no longer be
+afraid."
+
+
+                                II
+
+"Thirty-five years ago," said Father Pifferi, "the Holy Father had not
+even dreamt of being Pope. He was the only child of a Roman banker,
+living in a palace on the opposite side of the piazza. The old Baron had
+visions, indeed, of making his son a great churchman by the power of
+wealth, but these were vain and foolish, and the young man did not share
+them. His own aims were simple but worldly. He desired to be a soldier,
+and to compromise with his father's disappointed ambitions he asked for
+a commission in the Pope's Noble Guard."
+
+The old friar put his hands into the vertical pockets in the breast of
+his habit, and looked up at the ceiling as he went on speaking.
+
+"All this is no secret, but what follows is less known. The soldier, who
+had the charm of an engaging personality, led the life of an ordinary
+young Roman of his day, frequenting cafés, concerts, theatres, and
+balls. In this character he met a poor woman of the people, and came to
+love her. She was a good girl, with soft and gentle manners, but a heart
+of gold and a soul of fire. He was a good man and he meant to marry her.
+He did marry her. He married her according to the rites of the Church,
+which are all that religion requires and God calls for."
+
+Roma was leaning forward on her seat and breathing between
+tightly-closed lips.
+
+"Unhappily, then as now, a godless legislature had separated a religious
+from a civil marriage, and the one without the other was useless. The
+old Baron heard of what had happened and tried to defeat it. A cardinal
+had just been created in Australia, and an officer of the Noble Guard
+had to be sent with the Ablegate to carry the biglietto and the
+skull-cap. At the request of the Baron his son was appointed to that
+mission and despatched in haste."
+
+Roma could scarcely control herself.
+
+"The young husband being gone, the father set himself to deal with the
+wife. He had not yet relinquished his hopes of seeing his son a
+churchman, and marriage was a fatal impediment. A rich man may have many
+instruments, and the Baron was able to use some that were evil. He
+played upon the conscience of the girl, who was pure and virtuous; told
+her she was not legally married, and that the laws of her country
+thought ill of her. Finally, he appealed to her love for her husband,
+and showed her that she was standing in his way. He was not a bad man,
+but he loved his son beyond truth and to the perversion of honour, and
+was ready to sacrifice the woman who stood between them. She allowed
+herself to be sacrificed. She wiped herself out that she might not be an
+obstacle to her husband. She drowned herself in the Tiber."
+
+Roma could not control herself any longer, and made a half-stifled
+exclamation.
+
+"Then the young husband returned. He had been travelling constantly, and
+no letters from his wife had reached him. But one letter was waiting for
+him at Rome, and it told him what she had done. It was then all over;
+there was no help for it, and he was overwhelmed with horror. He could
+not blame the poor dead girl, for all she had done had been done in
+love; he could not blame himself, for he had meant no wrong in making
+the religious marriage, and had hastened home to complete the civil one;
+and he could not reproach his father, for if the Baron's conduct had led
+to fearful consequences, it had been prompted by affection for himself.
+But the hand of God seemed to be over him, and his soul was shaken to
+its foundations. From that time forward he renounced society and all
+worldly pleasures. For eight days he went into retreat and prayed
+fervently. On the ninth day he joined a religious house, the Novitiate
+of the Capuchins at San Lorenzo. The young soldier, so gay, so handsome,
+so fond of social admiration, became a friar."
+
+The old Capuchin looked tenderly at Roma, whose wet eyes and burning
+cheeks seemed to tell of sympathy with his story.
+
+"In those days, my daughter, the nuns of Thecla served the Foundling of
+Santo Spirito."
+
+Roma began to look frightened and to feel faint.
+
+"It was usual for a member of our house to live in the hospital in order
+to baptize the children and to confess the sick and the dying. We took
+it in turns to do so, staying one year, two years, three years, and then
+going back to the monastery. I was myself at Santo Spirito for this
+purpose at the time I speak about, and it was not until three or four
+years afterwards that I became Superior of our House and returned to San
+Lorenzo. There I found the young Noble Guard, and, wisely or unwisely, I
+told him a new phase of his own story."
+
+"There was a child?" said Roma, in a strange voice.
+
+The Capuchin bent his head. "That much he knew already by the letter his
+wife had left for him. She had intended that the child should die when
+she died, and he supposed that it had been so. But pity for the little
+one must have overtaken the poor mother at the last moment. She had put
+the babe in the rota of the hospital, and thus saved the child's life
+before carrying out her purpose upon her own."
+
+The Capuchin crossed his knees, and one of his bare feet in its sandal
+showed from under the edge of his habit.
+
+"We had baptized the boy by a name which the mother had written on a
+paper attached to his wrist, and the identity of that name with the name
+of the Noble Guard led to my revelation. Nature is a mighty thing, and
+on hearing what I told him the young brother became restless and
+unhappy. The instincts of the man began to fight with the feelings of
+the religious, and at last he left the friary in order to fulfil the
+duty which he thought he owed to his child."
+
+"He did not find him?"
+
+"He was too late. According to custom, the boy had been put out to nurse
+on the Campagna, by means of the little dower that was all his
+inheritance from the State. His foster parents passed him over to other
+hands, and thus by the abuse of a good practice the child was already
+lost."
+
+Roma tried to speak, but she could not utter a word.
+
+"What happened then is a long story. The old Baron was now dead and the
+young friar had inherited his princely fortune. Dispensations got over
+canonical difficulties, and in due course he took holy orders. His first
+work was to establish in Rome an asylum for friendless orphans. He went
+out into the streets to look for them, and brought them in with his own
+hands. His fame for charity grew rapidly, and he knew well what he was
+doing. He was looking for the little fatherless one who owned his own
+blood and bore his name."
+
+Roma was now sitting with drooping head, and her tears were falling on
+her hands.
+
+"Five years passed, and at length he came upon a trace of the boy and
+heard that he had been sent to England. The unhappy father obtained
+permission and removed to London. There he set up the same work as
+before and spent in the same way his great wealth. He passed five years
+more in a fruitless search, looking for his lost one day and night,
+winter and summer, in cold and heat, among the little foreign boys who
+play organs and accordions in the streets. Then he gave up hope and
+returned to Rome. His head was white and his heart was humble, but in
+spite of himself he rose from dignity to dignity until at length the old
+Baron's perverted ambitions were fulfilled. For his great and abounding
+charity, and still greater piety, he was promoted to be Bishop; seven
+years afterwards he was created Cardinal; and now he is Pope Pius the
+Tenth, the saint, the saviour of his people, once the storm-tossed,
+sorrowing, stricken man...."
+
+"David Leone?"
+
+The Capuchin bowed. "That was the Holy Father's name. He committed no
+sin and has nothing to reproach himself with, but nevertheless he has
+known what it is to fall and to rise again, to suffer and be strong.
+Tell me, my daughter, is there anything you would be afraid to confide
+to him?"
+
+"Nothing! Nothing whatever!" said Roma, with tears choking her voice and
+streaming down her cheeks.
+
+The door to the throne room opened again and a line of Cardinals came
+out and passed down the secret corridor, talking together as they
+walked, old men in violet, most of them very feeble and looking very
+tired. At the next moment the chaplain came in for Roma.
+
+"The Holy Father will be ready to receive you presently," he said in a
+hushed and reverent whisper, and she rose to follow him.
+
+A moment later Roma was at the door of the grand throne room. A
+chamberlain took charge of her there, and passed her to a secret
+chamberlain at the door of an anteroom adjoining. This secret
+chamberlain handed her on to a Monsignor in a violet cassock, and the
+Monsignor accompanied her to the door of the room in which the Pope was
+sitting.
+
+"As you approach," he said in a low tone, "you will make three
+genuflexions--one at the door, another midway across the floor, the
+third at the Holy Father's feet. You feel well?"
+
+"Yes," she faltered.
+
+The door was opened, the Monsignor stepped one pace into the room, and
+then knelt and said--
+
+"Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness."
+
+Roma was on her knees at the threshold; a soft, full, kindly voice,
+which she could have believed she had heard before, called on her to
+approach; she rose and stepped forward, the Monsignor stepped back, and
+the door behind her was closed.
+
+She was in the Presence.
+
+
+                                III
+
+The Pope, dressed wholly in white, was seated in a simple chair by a
+little table in a homely room, surrounded by bookcases and some busts of
+former pontiffs. There were little domesticities of intimate life about
+him, an empty soup-dish, a cruet-stand, a plate and a spoon. He had a
+face of great sweetness and spirituality, and as Roma approached he bent
+his head and smiled a fatherly smile. She knelt and kissed his ring, and
+continued to kneel by his chair, putting one hand on the arm. He placed
+his own mittened hand over hers and patted it tenderly, while he looked
+into her face.
+
+The little nervous perturbation with which Roma had entered the room
+began to leave her, and in the awful wearer of the threefold crown she
+saw nothing but a simple, loving human being. A feminine sense crept
+over her, a sense of nursing, almost of motherhood, and at that first
+moment she felt as if she wanted to do something for the gentle old man.
+Then he began to speak. His voice had that tone which comes to the voice
+of a man who has the sense of sex strong in him, when a woman is with
+him and his accents soften perceptibly.
+
+"My daughter," he said, "Father Pifferi has spoken about you, and by
+your permission, as I understand it, he has repeated the story you told
+him. You have suffered, and you have my sympathy. And though you are not
+among the number of my children, I sent for you, that, as an old man to
+a young woman, by God's grace I might strengthen you and support you."
+
+She kissed his ring again and continued to kneel by the arm of his
+chair.
+
+"Long ago, my child, I knew one who was in something like the same
+position, and perhaps it is the memory of what befell that poor soul
+which impels me to speak to you.... But she is dead, her story is dead
+too; let time and nature cover them."
+
+His voice had a slight tremor. She looked up. There was a hush, a
+momentary thrill. Then he smiled again and patted her hand once more.
+
+"You must not let the world weaken you, my child, or cause you to doubt
+the validity of your marriage. Whether it is a good marriage, in effect
+as well as intention (one of you being still unbaptized), it is for the
+Church, not the world, to decide."
+
+Again Roma kissed the ring of the Pope, and again he patted the hand
+that lay under his.
+
+"Nevertheless, there is something I wish you to do, my daughter," he
+said, in the same low tones. "I wish you to tell your husband."
+
+"Holy Father," said Roma, "I have already told him. I had done so before
+I spoke to Father Pifferi, but only under the disguise of another
+woman's story."
+
+"And what did your husband say?"
+
+"He said what your Holiness says. He was very charitable and noble; so I
+took heart and told him everything."
+
+"And what did he say then?"
+
+A cloud crossed her face. "Holy Father, he has not yet said anything."
+
+"Not anything?"
+
+"He is away; he has not replied to my letter."
+
+"Has there been time?"
+
+"More than time, your Holiness, but still I hear nothing."
+
+"And what is your conclusion?"
+
+"That my letter has awakened some pity, but now that he knows _I_ am the
+wife I spoke about and _he_ is the husband intended, he cannot forgive
+me as he said the husband would forgive, and his generous soul is in
+distress."
+
+"My daughter, could you wish me to speak to him?"
+
+The cloud fled from her face. "It is more than I deserve, far more, but
+if the Holy Father would do that...."
+
+"Then I must know the names--you must tell me everything."
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"Who is your father, my child?"
+
+"My father died in banishment. He was a Liberal--he was Prince Prospero
+Volonna."
+
+"As I thought. Who was the other man?"
+
+"He was a distant kinsman of my father's, and I have lately discovered
+that he was the principal instrument in my father's deportation. He was
+my guardian, a Minister and a great man in Italy. It is the Baron
+Bonelli, your Holiness."
+
+"Just so, just so!" said the Pope, tapping his foot in obvious heat.
+"But go on, my child. Who is your husband?"
+
+"My husband is a different kind of man altogether."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"He has done everything for me, Holy Father--everything. Heaven knows
+what I should have been now without him."
+
+"God bless him! God bless both of you!"
+
+"I came to know him by the strangest accident. He is a Liberal too, and
+a Deputy, and thinking of the corruptions of the Government, he pointed
+to me as the mistress of the Minister. It was not true, but I was
+degraded, and ... and I set out to destroy him."
+
+"A terrible vengeance, my child. Only the Minister could have thought of
+it."
+
+"Then I found that my enemy was one of my father's friends, and a true
+and noble man. Holy Father, I had begun in hate, but I could not hate
+him. The darkness faded away from my soul, and something bright and
+beautiful came in its place. I loved him, and he loved me. With all our
+hearts we loved each other."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then _he_ came back to me. I knew all the secrets I had set out to
+learn, but I could not give them up, and when I refused he threatened
+me."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"I married my husband and withstood every temptation. It wasn't so very
+hard, for I cared nothing for wealth and luxury now. I only wanted to be
+good. God Himself should see how good I could be."
+
+The Pope's eyes were moist. He was patting the young woman's trembling
+hand.
+
+"My blessing rest on you, my daughter, and may the man you have married
+be worthy of your love and trust."
+
+"Indeed, indeed he is," said Roma.
+
+"He was your father's friend, you tell me?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness, and although we met again so recently, I had known
+him in England when I was a child."
+
+"A Liberal, you say?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness."
+
+"The enmity of the Minister was the fruit of political warfare?"
+
+"Nothing but that at first, though now...."
+
+"I see, I see. And the secrets you speak of are only...."
+
+"Only the doings of twenty years ago, which are dead and done with."
+
+"Then your husband is older than you are?"
+
+The young woman broke into a sunny smile, which set the Pope smiling.
+
+"Only ten years older, your Holiness. He is thirty-four."
+
+"Where does he come from, and what was his father?"
+
+"He was born in Rome, but he does not know who his father was."
+
+"What is he like to look upon?"
+
+"He is like ... I have never seen any one so like ... will your Holiness
+forgive me?"
+
+The colour had mounted to her eyes, her two rows of pearly teeth seemed
+to be smiling, and the sunny old face of the Pope was smiling too.
+
+"Say what you please, my daughter."
+
+"I have never seen any one so like the Holy Father," she said softly.
+
+Her head was held down and there was a little nervous tremor at her
+heart. The Pope patted her hand affectionately.
+
+"Have I asked you his name, my child?"
+
+"His name is David Rossi."
+
+The Pope rose suddenly from his seat, and for the first time his face
+looked dark and troubled.
+
+"David Rossi?" he repeated in a husky voice.
+
+Roma began to tremble. "Yes," she faltered.
+
+"David Rossi, the Revolutionary?"
+
+"Indeed no, your Holiness, he is not that."
+
+"But, my child, my child, he is the founder of a revolutionary society
+which this very day the Holy Father has condemned."
+
+He walked across the room and she rose to her feet and looked after him.
+
+"One of the men who are conspiring against the peace of the
+Church--banded together to fight the Church and its head."
+
+"Don't say that, your Holiness. He is religious, deeply religious, and
+far more an enemy of the Government and the King."
+
+She began to talk wildly, almost aimlessly, trying to defend Rossi at
+all costs.
+
+"Holy Father," she said, "shall I tell you a secret? There is nobody
+else in the world to whom I could tell it, but I can tell it to you. My
+husband is now in England organising a great scheme among the exiles and
+refugees of Italy. What it is I don't know, but he has told me that it
+will lead to the conquest of the country and the downfall of the throne.
+Whether it is to be a conspiracy in the ordinary sense, or a
+constitutional plan of campaign, he has not said, but everything tells
+me that it is directed against the politics of Rome, and not against
+its religion, and is intended to overthrow the King, and not the Pope."
+
+The Pope, who had been standing with his back to Roma, turned round to
+her with a look of fright. His eyebrows had met over the vertical lines
+on his forehead, and this further reminder of another face threw Roma
+into still greater confusion.
+
+"'When I come back, it will be with such a force behind me as will make
+the prisons open their doors and the thrones of tyrants tremble.' That's
+what he said, your Holiness. The movement will come soon, too, I am sure
+it will, and then your Holiness will see that, instead of being
+irreligious men, the leaders of the people...."
+
+The Pope held up his hand. "Stop!" he cried. "Say no more, my child. God
+knows what I must do with what you have said already."
+
+Then Roma saw what she had done in the wild gust of her emotion, and in
+her terror she tried to take it back.
+
+"Holy Father, you must not think from what I say that David Rossi is for
+revolution and regicide...."
+
+"Don't speak, my child. You cannot know what an earthquake you have
+opened at my feet. Let me think!"
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then Roma gulped down the great
+lumps in her throat and said: "I am only an ignorant woman, Holy Father,
+and perhaps I have said too much, and do not understand. But what I have
+told your Holiness was told me in love and confidence. And the Holy
+Father is wise and good, and whatever he does will be for the best."
+
+The Pope returned to his chair with a bewildered look, and did not seem
+to hear. Roma sank to her knees by his side and said in a low, pleading
+tone:
+
+"My husband's faith in me is so beautiful, your Holiness. Oh, so
+beautiful. I am the only one in the world to whom he has told all his
+secrets, and if any of them should ever come back to him...."
+
+"Don't be afraid, my daughter. What you said in simple confidence shall
+be as sacred as if it had been spoken under the seal of the
+confessional."
+
+"If I could tell your Holiness more about him--who he is and where he
+comes from--a place so lowly and humble, your Holiness...."
+
+"Tell me no more, my child. It is better I should not know. Pity ought
+to have no place in what duty tells me to do. But I can love David Rossi
+for all that. I do love him. I love him as a lost and wayward son, whose
+hand is raised against his Father, though he knows it not."
+
+There was a bell button on the Pope's chair. He pressed it, and the
+Participante returned to the room without knocking. The Pope rose and
+took Roma's hand.
+
+"Go in peace and with my blessing, my child. I bless you! May my
+fatherly blessing keep you pure in heart, may it strengthen you in all
+temptations, comfort you in all trials, avert from you every evil omen,
+and bring you into the fold of Christ's children at the last."
+
+The Participante stepped forward and signed to Roma to withdraw. She
+rose and left the presence chamber, stepping backward and too much moved
+to speak. Not until the door had been closed did she realise that she
+was crossing the throne room, and that the Bussolante was walking beside
+her.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+When the Pope walked in his garden that afternoon as usual, the old
+Capuchin was with him. From the door of the Vatican they drove in the
+Pope's landau with two of the Noble Guard riding beside the carriage,
+and one of the chamberlains walking behind it, through lanes enshrouded
+in laurel and ilex, until they reached the summer-house on the top of
+the hill. There the old men stepped down, the Pope in his white cassock,
+white overcoat and red hat, the Capuchin in his brown habit, skull-cap
+and sandals. The Pope's cat, a creature of reddish coat, which followed
+him into the garden as a dog follows his master, leapt out of the
+carriage after them.
+
+The Pope was more than usually grave and silent. Once or twice the
+Capuchin said, "And how did you find my young penitent this morning?"
+
+"_Bene, bene!_" the Pope replied.
+
+But at length the Pope, scraping the gravel at his feet with the ferrule
+of his walking-stick, began to speak on his own initiative.
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Your Holiness?"
+
+"The inscrutable decree of God which made me your Pontiff has not
+altered our relations to each other as men?"
+
+The Capuchin took snuff and answered, "Your Holiness is always so good
+as to say so."
+
+"You are my master now just as you were thirty years ago, and there is
+something I wish to ask of you."
+
+"What is it, your Holiness?"
+
+"You have been a confessor many years, Father?"
+
+"Forty years, your Holiness."
+
+"In that time you have had many difficult cases?"
+
+"Very many."
+
+"Father, has it ever happened that a penitent, has revealed to you a
+conspiracy to commit a crime?"
+
+"More than once it has happened."
+
+"And what have you done?"
+
+"Persuaded him to reveal it to the civil authorities, or else tell it to
+me outside the confessional."
+
+"Has the penitent ever refused to do so?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But if ... if the case were such as made it difficult for the penitent
+to reveal the conspiracy to the civil authorities, having regard to the
+penalties the revelation would bring with it ... if by reason of ties of
+blood and affection such revelation were humanly impossible, and it
+would even be cruel to ask for it, what would you do then?"
+
+"Nothing, your Holiness."
+
+"Not even if the crime to be committed were a serious one, and it
+touched you very nearly?"
+
+The Capuchin shook out his coloured print handkerchief and said, "That
+could make no difference, your Holiness."
+
+"But suppose you heard in confession that your brother is to be
+assassinated, what is your duty?"
+
+"My duty to the penitent who reveals his soul to me is to preserve his
+secret."
+
+"And what is your duty to God?"
+
+The handkerchief dropped from the Capuchin's hand.
+
+The Pope paused, scraped the gravel with the ferrule of his stick, and
+said:
+
+"Father, I am in the position of the confessor who has guilty knowledge
+of a conspiracy against the life of his enemy."
+
+The Capuchin pushed his handkerchief into his sleeve and dropped back
+into his seat. After a moment the Pope told the story of what Roma had
+said of Rossi's plans abroad.
+
+"A conspiracy," he said, "plainly a conspiracy."
+
+"And what do you understand the conspiracy to be?"
+
+"Who can say? Perhaps a recurrence to the custom of the Middle Ages,
+when citizens who had been banished by their opponents used to apply
+themselves in exile to attempt the reconquest of their country by
+stirring up the factions at home."
+
+"You think that is Rossi's object?"
+
+"I do."
+
+The Capuchin shifted uneasily the skull-cap on his crown and said:
+
+"Holy Father, I trust your Holiness will leave the matter alone."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"In reading history I do not find that such enterprises have usually
+been successful. I see, rather, how commonly they have failed. And if it
+was so in the Middle Ages when the arts of war were primitive, how much
+less likely are the conspiracies of secret societies, the partial and
+superficial risings of refugees, to be serious now in the days of
+standing armies."
+
+"True. But is that a good reason for doing nothing in this instance?"
+
+"But, Holy Father, think. You cannot disclose the secrets this poor lady
+has revealed to you. Her confession was only a confidence, but your
+Holiness knows well that there is such a thing as a natural secret which
+it would be a great fault to reveal. Facts which of their own nature are
+confidential belong to this order. They are assimilated to the
+confessional, and as such they should be respected."
+
+"Indeed they should."
+
+"Then it is not possible for your Holiness to reveal what you heard this
+morning without bringing trouble to the penitent and wronging her in
+relation to her husband."
+
+"God forbid that I should do so, whatever happens. But is a priest
+forbidden to speak of a sin heard in confession if he can do so in such
+a way that the identity of the penitent cannot be discovered?"
+
+"Your Holiness intends to do that?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"The Holy Father knows best. For my own part, your Holiness, I think it
+a danger to tamper with the secrets of a soul, whatever the good end in
+view or the evil to be prevented."
+
+The Capuchin looked round to where the horses were pawing the path and
+the Guards stood by the carriage.
+
+"Thirty-five years ago we had a terrible lesson in such dangers, your
+Holiness."
+
+The Pope dropped his head and continued to scrape the gravel.
+
+"Your Holiness remembers the poor young woman who told her confessor she
+was about to marry a rich young man. The confessor thought it his duty
+to tell the young man's father in general terms that such a marriage was
+to be contracted. What was the result? The marriage took place in secret
+and ended in grief and death."
+
+The Pope rose uneasily. "We will not speak of that. It was a case of a
+father's pride and perverted ambition. This is a different case
+altogether. A man who is a prey to diabolical illusions, an enemy of the
+Church and of social order, is hatching a plot which can only end in
+mischief and bloodshed. The Holy Father knows it. Shall he keep this
+guilty knowledge locked in his own bosom? God forbid!"
+
+"Then you intend to warn the civil authorities?"
+
+"I must. It is my duty. How could I lay my head on my pillow and not do
+it? But I will do it discreetly. I will commit no one, and this poor
+lady shall remain unknown."
+
+The venerable old men, each leaning on his stick, walked down a path
+lined by clipped yews, shaded by cypresses, and almost overgrown with
+crocus, anemone, and violet. Suddenly from the bushes there came a
+flutter of wings, followed by the scream of a bird, and in a moment the
+Pope's cat had leapt on to a marble which stood in the midst of the
+jungle. It was an ancient sarcophagus, placed there as a fountain, but
+the spring that had fed it was dry, and in its moss-grown mouth a bird
+had made its nest. The cat was about to pounce down on the eggs when the
+Pope laid hold of it.
+
+"Ah, Meesh, Meesh," he said, "what an anarchist you are, to be sure!...
+Monsignor!"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness," said the chamberlain, coming up behind.
+
+"Take this _gatto rosso_ back to the carriage, and keep him in
+_domicilio coatto_ until we come."
+
+The Monsignor laughed and carried off the cat, and the Pope put his
+mittened hand gently on the little speckled eggs.
+
+"Poor things! they're warm. Listen! That's the mother bird screaming in
+the tree. Hark! She's watching us, and waiting for us to go. How snugly
+she thought she kept her secret."
+
+The Capuchin drew a long breath. "Yes, nature has the same cry for fear
+in all her offspring."
+
+"True," said the Pope.
+
+"It makes me think of that poor girl this morning."
+
+The Pope walked back to the carriage without saying a word. As he
+returned to the Vatican, the Angelus was ringing from all the church
+bells of Rome, the city was bathed in crimson light, the sun was sinking
+behind Monte Mario, and the stone pines on the crest of the hill,
+standing out against the reddening sky, were like the roofless columns
+of a ruined temple.
+
+
+                                V
+
+Next day Francesca came up with a letter. The porter from Trinità de'
+Monti had brought it and he was waiting below for a present. In a kind
+of momentary delirium Roma snatched at the envelope and emptied her
+purse into the old woman's hand.
+
+"Santo Dio!" cried Francesca, "all this for a letter?"
+
+"Never mind, godmother," said Roma. "Give the money to the good man and
+let him go."
+
+"It's from Mr. Rossi, isn't it? Yes? I thought it was. You've only to
+say three Ave Marias when you wake in the morning and you get anything
+you want. I knew the Signora was dying for a letter, so...."
+
+"Yes, yes, but the poor man is waiting, and I must get on with my work,
+and...."
+
+"Work? Ah, Signora, in paradise you won't have to waste your time
+working. A lady like you will have violins and celestial bread and...."
+
+"The man will be gone, godmother," said Roma, hustling the deaf old
+woman out of the room.
+
+But even when Roma was alone she could not at first find courage to open
+the envelope. There was a certain physical thrill in handling it, in
+turning it over, and in looking at the stamps and the postmark. The
+stamps were French and the postmark was of Paris. That fact brought a
+vague gleam of joy. Rossi had been travelling, and perhaps he had not
+yet received her letter.
+
+With a trembling kiss and a little choking prayer she broke the seal at
+last, and as the letter came rustling out of the envelope she glanced at
+the closing lines:
+
+"Your Faithful Husband."
+
+She caught her breath and waited a moment, tingling all over. Then she
+unfolded the paper and read:--
+
+    "DEAREST,--A telegram from Rome, published in the Paris newspapers
+    this morning, reports the trial and death of Bruno. To say that I
+    am shocked is to say little. I am shaken to my foundations. My
+    heart is bursting and my hand can with difficulty hold the pen.
+
+    "The news first reached me last evening, when I was in a
+    restaurant with a group of journalists. We were at dinner, but I
+    was compelled to rise and return to my lodgings. I must have been
+    almost in delirium the whole night long. More than once I started
+    from my sleep with the certainty that I heard Bruno's voice
+    calling to me. Once I went to the window and looked out into the
+    silent street. And yet I knew all the time that my poor friend lay
+    dead in prison.
+
+    "Poor Bruno! I do not hold with suicide under any circumstances. A
+    man's life does not belong to himself. Each of us is a soldier,
+    and no sentinel ought to kill himself at his post. Who knows what
+    the next turn of the battle will be? It is our duty to the General
+    to see the fight out. But when the sentinel dies rather than pass
+    a false watchword, suicide is sacrifice, death is victory, and God
+    takes His martyr under the wings of His mercy.
+
+    "The poor fellow died believing I had been false to him! I knew
+    him for eight years, and during that time he was more faithful to
+    me than my shadow. He was the bravest, staunchest friend man ever
+    had. And now he has left me, thinking I have wronged him at the
+    last. Oh, my brother, do you not know the truth at last? In the
+    world to which you are gone, does no heavenly voice tell you? Does
+    not death reveal everything? Can you not look down and see all,
+    tearing away the veil that clouded your vision here below? Is it
+    only vouchsafed to him who remains on earth to know that he was
+    true to the love you bore him? God forbid it! It cannot, cannot
+    be.
+
+    "Dearest, I came to Paris unexpectedly ten days ago...."
+
+Roma lifted her swimming eyes. "Then he hasn't received it," she
+thought.
+
+    "Called in haste, not only to organise our Italian people for the
+    new crusade, but to compose by a general principle the many groups
+    of Frenchmen who, under different names, have the same
+    aspirations--Marxists, Possibilists, Boulangists, Guesdists, and
+    Central Revolutionists, with their varying propaganda, co-operative,
+    trade-unionist, anti-semite, national, and I know not what--I had
+    almost despaired of any union of interests so pitifully subdivided
+    when the news of Bruno's death came like a trumpet-blast, and the
+    walls of the social Jericho fell before it. Everybody feels that
+    the moment of action has arrived, and  what I thought would be an
+    Italian movement is likely to become an international one. A great
+    outrage on the spirit of Justice breaks down all barriers of race
+    and nationality.
+
+    "God guide us now. What did our Master say? 'The dagger of the
+    conspirator is never so terrible as when sharpened on the
+    tombstone of a martyr.' With all the heat of my own blood I
+    tremble when I think what may be the effect of these tyrannies. Of
+    course the ruling classes at home will wash their hands of this
+    affair. When a Minister wants to play Macbeth he has no lack of
+    grooms to dabble with Duncan's blood. But the people will make no
+    nice distinctions. I wouldn't give two straws for the life of the
+    King when this crime has touched the conscience of the people. He
+    didn't do it? No, he does nothing, but he stands for all.
+    Anarchists did not invent regicide. It has been used in all ages
+    by people who think the spirit of Justice violated. And the names
+    of some who practised it are written on marble monuments in
+    letters of gold."
+
+Roma began to tremble. Had the Pope been right after all? Was it really
+revolution and regicide which Rossi contemplated?
+
+    "Dearest, don't think that because I am so moved by all this that
+    other and dearer things are not with me always. Never a day or an
+    hour passes but my heart speaks to you as if you could answer. I
+    have been anxious at not hearing from you for ten days, although I
+    left my Paris address in London for your letters to be sent on.
+    Sometimes I think my enemies may be tormenting you, and then I
+    blame myself for not bringing you with me, in spite of every
+    disadvantage. Sometimes I think you may be ill, and then I have an
+    impulse to take the first train and fly back to Rome. I know I
+    cannot be with you always, but this absence is cruel. Happily it
+    will soon be over, and we shall see an end of all sadness. Don't
+    suffer for me. Don't let my cares distress you. Whatever happens,
+    nothing can divide us, because love has united our hearts for
+    ever.
+
+    "That's why I'm sure of you, Roma, sure of your love and sure of
+    your loyalty. Otherwise how could I stay an hour longer after this
+    awful event, tortured by the fear of a double martyrdom--the
+    martyrdom of myself and of the one who is dearest to me in the
+    world?
+
+    "The spring is coming to take me home to you, darling. Don't you
+    smell the violets? Adieu!
+                                            "YOUR FAITHFUL HUSBAND."
+
+Roma slept little that night. Joy, relief, disappointment, but, above
+all, fear for Rossi, apprehension about his plans, and overpowering
+dread of the consequences kept her awake for hours. Early next day a man
+in a blue uniform brought a letter from the Braschi Palace. It ran:--
+
+     "DEAR ROMA,--I must ask you to come across to my office this
+     morning, and as soon as convenient. You will not hesitate to do
+     so when I tell you that by this friendly message I am saving you
+     the humiliation of a summons from the police. Yours, as always,
+     affectionately,
+                                                           BONELLI."
+
+
+                                VI
+
+The Minister of the Interior sat in his cabinet before a table covered
+with blue-books and the square sheets of his "projects of law," and the
+Commendatore Angelelli, with his usual extravagant politeness, was
+standing and bowing by his side.
+
+"And what is this about proclamations issued by Rossi?" said the Baron,
+fixing his eye-glasses and looking up.
+
+"We have traced the printer who published them," said Angelelli. "After
+he was arrested he gave the name of the person who paid him and provided
+the copy."
+
+The Baron bowed without speaking.
+
+"It was a certain lady, Excellency," said Angelelli in his thin voice,
+"so we thought it well to wait for your instructions."
+
+"You did right, Commendatore. Leave that part of the matter to me. And
+Rossi himself--he is still in England?"
+
+"In France, your Excellency, but we have letters from both London and
+Paris detailing all his movements."
+
+"Good."
+
+"The Chief Commissioner writes that during his stay in London Rossi
+lodged in Soho, and received visits from nearly all the representatives
+of revolutionary parties. Apparently he united many conflicting forces,
+and not only the Democratic Federations and the Socialist and Labour
+Leagues, but also the Radical organisations and various religious guilds
+and unions gathered about him."
+
+The Baron made a gesture of impatience. "It's a case of birds of a
+feather. London has always been the central home of anarchy under
+various big surnames. What does the Commissioner understand to be
+Rossi's plan?"
+
+"Rossi's plan, the Commissioner thinks, is to send back the Italian
+exiles, and to disperse them, with money and literature gathered abroad,
+among the excited millions at home."
+
+"Wonderful!" said the Baron.
+
+Angelelli laughed his thin laugh, like a hen cackling over its nest.
+Then he said:
+
+"But the Prefect of Paris has formed a more serious opinion, your
+Excellency."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That Rossi is conspiring to assassinate the King."
+
+The Baron blinked the glasses from his nose and sat upright.
+
+"Apparently he was having less success in Paris, where the moral plea
+has been overdone, when reports of the Rocco incident...."
+
+"A most unlucky affair, Commendatore."
+
+"Meeting at cafés in order to avoid the control of the police ... In
+short, although he has no exact information, the Prefect warns us to
+keep double guard over the person of his Majesty."
+
+The Baron rose and perambulated the hearthrug. "A pretty century, truly,
+for fools who pass for wise men, and for weaklings who threaten when the
+distance is great enough!... Commendatore, have you mentioned this
+matter to anybody else?"
+
+"To nobody whatever, Excellency."
+
+"Then think no more about it. It's nothing. The public mind must not be
+alarmed. Tighten the cord about our man in Paris. Adieu!"
+
+The Baron's next visitor was the Prefect of the Province, who looked
+more solemn and soldierly than ever.
+
+"Senator," said the Baron, "I sent for you to say that the Council has
+determined to put an end to the state of siege."
+
+The Prefect bowed again severely.
+
+"The insurrection has been suppressed, the city is quiet, and the
+severities of military rule begin to oppress the people."
+
+The Prefect bowed again and assented.
+
+"The Council has also resolved, dear Senator, that the country shall
+celebrate the anniversary of the King's accession with general
+rejoicings."
+
+"Excellent idea, sir," said the Prefect. "To wipe out the depression of
+the late unhappy times by a public festival is excellent policy. But the
+time is short."
+
+"Very short. The anniversary falls on Easter Monday. That is to say, a
+week from to-day. You will therefore take the matter in hand immediately
+and push it on without further delay. The details we will discuss later,
+and arrange all programmes of presentations and processions. Meantime I
+have written a proclamation announcing the event. Here it is. You can
+take it with you."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"The King will also sign a decree of amnesty to all the authors and
+accomplices of the late acts and attempts at rebellion who were not the
+organising and directing minds. That is also written. Here it is. But
+his Majesty has not yet signed it."
+
+The Prefect took a second paper from the Baron's hand, glanced his eyes
+over it, and read certain passages. "'Seeing that on a day of public
+rejoicing we could not restrain an emotion of grief ... turning a
+pitying eye upon the inexperienced youths drawn into a vortex of
+political disorder ... we therefore decree and command the following
+acts of sovereign clemency....' May I expect to receive this in the
+course of the day, your Excellency?"
+
+"Yes. And now for your own part of the enterprise, dear Senator. You
+will order all mayors of towns to assemble in Rome to complete the
+preparations. You will arrange a procession to the Quirinal, when the
+people will call the King on to the balcony and sing the National Hymn.
+You will order banners to be made bearing suitable watchwords, such as
+'Long live the King,' 'May he govern as well as reign,' 'Long live the
+Crown,' the 'Flag,' and (perhaps) the 'Army.' You will oppose these
+generating ideas to 'Atheism' and 'Anarchy.' The essential point is
+that the people must be caused by festivals, songs, bands of music, and
+processions to think of the throne as their bulwark and the King as
+their saviour, and to take advantage of every opportunity to attest
+their gratitude to both. You follow me?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Then lose no time, Senator.... One moment."
+
+The Prefect had risen and reached the door.
+
+"If you can double the King's guard and change the company every day
+until the festival is over...."
+
+"Easily, your Excellency. But wait; the Vatican Chief of Police has
+asked for help on Holy Thursday."
+
+"Give it him. Let the timid old man of the Sacred College have no excuse
+for saying we take more care of the King than of the Pope."
+
+The Minister of Justice was the next of the Baron's visitors. He was a
+short man with a smiling and rubicund face, and he wore yellow kid
+gloves.
+
+"All goes well and wisdom is justified of her children," said the Baron,
+rising again and promenading the hearthrug. "The national sentiment,
+dear colleague, is a sword, and either we must use it on behalf of the
+Government and the King, or stand by and see it used by the hostile
+factions."
+
+"Men like Rossi are not slow to use it, sir," said the little Minister.
+
+"Tut! It's not Rossi I'm thinking of now. It's the Church, the clergy,
+rich in money and in the faith of the populace. That's why I wanted to
+do something as set-off against those mourning demonstrations which the
+Pope has appointed."
+
+"Yes, the old gentleman of the Vatican knows the instincts and cravings
+of our people, doesn't he, sir? He knows they like a show, and the
+seasoning of their pleasures with a little religion."
+
+"It's the rustiest old weapon in the Pope's arsenal, dear colleague, but
+it may serve unless we do something. If the people can be persuaded that
+the Pope is their one friend in adversity, there couldn't be a better
+feather in the Papal cap. Happily our people love to sing and to dance
+as well as to weep and to pray. So we needn't throw up the sponge yet."
+
+Both laughed, and the little Minister said, "Besides, it is so easy to
+change religious processions into political ones. And then the Vatican
+is always intriguing with the powers of rebellion and preaching
+obedience to the Pope alone."
+
+The creaking of the Baron's patent-leather boots stopped, and he drew up
+before his colleague.
+
+"Watch that sharply," he said, "and if you see any sign on the part of
+the Vatican of intriguing with men like Rossi, any complicity with
+conspiracy, or any knowledge of plots pointing to revolution and
+regicide, let the Council hear of it immediately."
+
+The Baron's face had suddenly whitened with passion, and his little
+colleague looked at him in alarm. A secretary entered the room and
+handed the Baron a card. The Baron fixed his eye-glasses and read:
+"MONSIGNOR MARIO, Cameriere Segreto Partecipante di Sua Santità Pio X.
+Vaticano."
+
+"St. Anthony! Talk of the angels...." muttered the little Minister.
+
+"Will you perhaps...."
+
+"Certainly," said the Minister, and he left the room.
+
+"Show the Monsignor in," said the Baron.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+The Monsignor was young, tall, slight, almost fragile, and had thin
+black hair and large spiritual eyes. As he entered in the long black
+overcoat, which covered his cassock, he bowed and looked slowly round
+the room. His subdued expression was that of a sheep going through a
+gate where the dogs may be, and his manner suggested that he would fly
+at the first alarm.
+
+The Baron looked over his eye-glasses and measured his man in a moment.
+"Pray sit," he said, and at the next moment the young Monsignor and the
+Baron were seated at opposite sides of the table.
+
+"I am sent to you by a venerable and illustrious personage...."
+
+"Let us say the Pope," said the Baron.
+
+The young Monsignor bowed and continued, "to offer on his behalf a word
+of counsel and of warning."
+
+"It is an unusual and distinguished honour," said the Baron.
+
+"I am instructed to inform you that the Holy Father has reason to
+believe a further and more serious insurrection is preparing, and to
+warn you to take the necessary steps to secure public order and to
+prevent bloodshed."
+
+The Baron did not move a muscle. "If the Holy Father has special
+knowledge of a plot that is impending...."
+
+"Not special, only general, but sufficient to enable him to tell you to
+hold yourself in readiness."
+
+"How long has the Holy Father been aware of this?"
+
+"Not long. In fact, only since yesterday morning," said the Monsignor,
+and fearing he had said too much he added, "I only mention this to show
+you that the Holy Father has lost no time."
+
+"But if the Holy Father knows that a conspiracy is afoot, he can no
+doubt help us to further information."
+
+The Monsignor shook his head.
+
+"You mean that he will not do so?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Am I, then, to understand that the information with which his Holiness
+honours me came to him secretly?"
+
+"Yes, sir, secretly, and it is, therefore, not open to further
+explanation."
+
+"So it reached him by the medium of the confessional?"
+
+The Monsignor rose from his seat. "Your Excellency cannot be in
+earnest."
+
+"You mean that it did not reach him by the medium of the confessional?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Then he is able to tell me everything, if he will?"
+
+The Monsignor became agitated. "The Holy Father's information came
+through a channel that is assimilated to the confessional, and is almost
+as sacred and inviolate."
+
+"But obedience to the Pope obliterates from all other responsibility.
+His Holiness has only to say 'Speak,' and his faithful child must obey."
+
+The Monsignor became confused. "His informant is not even a Catholic,
+and he has, therefore, no right to command her."
+
+"So it is a woman," said the Baron, and the young ecclesiastic dropped
+his head.
+
+"It is a woman and a non-Catholic, and she visited the Holy Father at
+the Vatican yesterday morning; is that so?"
+
+"I do not assert it, sir, and I do not deny it."
+
+The Baron did not speak for a moment, but he looked steadily over his
+eye-glasses at the flushed young face before him. Then he said in a
+quiet tone:
+
+"Monsignor, the relations of the Pope and the Government are delicate,
+and if anything occurred to carry the disagreement further it might
+result in a serious fratricidal struggle."
+
+The Monsignor was trying to regain his self-possession, and he remained
+silent.
+
+"But whatever those relations, it cannot be the wish of the Holy Father
+to cover with his mantle the upsetters of order who are cutting at the
+roots of the Church as well as the State."
+
+"Therefore I am here now, sir, thus early and thus openly," said the
+Monsignor.
+
+"Monsignor," said the Baron, "if anything should occur to--for
+example--the person of the King, it cannot be the wish of his Holiness
+that anybody--myself, for instance--should be in a position to say to
+Parliament and to the Governments of Europe, 'The Pope knew everything
+beforehand, and therefore, not having revealed the particulars of the
+plot, the venerable Father of the Vatican is an accomplice of
+murderers.'"
+
+The young ecclesiastic lost himself utterly. "The Pope," he said, "knows
+nothing more than I have told you."
+
+"Yes, Monsignor, the Pope knows one thing more. He knows who was his
+informant and authority. It is necessary that the Government should know
+that also, in order that it may judge for itself of the nature of the
+conspiracy and the source from which it may be expected."
+
+The Monsignor was quivering like a limed bird. "I have delivered my
+message, and have only to add that in sending me here his Holiness
+desired to prevent crime, not to help you to apprehend criminals."
+
+The Baron's eye-glasses dropped from his nose, and he spoke sharply and
+incisively. "The Government must at least know who the lady was who
+visited his Holiness at the Vatican yesterday morning, and led him to
+believe that a serious insurrection was impending."
+
+"That your Excellency never will, or can, or shall know."
+
+The Monsignor was bowing himself out of the room when the Baron's
+secretary opened the door and announced another visitor.
+
+"Donna Roma, your Excellency."
+
+The Monsignor betrayed fresh agitation, and tried to go.
+
+"Bring her in," said the Baron. "One moment, Monsignor."
+
+"I have said all I am authorised to say, sir, and I feel warned that I
+must say no more."
+
+"Don't say that, Monsignor.... Ah, Donna Roma!"
+
+Roma, who had entered the room, replied with reserve and dignity.
+
+"Allow me, Donna Roma, to present Monsignor Mario of the Vatican," said
+the Baron.
+
+"It is unnecessary," said Roma. "I met the Monsignor yesterday morning."
+
+The young ecclesiastic was overwhelmed with confusion.
+
+"My respectful reverence to his Holiness," said the Baron, smiling, "and
+pray tell him that the Government will do its duty to the country and to
+the civilised world, and count on the support of the Pope."
+
+Monsignor Mario left the room without a word.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+The Baron pushed out an easy-chair for Roma and twisted his own to face
+it.
+
+"How are you, my child?"
+
+"One lives," said Roma, with a sigh.
+
+"What is the matter, my dear? You are ill and unhappy."
+
+She eluded the question and said, "You sent for me--what do you wish to
+say?"
+
+He told her the printer of certain seditious proclamations had been
+arrested, and in the judicial inquiry preparatory to his trial he had
+mentioned the name of the person who had employed and paid him.
+
+"You cannot but be aware, my dear, that you have rendered yourself
+liable to prosecution, and that nothing--nothing whatever--could have
+saved you from public exposure but the good offices of a powerful
+friend."
+
+Roma drew her lips tightly together and made no answer.
+
+"But what a situation for a Minister! To find himself ruled by his
+feelings for a friend, and thus weakened in the eyes of his servants,
+who ought to have no possible hold on him."
+
+Roma's gloomy face began to be compressed with scorn.
+
+"You have perhaps not realised the full measure of the indignity that
+might have befallen you. For instance--a cruel necessity--the police
+would have been making a domiciliary visitation in your apartment at
+this moment."
+
+Roma made a faint, involuntary cry, and half rose from her seat.
+
+"Your letters and most secret papers would by this time be exposed to
+the eyes of the police.... No, no, my child; calm yourself, be seated;
+thanks to my intervention, this will not occur."
+
+Roma looked at him, and found him more repulsive to her at that moment
+than he had ever been before. Even his daintiness repelled her--the
+modified perfume about his clothes, his waxed moustache, his rounded
+finger-nails, and all the other refinements of the man who loves himself
+and sets out to please the senses of women.
+
+"You will allow, my dear, that I have had sufficient to humiliate me
+without this further experience. A ward who persistently disregards the
+laws of propriety and exposes herself to criticism in the most ordinary
+acts of life was surely a sufficient trial. But that was not enough.
+Almost as soon as you have passed out of my legal control you join with
+those who are talking and conspiring against me."
+
+Roma continued to sit with a gloomy and defiant face.
+
+"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations you put upon me in
+your own mind? You give me no chance to defend myself. I cannot know
+what others have told you. I know no more than you repeat to me, and
+that is nothing at all."
+
+Roma was biting her compressed lips and breathing audibly.
+
+"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations I suffer in the
+minds of the public? There is only one way, and that is to allow it to
+be believed that, in spite of all appearances, you are still playing a
+part, that you are going to all lengths to punish the enemy who traduced
+you and publicly degraded you."
+
+Roma tried to laugh, but the laugh was broken in her throat by a rising
+sob.
+
+"I have only to whisper that, dear friend, and society, at all events,
+will credit it. Already it knows the very minute details of your life,
+and it will believe that when you threw away every shred of propriety
+and went to live in that man's apartment, it was only in order to play
+the old part--shall I say the Scriptural part?--of possessing yourself
+of _the inmost secrets of his soul_."
+
+The clear, sharp whisper in which the Baron spoke his last words cut
+Roma like a knife. She threw up her head with scorn.
+
+"Let it believe what it likes," she said. "If society cares to think
+that I have allowed my life to be turned upside down for the sake of
+hatred, let it do so."
+
+The Baron's secretary interrupted by opening the door.
+
+"Nazzareno, Excellency," said the secretary.
+
+"Ah! Let him come in," said the Baron. "You remember Nazzareno, Roma? My
+steward at Albano?"
+
+An elderly man with a bronzed face and shaggy eyebrows, bringing an
+odour of the fields and the farmyard, was ushered into the room.
+
+"Come in, Nazzareno! You've not forgotten Donna Roma? You planted a
+rosebush on her first Roman birthday, you remember. It's a great tree by
+this time, perhaps."
+
+"It is, Excellency," said the steward, bowing and smiling, "and nearly
+as full of bloom as the Signorina herself."
+
+"Well, what news from Albano?"
+
+The steward told a long story of operations on the estates--planting
+birch in the top fields, and eucalyptus in the low meadow, fencing,
+draining, and sowing.
+
+"And ... and the Baroness?" said the Baron, turning over some papers.
+
+"Ah! her Excellency is worse," said the old man. "The nurse and the
+doctor thought you had better be told exactly, and that is the object of
+my errand."
+
+"Yes?" The papers rustled in the Baron's fingers as he shuffled and
+sorted them.
+
+The steward told another long story. Her Excellency was weaker, or she
+would be quite ungovernable. And so changed! When he was called in
+yesterday she was so much altered that he would not have known her. It
+was a question of days, and all the servants were saying prayers to Mary
+Magdalene.
+
+"Have some dinner downstairs before you return, Nazzareno," said the
+Baron. "And when you see the doctor this evening, say I'll come out
+some time this week if I can. Good-morning!"
+
+The repulsion the Baron had inspired in Roma deepened to loathing when
+he began to speak affectionately the moment the door had closed on the
+steward.
+
+"Look at this, dearest. It's from his Majesty."
+
+She did not look at the letter he put before her, so he told her what it
+contained. It offered him the Collar of the Annunziata, the highest
+order in Italy, making him a cousin to the King.
+
+She could not contain herself any longer. "I want to tell you
+something," she said, "so that you may know once for all that it is
+useless to waste further thought on me."
+
+He looked at her with an indulgent smile.
+
+"I am married to Mr. Rossi," she said.
+
+"But that is impossible. There was no time."
+
+"We were married religiously, in the parish church, on the morning he
+left Rome."
+
+The indulgent smile gave way to a sarcastic one.
+
+"Then why did he leave you behind? If he thought _that_ was a good
+marriage, why didn't he take you with him? But perhaps he had his own
+reason, and the denunciation of the poor man in prison was not so far
+amiss."
+
+"That was an official lie, a cowardly lie," said Roma, and her eyes
+burned with anger.
+
+"Was it? Perhaps it was. But I have just heard something else about Mr.
+Rossi that is undoubtedly true. I have heard from the Prefect of Paris
+that he is organising a conspiracy for the assassination of the King."
+
+A look of fear which she could not restrain crossed Roma's face.
+
+"More than that, and stranger than that, I have just heard also that the
+Pope has some knowledge of the plot."
+
+Roma felt terror seizing her, and she said in a constrained voice, "Why?
+What has the Pope told you?"
+
+"Only that an insurrection is impending. It seems that his informant is
+a woman.... Who can she be, I wonder?"
+
+The Baron was fixing his eyes on her and she tried to elude his gaze.
+
+"Whoever she is she must know more," he said in a severe voice, "and
+whatever it is she must reveal it."
+
+Roma got up, looking very pale, and feeling very feeble. When she
+reached the door the Baron was smiling and holding out his hand.
+
+"Will you not shake hands with me?" he said.
+
+"What is the use?" she answered. "When people shake hands it means that
+they wish each other well. You do not wish me well. You are trying to
+force me to betray my husband.... _But I'll die first_," she said, and
+then turned and fled.
+
+When Roma was gone the Baron wrote a letter to the Pope:
+
+    "YOUR HOLINESS,--Providential accident, as your chamberlain would
+    tell you, has enabled his Majesty's Government to judge for itself
+    of that source of your Holiness's information which your Holiness
+    very properly refused to reveal. At the same time official
+    channels have disclosed to his Majesty's Government the nature of
+    the conspiracy of which your Holiness so patriotically forewarned
+    them. This conspiracy appears to be no less serious than an
+    attempt to assassinate the King, but as detailed knowledge of so
+    vile a plot is necessary in order to save the life of our august
+    sovereign, his Majesty's Government asks you to grant the Prime
+    Minister the honour of an audience with your Holiness in the cause
+    of order and public security. Hoping to hear of your Holiness's
+    convenience, and trusting that your Holiness will not disappoint
+    the hopes of those who are dreaming even yet of a reconciliation
+    of Church and State, I am, with all reverence, your Holiness's
+    faithful son and servant,                                BONELLI."
+
+
+                                IX
+
+Roma went home full of uncertainty, and wrote in a nervous and
+straggling hand a hasty letter to Rossi.
+
+"My dearest," she said, "your letter reached me safely last evening, and
+though I cannot answer it properly at the present moment, I must send a
+brief reply by mid-day's mail, because there are two or three things it
+is imperative I should say immediately.
+
+"The first is that I wrote you a very important letter to London twelve
+days ago, and it is clear that you have not yet received it. The
+contents were of the greatest seriousness and also of the greatest
+secrecy, and I should die if any other eye than yours were to read
+them; therefore do not lose a moment until you ask for the letter to be
+sent after you to Paris. Write to London by the first post, and when the
+letter has come to your hand, do telegraph to me saying so. 'Received,'
+that will be sufficient, but if you can add one other little word
+expressing your feeling on reading what I wrote--'Forgiven,' for
+instance--my feeling will not be happiness, it will be delirium.
+
+"The next thing I have to say, dearest, is about your letters. You know
+they are more precious to me than my heart's blood, and there is not a
+word or a line of them I would sacrifice for a queen's crown. But they
+are so full of perilous opinions and of hints of programmes for
+dangerous enterprises, that for your sake I am afraid. It is so good of
+you to tell me what you are thinking and doing, and I am so proud to be
+the woman who has the confidence as well as the love of the
+most-talked-of man in Europe, that it cuts at my heart to ask you to
+tell me no more about your political plans. Nevertheless, I must. Think
+what would happen if the police took it into their heads to make a
+domiciliary visitation in this house. And then think of what a fearful
+weapon it puts into the hands of your enemies, if, hearing that I know
+so much, they put pressure upon me that I cannot withstand! Of course,
+that is impossible. I would die first. But still....
+
+"My last point, dearest...."
+
+Her pen stopped. How was she to put what she wished to say next? David
+Rossi was in danger--a double danger--danger from within as well as
+danger from without. His last letter showed plainly that he was engaged
+in an enterprise which his adversaries would call a plot. Roma
+remembered her father, doomed to a life-long exile and a lonely death,
+and asked herself if it was not always the case that the reformer partly
+reformed his age, and was partly corrupted by it.
+
+If she could only draw David Rossi away from associations that were
+always reeking of revolution, if she could bring him back to Rome before
+he was too far involved in plots and with plotters! But how could she do
+it? To tell him the plain truth that he was going headlong to _domicilio
+coatto_ was useless. She must resort to artifice. A light shot through
+her brain, her eyes gleamed, and she began again:
+
+"My last point, dearest, is that I am growing jealous. Yes, indeed,
+jealous! I know you love me, but knowing it doesn't help me to forget
+that you are always meeting women who must admire and love you. I
+tremble to think you may be happy with them. I want you to be happy, yet
+I feel as if it would be treason for you to be happy without me. What an
+illogical thing love is! But where Love reigns jealousy is always the
+Prime Minister, and in order to banish my jealousy you must come back
+immediately...."
+
+Her pen stopped again. The artifice was too trivial, too palpable, and
+he would certainly see through it. She tore up the sheet and began
+afresh.
+
+"My last point, dearest, is that I fear you are forgetting me in your
+work. While thinking of the revolution you are making in Europe, you
+forget the revolution you have already made in this poor little heart.
+Of course I love your glory more than I love myself, yet I am afraid it
+is taking you away from me, and will end by leading you up, up, up, out
+of a woman's reach. Why didn't I give you my portrait to put in your
+watch-case when you went away? Don't let this folly disgust you,
+dearest. A woman is a foolish thing, isn't she? But if you don't want me
+to make a torment of everything you will hasten back in time to...."
+
+She threw down the pen and began to cry. Hadn't she promised him that,
+come what would, her love for him should never stand in his way? In the
+midst of her tears a little stab at her heart made her think of
+something else, and she took up the pen again.
+
+"My last point, dearest, is that I am ill, and very, very anxious to see
+you soon. My health has been failing ever since you left Rome. Perhaps
+the anxieties I have gone through have been partly the cause of this,
+but I am sure that your absence is chiefly responsible, and that no
+doctor and no medicine would be so good for me as one rush into your
+arms. Therefore come and give me back all my health and happiness. Come,
+I beg of you. Leave it to others to do your work abroad. Come at once
+_before things have gone too far_; come, come, come!"
+
+She hesitated, wanting to say, "Not that I am _very_ ill...." And then,
+"You mustn't come if there is any risk to yourself...." And again, "I
+would never forgive myself if...." But she crushed down her qualms,
+sealed her letter, and sent the Garibaldian to post it.
+
+Then she gathered up the entire body of David Rossi's letters, and
+putting some light firewood into the stove she sat on the ground to burn
+them. It was necessary to remove all evidence that could be used against
+him in the event of a domiciliary visitation. One by one as the letters,
+were passed into the fire she read parts of them, and some of the
+passages seemed to stand out afresh in the flames. "Your friend must be
+a true woman, and it was very sweet of you to be so tender with
+her." ... "There is always a little twinge when I read between the lines
+of your letters. Are you not dissimulating?... to keep up my
+spirits?" ... "You shall smile and recover all your girlish spirits....
+I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in
+the Campagna." ... "It shows how rightly I judged the moral elevation
+of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and your heart of
+gold."
+
+While the letters were burning she felt herself to be under the
+influence of a kind of delirium. It was almost as though she were
+committing murder.
+
+
+                                X
+
+The Pope had begun the day with the long task of administering the
+sacrament to the lay members of his household, yet at eight o'clock he
+was back in his library in the midst of his morning receptions
+surrounded by a bevy of camerieri, monsignori, and messengers. First
+came a Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda to report the doings of his
+congregation; then an ambassador from Spain to tell of the suppression
+of religious orders; and finally the majordomo to recite the official
+programme for the public ceremonies which the Pope had ordered for Holy
+Thursday.
+
+It was now ten o'clock, and Cortis, the valet, brought the usual plate
+of soup. Then came a large man with bold features and dark complexion,
+wearing a purple robe edged with red and a red biretta. It was the
+Cardinal Secretary of State.
+
+"What news this morning, your Eminence?" said the Pope.
+
+"The Government," said the Cardinal Secretary, "has just published a
+proclamation announcing a jubilee in honour of the King's accession. It
+is to begin on Monday next, and there are to be great feasts and
+rejoicings."
+
+"A jubilee at a time like this! What a wild mockery of the people's
+woes! How many poor women and children must go hungry before this royal
+orgy has been paid for! God be with us! Such injustice and tyranny in
+the Satanic guise of clemency and indulgence is almost enough to explain
+the homicidal theories of the demagogues and to justify men like
+Rossi.... Any further news of him?"
+
+"Yes. He is at present in Paris, in close intercourse with the leaders
+of every abominable sect."
+
+"You have seen this man Rossi, your Eminence?"
+
+"Once. I saw him on the morning of the jubilee of your Holiness, when he
+attempted to present a petition."
+
+"What is he like to look upon--the typical demagogue; no?"
+
+"No. I am bound to say no, your Holiness. And his conversation, though
+it is full of the jargon of modern Liberalism, has none of the
+obscenities of Voltaire."
+
+"Some one said ... who was it, I wonder?... some one said he resembled
+the Holy Father."
+
+"Now that you mention it, your Holiness, there is perhaps a remote
+resemblance."
+
+"Ah! who knows what service for God and humanity even such a man might
+have done if in early life his lines had been cast in better places."
+
+"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, your Holiness."
+
+"Then he never knew a father's care and guidance! Unhappy son! Unhappy
+father!"
+
+"Monsignor Mario," said the low voice of a chamberlain, and at the next
+moment the Pope's messenger to the Prime Minister was kneeling in the
+middle of the floor.
+
+In nervous tones and broken sentences the Monsignor told his story. The
+Pope listened intently, the vertical lines on his forehead deepening and
+darkening every moment, until at length he burst out impatiently:
+
+"But, my son, you do not say that you said all this in addition to your
+message?"
+
+"I was drawn into doing so in defence of your Holiness."
+
+"You told the Minister that my information came through the channel of a
+simple confidence?"
+
+"He insinuated that the Holy Father was perhaps breaking the seal of the
+confessional...."
+
+"That my informant was a non-Catholic and a woman?"
+
+"He implied that your Holiness had only to command her to reveal the
+conspiracy to the civil authorities, and therefore...."
+
+"And you said she was here on Saturday morning?"
+
+"He hinted that the Holy Father was an accomplice of criminals if he had
+known this without revealing it before, and that was why...."
+
+"And she came in at that moment, you say?"
+
+"At that very moment, your Holiness, and said she had met me on Saturday
+morning."
+
+"Man, man, what have you done?" cried the Pope, rising from his seat and
+pacing the room.
+
+The chamberlain continued to kneel in utter humility, until the Pope,
+recovering his composure, put both hands on his shoulders and raised him
+to his feet.
+
+"Forgive me, my son. I was more to blame than you were. It was wrong to
+trust any one with a verbal message in the cabinet of a fox. The Holy
+Father should have no intercourse with such persons. But this is God's
+hand. Let us leave everything to the Holy Spirit."
+
+At that moment the Papal Majordomo returned with a letter. It was the
+Baron's letter to the Pope. After the Pope had read it he stepped into a
+little adjoining room which contained nothing but a lounge and an
+easy-chair. There he lay on the lounge and turned his face to the wall.
+
+
+                                XI
+
+At four o'clock in the afternoon the Pope and Father Pifferi were again
+walking in the garden. The groves of Judas trees were shedding their
+crimson blossoms and the path had a covering of bloom; the atmosphere
+was full of the odour of honey-suckle and violet, and through the sunlit
+air the swallows were darting with shrill cries and the glitter of
+wings.
+
+"And what does your Holiness intend to do?" asked the Capuchin.
+
+"Providence will direct us," said the Pope with a sigh.
+
+"But your Holiness will refuse the request of the Government?"
+
+"How can I do so without exposing myself to misunderstanding? Suppose
+the King is assassinated, what then? The Government will tell the world
+that the Pope knew all and did nothing."
+
+"Let them. It will not be an incident without parallel in the history of
+the Church. And the world will only honour your Holiness the more for
+standing firm on your sanctity of the human soul."
+
+"Yes, if the confessional were in question. The world knows that the
+seal of the confessional is sacred, and must be observed at all costs.
+But this is not a case of the confessional."
+
+"Didn't your Holiness say you would observe it as such?"
+
+"And I shall. But what about the public? Accident has told the
+Government that this is not a case of the confessional, and the
+Government will tell the world. What follows? If I refuse to do anything
+the enemies of the Church will give it out that the Holy Father is an
+accomplice of a regicide, ready and willing to intrigue with the agents
+of rebellion to regain the temporal power."
+
+"Then you will receive the Prime Minister?"
+
+"No! Or if so, only in the company of his superior."
+
+"The King?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Capuchin removed his skull-cap with an uneasy hand, and walked some
+paces without speaking.
+
+"Will he come, your Holiness?"
+
+"If he thinks I hold the secret on which his life depends, assuredly he
+will come."
+
+"But you are sovereign as well as Pope--is it possible for you to
+receive him?"
+
+"I will receive him as the King of Sardinia, the King of Italy, if you
+will, but not as the King of Rome."
+
+The Capuchin took his coloured handkerchief from his sleeve and rolled
+it in his palms, which were hot and perspiring.
+
+"But, Holy Father," he said, "what will be the good? Say that all
+difficulties of etiquette can be removed, and you can meet as man to
+man, as David Leone and Albert Charles--why will the King come? Only to
+ask you to put pressure upon your informant to give more information."
+
+The Pope drew himself up on the gravel path and smote his breast with
+indignation. "Never! It would be an insult to the Church," he said. "It
+is one thing to expect the Holy Father to do his duty as a Christian
+even to his enemy, it is another thing to ask him to invade the sanctity
+of a private confidence."
+
+The Capuchin did not reply, and the two old men walked on in silence. As
+the light softened the swallows increased their clamour, and song-birds
+began to call from neighbouring trees. Suddenly a startled cry burst
+from the foliage, and, turning quickly, the Pope lifted up the cat
+which, as usual, was picking its way at his heels.
+
+"Ah, Meesh, Meesh! I've got you safely this time.... It was the poor
+mother-bird again, I suppose. Where is her nest, I wonder?"
+
+They found it in the old sarcophagus, which was now almost lost in
+leaves. The eggs had been hatched, and the fledglings, with eyes not yet
+opened, stretched their featherless necks and opened their beaks when
+the Pope put down his hand to touch them.
+
+"Monsignor," said the Pope over his shoulder, "remind me to-morrow to
+ask the gardener for some worms."
+
+The cat, from his prison under the Pope's arm, was watching the
+squirming nest with hungry eyes.
+
+"Naughty Meesh! Naughty!" said the Pope, shaking one finger in the cat's
+face. "But Meesh is only following the ways of his kind, and perhaps I
+was wrong to let him see the quarry."
+
+The Pope and the Capuchin walked back to the Vatican for joy of the
+sweet spring evening with its scent of flowers and song of birds.
+
+"You are sad to-day, Father Pifferi," said the Pope.
+
+"I'm still thinking of that poor lady," said the Capuchin.
+
+At the first hour of night the Pope attended the recitation of the
+rosary in his private chapel, and then returning to his private study, a
+room furnished with a table and two chairs, he took a light supper,
+served by Cortis in the evening dress of a civilian. His only other
+company was the cat, which sat on a chair on the opposite side of the
+table. After supper he wrote a letter. It ran:
+
+    "SIRE,--Your Minister informs us that through official channels he
+    has received warning of a plot against your life, and believing
+    that we can give information that will help him to defeat so vile
+    a conspiracy, he asks us for a special audience. It is not within
+    our power to promise more assistance than we have already given;
+    but this is to say that if your Majesty yourself should wish to
+    see us, we shall be pleased to receive you, with or without your
+    Minister, if you will come in private and otherwise unattended, at
+    the hour of 21-1/2 on Holy Thursday, to the door of the Canons'
+    House of St. Peter's, where the bearer of this  message will be
+    waiting to conduct you to the Sacristy.
+
+    "Nil timendum nisi a Deo.
+                                                        Pius P.P.X."
+
+
+                                XII
+
+The ceremonies in St. Peter's on Maundy Thursday exceeded in pomp and
+magnificence anything that could be remembered in Rome.
+
+It was a great triumph for the Church. In the face of the anti-religious
+Governments of Europe she had proved that the mightiest sentiment of the
+people was the sentiment of religion.
+
+The Papal Court was proud of itself. Some of its members made no effort
+to conceal their delight at the blow they had struck at the ruling
+classes. But there was one man in Rome who felt no joy in his triumph.
+It was the Pope.
+
+At nine o'clock at night he visited the "urn" called the "Sepulchre."
+Borne amid the light of torches on his _sedia_ with his _flabelli_
+waving on either hand, under a white canopy upheld by prelates, he
+passed through the glittering rooms of his own palace, along the dark
+corridors of the Vatican and down the marble stairs, accompanied by his
+guards in helmets and preceded by the papal cross covered with a violet
+veil, into the great Basilica, lit only by large candles in iron stands,
+and looking plain and barn-like and full of shadows in the gloom and the
+smoky air. But after he had visited the Sepulchre, gorgeously
+illuminated, while the cantors sang the _Verbum Caro_, after he had
+knelt in silence and had risen, and the torches of his procession had
+been put out, and he had returned to his chair to be borne into the
+Sacristy, and the poor people, lifted to a height of emotion not often
+reached by the human soul, had broken again into a last delirious shout
+of affection, he dropped his head and wept.
+
+At that moment the Sacristy was empty save for the custodian in black
+cassock and biretta, who was warming his hands over a large bronze
+scaldino; but in the Archpriest's room adjoining, with its gilt
+arm-chair and stools of red plush, Father Pifferi in his ordinary brown
+habit was waiting for the Pope. The bearers put down the chair, knelt
+and kissed the Pope's feet in spite of his protest, backed themselves
+out with deep obeisance, and left the two old men together.
+
+"Have they arrived?" asked the Pope.
+
+"Not yet, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Father, have you any faith in presentiments?"
+
+"Sometimes, your Holiness. When they continue and are persistent..."
+
+"I have had a presentiment which has been with me all my life--all my
+life as Pope, at all events. The blessed God who abases and lifts up has
+thought fit to raise my lowliness to the most sublime dignity that
+exists on earth, but I have always lived in the fear that some day I
+should be torn down from it, and the Church would suffer."
+
+"God forbid, your Holiness!"
+
+"That was why I refused every place and every honour. You know how I
+refused them, Father!"
+
+"Yes, but God knew better, your Holiness, and He preserved you to be a
+blessing and a comfort to His people."
+
+"His holy will be done! But the shadow which has been over me will not
+be lifted. Cause prayers to be said for me. Pray for me yourself,
+Father."
+
+"Your Holiness is in low spirits. And to-day of all days! Ah, how happy
+is the Church which has seen the hand of God place in the chair of St.
+Peter a soul capable of comprehending the necessities of His children
+and a heart desirous of satisfying them!"
+
+"I hardly know what is to come of this interview, Father, but I must
+leave myself in the hands of the Holy Spirit."
+
+"There is no help for it now, your Holiness."
+
+"Perhaps I should not have gone so far but for this wave of anarchy
+which is sweeping over the world.... You believe the man Rossi is
+secretly an anarchist?"
+
+"I am afraid he is, your Holiness, and one of the worst enemies of the
+Church and the Holy Father."
+
+"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, and never knew father, or
+mother, or home."
+
+"Pitiful, very pitiful!"
+
+"I have heard that his public life is not without a certain perverted
+nobility, and that his private life is pure and good."
+
+"His relation to the lady would seem to say so, your Holiness."
+
+"But the Holy Father may be sorry for a wayward son, and yet be forced
+to condemn him for all that. He must cut himself off from all such men,
+lest his adversaries should say that, while preaching peace and the
+moral law, he is secretly encouraging the devilish agents of atheism,
+anarchy, and rebellion."
+
+"Perhaps so, your Holiness."
+
+"Father, do you think the care of temporal things is ever a danger and
+temptation?"
+
+"Sometimes I think it is, your Holiness, and that the Holy Father would
+be better without lands or fleshly armies."
+
+"How late they are!" said the Pope; but at the same moment the door
+opened, and a Noble Guard knelt on the threshold.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The personages you expect have come, your Holiness."
+
+"Bring them in," said the Pope.
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+The young King, who wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, with sword
+and long blue cloak, knelt to the Pope and kissed his ring, while the
+Prime Minister, who was in ordinary civilian costume, bowed deeply, but
+remained standing.
+
+"Pray sit," said the Pope, seating himself in the gilded arm-chair, with
+the Capuchin on his left.
+
+The King sat on one of the wooden stools in front of the Pope, but the
+Baron continued to stand by his side. Between the Pope and the King was
+a wooden table on which two large candles were burning. The young King
+was pale, and the expression of his twitching face was one of pain.
+
+"It was good of your Holiness to see us," he said, "and perhaps the
+gravity of our errand may excuse the informality of our visit."
+
+The Pope, who was leaning forward on the arms of his chair, only bent
+his head.
+
+"His Excellency," said the King, indicating the Baron, "tells me he has
+gained proof of an organised conspiracy against my life, and he says
+that your Holiness holds the secret of the conspirators."
+
+The Pope, without responding, looked steadily into the face of the young
+King, who became nervous and embarrassed.
+
+"Not that I'm afraid," he said, "personally afraid. But naturally I must
+think of others--my family--my people--even of Italy--and if your
+Holiness...if your...your Holiness..."
+
+The Baron, who had been standing with one arm across his breast, and the
+other supporting his chin, intervened at this moment.
+
+"Your Majesty," he said, "with your Majesty's permission, and that of
+his Holiness," he bowed to both sovereigns, "it may be convenient if I
+state shortly the object of our visit."
+
+The young King drew a breath of relief, and the Pope, who was still
+silent, bent his head again.
+
+"Some days ago your Holiness was good enough to warn his Majesty's
+Government that from private sources of information you had reason to
+fear that an assault against the public peace was to be attempted."
+
+The Pope once more assented.
+
+"Since then the Government has received corroboration of the gracious
+message of your Holiness, coupled with very definite predictions of the
+nature of the revolt intended. In short, we have been told by our
+correspondents abroad that a conspiracy of European proportions,
+involving the subversive elements of England, France, and Germany, is to
+be directed against Rome as a centre of revolution, and that an attempt
+is to be made to assail constituted society by striking at our King."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Your Holiness may have heard that it is the intention of the Government
+and the nation to honour the anniversary of his Majesty's accession by a
+festival. The anniversary falls on Monday next, and we have reason to
+fear that Monday is the day intended for the outbreak of this vile
+conspiracy."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Your Holiness may have differences with his Majesty, but you cannot
+desire that the cry of suffering should mingle with the strains of the
+royal march."
+
+"If your Government knows all this, it has its remedy--let it alter the
+King's plans."
+
+"The advice with which your Holiness honours us is scarcely practicable.
+For the Government to alter the King's plans would be to alarm the
+populace, demoralise the services, and to add to the unhappy excitement
+which it is the object of the festival allay."
+
+"But why do you come to me?"
+
+"Because, your Holiness, our information, although conclusive, is too
+indefinite for effective action, and we believe your Holiness can supply
+the means by which we may preserve public order, and"--with an apologetic
+gesture--"save the life of the King."
+
+The Pope was moving uneasily in his chair. "I will ask you to be good
+enough to speak more plainly," he said.
+
+The Baron's heavy moustache rose at one corner to a fleeting smile.
+"Your Holiness," he said, "is already aware that accident disclosed to
+us the source of your information. It was a lady. This knowledge enabled
+us to judge who was the subject of her communication. It was the lady's
+lover. Official channels give us proof that he is engaged abroad in
+plots against public order, and thus..."
+
+"If you know all this, sir, what do you want with me?"
+
+"Your Holiness may not be aware that the person in question is a Deputy,
+and that a Deputy cannot be arrested without the fulfilment of various
+conditions prescribed by law. One of those conditions is that some one
+should be in a position to denounce him."
+
+The Pope half rose from his chair. "You ask me to denounce him?"
+
+The Baron bowed very low. "The Government does not presume so far," he
+said. "It only hopes that your Holiness will require your informant to
+do so."
+
+"Then you want me to outrage a confidence?"
+
+"It was not a confession, your Holiness, and even if it had been, as
+your Holiness knows better than we do, it would not be without precedent
+to reveal the facts which are necessary to be known in order to prevent
+crime."
+
+The Capuchin's sandals were scraping on the floor, but the Pope raised
+his left hand, and the friar fell back.
+
+"You are aware," said the Pope, "that the lady you speak of as my
+informant is married to the Deputy?"
+
+"We are aware that she thinks she is."
+
+"Thinks?" said the indignant voice of the Capuchin, but the Pope's left
+hand was raised again.
+
+"In short, sir, you ask me to require the wife to sacrifice her
+husband."
+
+"If your Holiness calls it so,--to perform an act that will preserve the
+public peace...."
+
+"I _do_ call it so."
+
+The Baron bowed, the young King was restless, and there was a moment's
+silence. Then the Pope said:
+
+"Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood that the lady knows more than
+she has said, and we have already communicated, what possible inducement
+do you expect us to offer her that she should sacrifice her husband?"
+
+"Her husband's life," said the Baron.
+
+"His life?"
+
+"Your Holiness may not know that the Governments of Europe, having
+ascertained the existence of a widespread plot against civil society,
+have joined in measures of repression. One of these is the extension to
+all countries of what is called the Belgian clause in treaties, whereby
+persons guilty of regicide or of plots directed against the lives of
+sovereigns are made liable to extradition."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The Deputy Rossi is now in Berlin. If he were denounced with the
+conditions required by law as conspiring against the life of the King,
+we might have him arrested to-night and brought back as a common
+murderer."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Your Holiness may not have heard that since the late unhappy riots the
+Parliament, in spite of the protests of his Majesty, has re-established
+capital punishment for all forms of high treason."
+
+"Therefore," said the Pope, "if the wife were to denounce her husband
+for participation in this conspiracy he would be sentenced to death."
+
+"For this conspiracy--yes," said the Baron. "But the present is not the
+only conspiracy the man Rossi has engaged in. Eighteen years ago he was
+condemned in contumacy for conspiracy against the life of the late King.
+He has not yet suffered for his crime, because of the difficulty of
+bringing it home. In that case, as in this, there is only one person
+known to the authorities who can fulfil the conditions required by law.
+That person is the informant of your Holiness."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If your Holiness can prevail upon the lady to identify her lover as the
+man condemned for the former conspiracy, you will be helping her to save
+her husband's life from the penalty due for the present one."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"His Majesty is willing to promise your Holiness that, whatever the
+result of a new trial in assize to follow the old one in contumacy, he
+will grant a complete pardon."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then the Deputy Rossi will be banished, the threatened conspiracy will
+be crushed, the public peace will be preserved, and the King's life will
+be saved."
+
+The Pope leaned forward on the arms of his chair, but he did not speak,
+and there was silence for some moments.
+
+"Thus your Holiness must see," said the Baron suavely, "that, in asking
+you to obtain the denunciation of the man Rossi, the Government is only
+looking to your Holiness to fulfil the mission of mercy to which your
+venerated position has destined you."
+
+"And if I refused to exercise this mission of mercy?"
+
+The Baron bowed gravely. "Your Holiness will not refuse," he said.
+
+"But if I do--what then?"
+
+"Then ... your Holiness.... I was about to say something."
+
+"I am listening."
+
+"The man we speak of is the bitterest enemy of the Church. Whatever his
+hypocrisies, he is at once an atheist and a freemason, sworn to allow no
+private interests or feelings, no bonds of patriotism or blood, to turn
+him aside from his purpose, which is to overthrow Society and the
+Church."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He is also a bitter personal enemy of the Holy Father, and knows no
+object so dear as that of tearing him from his place and shaking the
+throne of St. Peter."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"The police and the army of the Government are the only forces by which
+the Holy Father can be protected, and without them the bad elements
+which lurk in every community would break out, the Holy Father would be
+driven from Rome, and his priests assaulted in the streets."
+
+"But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal
+soul in spite of all this danger?"
+
+"Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the
+denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against
+public order?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister
+of his Majesty, will be in a position to say--and to call upon this
+friar to witness--that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the
+most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a
+supreme encouragement of regicide."
+
+"And then, sir?"
+
+"The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is
+now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the
+presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most
+highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent
+the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the
+Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by
+means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins."
+
+The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more
+the Pope put up his hand.
+
+"You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of
+obtaining your end?"
+
+"Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an
+unusual and painful ordeal."
+
+"The lady has resisted all other influences?"
+
+"She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her
+by the proper authorities."
+
+"I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done
+to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man,
+and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried
+her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and
+the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which
+had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last."
+
+The Baron, for the first time, looked confused.
+
+"I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your
+gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine
+and human law."
+
+"Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the
+halfpenny papers."
+
+"Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the
+penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in
+disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?"
+
+"These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I
+do not deny."
+
+"In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or
+do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?"
+
+"No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for
+the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another
+to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such
+persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong
+and enlightened Government."
+
+"Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian
+system which supports them! Allow that the man _was_ a miserable
+malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor,
+degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do?
+They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his
+murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They
+crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the
+presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them."
+
+The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a
+majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale
+for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his
+arms and stiffened his legs.
+
+"Have you ever thought, sir, of the end of the unjust Minister? Think of
+his dying hour, tortured with the memory of young lives dissolved,
+mothers dead, widows desolate, and orphans in tears. Think of the day
+after his death, when he who has passed through the world like the
+scourge of God lies at its feet, and no one so mean but he may spurn the
+dishonoured carcass. You are aiming high, your Excellency, but beware,
+beware!"
+
+The Pope sat, and the King rose to his feet.
+
+"Your Majesty," said the Pope, "the day will come when we must both
+present ourselves before God to render to Him an account of our deeds,
+and I, being far more advanced in years, will assuredly be the first.
+But I would not dare to meet the eye of my Judge if I did not this day
+warn you of the dangers in which you stand. Only God knows by what
+inscrutable decree of Providence one man is made a Pope or a King, while
+another man, his equal or superior, is made a beggar or a slave. But God
+who made Popes and Kings meant them to be the fathers, not the seducers
+of their subjects. A sovereign may be a man of good intentions, but if
+he is weak, and allows himself to fall into the hands of despotic
+Ministers, he is a worse affliction than the cruellest tyrant. Think
+well, your Majesty! A throne may be a quagmire, and a man may be buried
+in it, and buried alive."
+
+The young King began to falter some incoherent words, but without
+listening the Pope rose to end the audience.
+
+"You promise me," said the Pope, "that if--I say _if_--in order to avoid
+bloodshed and to prevent a crime, I obtain from this lady the
+identification of her husband as the person condemned for the former
+conspiracy, you will spare and pardon him whatever happens?"
+
+"Holy Father, I give you my solemn word for it."
+
+"Then leave me! Let me think!... Wait! If she consents, where must she
+go to?"
+
+"To the Procura by the Ponte Ripetta, and, as time presses, at ten
+o'clock on Saturday morning," said the Baron.
+
+"Leave me! Leave me!"
+
+The King knelt again and kissed the Pope's hand, but the Baron only
+bowed as he passed out behind his sovereign.
+
+The opening of the doors let in a wave of sound that was like the roll
+of a great wind in a cave. Tenebræ had been going on for some time in
+the Basilica, and the people were singing the Miserere.
+
+"Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to
+justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?"
+
+"We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin.
+
+The friar touched a bell, and the _palfrenieri_ returned with the
+chair.
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+Next day, being Good Friday, was passed by the Pope in religious
+retreat, which was interrupted by indispensable business only. After
+Mass of the Presanctified he sat in his study with his confessor, while
+his chaplain in black passed through on tiptoe from the private chapel,
+and his chamberlains, tired out by the ceremonies of yesterday, dozed on
+their stools in the outer hall.
+
+The day was bright but the room was darkened, and the hearts of the two
+old men were heavy. Over the face of the Pope there was a cloud of
+trouble, and the countenance of the Capuchin was solemn to the point of
+sternness. The friar sat in the old-fashioned easy-chair with his bare
+feet showing from under the edge of his brown habit; the Pope lay on the
+lounge with both hands in the vertical pockets of his white woollen
+cassock.
+
+"Your Holiness is not well this morning?"
+
+"Not very well, Father Pifferi."
+
+"Your Holiness was disturbed by the interview in the Sacristy. But you
+should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed
+was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a
+wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than
+the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness could
+never consider it."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Didn't your Holiness promise that whatever the nature of this poor
+lady's confidence you would hold it as sacred as the confessional?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What is the confessional, your Holiness? It is a tribunal in which the
+priest is judge and the penitent a prisoner who pleads guilty. Is the
+priest to call witnesses to prove other crimes? He has no right and no
+power to do so."
+
+"But where the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of
+an accomplice, what then, Father Pifferi?"
+
+"Even then it is expressly forbidden to demand the names of others upon
+the plea of preventing evil. How can you hold this lady's confidence as
+sacred and yet ask her to denounce her husband?"
+
+The Pope rose with a face full of pain, walked to the bookcase, and
+took down a book. "Listen, Father," he said, and he began to read:--
+
+"_If the penitent was obliged under pain of mortal sin to reveal his
+accomplices to repair a common injury, I have maintained against other
+theologians that even then the confessor cannot oblige him to do so._"
+
+"There!" cried the Capuchin. "What did I say? Gaume is wise, and the
+other theologians, who are they?"
+
+"_Only_," continued the Pope, turning a page and holding up one finger,
+"_he can and must oblige him to make known his accomplices to other
+persons who can arrest the scandal._"
+
+The Capuchin took a long breath. "Is that what the Holy Father intends
+to do in this instance?"
+
+"He _can_ and _must_."
+
+The Capuchin dropped his head, and there was a long pause, in which the
+Pope walked nervously about the room.
+
+"Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "But perhaps her heart has been too
+much set on human love."
+
+The Pope sighed.
+
+"Yet who are we, whose hearts are closed to earthly affection, to
+prescribe a limit to human love?"
+
+"Who indeed?" said the Pope.
+
+"Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?"
+
+The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window.
+
+"The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry
+towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...."
+
+"The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said
+the Pope.
+
+"And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul,
+that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call
+themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of
+civilisation."
+
+"He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope.
+
+Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat
+down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of
+the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind
+the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the
+table.
+
+The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in the ante-camera, and
+the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and the _palfrenieri_
+dotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs.
+
+But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no
+family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew
+no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his
+little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans.
+
+
+                                XV
+
+Good Friday's Ministerial paper announced in its official column that
+late the night before the King, attended by the Minister of the
+Interior, had paid a surprise visit to the Mint, which was in the Via
+Fondamenta, a lane approached by way of the silent passage which leads
+to the lodging of the Canons of St. Peter's. Roma was puzzling over the
+inexplicable announcement, when old John, one of Rossi's pensioners,
+knocked at her door. His face and his lips were white, and when Roma
+offered him money he put it aside impatiently.
+
+"You mustn't think a gold hammer can break the gate of heaven,
+Eccellenza," the old man said.
+
+Then he told his story. The King had seen the Pope in secret the night
+before, and there was something going on about the Honourable Rossi.
+John knew it because his grandson had left Rome that morning for
+Chiasso, and another member of the secret police had started for Modane.
+If Donna Roma knew where the Honourable was to be found, she had better
+tell him not to return to Italy.
+
+"Better be a wood-bird than a cage-bird, you know," the old man
+whispered.
+
+Roma thanked him for his news, and then warned him of the risk he ran,
+being dependent on his grandson and his grandson's wife.
+
+"That's nothing," he said, "nothing at all _now_."
+
+Last night he had dreamed a dream. He thought he was a strong man again,
+with his children about him, and beholden to no one. How happy he had
+been! But when he awoke, and found it was not true, and that he was old
+and feeble, he felt that he could hear it no longer.
+
+"I'm in the way and taking the food of the children, so it can't last
+long, Eccellenza," he said in a tremulous voice, smiling with his
+toothless mouth, and nodding slightly as he went away.
+
+In the uneasy depths of Roma's soul only one thing was now certain. Her
+husband was in danger, and he must not attempt to cross the frontier.
+Yet how was he to be prevented? The difficulty was enormous. If only
+Rossi had replied to her letter by telegram, as she had asked him to do,
+she might have found some means of communication. At length an idea
+occurred to her, and she sat down to write a letter.
+
+    "Dearest," she wrote, while her eyes shone with a kind of delirium
+    and tears trickled down her cheeks, "I am very ill, and as you
+    cannot come to me I must go to you. Don't think me too weak and
+    womanish, after all my solemn promises to be so strong and brave.
+    But I can only live by love, dearest, and your absence is more
+    than I can bear. You will think I ought to be content with your
+    letters, and certainly they have been very sweet and dear to me;
+    but they are so few, and they come at such long intervals, and now
+    they seem to have stopped altogether. Perhaps at the bottom of my
+    selfish heart, too, I think your letters might be a wee bit more
+    lover-like, but then men don't write real love letters, and nearly
+    every woman would confess, if she told the truth, and she is a
+    little disappointed in that regard.
+
+    "I know my husband has other things to think about, great things,
+    high and noble aims and objects, but I am only a woman in spite of
+    my loud pretences, and I must be loved, or I shall die. Not that I
+    am afraid of dying, because I know that if I die I shall be with
+    you in a moment, and this cruel separation will be at an end. But
+    I want to live, and I'm certain I shall begin to feel better after
+    I have passed a few moments at your side. So I shall pack up
+    immediately and start away on the wings of the morning.
+
+    "Don't be alarmed if you find me looking pale and thin and old and
+    ugly. How could I be anything else when the particular world I
+    live in has been sunless all these weeks? I know your work is very
+    pressing, especially now when so many things are happening; but
+    you will put it aside for a little while, won't you, and take me
+    up into the Alps somewhere, and nurse me back to health and
+    happiness? Fancy! We shall be boy and girl again, as in the days
+    when you used to catch butterflies for me, and then look sad when,
+    like a naughty child, I scrunched them!
+
+    "_Au revoir_, dearest. I shall fall into your hands nearly as soon
+    as this letter. I tremble to think you may be angry with me for
+    following you and interrupting your work. If you show it in your
+    face I shall certainly expire. But you will be good to your poor
+    pilgrim of love and comfort and strengthen her. All the time you
+    have been away she has never forgotten you for a moment--no, not
+    one waking moment. An ordinary woman who loved an ordinary man
+    would not tell him this, but you are not ordinary, and if I am I
+    don't care a pin to pretend.
+
+    "Expect me, then, by the fastest train leaving Rome to-morrow
+    morning, and don't budge from Paris until I arrive.
+
+    "ROMA."
+
+The strain of this letter, with its conscious subterfuge and its
+unconscious truth, put Roma into a state of fever; and when she had
+finished it and sent it to the post, her head was light, and she was
+aware for the first time that she was really ill.
+
+The deaf old woman, who helped her to pack, talked without ceasing of
+Rossi and Bruno and Elena and little Joseph, and finally of the King and
+his intended jubilee.
+
+"I don't take no notice of Governments, Signora. It's the same as it
+used to be in the old days. One Pope died, and his soul went into the
+next. First an ugly Pope, then a handsome one, but the soul was the same
+in all. Wet soup or dry--that's all I trouble about now; and I don't
+care who gets the taxes so long as I can pay.... What do you say,
+Tommaso?"
+
+The Garibaldian had come upstairs smiling and winking, and holding out a
+letter. "From Trinità de' Monti," he whispered. Flushing crimson and
+trembling visibly, Roma took the letter out of the old man's hands with
+as much apprehension as if he had tried to deal her a blow, and went off
+to her room.
+
+"What do I say, Francesca? I say it's a good thing to be a Christian in
+these days, and that's why I always carry a sharp knife and a rosary."
+
+
+                                XVI
+
+The letter bore the Berlin postmark.
+
+    "MY DEAR WIFE,--I left Paris rather unexpectedly three days ago
+    and arrived here on Tuesday. The reason of this sudden flight was
+    the announcement in the Paris papers of the festivities intended
+    in Rome in honour of the King's accession. Such a shameless
+    outrage on the people's sufferings in the hour of their greatest
+    need seemed to call for immediate and effectual protest, and it
+    was thought wise to push on the work of organisation with every
+    possible despatch...."
+
+"There is a train north at 9.30," thought Roma. "I must leave to-night,
+not in the morning."
+
+    "Oh, Roma, Roma, my dear Roma, I understand your father now, and
+    can sympathise with him at last. He held that even regicide might
+    become a necessary weapon in the warfare of humanity, and though I
+    knew that some of the greatest spirits had recourse to it, I
+    always thought this belief the defect of your father's quality as
+    a prophet and the limit of his vision. But now I see that the only
+    difference between us was that his heart was bigger than mine, and
+    that in those cruel crises where the people are helpless and can
+    do nothing by constitutional means, revolution, not evolution,
+    may _seem_ to be their only hope...."
+
+Roma felt hysterical. There could no longer be any doubt of Rossi's
+intention.
+
+    "I don't tell you anything definite about our plans, dearest,
+    partly because of the danger of this letter going astray, and
+    partly because I don't think it right to saddle my wife with the
+    responsibility of knowing a programme that is weighted with issues
+    of such immense importance to so many. I know there is not a drop
+    of blood in her veins that isn't ready to flow for me, but that is
+    no reason for exposing her to the danger of even the prick of her
+    little finger.
+
+    "Briefly our cry is 'Unite! Unite! Unite!' As soon as our scheme
+    is complete, and associates all over Europe receive the word to
+    commence concerted movement, the tyrants at the heads of the
+    States will find the old edifices riddled and honeycombed, and
+    ready to fall."
+
+Roma imagined she could see everything as it was intended to be--the
+signal, the rising, the regicide. "There is a train at 2.30; I must
+catch that one," she thought.
+
+    "Dearest, don't attempt to reply to this letter, for I may leave
+    Berlin at any moment, but whether for Geneva or Zürich I don't yet
+    know. I can give you no address for letter or telegram, and
+    perhaps it is best that at the critical moment I should cut myself
+    off from all connection with Rome. Before many days I shall be
+    with you; my absence will be over, and, God willing, I shall never
+    leave your side again...."
+
+Roma was growing dizzy. Rossi was rushing on his death, and there was no
+help for him. It was like the awful hand of the Almighty driving him
+blindly on.
+
+    "Adieu, my darling. Keep well. A friend writes that letters from
+    Rome are following me from London. They must be yours, but before
+    they overtake me I shall be holding you in my arms. How I long for
+    it! I am more than ever full of love for you, and if I have filled
+    my letter with business I have other things to say to you the very
+    moment that we meet. Don't expect me until you see me in your
+    room. Be brave! Now is the moment for all your courage. Remember
+    you promised to be my soldier as well as my wife--'ready and waiting
+    when her captain calls.'   D."
+
+Roma was standing with Rossi's letter in her hand--her face and lips
+white, and her head full of a roaring noise--when a knock came to the
+bedroom door. Before answering she thrust the letter into the stove and
+set a match to it.
+
+"Donna Roma! Are you there, Signora?"
+
+"Wait ... come in."
+
+The old woman's head, in its coloured handkerchief, appeared through the
+half-opened door.
+
+"A Frate in the sitting-room to see you, Signora."
+
+It was Father Pifferi. The old man's gentle face looked troubled. Roma
+gave him a rapid, penetrating, and fearful glance.
+
+"The Holy Father wishes to see you again," he said.
+
+Roma thought for a moment; then she said, "Very well, let us go," and
+she went back to her room to make ready. The last of the letter was
+burning in the stove.
+
+
+                                XVII
+
+Roma returned to the Vatican with the Capuchin. There were the same
+gorgeous staircases and halls, the same soldiers, chamberlains,
+Bussolanti and Monsignori, the same atmosphere of the palace of an
+emperor. But in the little plain apartment which they entered, not as
+before by way of the throne room, but by a secret corridor with cocoanut
+matting and narrow frosted windows, the Pope stood waiting, like a
+simple priest, in a white woollen cassock.
+
+He smiled as Roma approached, a sad smile, and his weary eyes, when she
+looked timidly into his face, were full of the measureless pity that is
+in the eyes of the surgeon who is about to vivisect a dumb creature
+because it is necessary for the welfare of the human race.
+
+She knelt and kissed his ring. He raised her and put her to sit on the
+lounge, sitting in the arm-chair himself, and continuing to hold her
+hand. The Capuchin stood by the window, holding the curtain aside as if
+looking out on the piazza.
+
+"You believe the Holy Father would not send for you to injure you?" he
+said.
+
+"I am sure he would not, your Holiness," she answered.
+
+"And though I disapprove of your husband's doings, you know I would not
+willingly do him any harm?"
+
+"The Holy Father would not do harm to any one; and my husband is so
+good, and his aims are so noble, that nobody who really knew him could
+ever try to injure him."
+
+He looked into her face; it shone with a frightened joy, and pity grew
+upon him.
+
+"Your devotion to your husband is very sweet and beautiful, my daughter,
+and it grieves the Holy Father's heart to trouble it. But it seems to be
+his duty to do so, and he must do his duty."
+
+Again she looked up timidly, and again the sense came to him of dumb
+eyes full of entreaty.
+
+"My daughter, your husband's motives may not be bad. They may even be
+good and noble. It is often so with men of his sympathies. They see the
+disparity of wealth and poverty, and their hearts are torn with anger
+and with pity. But, my child, they do not know that true and lasting
+reforms, such as affect the whole human family, can only be
+accomplished by God and by the authority of His Holy Church and
+Pontificate, and that it must be the bell of St. Peter's which announces
+them to the world."
+
+As the Pope was speaking the colour ran up Roma's face like a flag of
+distress. She looked helplessly round at the Capuchin. The dumb eyes
+seemed to ask when the blow would fall.
+
+"As a consequence, what is he doing, my daughter? Ignoring the Church,
+which like a true mother is ever anxious to bear the burden of human
+weakness and suffering; he is setting up a new gospel, such as would
+reduce mankind to a worse barbarism than that from which Christ freed
+us. Is this conduct worthy of your devotion, my child?"
+
+Roma fixed her timid eyes on the Pope's face and answered:
+
+"I have nothing to do with my husband's opinions, your Holiness. I have
+only to be true to the friendship he gives me and the love I bear him."
+
+"My child," said the Pope, "ask yourself what your husband is doing at
+this moment. Not content with sowing the seeds of discord in Parliament
+and by the press, he is wandering through Europe, gathering up the
+adventurers who work in darkness in every country, and hatching a
+conspiracy which would lead to a state of anarchy throughout the world."
+
+Roma withdrew her hand from the hand of the Pope and made an exclamation
+of dissent.
+
+"Ah, I know what you would say, my daughter. He did not set out to
+produce anarchy. Such men never do. They begin with evolution and end
+with revolution. They begin with peace and end with violence. And the
+only sequel to your husband's aims must be the destruction of civil
+society, of Government, and of the Church."
+
+Roma's fingers were clasped convulsively in her lap. She lifted her
+timid but passionate face and said:
+
+"I know nothing about that, your Holiness. I only know that whatever he
+is doing his heart laid it upon him as a duty, and his heart is pure and
+noble."
+
+"My daughter, your husband may be the greatest of patriots in spirit and
+intention, but nevertheless he is one of the criminal and visionary
+teachers of this unhappy time who are deluding the ignorant crowd with
+promises that can never be realised. Anarchy, chaos, the uprooting of
+religion and morality, of justice, human dignity, and the purity of
+domestic life--these are the only possible fruits of the seed he is
+sowing."
+
+The timid eyes began to flash. "I did not come here to hear this, your
+Holiness." The Pope put his hand tenderly on her hands.
+
+"Remember, my child, what you said yourself on your former visit."
+
+Roma dropped her head.
+
+"The authorities know all about it."
+
+"Holy Father!"
+
+"It was necessary."
+
+"Then ... then somebody must have told them."
+
+"I told them. The Holy Father revealed no more than was necessary to
+relieve his conscience and to prevent crime. It was your own tongue that
+told the rest, my daughter."
+
+He recalled what had passed in the cabinet of the Prime Minister, and
+Roma felt as if something choked her. "No matter!" she said, with the
+same frightened but passionate face. "David Rossi is prepared for
+anything, and he will be prepared for this."
+
+"The authorities already knew more than I could tell them," said the
+Pope. "They knew where your husband was and what he was doing. They know
+where he is now, and they are preparing to arrest him."
+
+Roma's nerves grew more and more excited, the timid look gave place to a
+look of defiance.
+
+"They tell me that he is in Berlin at this moment. Is it true?"
+
+Roma did not reply.
+
+"They say their advices from official sources leave no doubt that he is
+engaged in conspiracy."
+
+Still Roma did not reply.
+
+"They say confidently that the conspiracy points to rebellion, and is
+intended to include regicide. Is it so?"
+
+Roma bit her lip and remained silent.
+
+"Can't you trust me, my child? Don't you know the Holy Father? Only give
+me some hope that these statements are untrue, and the Holy Father is
+ready to withstand all evil influences against you, and face the world
+in your defence."
+
+Roma felt as if something would snap within her brain. "I cannot say ...
+I do not know," she faltered.
+
+"But have you any uncertainty, my daughter? If you have the least reason
+to believe that these statements are slanders of malicious imaginations,
+tell me so, and I will give your husband the benefit of the doubt."
+
+Roma rose to her feet, but she held on to the edge of the table that
+stood by her side, rigid, quivering, frail and silent. The Pope looked
+up at her with weary eyes, and continued in a caressing tone:
+
+"If unhappily you have no doubt that your husband is engaged in
+dangerous enterprises, can you not dissuade him from them?"
+
+"No," said Roma, struggling with her tears, "that is impossible. Whether
+he is right or wrong, it is not for me to sit in judgment upon him.
+Besides, long ago, before we were married, I promised that I would never
+stand between him and his work, and I never can--never."
+
+"But if he loves you, my child, would he not wish for your sake to avoid
+the danger?"
+
+"I can't ask him. I told him to go on without thinking of me, and I
+would take care of myself whatever happened."
+
+Her eyes were now shining with her tears. The Pope patted the hand on
+the table.
+
+"Can you not at least go to him and warn him, and thus leave him to
+judge for himself, my daughter?"
+
+"Yes ... no, that is impossible also."
+
+"Why so, my child?"
+
+"Because I don't know where he is, and I shouldn't know where to find
+him. In his last letter he said it was better I should not know."
+
+"Then he has cut himself off from you entirely?"
+
+"Entirely. I am to see him next in Rome."
+
+"And meantime, that he may not run the risk of being traced by his
+enemies, he has stopped all channels of communication with his friends?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Pope's face whitened visibly, and an inward voice said to him, "This
+is God's hand. Death is waiting for the man in Rome, and he is walking
+blindly on to it."
+
+The weary eyes looked with compassion on Roma's quivering face. "There's
+no help for it," thought the Pope.
+
+"Suppose, my child ... suppose it were within your power to hinder evil
+consequences, would you do it?"
+
+"I am a woman, Holy Father. What can a woman do to hinder anything?"
+
+"In the history of nations it has sometimes happened that a woman has
+been able to save life and protect society by raising a little hand like
+this."
+
+The Pope lifted Roma's quivering fingers from the table.
+
+"If there is anything I can do, your Holiness, without breaking my
+promise or betraying my husband...."
+
+"It is a terrible ordeal, my child. For a wife, God knows how terrible."
+
+"No matter! If it will save my husband.... Tell me, your Holiness."
+
+He told her the proposal of the Prime Minister and the promise of the
+King. His voice vibrated. He was like a man who was wounding himself at
+every word. She looked at him until he had finished, without ability to
+speak.
+
+"You ask me to _denounce_ my husband?"
+
+"It is the only way to save him, my daughter."
+
+She looked round the room with helpless eyes, full of a dumb appeal for
+mercy or the chance of escape.
+
+"Holy Father," she said in a choking voice, "that is what his enemies
+have been asking me to do all this time, and because I have refused they
+have persecuted me with poverty and shame. And now that I come to you
+for refuge and shelter, thinking your fatherly arms will protect me,
+you ... even you...."
+
+She broke off as by a sudden thought, and said: "But it is impossible.
+He is my husband, therefore I cannot witness against him."
+
+"My heart bleeds for you, my child, and I am ashamed to gainsay you. But
+an oath is not necessary to a denunciation, and if it were so the law of
+this unchristian country would not recognise you as Rossi's wife."
+
+"But he will know who has denounced him. I am the only one in the world
+to whom he has told his secrets, and he will hate me and part from me."
+
+"You will have saved his life, my daughter."
+
+"What is it to me to have saved his life if he is lost to me for ever?"
+
+"Is it you that say that, my child--you that have sacrificed so much
+already? Doesn't the highest love remember first the welfare of the
+loved one and think of itself the last?"
+
+"Yes, yes; I didn't know what I was saying. But he will curse me for
+destroying his cause."
+
+"His cause will be destroyed in any case. It is doomed already. And when
+his visionary schemes are in the dust, and all is lost and vain, and
+your tears are powerless to bring back the past...."
+
+"But he will be banished, and I shall never see him again."
+
+"It will be the less of two evils, my child," said the Pope. And in the
+solemn, vibrating voice that rang in Roma's ears like the voice of
+Rossi, he added, "'Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be
+shed.'"
+
+Again Roma held on to the table, feeling at every moment as if she might
+fall with a crash.
+
+"That's what would come to your husband if he were arrested and
+condemned for a conspiracy to kill the King. And even if the humane
+spirit of the age snatched him from death--what then? A cell in a prison
+on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead,
+buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded,
+watched, tortured in body and soul--a figure of tremendous tragedy, the
+hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to
+the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him
+to escape into eternity and leave only his wasted body on the earth."
+
+Roma could bear the nervous tension no longer. "I'll do it," she said.
+
+"My brave child!" said the Capuchin, turning from the window, with a
+face broken up by emotion.
+
+"It is one thing to repeat a secret if it is to harm any one, and quite
+another thing if it is to do good, isn't it?" said Roma.
+
+"Indeed it is," said the Capuchin.
+
+"He will never forgive me--I know that quite well. He will never imagine
+I would have died rather than do it. But I shall know I have done it for
+the best."
+
+"Indeed you will."
+
+Roma's eyes were shining with fresh tears, and she was struggling to
+keep back her sobs. "When we parted on the night he went away he said
+perhaps we were parting for ever. I promised to be faithful to death
+itself, but I was thinking of my own death, not his, and I didn't
+imagine that to save his life I must betray his...."
+
+But at that moment she broke down utterly, and the Pope, who had
+returned to his seat, rose again to comfort her.
+
+"Calm yourself, my daughter," he said. "What you are going to do is an
+act of heroic self-sacrifice. Be brave and Heaven will reward you."
+
+She grew calmer after a while, and then Father Pifferi made arrangements
+for the visit to the Procura. He would call for her at ten in the
+morning.
+
+"Wait!" said Roma. A new light had come into her face--the light of a
+new idea.
+
+"What is it, my daughter?" said the Pope.
+
+"Holy Father, there is something I had forgotten. But I must tell you
+before it is too late. It may alter your view of everything. When you
+hear it you may say, 'You must not speak a word. You shall not speak. It
+is impossible.'"
+
+"Tell me, my child."
+
+Roma hesitated and looked from the Capuchin to the Pope. "How can I tell
+you," she said. "It is so difficult. I hadn't meant to tell any one."
+
+"Go on, my daughter."
+
+"My husband's name...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Rossi is not really his name, your Holiness. It is the name he took on
+returning to Italy, because the one he had borne abroad had been
+involved in trouble."
+
+"Just so," said the Pope.
+
+"Holy Father, David Rossi was a friendless orphan."
+
+"I have heard so," said the Pope.
+
+"He never knew his father--not even by name. His mother was a poor
+unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned
+herself in the Tiber."
+
+"Poor soul," said the Pope.
+
+"He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a
+straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."
+
+The Pope moved uneasily in his seat.
+
+"My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your
+Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of
+velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was
+all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's
+child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your
+Holiness?"
+
+The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes
+were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak.
+
+"My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that
+time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him
+to the public or even the police."
+
+The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at
+Roma.
+
+"But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have
+been a good man after all--one of those who have to suffer all their
+lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was
+walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and
+outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his
+name."
+
+The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms
+of his chair and his wrinkled hands were tightly clasped.
+
+Roma stopped. There was a prolonged silence. The atmosphere of the room
+seemed to be whirling round with frightful rapidity to one terrific
+focus.
+
+"Holy Father," said Roma at length, in a low tone, "if David Rossi were
+_your own son_, would you still ask me to denounce him?"
+
+The Pope lifted a face full of suffering and said in his deep, vibrating
+voice, "Yes, yes! More than ever for that--a thousand times more than
+ever."
+
+"Then _I will do it_," said Roma.
+
+The Pope rose up in great emotion, laid both hands on her shoulder, and
+said, "Go in peace, my daughter, and may God grant you at least a little
+repose."
+
+
+                                XVIII
+
+After recitation of the Rosary, the Pope, who had kept his religious
+retreat throughout the day, announced, to the astonishment of his
+chamberlains, his desire to walk in the garden at night. With Father
+Pifferi carrying a long Etruscan lamp he walked down the dark corridors
+with their surprised _palfrenieri_, and across the open courtyards with
+their startled sentinels, to where the arches of the Vatican opened upon
+the soft spring sky.
+
+The night was warm and quiet, and the moon, which had just risen and was
+near the full, shone with steady brilliance.
+
+The venerable old men walked without speaking, and only the beating of
+their sticks on the gravel seemed to break the empty air. At length the
+Pope stopped and said:
+
+"How strange it all was, Father Pifferi!"
+
+"Very strange, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Rossi is not his name, it seems."
+
+"'Not _really_ his name' was what she said."
+
+"His mother was deceived by every one, and she drowned herself in the
+Tiber."
+
+"That was so, your Holiness."
+
+"He was nursed in the Foundling, brought up in the Campagna, and then
+sold as a boy into England."
+
+"It is really extraordinary," said Father Pifferi.
+
+"Most extraordinary," repeated the Pope.
+
+They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then walked on in
+silence. Little sparks of blue light pulsed and throbbed and floated
+before their faces, and the moon itself, like a greater firefly, came
+and went in the interstices of the thin-leaved trees. The Pope, who
+shuffled in his walking, stopped again.
+
+"Your Holiness?"
+
+"Who can he be, I wonder?"
+
+The Capuchin drew a deep breath. "We shall know everything to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Yes," said the Pope, "we shall know everything to-morrow morning."
+
+Some dark phantom of the past was hovering about them, and they were
+afraid to challenge it.
+
+At that moment the silence of the listening air was broken by a long
+clear call, which rang out through the night without any warning, and
+then stopped as suddenly.
+
+"The nightingale," said the Pope.
+
+A mighty flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying
+strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every
+phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of
+unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed
+to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed
+around, the world seemed to have become void.
+
+The Pope's feet shuffled on the gravel. "I shall never forget it," he
+said.
+
+"It was wonderful," said the Capuchin.
+
+"I was thinking of that poor lady," said the Pope. "Her pleading voice
+will ring in my ears as long as I live."
+
+"Poor child!" said the Capuchin.
+
+"After all, we could not have acted otherwise. Don't you think so,
+Father Pifferi? Considering everything, we could not possibly have acted
+otherwise."
+
+"Perhaps we could not, your Holiness."
+
+They turned the bend of an avenue, where the path under their feet
+rustled with the thick blossom shed from the overhanging Judas trees.
+
+"Surely this is where the little mother bird used to be," said the Pope.
+
+"So it is," said the friar.
+
+"Strange, she has not sprung out as usual. Ah, Meesh is not here, and
+perhaps that's the reason." And feeling for the old sarcophagus, the
+Pope put his hand gently down into it. A moment afterwards he said in
+another tone: "Father, the young birds are gone."
+
+"Flown, no doubt," said the friar.
+
+"No. See," said the Pope, and he brought up a little nest filled with a
+ruin of fluff and feathers.
+
+"Meesh has been here indeed," said the friar.
+
+The venerable old men walked on in silence until they re-entered the
+vaulted courtyards of the Vatican. Then the Pope turned to the Capuchin
+and said in a breaking voice, "You'll go with the poor lady to the
+Procura in the morning, Father Pifferi. If the magistrates ask questions
+which they should not ask, you will protect her, and even forbid her to
+reply, and if she breaks down at the last moment you will support and
+comfort her. After that ... we must leave all to the Holy Spirit. God's
+hand is in this thing ... it is in everything. He will bring out all
+things well--well for us, well for the Church, well for the poor lady,
+and even for her husband, whoever he may be."
+
+"Whoever he may be," repeated the Capuchin.
+
+
+                                XIX
+
+Early in the morning of Holy Saturday, Roma was summoned as a witness
+before the Penal Tribunal of Rome. The citation, which was signed by a
+magistrate, required that she should present herself at the Procura at
+ten o'clock the same day, "to depose about facts on which she would then
+be interrogated," and she was warned that if she did not appear, "she
+would incur the punishment sanctioned by Article 176 of the Code of
+Penal Procedure."
+
+Roma found Father Pifferi waiting for her at the door of the Procura.
+The old Capuchin looked anxious. He glanced at her pale face and
+quivering lips and inquired if she had slept. She answered that she was
+well, and they turned to go upstairs.
+
+On the landing of the first floor Commendatore Angelelli, who was
+wearing a flower in his button-hole, approached them with smiles and
+quick bows to lead them to the office of the magistrate.
+
+"Only a form," said the Questore. "It will be nothing--nothing at all."
+
+Commendatore Angelelli led the way into a silent room furnished in red,
+with carpet, couch, armchairs, table, a stove, and two large portraits
+of the King and Queen.
+
+"Sit down, please. Make yourselves comfortable," said the Chief of
+Police, and he passed into an adjoining room.
+
+A moment afterwards he returned with two other men. One of them was an
+elderly gentleman, who wore with his frockcoat a close-fitting velvet
+cap decorated with two bands of gold lace. This was the Procurator
+General, and the other, a younger man, carrying a portfolio, was his
+private secretary. A marshal of Carabineers came to the door for a
+moment.
+
+"Don't be afraid, my child. No harm shall come to you," whispered Father
+Pifferi. But the good Capuchin himself was trembling visibly.
+
+The Procurator General was gentle and polite, but he dismissed the Chief
+of Police, and would have dismissed the Capuchin also, but for vehement
+protests.
+
+"Very well, I see no objection; sit down again," he said.
+
+It was a strange three-cornered interview. Father Pifferi, quaking with
+fear, thought he was there to protect Roma. The Procurator General,
+smiling and serene, thought she had come to complete a secret scheme of
+personal revenge. And Roma herself, sitting erect in her chair, in her
+black Eton coat and straw hat, and with her wonderful eyes turning
+slowly from face to face, thought only of Rossi, and was silent and
+calm.
+
+The secretary opened his portfolio on the table and prepared to write.
+The Procurator General sat in front of Roma and leaned slightly forward.
+
+"You are Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of the late Prince Prospero
+Volonna?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"You were born in England and lived there as a child?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Although you were young when you lost your father, you have a perfect
+recollection both of him and of his associates?"
+
+"Of some of his associates."
+
+"One of them was a young man who lived in his house as a kind of adopted
+son?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are aware that your father was unhappily involved in political
+troubles?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"You know that he was arrested on a serious charge?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You also know that, when condemned to death by a military tribunal for
+conspiring against the person of the late sovereign, his sentence was
+commuted by the King, but that one of his associates, condemned at the
+same time, and for the same crime, escaped all punishment because he was
+not then at the disposition of the law?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That was the young man who lived with him as his adopted son?"
+
+"It was."
+
+There was a moment's pause during which nothing could be heard but the
+quick breathing of the Capuchin and the scratching of the secretary's
+pen.
+
+"During the past few months you have made the acquaintance in Rome of
+the Deputy David Rossi?"
+
+"I have."
+
+The Capuchin moved in his seat. "Acquaintance! The lady is married to
+the Deputy."
+
+The Procurator General's eyes rose perceptibly. "Married!"
+
+"That is to say religiously married, which is all the Church thinks
+necessary."
+
+"Ah, I see," said the Procurator General, suppressing a smile. "Still I
+must ask the lady to make her statement in her natal name."
+
+"Go on, sir," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Your intimacy with the Honourable Rossi has no doubt led him to speak
+freely on many subjects?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"He has perhaps told you that Rossi was not his father's name."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That it was his mother's name, and though strictly his legal name also,
+he has borne it only since his return to Rome?"
+
+"That is so."
+
+It was the Capuchin's turn to look surprised. His sandalled feet
+shuffled on the carpet, and he prepared to take snuff.
+
+"The Honourable Rossi has been some weeks abroad, and during his absence
+you have no doubt received letters from him?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Can you tell me if in any of these letters he has said anything of a
+certain revolutionary propaganda?"
+
+The Capuchin, with his finger and thumb half raised, stopped and said,
+"I forbid the question, sir."
+
+"Father General!"
+
+"I mean that I counsel the lady not to answer it."
+
+The Procurator General suppressed another smile, directed this time at
+Roma, and said, "_Bene!_"
+
+"Be calm, my daughter," whispered the Capuchin.
+
+"At least," said the Procurator General, "you can now be certain that
+you had seen the Honourable Rossi before you met him in Rome?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"In fact you recognise in the illustrious Deputy the young man condemned
+in contumacy eighteen years ago?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Perhaps in his letters or conversations he has even admitted the
+identity?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"Only one more question, Donna Roma," said the Procurator General, with
+another smile. "Your father's name in England was Doctor Roselli, and
+the name of his young confederate----"
+
+"Courage, my child," whispered the Capuchin, taking Roma's ice-cold hand
+in his own trembling one.
+
+"The name of his young confederate was----"
+
+"David Leone," said Roma, lifting her eyes to the face of Father
+Pifferi.
+
+"So David Leone and David Rossi are one and the same person?"
+
+"Yes," said Roma, and the Capuchin dropped back in his seat as if he had
+been dealt a blow.
+
+"Thank you. I need trouble you no more. My secretary will now prepare
+the _précis_."
+
+Commendatore Angelelli returned with the Carabineer, and there was some
+talking in low tones. "Report for the Committee of the Chamber, sir?"
+"That is unnecessary at this moment, the House having risen for Easter."
+"Warrant for the arrest, then?" "Certainly. Here is the form. Fill it
+up, and I will sign."
+
+While the secretary wrote his _précis_ at one side of the table, the
+Chief of Police prepared his _mandato_ at the other side, repeating the
+words to the Carabineer who stood behind his chair. "We ... considering
+the conclusions of the Public Minister ... according to Article 187 of
+the Code ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David
+Rossi ... imputed guilty of attempted regicide in the year ... and tried
+and condemned in contumacy for the crime contemplated in Article.... And
+to such effects we require the Corps of the Royal Carabineers to conduct
+him before us to be interrogated on the facts above stated, and call on
+all officials and agents of the public force to lend a strong hand for
+the execution of the present warrant. Age, 34 years. Height, 1.79
+metres. Forehead, lofty. Eyes, large and dark. Nose, Roman. Hair, black
+with short curls. Beard and moustache, clean shaven. _Corporatura_,
+distinguished."
+
+When the secretary had finished his _précis_ he read it aloud to Roma
+and his superior.
+
+"Good! Give the lady the pen. You will sign this paper, Donna Roma--and
+that will do."
+
+Roma and Father Pifferi had both risen. "Courage," the Capuchin tried to
+say, but his quivering lips emitted no sound. Roma stood a moment with
+the pen in her fingers, and her great eyes looked slowly round the room.
+Then she stooped and wrote her name rapidly.
+
+At the same moment the Procurator General signed the warrant, whereupon
+the Chief of Police handed it to the Carabineer, saying, "Lose no
+time--Chiasso," and the soldier went out hurriedly.
+
+Roma held the pen a moment longer, and then it dropped out of her
+fingers.
+
+"Come," said the Capuchin, and they left the room.
+
+There was a crowd on the embankment by the corner of the Ripetta bridge.
+The body of a beggar had been brought out of the river, and it was lying
+there for the formal inspection of the officials who report on cases of
+sudden death. Roma stopped to look at the dead man. It was Old John. He
+had committed suicide.
+
+
+                                XX
+
+It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The
+attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected
+to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment
+he heard him singing a hymn.
+
+To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures
+of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing
+out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone.
+
+First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them.
+The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own
+name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so
+that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name,
+another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an
+old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while."
+Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost
+unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ
+on earth.
+
+Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day
+to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of
+God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson
+vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of
+the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon
+ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings--the
+Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone, having taken the name of Pius
+X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten
+thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the
+balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church
+tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His
+World.
+
+Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the
+maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture--a picture which
+had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever
+since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was
+saluted as a god--came to him again that night. He called it his
+presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel,
+an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over
+him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:--"You, the Vicar of Jesus
+Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the
+living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most
+exalted dignity on earth--_remember you are but clay_!"
+
+The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful
+thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a
+book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend
+of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the
+father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that
+they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his
+father without knowing who he was!
+
+One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the
+incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the
+Vatican--childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off
+from every human tie--began to think of things that were still farther
+back than the conclave and the proclamation--things of the dead past
+which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave
+with grass and flowers.
+
+A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the
+world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame,
+unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank
+period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest
+place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great
+yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent;
+dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands
+and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one
+who had been lost and was never found.
+
+The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he
+sang and prayed.
+
+When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the
+morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the
+valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long."
+
+There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a
+procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection,
+but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with
+curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering
+the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of
+the Easter bells.
+
+The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father
+Pifferi entered the room.
+
+"Well?" said the Pope.
+
+"It is all over," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?"
+
+"Very bravely, your Holiness."
+
+"No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?"
+
+"On the contrary, she was composed--perfectly composed and quiet."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"It was most extraordinary. A woman denouncing her husband, and yet so
+calm, so terribly calm."
+
+"God helped her to bear her burden. God help all of us in our hour of
+need!"
+
+The Pope lifted the crucifix to his lips, and added, "And the man?"
+
+"Rossi?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"After she had signed the denunciation a warrant for his arrest was made
+out and given to the Carabineers."
+
+"It mentioned everything?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"Who he is and all about him?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness."
+
+The Pope fingered his crucifix again, and said, "Who is he, Father
+Pifferi?"
+
+The Capuchin did not reply.
+
+"Father Pifferi, I ask you who he is?"
+
+Still the Capuchin did not reply, and the Pope smiled a pitiful smile,
+touched the friar's arm with a caressing gesture, and said, "Don't be
+afraid for the Holy Father, carissimo. If that poor child, who would
+have died rather than sacrifice her husband, could be so calm and
+strong...."
+
+"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "when you asked the lady to denounce
+David Rossi you thought of him only as an enemy of the Church and of its
+head, trying to pull down both and destroy civil society--isn't that
+so?"
+
+The Pope bent his head.
+
+"Holy Father, if ... if you had known that he was something more than
+that ... something nearer ... if, for example, you had been told
+that ... that he was the relative of a priest, would you have asked for his
+denunciation just the same?"
+
+The old Capuchin had stammered, but the Pope answered in a firm voice,
+"That would have made no difference, my son. The blessed Scriptures do
+not conceal the sin of Judas, and shall we conceal the offences of those
+who come within the circle of our own families?"
+
+"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "if you had been told that he was
+related to a prelate of your domestic household...."
+
+He stopped, and the Pope answered in a voice that trembled slightly,
+"Still it would have made no difference. The enemies of the Almighty are
+watching day and night, and shall His holy Church be imperilled and
+abased by the weakness of His servant?"
+
+"Holy Father, if ... if you had been told that ... that he was the
+kinsman of a Cardinal?"
+
+The Pope was struggling to control himself. "Even then it would have
+made no difference. I am old and weak, but God would have supported me,
+and though I had been called upon to cut off my right hand, or give my
+body to be burned, still...."
+
+His voice quivered and died in his throat, and there was a moment's
+pause.
+
+"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, turning his eyes away, "if you had
+been told that he was the nearest of kin to the Pope himself...."
+
+The Pope dropped the crucifix which was trembling in his hand, and half
+rose from his chair. "Then ... even then ... it would have ... but the
+will of God be done," he said, and he could not utter another word.
+
+At that moment the Easter bells began to ring. The deep-toned bells of
+St. Peter's came first with its joyful peal, and then the bells of the
+other churches of the city took up the rapturous melody. In the Basilica
+the veil before the altar had been rent with a loud crash, and the
+Gloria in Excelsis was being sung.
+
+At the same moment a prelate vested in a white tunic entered the Pope's
+room, and kneeling in the middle of the floor, he said, "Holy Father, I
+announce to you a great joy. Hallelujah! The Lord is risen again."
+
+The Pope tried to rise from his seat, but could not do so. "Help me,
+Monsignor," he said faintly, and the prelate raised him to his feet.
+Then leaning on the prelate's arm, he walked to the door of his private
+chapel. On reaching it he looked back at Father Pifferi, who was going
+silently out of the room.
+
+"Addio, carissimo," he said, in a pitiful voice, but the Capuchin could
+not reply.
+
+Some moments afterwards the Pope was quite alone. The arched windows of
+the little chapel were covered with heavy red curtains, but the clanging
+of the brass tongues in the cupola, the deep throb of the organ, and the
+rolling waves of the voices of the people singing the grand Hallelujah,
+found their way into the darkened chamber. But above all other sounds in
+the ears of the Pope as he lay prostrate on the altar steps was the
+sound of a voice which said, "You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the
+rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of
+God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on
+earth--_remember you are but clay_."
+
+
+                                XXI
+
+"Acqua Acetosa!" "Roba Vecchia!" "Rannocchie!"
+
+The street cries were ringing through the Navona, the piazza was alive
+with people, and strangers were saluting each other as they passed on
+the pavement when Roma returned home. At the lodge the Garibaldian
+wished her a good Easter, and at the door of the apartment the curate of
+the parish, who in cotta and biretta was making his Easter call to
+sprinkle the rooms with holy water, gave her a smile and his blessing,
+while old Francesca, inside the house, laying the Easter sideboard of
+cakes, sausages, and eggs, put both hands behind her back, like a child
+playing a game, and cried--
+
+"Now, what does the Signora think I've got for her?"
+
+It was a letter, and as the old woman produced it she was glowing with
+happiness at the joy she was bringing to Roma.
+
+"The porter from Trinità de' Monti brought it," she said, "and he told
+me to tell you there's a lay sister called Sister Angelica at the
+convent now, and he is afraid that other letters may go astray....
+Aren't you glad you've got a letter, Signora? I thought Signora would
+die of delight, and I gave the man six soldi."
+
+Roma was turning the envelope over and over in her hands, thinking what
+a call to joy a letter of Rossi's used to be, and wondering if she ought
+to open this one.
+
+"Well, that was the way with me too when Tommaso was at the wars. But
+this is Easter, Signora, and the Blessed Virgin wouldn't bring you bad
+news to-day. Listen! That's the Gloria. I can always hear the church
+bells on Holy Saturday. The first time after I was deaf Joseph was a
+baby, and I took the wrappings off his little feet while the bells were
+ringing, and he walked straight away! Ah, my poor darling!... But I'm
+making the Signora cry."
+
+The letter was dated from Zürich. It ran:--
+
+    "MY DEAR ROMA,--Your letters and I seem to be running a race which
+    shall return to you first. I was compelled to leave Berlin before
+    my long-delayed correspondence could arrive from London, and now
+    it seems probable that I must leave Zürich before it can follow me
+    from Berlin. As a consequence I have not heard from you for
+    weeks--not since your letter about your friend, you remember--and
+    I am in agonies of impatience to know what has happened to you in
+    the interval.
+
+    "I came to Switzerland the day before yesterday, pushed on by the
+    urgency of affairs at home. Here we hold the last meeting of our
+    international committee before I go back to Italy. This will be
+    to-morrow (Friday) night, and according to present plans I set out
+    for Rome on Saturday morning.
+
+    "How different my return will be from my flight a few weeks ago!
+    Then I was plunged in despair, now I am buoyed up with hope; then
+    my soul was furrowed by doubts, now it is braced up with
+    certainties; then my idea was a dream, now it is a practical
+    reality.
+
+    "O Roma, my Roma, it is a good thing to live. After all, the world
+    is no Gethsemane, and when a man has a beautiful life like yours
+    belonging to him he may be forgiven if he forgets the voices which
+    assail him with fears. They have come to me sometimes, dearest, in
+    this long and cruel silence, and I have asked myself hideous
+    questions. What is happening to my dear one in the midst of my
+    enemies? What sufferings are being inflicted upon her for my sake?
+    She is brave, and will bear anything, but did I do right to leave
+    her behind? Bruno died rather than betray me, and she will do
+    more--infinitely more in her eyes--she will see _me_ die, rather
+    than imperil a cause which is a thousand times more dear to me
+    than my life.
+
+    "Addio, carissima! Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal
+    upon thine arm, for love is strong as death. If there were any
+    possibility of our love increasing it _would_ increase after going
+    through dangers like these. Keep well, dearest. Preserve that
+    sweet life which is so precious to me that I cannot live without
+    it. Do you remember, it was the 2nd of February when we parted in
+    the darkness at the church door, and now it is Easter, and the day
+    after to-morrow we shall hear the Easter bells! Spring is here,
+    and in the unchangeable changeableness of nature I see the
+    resurrection of humanity and listen to the Gloria of God.
+
+    "You cannot answer this letter, dear, because I shall already be
+    on the way to Rome before it reaches you, but you can send me a
+    telegram to Chiasso. Do so. I shall look out for the telegraph boy
+    the moment the train stops at the station. Say you are well and
+    happy and waiting for me, and it will be like a smile from your
+    lovely lips and eyes on the frontier of my native land.
+
+    "My train is due to arrive on Sunday morning at seven o'clock.
+    Meet me at the railway station, and let your face be the first I
+    see when the train draws up in Rome. Then ... let me hear your
+    voice, and let my heart become a King.
+
+    "D.R."
+
+Roma had grown paler and paler as she read this letter. The man's love
+and trust were crushing her. Tears filled her eyes and flooded her face.
+But her soul, which had been stunned and had fallen, recovered itself
+and arose.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      PART EIGHT--THE KING
+
+
+                                I
+
+Early on the morning of Holy Saturday a little crowd of Italians stood
+on the open space in front of the platform at the Bahnhof of Zürich.
+Most of them wore the blue smocks and peaked caps of porters and
+street-sweepers, but in the centre of the group was a tall man in a
+frockcoat and a soft felt hat.
+
+It was Rossi. He was noticeably changed since his flight from Rome. His
+bronzed face was paler, his cheeks thinner, his dark eyes looked larger,
+his figure stooped perceptibly, and he had the air of a man who was
+struggling to conceal a consuming nervousness.
+
+The bell rang for the starting of a train and Rossi shook hands with
+everybody.
+
+"Going straight through, Honourable?"
+
+"No, I shall sleep at Milan to-night and go on to Rome in the morning."
+
+"_Addio, Onorevole!_"
+
+"_Addio!_"
+
+The moment the train started, Rossi gave himself up to thoughts of Roma.
+Where was she now? He closed his eyes and tried to picture her. She was
+reading his letter. He recalled particular passages, and saw the smile
+with which she read them. Peace be with her! The light pressure of her
+soft fingers was on his hands already, and through the _tran-tran_ of
+the train he could hear her softest tones.
+
+Nature as well as humanity seemed to smile on Rossi that day. He thought
+the lakes had never looked so lovely. It was early when they ran along
+the shores of Lucerne, and the white mists, wrapping themselves up on
+the mountains, were gliding away like ghosts. One after another the
+great peaks looked over each other's shoulders, covered with pines as
+with vast armies crossing the Alps, thick at the bottom and with thinner
+files of daring spirits at the top. The sun danced on the waters of the
+lake like fairies on a floor of glass, and when the train stopped at
+Fluelen the sound of waterfalls mingled with the singing of birds and
+the ringing of the church bells. It was the Gloria. All the earth was
+singing its Gloria. "Glory to God in the highest."
+
+Rossi's happiness became almost boyish as the train approached Italy.
+When the great tunnel was passed through, the signs of a new race came
+thick and fast. Shrines of the Madonna, instead of shrines of the
+Christ; long lines of field-workers, each with his hoe, instead of
+little groups with the plough; grey oxen with great horns and slow step,
+instead of brisk horses with tinkling bells.
+
+Signs of doubtful augury for the most part, but Rossi was in no mood to
+think of that. He let down the carriage window that he might drink in
+the air of his own country. In spite of his opinions he could not help
+doing that. The mystic call that comes to a man's heart from the soil
+that gave him birth was coming to him also. He heard the voice of the
+vine-dresser in the vineyard singing of love--always of love. He saw the
+oranges and lemons, and the roses white and red. He caught a glimpse of
+the first of the little cities high up on the crags, with its walls and
+tower, and Campo Santo outside. His lips parted, his breast swelled. It
+was home! Home!
+
+The day waned, the sky darkened, and the passengers in the train, who
+had been talking incessantly, began to doze. Rossi returned to his seat,
+and thought more seriously about Roma. All his soul went out to the
+young wife who had shared his sufferings. In his mind's eye he was
+reading between the lines of her letters, and beginning to reproach
+himself in earnest. Why had he imposed his life's secret upon her,
+seeing the risk she ran, and the burden of her responsibility?
+
+The battle with his soul was short. If he had not trusted Roma, he would
+never have loved her. If he had not stripped his heart naked before her,
+he would never have known that she loved him. And if she had suffered in
+his absence he would make it all up to her on his return. He thought of
+their joyous day on the Campagna, and then of the unalloyed hours before
+them. What would she be doing now? She would be sending off the telegram
+he was to receive at Chiasso. God bless her! God bless everybody!
+
+The thought of Roma's telegram filled the whole of the last hour before
+he reached the frontier. He imagined the words it would contain: "Well
+and waiting. Welcome home." But was she well? It was weeks since he had
+heard from her, and so many things might have happened. If he had
+managed his personal affairs with more thought for himself, he might
+have received her letters.
+
+Heavy clouds began to shut out the landscape. The temperature had fallen
+suddenly, and the wind must have risen, for the trees, as they flashed
+past, were being beaten about. Rossi stood in the corridor again,
+feeling feverish and impatient.
+
+At length the train slackened speed, the noise of the wheels and the
+engine abated, and there came a clap of thunder. After a moment there
+was a far-off sound of church bells which were being rung to avert the
+lightning, and then came a downpour of rain. It was raining in torrents
+when the train drew up at Chiasso, but the carriages were hardly under
+cover of the platform when Rossi was ready to step out.
+
+"All baggage ready!" "Hand baggage out!" "Chiasso!" "The Customs!"
+
+The station hands and porters were shouting by the stopping train, and
+Rossi's dark eyes with their long lashes were looking through the line
+of men for some one who carried a yellow letter.
+
+"Facchino!"
+
+"Signore?"
+
+"Seen the telegraph boy about?"
+
+"No, Signore."
+
+Rossi leapt down to the platform, and at the same moment three
+Carabineers, who had been working their heads from right to left to peer
+into the carriages as they passed, stepped up to him and offered a
+folded white paper.
+
+He took it without speaking, and for a moment he stood looking at the
+soldiers as if he had been stunned. Then he opened the paper and read:
+"_Mandate di Cattura...._ We ... order the arrest of David Leone,
+commonly called David Rossi...."
+
+A cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead. Again he looked
+into the faces of the soldiers. And then he laughed. It was a fearful
+laugh--the laugh of a smitten soul.
+
+The scene had been observed by passengers trooping to the Customs, and
+a group of English and American tourists were making apposite comments
+on the event.
+
+"It's Rossi." "Rossi?" "The anarchist." "Travelled in our train?"
+"Sure." "My!"
+
+The marshal of Carabineers, a man with shrunken cheeks and the eyes of a
+hawk, dressed in his little brief authority, strode with a lofty look
+through the spectators to telegraph the arrest to Rome.
+
+
+                                II
+
+When the train started again, Rossi was a prisoner sitting between two
+of the Carabineers with the marshal of Carabineers on the seat in front
+of him. His heart felt cold and his chin buried itself in his breast. He
+was asking himself how many persons knew of his identity with David
+Leone, and could connect him with the trial of eighteen years ago.
+_There was but one._
+
+Rossi leapt to his feet with a muttered oath on his lips. The thing that
+had flashed through his mind was impossible, and he was himself the
+traitor to think of it. But even when the imagined agony had passed
+away, a hard lump lay at his heart and he felt sick and ashamed.
+
+The marshal of Carabineers, who had mistaken Rossi's gesture, closed the
+carriage window and stood with his back to it until the train arrived at
+Milan. A police official was waiting for them there with the latest
+instructions from Rome. In order to avoid the possibility of a public
+disturbance in the capital on the day of the King's Jubilee, the
+prisoner was to be detained in Milan until further notice.
+
+"Seems you're to sleep here to-night, Honourable," said the soldier.
+Remembering that it had been his intention to do so when he left Zürich,
+Rossi laughed bitterly.
+
+It was now dark. A prison van stood at the end of a line of hotel
+omnibuses, and Rossi was marched to it between the measured steps of the
+Carabineers. News of his arrest had already been published in Milan, and
+crowds of spectators were gathered in the open space outside the
+station. He tried to hold up his head when the people peered at him,
+telling himself that the arrest of an innocent man was not his but the
+law's disgrace; yet a sense of sickness surprised him again and he
+dropped his head as he buried himself in the van.
+
+On the dark drive to the prison in the Via Filangeri the Carabineers
+grumbled and swore at the hard fate which kept them out of Rome at a
+time of public rejoicing. There was to be a dinner on Monday night at
+the barracks on the Prati, and on Tuesday morning the King was to
+present medals.
+
+Rossi shut his eyes and said nothing. But half-an-hour later, when he
+had been put in the "paying" cell, and the marshal of Carabineers was
+leaving him, he could not forbear to speak.
+
+"Officer," he said, fumbling his copy of the warrant, "would you mind
+telling me where you received this paper?"
+
+"At the Procura, of course," said the soldier.
+
+"Some one had denounced me there--can you tell me who it was?"
+
+"That's no business of mine, Honourable. Still, as you wish to know...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"A lady was there when the warrant was made out, and if I had to guess
+who she was...."
+
+Rossi saw the name coming in the man's face, and he flung out at him in
+a roar of wrath.
+
+During the long hours of the night he tried to account for his arrest to
+the exclusion of Roma. He thought of every woman whom he had known
+intimately in England and America, and finally of Elena and old
+Francesca. It was useless. There was only one woman in the world who
+knew the secrets of his early life. He had revealed some of them
+himself, and the rest she knew of her own knowledge.
+
+No matter! There was no traitor so treacherous as circumstance. He would
+not believe the lie that fate was thrusting down his throat. Roma was
+faithful, she would die rather than betray him, and he was a
+contemptible hound to allow himself to think of her in that connection.
+He recalled her letters, her sacrifices, her brave and cheerful
+renunciation, and the hard lump that had settled at his heart rose up to
+his throat.
+
+Morning broke at last. As the grey dawn entered the cell the Easter
+bells were ringing. Rossi remembered in what other conditions he had
+expected to hear them, and again his heart grew bitter. A good-natured
+warder came with his breakfast of bread and water, and a smuggled copy
+of a morning journal called the _Perseveranza_. It contained an account
+of his arrest, and a leading article on his career as a thing closed
+and ruined. The public would learn with astonishment that a man who had
+attained to great prominence in Parliament and lived several years in
+the fierce light of the world's eye, had all the time masqueraded in a
+false character, being really a criminal convicted long ago for
+conspiring against the person of the late King.
+
+The sun shone, the sparrows chirped, the church bells rang the whole day
+long. Towards evening the warder came with another newspaper, the
+_Corriere della Sera_. It explained that the sensational arrest of the
+illustrious Deputy, which had fallen on the country like a thunderbolt,
+was not intended as punishment for an offence long past and forgotten,
+but as a means of preventing a political crime that was on the eve of
+being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of
+the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt
+whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined
+revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish
+imagination to break out on the festival of the King's Jubilee.
+
+Rossi slept as little on Sunday night as on the night before. The
+horrible doubts which he had driven away were sucking at his heart like
+a vampire. He tried to invent excuses for Roma. She was intimidated; she
+was a woman and she could not help herself. Useless, and worse than
+useless! "I thought the daughter of Joseph Roselli would have died
+first," he told himself.
+
+The good-natured warder brought him another newspaper in the morning,
+the _Secolo_, an organ of his own party. Its tone was the bitterest of
+all. "We have reason to believe that the unfortunate event, which cannot
+but have the effect of setting back the people's cause, is due to the
+betrayal of one of their leaders by a certain fashionable woman who is
+near to the person of the President of the Council. It is the old story
+over again, the story of man's weakness and woman's deception, with
+every familiar circumstance of humiliation, folly, and shame."
+
+There could be no doubt of it. It was Roma who had betrayed him.
+Whatever her reasons or excuse, the result was the same. She had given
+up the deepest secrets of his soul, and his life's work was in the dust.
+
+The marshal of Carabineers came to say that they were to go on to Rome,
+and at nine o'clock they were again in the train. People in holiday
+dress were promenading the platform and the station was hung with flags.
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat was about to step into the compartment
+with the Carabineers and their prisoner, when, recognising his
+travelling companions, he bowed and stepped back. It was the Sergeant of
+the Chamber, returning after the Easter vacation from his villa on one
+of the lakes. Rossi sent a ringing laugh after the man, and that brought
+him back.
+
+"I'm sorry for you, Honourable, very sorry," he said. "You've deceived
+us all, but now you are seen in your true colours, and apparently
+throwing off all disguise."
+
+The Sergeant was so far right that Rossi was another man. Whatever had
+been tender and sweet in him was now hard and bitter. The train started
+for Rome, and the soldiers drew the straws out of their Tuscan cigars
+and smoked. Rossi coiled himself up in his corner and shut his eyes.
+Sometimes a sneer curled his lips, sometimes he laughed aloud.
+
+They were travelling by the coast route, and when the train ran into
+Genoa a military band at the foot of the monument to Mazzini was playing
+the royal hymn. But the festivities of the King's Jubilee were eclipsed
+in public interest by the arrest of Rossi and the collapse of the
+conspiracy which it was understood to imply. The marshal of the
+Carabineers bought the local papers, and one of them was full of details
+of "The Great Plot." An exact account was given from a semi-military
+standpoint of the plan of the supposed raid. It included the capture of
+the arsenal at Genoa and the assassination of the King at Rome.
+
+The train ran through countless tunnels like the air through a flute,
+now rumbling in the darkness, now whistling in the light. Rossi closed
+his eyes and shut out the torment of passing scenes, and straightway he
+was seeing Roma. He could only see her as he had always seen her, with
+her golden complexion, her large violet eyes and long curved lashes, her
+mouth which had its own gift of smiling, and her glow of health and
+happiness. Whatever she had done he knew that he must always love her.
+This worked on him like madness, and once again he leapt to his feet and
+made for the corridor, whereupon the Carabineers, who had been sleeping,
+got up and shut the door.
+
+Night fell, and the moon rose, large and blood-red as a setting sun.
+When the train shot on to the Roman Campagna, like a boat gliding into
+open sea, the great and solemn desolation seemed more than ever
+withdrawn from the sights and sounds of the living world. Rossi
+remembered the joy of joys with which he had expected to cross the
+familiar country. Then he looked across at the soldiers who were snoring
+in their seats.
+
+When the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, the Carabineers opened the
+door to the corridor that their prisoner might stretch his legs. Some
+evening papers from Rome were handed into the carriage. Rossi put out
+his hand to pay for them, and to his surprise it was seized with an
+eager grasp. The newsman, who was also carrying a tray of coffee, was a
+huge creature, with a white apron and a paper cap.
+
+"Caffé, sir? Caffé?" he called, and then in an undertone, "Don't you
+know me, old fellow? Caffé, sir? Thank you."
+
+It was one of Rossi's colleagues in the House of Deputies.
+
+"Milk, sir? With pleasure, sir. Venti centesimi, sir.... All right, old
+chap. Keep your eyes open at the station at Rome.... Change, sir?
+Certainly sir.... Coupé, waiting on the left side. Look alive. Addio!...
+Caffé! Caffé!"
+
+The lusty voice died away down the platform, and the train started
+again. Rossi felt giddy. He staggered back to his seat and tried to read
+his evening papers.
+
+The _Sunrise_, the paper founded by Rossi himself, seemed to be full of
+the Prime Minister. He had that day put the crown on a career of the
+highest distinction; the King had conferred the Collar of the Annunziata
+upon him; and in view of the continued rumblings of unrest it was even
+probable that he would be made Dictator.
+
+The _Avanti_ seemed to Rossi to be full of himself. When the country
+recovered from the delirium of that day's ridiculous doings, it would
+know how to judge of the infamous methods of a Minister who had
+condescended to use the devices of a Delilah for the defeat and
+confusion of a political adversary.
+
+Rossi felt as if he were suffocating. He put a hand into a side-pocket,
+for his copy of the warrant crinkled there under his twitching fingers.
+If he could only meet with Roma for a moment and thrust the damning
+document in her face!
+
+When the train ran along the side of the Tiber, they could see a great
+framework of fireworks which had been erected on the Pincio. It
+represented a gigantic crown and was all ablaze. At length the train
+slowed down and entered the terminus at Rome. Rossi remembered how he
+had expected to enter it, and he choked with wounded pride.
+
+There were the thumpings and clankings and the blinding flashes of white
+light, and then the train stopped. The station was full of people. Rossi
+noticed Malatesta among them, the man whose life he had spared in the
+duel he had been compelled to fight.
+
+"Now, then, please!" said the marshal of Carabineers, and Rossi stepped
+down to the platform. A soldier marched on either side of him; the
+marshal walked in front. The people parted to let the four men pass, and
+then closed up and came after them. Not a word was spoken.
+
+With pale lips and a fixed gaze which seemed to look at nobody, Rossi
+walked to the end of the platform, and there the crush was greatest.
+
+"Room!" cried the marshal of Carabineers, making for the gate at which a
+porter was taking tickets. A black van stood outside.
+
+Suddenly the marshal was struck on the shoulder by a hand out of the
+crowd. He turned to defend himself, and was struck on the other side.
+Then he tried to draw a weapon, but before he could do so he was thrown
+to the ground. One of the two other Carabineers stooped to lift him up,
+and the third laid hold of Rossi. At the next instant Rossi felt the
+soldier's hand fall from his arm as by a sword cut, and somebody was
+crying in his ear:
+
+"Now's your time, sir. Leave this to me and fly."
+
+It was Malatesta. Before Rossi fully knew what he was doing, he crossed
+the lines to the opposite platform, passed through the barrier by means
+of his Deputy's medal permitting him to travel on the railways, and
+stepped into a coupé that stood waiting with an open door.
+
+"Where to, signore?"
+
+"Piazza Navona--_presto_."
+
+As the carriage rattled across the end of the Piazza Margherita a
+company of Carabineers was going at quick march towards the station.
+
+
+                                III
+
+At ten o'clock on Saturday night the screamers in the Piazza Navona were
+crying the arrest of Rossi. The telegrams from the frontier gave an ugly
+account of his capture. He was in disguise, and he made an effort to
+deny himself, but thanks to the astuteness of the Carabineer charged
+with the warrant the device was defeated, and he was now lodged in the
+prison at Milan, where it was probable that he would remain some days.
+
+Roma's feelings took a new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the
+degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an
+intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and
+triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past
+months and saw that the Baron was responsible for everything. He had
+intimidated her. His intimidation had worked upon her conscience and
+driven her to the confessional. The confessional had taken her to the
+Pope, and the Pope in love and loyalty and fatal good faith had led her
+to denounce her husband. It was a chain of damning circumstances, helped
+out by the demon of chance, but the first link had been forged by the
+Baron, and he was to blame for all.
+
+On Monday morning bands of music began to promenade the streets. Before
+breakfast the rejoicings of the day had begun. Towards mid-day drunken
+fellows in the piazza were embracing and crying, "Long live the King,"
+and then "Long live the Baron Bonelli."
+
+Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing?
+There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It
+was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of
+clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had
+prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen,
+smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And
+meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse
+than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted.
+
+Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the _Sunrise_, and it
+contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on
+Saturday--there were three lines for that incident. The King had made
+him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata--there was half a column on the
+new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held
+at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President
+of the Council would be nominated Dictator.
+
+In another column of the _Sunrise_ she found an interview with the
+Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who
+conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the
+Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King
+would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date,
+and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public
+to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be
+encouraged.
+
+When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in
+a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make
+the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the
+blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There
+was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a
+thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore
+one course only was left--to send him to the bar of God!
+
+When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the
+moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive
+justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress
+of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them.
+
+One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She
+revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the
+Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but
+she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her
+high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone
+late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal.
+Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the
+shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as
+the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light--and do
+it.
+
+In the drawer of a bureau she had found a revolver which Rossi had left
+with her on the night he went away. His name had been inscribed on it by
+the persons who sent it as a present, but Roma gave no thought to that.
+Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely
+indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she
+would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of
+justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her
+only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to
+the supreme tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the
+responsibility of fixing the moral weight of her motive in the scales of
+human justice.
+
+With these sublime feelings she began to examine the revolver. She
+remembered that when Rossi had given it to her she had recoiled from the
+touch of the deadly weapon, and it had fallen out of her fingers. No
+such fear came to her now, as she turned it over in her delicate hands
+and tried to understand its mechanism. There were six chambers, and to
+know if they were loaded she pulled the trigger. The vibration and the
+deafening noise shook but did not frighten her.
+
+The deaf old woman had heard the shot, and she came upstairs panting and
+with a pallid face.
+
+"Mercy, Signora! What's happened? The Blessed Virgin save us! A
+revolver!"
+
+Roma tried to speak with unconcern. It was Mr. Rossi's revolver. She had
+found it in the bureau. It must be loaded--it had gone off.
+
+The words were vague, but the tone quieted the old woman. "Thank the
+saints it's nothing worse. But why are you so pale, Signora? What is the
+matter with you?"
+
+Roma averted her eyes. "Wouldn't you be pale too if a thing like this
+had gone off in your hands?"
+
+By this time the Garibaldian had hobbled up behind his wife, and when
+all was explained the old people announced that they were going out to
+see the illuminations on the Pincio.
+
+"They begin at eleven o'clock and go on to twelve or one, Signora.
+Everybody in the house has gone already, or the shot would have made a
+fine sensation."
+
+"Good-night, Tommaso! Good-night, Francesca!"
+
+"Good-night, Signora. We'll have to leave the street door open for the
+lodgers coming back, but you'll close your own door and be as safe as
+sardines."
+
+The Garibaldian raised his pork-pie hat and left the door ajar. It was
+half-past ten and the _piazza_ was very quiet. Roma sat down to write a
+letter.
+
+    "Dearest," she wrote, "I have read in the newspapers what took
+    place on the frontier and I am overwhelmed with grief. What can I
+    say of my own share in it except that I did it for the best? From
+    my soul and before God, I tell you that if I betrayed you it was
+    only to save your life. And though my heart is breaking and I
+    shall never know another happy hour until God gives me release, if
+    I had to go through it all again I should have to do as I have
+    done....
+
+    "Perhaps your great heart will be able to forgive me some day, but
+    I shall never forgive myself or the man who compelled me to do
+    what I have done. Before this letter reaches you in Milan a great
+    act will be done in Rome. But you must know nothing more about it
+    until it is done.
+
+    "Good-bye, dearest. Try to forgive me as soon as you can. I shall
+    know it if you do ... where I am going to--eventually ... and it
+    will be so sweet and beautiful. Your loving, erring, broken-hearted
+                                                                  ROMA."
+
+A noisy group of revellers were passing through the piazza singing a
+drinking song. When they were gone a church clock struck eleven. Roma
+put on a hat and a veil. Her impatience was now intense. Being ready to
+go out she took a last look round the rooms. They brought a throng of
+memories--of hopes and visions as well as realities and facts. The
+piano, the phonograph, the bust, the bed. It was all over. She knew she
+would never come back.
+
+Her heart was throbbing violently, and she was opening the bureau a
+second time when her ear caught the sound of a step on the stairs. She
+knew the step. It was the Baron's.
+
+She stopped, with an indescribable sense of terror, and gazed at the
+door. It stood partly open as the Garibaldian had left it.
+
+Through the door the Baron was about to enter. He was coming up, up,
+up--to his death. Some supernatural power was sending him.
+
+She grew dizzy and quaked in every limb. Still the step outside came on.
+At length it reached the top, and there was a knock at the door. At
+first she could not answer, and the knock was repeated.
+
+Then the free use of her faculties came back to her. There was more of
+the Almighty in all this than of her own design. It _was_ to be. God
+intended her to kill this guilty man.
+
+"Come in!" she cried.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+When the Baron awoke on Saturday he remembered Roma with a good deal of
+self-reproach, and everything that happened during the following days
+made him think of her with tenderness. During the morning an
+aide-de-camp brought him the casket containing the Collar of the
+Annunziata, and spoke a formal speech. He fingered the jewelled band and
+golden pendant as he made the answer prescribed by etiquette, but he was
+thinking of Roma and the joy she might have felt in hailing him cousin
+of the King.
+
+Towards noon he received the telegram which announced the death of his
+maniac wife, and he set off instantly for his castle in the Alban Hills.
+He remained long enough to see the body removed to the church, and then
+returned to Rome. Nazzareno carried to the station the little hand-bag
+full of despatches with which he had occupied the hour spent in the
+train. They passed by the tree which had been planted on the first of
+Roma's Roman birthdays. It was covered with white roses. The Baron
+plucked one of them, and wore it in his button-hole on the return
+journey.
+
+Before midnight he was back in the Piazza Leone, where the Commendatore
+Angelelli was waiting with news of the arrest of Rossi. He gave orders
+to have the editor of the _Sunrise_ sent to him so that he might make a
+tentative suggestion. But in spite of himself his satisfaction at
+Rossi's complete collapse and possible extermination was disturbed by
+pity for Roma.
+
+Sunday was given up to the interview with the journalist, the last
+preparations for the Jubilee, and various secular duties. Monday's
+ceremonials began with the Mass. The Piazza of the Pantheon was lined
+with a splendid array of soldiers in glistening breastplates and
+helmets, a tall bodyguard through which the little King passed to his
+place amid the playing of the national hymn. In the old Pantheon itself,
+roofed with an awning of white silk which bore the royal arms, flares
+were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary
+altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the
+choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden
+cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet
+canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators,
+deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state
+functions, and the Mass was a magnificent political demonstration
+carried out on lines arranged by the Baron himself. He had forgotten
+God, but he had remembered the King, and he had thought of Roma also.
+She wept at all religious ceremonies, and would have shed tears if she
+had been present at this one.
+
+From the Pantheon they passed to the Capitol, amid the playing of bands
+of music which showered through the streets their hail of sound. The
+magnificent hall was crowded by a brilliant company in silk dresses and
+decorations. An address was read by the Mayor, reciting the early
+misfortunes of Italy, and closing with allusions to the prosperity of
+the nation under the reigning dynasty. In his reply the King extolled
+the army as the hope of peace and unity, and ended with a eulogy of the
+President of the Council, whose powerful policy had dispelled the
+vaporous dreams of unpractical politicians who were threatening the
+stability of the throne and the welfare of its loyal subjects.
+
+The Baron answered briefly that he had done no more than his duty to his
+King, who was almost a republican monarch, and to his country, which was
+the freest in the world. As for the visionaries and their visions, a few
+refugees in Zürich, cheered on by the rabble abroad, might dream of
+constructing a universal republic out of the various nations and races,
+with Rome as their capital, but these were the delirious dreams of weak
+minds.
+
+"Dangerous!" said the Baron, with a smile. "To think of the eternal
+dreamer being dangerous!"
+
+The King laughed, the senators cheered, the ladies waved their
+handkerchiefs, and again the Baron remembered Roma.
+
+The procession to the Quirinal was a prolonged triumph. Every house was
+hung with flags, every window with red and yellow damask. The clubs in
+the Corso were crowded with princes, nobles, diplomats, and
+distinguished foreigners. Civil guards by hundreds in their purple
+plumes lined the streets, and the pavements were packed with loyal
+people. It was a glorious pageant, such as Roma loved.
+
+The mayors of the province, followed by citizens under their appointed
+leaders and flags, came up to the Quirinal as the Baron had appointed,
+and called the King on to the balcony. The King accepted the call and
+made a sign of thanks.
+
+Returning to the house the King ordered that papers should be prepared
+immediately creating the Baron Bonelli by royal decree Dictator of Italy
+for a period of six months from that date. "If Roma were here now,"
+thought the Baron.
+
+Then night came, and the state dinner at the royal palace was a moving
+scene of enchantment. One princess came after another, apparently
+clothed in diamonds. The Baron wore the Collar of the Annunziata, and
+the foreign ambassadors, who as representatives of their sovereigns were
+entitled to precedence, gave place to him, and he sat on the right of
+the Queen.
+
+After dinner he led the Queen to an embroidered throne under a velvet
+baldachino in a gorgeous chamber which had been the chapel of the Popes.
+Then the ball began. What torrents of light! What a dazzling blaze of
+diamonds! What lovely faces and pure white skins! What soft bosoms and
+full round forms! What gleams of life and love in a hundred pairs of
+beautiful eyes! But there was a lovelier face and form in the mind of
+the Baron than any his eyes could see, and excusing himself to the King
+on the ground of Rossi's expected arrival, he left the palace.
+
+Fireflies in the dark garden of the Quirinal were emitting drops of
+light as the Baron passed through the echoing courts, and the big square
+in front, bright with electric light, was silent save for the footfall
+of the sentries at the gate.
+
+The Baron walked in the direction of the Piazza Navona. His
+self-reproach was becoming poignant. He remembered the threats he had
+made, and told himself he had never intended to carry them out. They
+were only meant to impress the imagination of the person played upon, as
+might happen in any ordinary affair of public life.
+
+The Baron's memory went back to the last state ball before this one, and
+he felt some pangs of shame. But the disaster of that night had not been
+due to the cold calculation to which he had attributed it. The cause was
+simpler and more human--love of a beautiful woman who was slipping away
+from him, the girding sense of being bound body and soul to a wife that
+was no wife, and the mad intoxication of a moment.
+
+No matter! Roma should not lose by what had happened. He would make it
+up to her. Considering her unconventional conduct, it was no little
+thing he intended to do, but he would do it, and she would see that
+others were capable of sacrifice.
+
+The people were on the Pincio and the streets were quiet. When the Baron
+reached the Piazza Navona there was hardly anybody about, and he had
+difficulty in finding the house. No one saw him enter, and he met with
+nobody on the stairs. So much the better. He was half ashamed.
+
+After he had knocked twice a voice which he did not recognise told him
+to come in. When he pushed the door open Roma, in hat and veil, stood
+before him, with her back to a bureau. He thought she looked frightened
+and ill.
+
+
+                                V
+
+"My dear Roma," said the Baron, "I bring you good news. Everything has
+turned out well. Nothing could have been managed better, and I come to
+congratulate you."
+
+He was visibly excited, and spoke rapidly and even loudly.
+
+"The man was arrested on the frontier--you must have heard of that. He
+was coming by the night train on Saturday, and to prevent a possible
+disturbance they kept him in Milan until this morning."
+
+Roma continued to stand with her back to the bureau.
+
+"The news was in all the journals yesterday, my dear, and it had a
+splendid effect on the opening of the Jubilee. When the King went to
+Mass this morning the plot had received its death-blow, and our anxiety
+was at an end. To-night the man will arrive in Rome, and within an hour
+from now he will be safely locked up in prison."
+
+Every nerve in Roma's body was palpitating, but she did not attempt to
+speak.
+
+"It is all your doing, my child--yours, not mine. Your clever brain has
+brought it all to pass. 'Leave the man to me,' you said. I left him to
+you, and you have accomplished everything."
+
+Roma drew her lips together and tried to control herself.
+
+"But what things you have gone through in order to achieve your purpose!
+Slights, slurs, insults! No wonder the man was taken in by it. Society
+itself was taken in. And I--yes, I myself--was almost deceived."
+
+"Shall it be now?" thought Roma. The Baron was on the hearthrug
+directly facing her.
+
+"But you knew what you were doing, my dear. It was all a part of your
+scheme. You drew the man on. In due time he delivered himself up to you.
+He surrendered every secret of his soul. And when your great hour came
+you were ready. You met it as you had always intended. 'At the top of
+his hopes he shall fall,' you said."
+
+Roma's heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds.
+
+"He _has_ fallen. Thanks to you, this enemy of civil society, this
+slanderer of women, is down. Then the Pope too! And the confession to
+the Reverend Father! Who but a woman could have thought of a thing like
+that?---making your denunciation so defensible, so pardonable, so
+plausible, so inevitable! What skill! What patience! What diplomacy! And
+what will and nerve too! Who shall say now that women are incapable of
+great things?"
+
+The Baron had thrown open his overcoat, revealing the broad expanse of
+his shirt-front, crossed by the glittering collar of the Annunziata, and
+was promenading the hearthrug without a thought of his peril.
+
+"The journals of half Europe will have accounts of the failure of the
+'Great Plot.' There was another plot, my dear, which did not fail.
+Europe will hear of that also, and by to-morrow morning the world will
+know what a woman may do to punish the man who traduces and degrades
+her!"
+
+"Why don't I do it?" thought Roma. She was fingering the revolver on the
+bureau behind her, and breathing fast and audibly.
+
+"You shall have everything back, my dear. Carriages, jewellery,
+apartments, exactly as you parted with them. I have kept all under my
+own control, and in a single day you can be reinstated."
+
+Roma's palpitating heart was hurting her.
+
+"But won't you sit down, my child? I have something to tell you. It is
+important news. The Baroness is dead. Yes, she died on Saturday, poor
+soul. Should I play the hypocrite and weep? Why should I? For fifteen
+years a cruel law, which I dare not attempt to repeal by divorce in a
+Catholic country, has tied me to a living corpse. Shall I pretend to
+mourn because my burden has fallen away?... Roma, sit down, my dear;
+don't continue to stand there.... Roma, I am free, and we can now carry
+out our marriage, as we always hoped and intended."
+
+"Now!" thought Roma, moving a little forward.
+
+"Ah, don't be afraid of anything. I am not afraid, and you needn't be
+afraid either. Certainly rumour has coupled our names already. But what
+matter about that? No one shall insult you, whatever has occurred.
+Wherever I go you shall go too. If they cannot do without me they shall
+not do without you, and in spite of everything you shall be received
+everywhere."
+
+"Is that all you had to say?" said Roma.
+
+"Not all. There is something else, and I couldn't wait for the
+newspapers to tell you. The King has appointed me Dictator for six
+months. That means that you will be more courted than the Queen. What a
+revenge! The women who have been turning their backs upon you will bend
+their backs before you. You will break down every barrier. You will...."
+
+"Wait," said Roma.
+
+The Baron had been approaching her, and she lifted her hand.
+
+"You expect me to acquiesce in this lie?"
+
+"What lie, my child?"
+
+"That I denounced David Rossi in order to destroy him. It is true that I
+did denounce him--unhappy woman that I am--but you know perfectly why I
+did it. I did it because I was forced to do it. _You_ forced me."
+
+At the sound of her own voice, her eyes had begun to fill.
+
+"And now you ask me to pretend that it was all done from an evil motive,
+and you offer me the rewards of guilt. Do you think I'm a murderer that
+you can offer me the price of blood? Have you any shame? You come here
+to ask me to marry you, knowing that I am married already--here of all
+places, in the house of my husband."
+
+Her eyes were blinded with tears, but her voice thickened with anger.
+
+"My child," said the Baron, "if I have asked you to acquiesce in the
+idea that what you did was from a certain motive it was only to spare
+you pain. I thought it would be easier for you to do so now, things
+being as they are. It was only going back to your original purpose,
+forgetting all that has intervened."
+
+His voice softened, and he said in a low tone: "If _I_ am so much to
+blame for what has been done, perhaps it was because you were first of
+all at fault! At the beginning my one offence consisted in agreeing to
+your proposal. It was the _statesman_ who committed that error, and the
+_man_ has suffered for it ever since. You know nothing of jealousy, my
+child--how can you?--but its pains are as the pains of hell."
+
+He tried to approach her once more.
+
+"Come, dear, try to be yourself again. Forget this moment of
+fascination, and rise afresh to your old strength and wisdom. I am
+willing to forget ... whatever has happened--I don't ask what. I am
+ready to wipe it all away, just as if it had never been."
+
+In spite of his soft words and gentle tones, Roma was gazing at him with
+an aversion she had never felt before for any human being.
+
+"Have no qualms about your marriage, my child. I assure you it is no
+marriage at all. In the eye of the civil law it is frankly invalid, and
+the Church could annul it at any moment, being no sacrament, because you
+are unbaptized and therefore not in her sense a Christian."
+
+He took another step towards her and said:
+
+"But if you have lost one husband another is waiting for you--a more
+devoted and more faithful husband--one who can give you everything in
+the place of one who can give you nothing.... And then that man has gone
+out of your life for good. Whatever happens now, it is impossible that
+you and he can ever come together again. But I am here still.... Don't
+answer hastily, Roma. Isn't it something that I am ready to face the
+opprobrium that will surely come of marrying the most criticised woman
+in Rome?"
+
+Roma felt herself to be suffocating with indignation and shame.
+
+"You see I am suing to you, Roma--I who have never sued to any human
+being. Even when I was a child I would not sue to my own mother. Since
+then I have done something in life--I have justified myself, I have
+given my country a place among the nations, I stand for it in the eye of
+the world--and yet--"
+
+"And yet I despise you," said Roma.
+
+There was a moment of silence, and then, recovering himself, the Baron
+tried to laugh.
+
+"As you will. I must needs accept the only possible interpretation of
+your words. I thought my devotion in spite of every provocation might
+burn away your bitterness. But if...." (he was getting excited) "if you
+have no respect for the past, you may have some regard for the future."
+
+She looked at him with a new fear.
+
+"Naturally, I have no desire to humiliate myself further by suing to a
+woman who despises me. It will be sufficient to punish the man who is
+responsible for my loss of esteem in the eyes of one who has so many
+reasons to respect me."
+
+"You mean that you will persuade the King to break his promise?"
+
+"The King need not be persuaded after he has appointed his Dictator."
+
+"So the King's promise to pardon Mr. Rossi will be set aside by his
+successor?"
+
+"If I leave this room without a better answer ... yes."
+
+Roma drew from behind the revolver she had held in her hand.
+
+"Then you will never leave this room," she said.
+
+The Baron stood perfectly still, and there was a moment of deadly
+silence.
+
+Then came the rattle of carriage wheels on the stones of the piazza,
+followed immediately by a hurried footstep on the stairs.
+
+Roma heard it. She was trembling all over.
+
+A moment afterwards there was a knock at the door. Then another knock,
+and another. It was imperative, irregular knocking.
+
+Roma, who had forgotten all about the Baron, was rooted to the spot on
+which she stood. The Baron, who had understood everything, was also
+transfixed.
+
+Then came a thick, vibrating voice, "Roma!"
+
+Roma made a faint cry, and dropped the revolver out of her graspless
+hand. The Baron picked it up instantly. He was the first to recover
+himself.
+
+"Hush!" he said in a whisper. "Let him come in. I will go into this
+room. I mean no harm to any one; but if he should follow me--if you
+should reveal my presence--remember what I said before about a
+challenge. And if I challenge him his shrift will have to be swift and
+sure."
+
+The Baron stepped into the bedroom. Then the voice came again, "Roma!
+Roma!"
+
+Roma staggered to the door and opened it.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Flying from the railway station in the coupé, down the Via Nazionale and
+the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Rossi had seen by the electric light the
+remains of the day's festoons, triumphal arches, banners, embroideries,
+emblems, and flowers. These things had passed before his eyes like a
+flash, yet they had deepened the bitterness of his desire to meet with
+Roma that he might thrust the evidence of her treachery into her face.
+
+But when he came to his own house and Roma opened the door to him, and
+he saw her, looking so ill, her cheeks so pale, her beautiful eyes so
+large and timid, and her whole face expressing such acute suffering, his
+anger began to ebb away, and he wanted to take her into his arms in
+spite of all.
+
+Roma knew she was opening the door to Rossi, whatever the strange chance
+which had brought him there, and when she saw him she made a faint cry
+and a helpless little run toward him, and then stopped and looked
+frightened. The momentary sensation of joy and relief had instantly died
+away. She looked at his world-worn face, so disfigured by pain and
+humiliation, and the arms she had outstretched to meet him she raised
+above her head as if to ward off a blow.
+
+He saw under the veil she wore the terror which had seized her at sight
+of him, and by that alone he knew the depths of the abyss between them.
+But this only increased the measureless pity he felt for her. And he
+could not look at her without feeling that whatever she had done he
+loved her, and must continue to love her to the last.
+
+Tears rose to his throat and choked him. He opened his mouth to speak,
+but at first he could not utter a word. At length he fumbled at his
+breast, tore at his shirt front, so that his loose neckerchief became
+untied, and finally drew from an inner pocket a crumpled paper.
+
+"Look!" he said with a kind of gasp.
+
+She saw at a glance what the paper was, and dared not look at it a
+second time. It was the warrant. She dropped into a chair with bowed
+head and humble attitude, as if trying to sink out of sight.
+
+"Tell me you know nothing about it, Roma."
+
+She covered her face with both hands and was silent.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+She had expected that he would flame out at her, but his voice was
+breaking. She lifted her head and tried to look at him. His eyes were
+fixed on her with an expression she had never seen before. She wanted to
+speak, and could not do so. Her lip trembled, and she hung her head and
+covered her face again, unable to say a word.
+
+By this time he knew full well that she was guilty, but he tried to
+persuade himself that she was innocent, to make excuses for her, and to
+find her a way out.
+
+"The newspapers say that the warrant was made at your instruction,
+Roma--that you were the informer who denounced me. It cannot be true.
+Tell me it is not true."
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"Look at the name on it--David Leone. There was only one person in the
+world who knew me by that name--only one."
+
+She began to cry beneath her hands.
+
+"I told you everything myself, Roma. It was in this very room, you
+remember, the night you came here first. You asked me if I wasn't afraid
+to tell you, and I answered no. You couldn't deceive the son of your own
+father. It wasn't natural. I was right, wasn't I?"
+
+She felt him take hold of her hand and draw it down from her face.
+
+"Look at the ring on your hand, dear. And look at this one on mine. You
+are my wife, Roma. Does a man's wife betray him?"
+
+His voice cracked at every word.
+
+"When we parted you promised that as long as you lived, wherever you
+might be, and whatever the world might do with us, you would be faithful
+to me to the last. You have kept your promise, haven't you? It isn't
+true that you have denounced me to the police."
+
+He paused, but she did not reply, and he dropped her hand, and it fell
+like a lifeless thing to her side.
+
+"I know it isn't true, dear, but I want to hear it from your own lips.
+One word--only one. Why shouldn't you speak? Say you know nothing of
+this warrant. Say that somebody else knew David Leone. It may be so--I
+cannot remember. Say ... say anything. Don't you see I will believe you
+whatever you say, Roma?"
+
+Roma could control herself no longer.
+
+"I know quite well it is impossible for you to forgive me, David."
+
+"Forgive!"
+
+"But if I could explain...."
+
+"Explain? What can there be to explain? Did you denounce me to the
+magistrate?"
+
+"If you could only know what happened...."
+
+"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"
+
+She looked with frightened eyes at the bedroom door, and then dropped to
+her knees.
+
+"Have pity upon me."
+
+"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His pale face became ashen.
+
+"Then it's true," he said in a voice that hardly passed his throat.
+"What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me
+against you from the first, but I wouldn't believe them. I was a fool,
+and _this_ is my reward."
+
+So saying he crushed the warrant in his hand and flung it at her feet.
+
+Roma could bear no more. Making a great call on her resolution, she
+rose, turned towards the bedroom door, and, speaking in a loud voice in
+order that he who was within might hear, she said:
+
+"David, I don't want to excuse myself or to blame anybody else, whoever
+it may be, and however wickedly he may have acted. But, from my soul and
+before God, I tell you that if I denounced you I did it for the best."
+
+"The best!"
+
+He laughed bitterly, but she forced herself to go on.
+
+"When you went away you warned me that your enemies could be merciless.
+They _have_ been merciless. First, they tempted me with the fear of
+poverty. I had been accustomed to wealth, comfort, luxury. Look round
+you, David--they are gone. Did I ever regret them? Never! I was rich
+enough in your love, and I would not have sacrificed that for a queen's
+crown."
+
+She looked up at his tortured face and saw that it was full of scorn,
+but still she struggled on.
+
+"Then they tempted me with jealousy. The forged letter which killed
+Bruno was intended to poison me. Did I believe it? No! I knew you loved
+me, and if you didn't, if you had deceived me, that made no difference.
+_I_ loved _you_, and even if I lost you I should always love you,
+whatever happened."
+
+Again she looked up into his face with her glistening eyes. It was not
+anger she saw there now, but an expression of bewilderment and of pain.
+
+"Last of all, they tempted me with love itself. The treacherous tyrants
+deceived and intimidated the Pope--the good and saintly Pope--and
+through him they told me that your arrest was certain, your life in
+danger, and nothing could save you from your present peril but that I
+should denounce you for your past offences. The phantom of conspiracy
+rose up before me, and I remembered my father, doomed to life-long exile
+and a lonely death. It was my dark hour, dearest, and when they promised
+me--faithfully promised me--that your life should be spared...."
+
+A faint sound came from the bedroom. Roma heard it, but Rossi, in the
+tumult of his emotion, heard nothing.
+
+"I know what you will say, dear--that you would have given your life a
+hundred times rather than save it at the loss of all you hold so dear.
+But I am no heroine, David. I am only a woman who loves you, and I could
+not see you die."
+
+He felt his soul swell with love and forgiveness, and he wanted to sob
+like a child, but Roma went on, and without trying to keep back her
+tears.
+
+"That's all, dear. Now you know everything. It is not your fault that
+the love you have brought home to me is dead. I hoped that before you
+came home I might die too. I think my soul must be dead already. I do
+not hope for pardon, but if your great heart _could_ pardon me...."
+
+"Roma," said Rossi at last, while tears filled his eyes and choked his
+voice, "when I escaped from the police I came here to avenge myself; but
+if you say it was your love that led you to denounce me...."
+
+"I do say so."
+
+"Your love, and nothing but your love...."
+
+"Nothing! Nothing!"
+
+"Though I am betrayed and fallen, and may be banished or condemned to
+death, yet...."
+
+Her heart swelled and throbbed. She held out her arms to him.
+
+"David!" she cried, and at the next moment she was clasped to his
+breast.
+
+Again there was a faint sound from the adjoining room.
+
+"The woman lies," said a voice behind them.
+
+The Baron stood in the bedroom door.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+The Baron's impulse on going into the bedroom had been merely to escape
+from one who must be a runaway prisoner, and therefore little better
+than a madman, whose worst madness would be provoked by his own
+presence; but when he realised that Rossi was self-possessed, and even
+magnanimous in his hour of peril, the Baron felt ashamed of his
+hiding-place, and felt compelled to come out. In spite of his pride he
+had been forced to overhear the conversation, and he was humiliated by
+the generosity of the betrayed man, but what humbled him most was the
+clear note of the woman's love.
+
+Knight of the Annunziata! Cousin of the King! President of the Council!
+Dictator! These things had meant something to him an hour ago. What were
+they now?
+
+The agony of the Baron's jealousy was intolerable. For the first time in
+his life his ideas, usually so clear and exact, became confused. Roma
+was lost to him. He was going mad.
+
+He looked at the revolver which he had snatched up when Roma let it
+fall, examined it, made sure it was loaded, cocked it, put it in the
+right-hand pocket of his overcoat, and then opened the door.
+
+The two in the other room did not at first see him. He spoke, and their
+arms slackened and they stood apart.
+
+After a moment of silence Rossi spoke. "Roma," he said, "what is this
+gentleman doing here?"
+
+The Baron laughed. "Wouldn't it be more reasonable to ask what you are
+doing here, sir?" he asked.
+
+Then trying to put into logical sequence the confused ideas which were
+besieging his tormented brain, he said, "I understand that this
+apartment belongs now to the lady; the lady belongs to me, and when she
+denounced you to the police it was merely in fulfilment of a plan we
+concocted together on the day you insulted both of us in your speech in
+the piazza."
+
+Rossi made a step forward with a threatening gesture, but Roma
+intervened. The Baron gripped firmly the revolver in his pocket, and
+said:
+
+"Take care, sir. If a man threatens me he must be prepared for the
+consequences. The lady knows what those consequences may be."
+
+Rossi, breathing heavily, was trying to retain the mastery of himself.
+
+"If you tell me that the lady...."
+
+"I tell you that according to the law of nature and of reason the lady
+is my wife."
+
+"It's a lie."
+
+"Ask her."
+
+"And so I will."
+
+Roma saw the look of triumph with which Rossi turned to her. The
+terrible moment she had lived in fear of had come to pass. The letters
+she had written to Rossi had not yet reached him, and her enemy was
+telling his story before she had told hers.
+
+What was she to do? She would have said anything at that moment and
+believed herself justified before God. But even lying itself would be of
+no avail. She remembered the Baron's threat and trembled. If she told
+the truth her confession, coming at that moment, would be worse than
+vain. If she told a lie, Rossi would insult the Baron, the Baron would
+challenge Rossi, and they would fight with all the consequences the
+Baron had foretold.
+
+"Roma," said Rossi, "forgive me for putting the question, but a
+falsehood like this, affecting the character of a good woman, ought to
+be stopped in the slanderer's throat. Don't be afraid, dear. You know I
+will believe you before anybody in the world. What the man says is a
+lie, isn't it?"
+
+Roma stood for a moment looking in a helpless way from Rossi to the
+Baron, and from the Baron back to Rossi. She made an effort to speak,
+but at first she could not do so. At length she said:
+
+"Can't you trust me, David?"
+
+"Trust you? Answer me on this one point and I will trust you on all the
+rest. Say the man speaks falsely, and I will stake my life on your
+word."
+
+Roma did not reply, and the Baron tried to laugh.
+
+"If the lady can deny what I say, let her do so. If she cannot, you must
+come to your own conclusions."
+
+"Deny it, Roma! Deny it, and I will fling the man's insult in his face."
+
+"David, if I could tell you everything...."
+
+"Everything! It's only one thing I want to know, Roma."
+
+"If you had received my letters addressed to England...."
+
+"Letters? What matter about letters now. Don't you understand, dear?
+This gentleman says that before you married me you ... had already
+belonged to him. That's what he means, and it's false, isn't it?"
+
+"My mouth is closed. If I could say anything one way or other...."
+
+"Yes or no--that is all that is necessary."
+
+Roma looked up at him with a pleading expression, but seeing nothing in
+his face except the magistrate who was interrogating her, she turned her
+back and hung her head, and cried like a helpless child.
+
+Rossi laid hold of her arm, twisted her about, and looked into her eyes.
+
+"Crying, Roma? You don't mean to tell me that I am to believe what the
+man says? Deny it! For God's sake deny it!"
+
+"I ... I cannot ... I cannot speak," she stammered, and then there was a
+dead silence.
+
+When Rossi spoke again his face was dark as a thundercloud, and his
+voice hoarse as a raven's.
+
+"If that is so, there is nothing more to say."
+
+She looked up at him with a pathetic remonstrance, but he met her eyes
+with the gaze of a relentless judge who had tried and condemned her.
+
+"I was not to blame, David--I swear before God I was not."
+
+"Yet you allowed me to go on believing that falsehood. The woman who
+could do a thing like that could do anything. She could pretend to be
+poor, pretend to be tempted, pretend...."
+
+"David, what are you saying?"
+
+Rossi broke into a peal of mad laughter.
+
+"Saying? That you have deceived me from the beginning, when you
+undertook to betray me to your master and paramour."
+
+"David!"
+
+She tried to protest, but he bore her down with a laugh of scorn, and
+then wheeled round on the Baron, who had been standing in silence behind
+them.
+
+"That's why you are here to-night, I suppose. You didn't expect to be
+disturbed, did you? You didn't expect to see me. You thought I was
+stowed away in a cell, and you could meet in safety.... Oh, my brain! my
+brain! I shall go mad!"
+
+"It isn't true," cried Roma. And turning to the Baron with flame in her
+eyes she said, "Tell him it isn't true. You know it isn't true."
+
+"True?" Again the Baron tried to laugh. "Of course it's true. Every word
+the man has uttered is true. Don't ask me to lie to him as you have done
+from first to last." At that Rossi's mad laughter stopped suddenly, and
+he stepped up to the Baron with fury in his face.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he said. "You've succeeded, you've separated us, but I
+understand you perfectly. You have used this unhappy lady's shame to
+compel her to carry out your infamous designs, and now that she is done
+with, she must lose the man who played with her as well as the man she
+has played with."
+
+Roma saw that the Baron was feeling for something in the side pocket of
+his overcoat, and she called to Rossi to warn him.
+
+"One doesn't quarrel with an escaped criminal," said the Baron. "It is
+sufficient to call the police ... Police!" he cried, lifting his voice
+and taking a step forward.
+
+Rossi stood between the Baron and the door.
+
+"Don't stir," he said. "Don't utter a word, I warn you. I'm a hunted dog
+to-night, and a hunted dog is dangerous."
+
+"Let me pass," said the Baron.
+
+"Not yet, sir," said Rossi. "You have something to do before you go. You
+have to go down on your knees and beg the pardon of your victim...."
+
+Roma saw the Baron draw the revolver. She saw Rossi spring upon him, and
+seize him by the collar of the Annunziata which hung over his shirt
+front. She saw the men go struggling through the door of the
+sitting-room into the dining-room. She covered her ears with her hands
+to shut out the sounds from the outer chamber, but she heard Rossi's
+hoarse voice that was like the growl of a wild beast. Then came the
+deafening report of a pistol-shot, then the vibration of a heavy fall,
+and then dead silence.
+
+Roma was still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with
+terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the
+floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she
+turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down
+on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For
+one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and
+blistering words poured out of him in a torrent.
+
+"He's dead. D'you hear me? He's dead. But it's as much your work as
+mine, and you will never think of yourself henceforward without remorse
+and horror. I curse you by the love you've wronged and the heart you've
+broken. I curse you by the hopes you wasted and the truth you've
+outraged. I curse you by the memory of your father, the memory of a
+saint and martyr."
+
+Before his last words were spoken Roma had ceased to hear. With a feeble
+moan, interrupted by a faint cry, she had slowly retreated before him,
+and then fallen face downwards. Everything about her, Rossi, herself,
+the room, the lamp on the table and the shadows cast by it, had mingled
+and blended, and gone out in a complete obscurity.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+When Roma regained consciousness, there was not a sound in the
+apartment. Even the piazza outside was quiet. Somebody was playing a
+mandoline a long way off, and the thin notes were trembling through the
+still night. A dog was barking in the distance. Save for these sounds
+everything was still.
+
+Roma lay for some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was
+swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle
+the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and
+she wept bitterly.
+
+But when the first tenderness was over the one feeling which seized and
+held her was hatred of the Baron. Rossi had told her the man was dead,
+and she felt no pity. The Baron deserved his death, and if Rossi had
+killed him it was no crime.
+
+She was still lying where she had fallen when a noise as of some one
+moving came from the adjoining room. Then a voice called to her:
+
+"Roma!"
+
+It was the Baron's voice, broken and feeble. A great terror took hold of
+her. Then came a sense of shame, and finally a feeling of relief. The
+Baron was not dead. Thank God! O thank God!
+
+She got up and went into the dining-room. The Baron was on his knees
+struggling to climb to the couch. His shirt front was partly dragged out
+of his breast, and the Order of the Annunziata was torn away. There was
+a streak of blood over his left eyebrow, and no other sign of injury.
+But his eyes themselves were glassy, and his face was pale as death.
+
+"I'm dying, Roma."
+
+"I'll run for a doctor," she said.
+
+"No. Don't do that. I don't want to be found here. Besides, it's
+useless. In five minutes a clot of blood will have covered the lacerated
+brain, and I shall lose consciousness again. Stupid, isn't it?"
+
+"Let me call for a priest," said Roma.
+
+"Don't do that either. You can do me more good yourself, Roma. Give me a
+drink."
+
+Roma was fighting with an almost unconquerable repugnance, but she
+brought the Baron a drink of water, and with shaking hands held the
+glass to his trembling lips.
+
+"How do you feel?" she asked.
+
+"Worse," he answered.
+
+He looked into her eyes with evident contrition, and said, "I wonder if
+it would be fair to ask you to forgive me? Would it?"
+
+She did not answer, and he stretched himself and sighed. His breathing
+became laboured and stertorous, his skin hot, and his eyes dilated.
+
+"How do you feel now?" asked Roma.
+
+"I'm going," he replied, and he smiled again.
+
+The human soul was gleaming out of the wretched man at the last, and he
+was looking at her now with pleading eyes which plainly could not see.
+
+"Are you there, Roma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Promise that you will not leave me."
+
+"I will not leave you now," she answered in a low voice.
+
+After a moment he roused himself with an effort and said, "And this is
+the end! How absurd! They'll find me here in any case, and what a
+chatter there'll be! The Chamber--the journals--all the scribblers and
+speechifiers. What will Europe say? Another Boulanger, perhaps! But I'm
+sorry for Italy. Nobody can say I did not love my country. Where her
+interest lay I let nothing interfere. And just when everything seemed to
+triumph...."
+
+He attempted to laugh. Roma shuddered.
+
+"It was the star of the Annunziata that did it. The man threw it with
+such force. To think that it's been the aim of my life to win that Order
+and now it kills me! Ridiculous, isn't it?"
+
+Again he attempted to laugh.
+
+"There's a side of justice in that, though, and I'm not going to whine.
+The Pope tried to paint an awful end, but his nightmare didn't frighten
+me. We must all bow our heads to the law of compensation--the Pope as
+well as everybody else. But to die stupidly like this..."
+
+He was speaking with difficulty, and dragging at his shirt front. Roma
+opened it at the neck, and something dropped on to the floor. It was a
+lock of glossy black hair tied with a red ribbon such as lawyers used to
+bind documents together. Dull as his sight was, he saw it.
+
+"Yours, Roma! You were ill with fever when you first came to Rome, you
+remember. The doctors cut off your beautiful hair. This was some of it.
+I've worn it ever since. Silly, wasn't it?"
+
+Tears began to shine in Roma's eyes. The cynical man who laughed at
+sentiment had carried the tenderest badge of it in his breast.
+
+"I used to wear some of my mother's in the same place when I was
+younger. She was a good woman, too. When she put me to bed she used to
+repeat something: 'Hold Thou my hands,' I think.... May I hold your
+hands, Roma?"
+
+Roma turned away her head, but she held out her hand, and the dying man
+kissed it.
+
+"What a beautiful hand it is! I think I should know it among all the
+hands in the world. How stupid! People have been afraid of me all my
+life, Roma; even my mother was afraid of me when I was a child; but to
+die without once having known what it was to have some one to love
+you.... I believe I'm beginning to rave."
+
+The mournful irony of the words was belied by the tremulous voice.
+
+"My little comedy is played out, I suppose, and when the curtain is down
+it is time to go home. Death is a solemn sort of homegoing, Roma, and if
+those we've injured cannot forgive us before we go...."
+
+But the battle of hate in Roma's heart was over. She had remembered
+Rossi and that had swept away all her bitterness. As the Baron stood to
+her, so she stood to her husband. They were two unforgiven ones, both
+guilty and ashamed.
+
+"Indeed, indeed I do forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven," she said,
+whereupon he laughed again, but with a different note altogether.
+
+Then he asked her to lift up his head. She placed a cushion under it,
+but still he called on her to lift his head higher.
+
+"Can you lift me in your arms, Roma?... Higher still. So!... Can you
+hold me there?"
+
+"How do you feel now?" she asked.
+
+"It won't be long," he answered. His respirations came in whiffs.
+
+Roma began to repeat as much as she could remember of the prayers for
+the dying which she had heard at the deathbed of her aunt. The dying man
+smiled an indulgent smile into the young woman's beautiful and mournful
+face and allowed her to go on. As she prayed faster and faster, saying
+the same words over and over again, she felt his breathing grow more
+faint and irregular. At length it seemed to stop, and thinking it was
+gone altogether, she made the sign of the cross and said:
+
+"We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant Gabriel, that being
+dead to the world he may live to Thee, and those sins which through the
+frailty of human life he has committed, Thou by the indulgence of Thy
+most merciful loving-kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord.
+Amen."
+
+Then the glazed eyes opened wide and lighted up with a pitiful smile.
+
+"I'm dying in your arms, Roma."
+
+Then a long breath, and then:
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+He had tried to subdue all men to his will, and there was one man he had
+subdued above all others--himself. There is a greater man than the great
+man--the man who is too great to be great.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+There had been no light in the dining-room except the reflection from
+the lamp in the sitting-room, and now it fell with awful shadows on the
+whitening face turned upward on the couch. The pains of death had given
+a distorted expression, and the eyes remained open. Roma wished to close
+them, but dared not try, and the image of inanimate objects standing in
+the light was mirrored in their dull and glassy surface. The dog in the
+distance was still barking, and a company of tipsy revellers were
+passing through the piazza singing a drinking song with a laugh in it.
+When they were gone the clocks outside began to strike. It was one
+o'clock, and the hour seemed to dance over the city in single steps.
+
+Roma's terror became unbearable. Feeling herself to be a murderer, she
+acted on a murderer's impulse and prepared to fly. When she recalled the
+emotions with which she had determined to kill the Baron and then
+deliver herself up to justice, they seemed so remote that they might
+have existed only in a dream or belonged to another existence.
+
+Trembling from head to foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she
+fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last
+fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to
+the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something
+might touch her on the shoulder.
+
+The door was open. No doubt Rossi had left it so, and she had not
+noticed the circumstance until now. She had got as far as the first
+landing when a poignant memory came to her--the memory of how she had
+first descended those stairs with Rossi, going side by side, and almost
+touching. The feeling that she had been fatal to the man since then
+nearly choked and blinded her, but it urged her on. If she remained
+until some one came, and the crime was discovered, what was she to say
+that would not incriminate her husband?
+
+Suddenly she became aware of sounds from below--the measured footsteps
+of soldiers. She knew who they were. They were the Carabineers, and they
+were coming for Rossi, who had escaped and was being pursued.
+
+Roma turned instantly, and with a noiseless step fled back to the door
+of the apartment, opened it with her latch-key, closed it silently, and
+bolted it on the inside. This was done before she knew what she was
+doing, and when she regained full possession of her faculties she was in
+the sitting-room, and the Carabineers were ringing at the electric bell.
+
+They rang repeatedly. Roma stood in the middle of the floor, listening
+and holding her breath.
+
+"Deuce take it!" said a voice outside. "Why doesn't the woman open the
+door if she doesn't want to get herself into trouble? She's at home, at
+all events."
+
+"So is he, if I know anything," said a second voice. "He drove here
+anyway--not a doubt about that."
+
+"Let's see the porter--he'll have another key."
+
+"The old fool is out at the illuminations. But listen...." (the door
+rattled as if some one was shaking it). "This door is fastened on the
+inside."
+
+There was a chuckling laugh, and then, "All right, boys! Down with it!"
+
+A moment afterwards the door was broken open and four Carabineers were
+in the dining-room. Roma awaited their irruption without a word. She
+continued to stand in the middle of the sitting-room looking straight
+before her.
+
+"Holy saints, what's this?" cried the voice she had heard first, and she
+knew that the Carabineers were bending over the body on the couch.
+
+"His Excellency!"
+
+"Lord save us!"
+
+Roma's head was dizzy, and something more was said which she did not
+follow. At the next moment the Carabineers had entered the sitting-room;
+she was standing face to face with them, and they were questioning her.
+
+"The Honourable Rossi is here, isn't he?"
+
+"No," she answered in a timid voice.
+
+"But he has been here, hasn't he?"
+
+"No," she answered more boldly.
+
+"Do you mean to say that the Honourable Rossi has not been here
+to-night?"
+
+"I do," she said, with exaggerated emphasis.
+
+The marshal of the Carabineers, who had been speaking, looked
+attentively at her for a moment, and then he called on his men to search
+the rooms.
+
+"What's this?" said the marshal, taking up a sealed letter from the
+bureau and reading the superscription: "L'on, Davide Rossi, Carceri
+Giudiziarie, di Milano."
+
+"That's a letter I wrote to my husband and haven't yet posted," said
+Roma.
+
+"But what's this?" cried a voice from the dining-room. "Presented to the
+Honourable David Rossi by the Italian colony in Zürich."
+
+Roma sank into a seat. It was the revolver. She had forgotten it.
+
+"That's all right," said the marshal, with the same chuckle as before.
+
+Dizzy and almost blind in her terror, Roma struggled to her feet. "The
+revolver belongs to me," she said. "Mr. Rossi left it in my keeping
+when he went away two months ago, and since that time he has never
+touched it."
+
+"Then who fired the shot that killed his Excellency, Signora?"
+
+"_I_ did," said Roma.
+
+Instinctively the man removed his hat.
+
+Within half-an-hour Roma had repeated her statement at the Regina
+C[oe]li, and the Carabineers, to prevent a public scandal, had smuggled
+the body of the Baron, under the cover of night, to his office in the
+Palazzo Braschi, on the opposite side of the piazza.
+
+
+                                X
+
+One thought was supreme in David Rossi's mind when he left the Piazza
+Navona--that the world in which he had lived was shaken to its
+foundations and his life was at an end. The unhappy man wandered about
+the streets without asking himself where he was going or what was to
+become of him.
+
+Many feelings tore his heart, but the worst of them was anger. He had
+taken the life of the Baron. The man deserved his death, and he felt no
+pity for his victim and no remorse for his crime. But that he should
+have killed the Minister, he who had twice stood between him and death,
+he who had resisted the doctrine of violence and all his life preached
+the gospel of peace, this was a degradation too shameful and abject.
+
+The woman had been the beginning and end of everything. "How I hate
+her!" he thought. He was telling himself for the hundredth time that he
+had never hated anybody so much before, when he became aware that he had
+returned to the neighbourhood of the Piazza Navona. Without knowing what
+he was doing, he had been walking round and round it.
+
+He began to picture Roma as he had seen her that night. The beautiful,
+mournful, pleading face, which he had not really seen while his eyes
+looked on it, now rose before the eye of his mind. This caused a wave of
+tenderness to pass over him against his will, and his heart, so full of
+hatred, began to melt with love.
+
+All the cruel words he had spoken at parting returned to his memory, and
+he told himself that he had been too hasty. Instead of bearing her down
+he should have listened to her explanation. Before the Baron entered
+the room she had been at the point of swearing that her love, and
+nothing but her love, had caused her to betray him.
+
+He told himself she had lied, but the thought was hell, and to escape
+from it he made for the bank of the river again. This time he crossed
+the bridge of St. Angelo, and passed up the Borgo to the piazza of St.
+Peter's. But the piazza itself awakened a crowd of memories. It was
+there in a balcony that he had first seen Roma, not plainly, but vaguely
+in a summer cloud of lace and sunshades.
+
+Then it occurred to him that it must have been on this spot that Roma
+was inspired with the plot which had ended with his betrayal. At that
+thought all the bitterness of his soul returned. He told himself she
+deserved every word he had said to her, and blamed himself for the
+humiliation he had gone through in his attempt to make excuses for what
+she had done. To the curse he had hurled at her at the last moment he
+added words of fiercer anger, and though they were spoken only in his
+brain, or to the dark night and the rolling river, they intensified his
+fury.
+
+"Oh, how I hate her!" he thought.
+
+The _piazza_, was quiet. There was a light in the Pope's windows, and a
+Swiss Guard was patrolling behind the open wicket of the bronze gate to
+the Vatican. A porter in gorgeous livery was yawning by the door of the
+Prime Minister's palace. The man was waiting for his master. He would
+_have_ to wait.
+
+The clock of St. Peter's struck one, and the silent place began to be
+peopled with many shadows. The scene of the Pope's jubilee returned to
+Rossi's mind. He saw and heard everything over again. The crowd, the
+gorgeous procession, the Pope, and last of all his own speech. A
+sardonic smile crossed his face in the darkness as he thought of what he
+had said.
+
+"Is it possible that I can ever have believed those fables?"
+
+He was tramping down the Trastevere, picturing his trial for the murder
+of the Baron, with Roma in the witness-box and himself in the dock. The
+cold horror of it all was insupportable, and he told himself that there
+was only one place in which he could escape from despair.
+
+The unhappy man had begun to think of taking his own life. He had always
+condemned suicide. He had even condemned it in Bruno. But it was the
+death grip of a man utterly borne down, and there was nothing else to
+hold on to.
+
+The day began to break, and he turned back towards the piazza of St.
+Peter's, thinking of what he intended to do and where he would do it. By
+the end of the Hospital of Santo Spirito there was a little blind alley
+bounded by a low wall. Below was the quick turn of the Tiber, and no
+swimmer was strong enough to live long in the turbulent waters at that
+point. He would do it there.
+
+The streets were silent, and in the grey dawn, that mystic hour of
+parturition when the day is being born and things are seen in places
+where they do not exist, when ships sail in the sky and mountains rise
+around lowland cities, David Rossi became aware in a moment that a woman
+was walking on the pavement in front of him. He could almost have
+believed that it was Roma, the figure was so tall and full and upright.
+But the woman's dress was poorer, and she was carrying a bundle in her
+arms. When he looked again he saw that her bundle was a child, and that
+she was weeping over it.
+
+"Taking her little one to the hospital," he thought.
+
+But on turning into the little Borgo he saw that the woman went up to
+the Rota, knelt before it, kissed the child again and again, put it in
+the cradle, pulled the bell, and then, crying bitterly, hastened away.
+
+Rossi remembered his own mother, and a great tide of simple human
+tenderness swept over him. What he had seen the woman do was what his
+mother had done thirty-five years before. He saw it all as by a mystic
+flash of light, which looked back into the past.
+
+Suddenly it occurred to him that the Rota had been long since closed,
+and therefore it was physically impossible that anybody could have put a
+child into the cradle. Then he remembered that he had not heard the
+bell, or the woman's footsteps, or the sound of her voice when she wept.
+
+He stopped and looked back. The woman was returning in the direction of
+the piazza of St. Peter's. By an impulse which he could not resist he
+followed her, overtook her, and looked into her face.
+
+Again he thought he was looking at Roma. There was the same nobility in
+the beautiful features, the same sweetness in the tremulous mouth, the
+same grandeur in the great dark eyes. But he knew perfectly who it was.
+It was his mother.
+
+It did not seem strange that his mother should be there. From her home
+in heaven she had come down to watch over her son on earth. She had
+always been watching over him. And now that he too was betrayed and
+lost, now that he too was broken-hearted and alone....
+
+He was utterly unmanned. "Mother! Mother! I am coming to you! Every door
+is closed against me, and I have nowhere to go to for refuge. I am
+coming!... I am coming!"
+
+Then the spirit paused, and pointing to the bronze gate of the Vatican,
+said, with infinite tenderness:
+
+"Go there!"
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      PART NINE--THE PEOPLE
+
+
+                                I
+
+The Pope awoke next morning in the dreary hour of cock-crow, and rang
+for his valet while he was still in bed. When the valet came he was
+greatly agitated.
+
+"What's amiss, Gaetanino?" said the Pope.
+
+"A madman, your Holiness," said the valet. "They wanted me to awaken
+your Holiness, and I wouldn't do it. A madman is down at the bronze
+gate, and insists on seeing you."
+
+At this moment the Maestro di Camera came into the room. He also was
+greatly agitated.
+
+"What is this about some poor madman at the bronze gate?" asked the
+Pope.
+
+"I have come to tell your Holiness," said the master of the household.
+"The man declares he is pursued, and demands sanctuary."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"He says he will give his name to the Holy Father only; but his
+face...."
+
+"The man's mad," said the valet.
+
+"Be quiet, Gaetanino."
+
+"His face," continued the Maestro di Camera, "is known to the Swiss
+Guard, and when they sent up word...."
+
+The Pope sat up and said, "Is it perhaps..."
+
+"It is, your Holiness."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He has forced his way in as far as the Sala Clementina, and nothing but
+physical force...."
+
+Sounds of voices raised in dispute could be heard in a distant room. The
+Pope listened and said:
+
+"Let the man come up immediately."
+
+"Here, your Holiness?"
+
+"Here."
+
+The Maestro di Camera had hardly gone from the Pope's bedroom when the
+Secretary of State entered it with hasty steps.
+
+"Your Holiness," he said, "you will not allow yourself to receive this
+person? It is sufficiently clear that he must have escaped from the
+police during the night, probably by the help of confederates, and to
+shelter him will be to come into collision with the civil authorities."
+
+"The young man demands sanctuary, your Eminence, and whatever the
+consequences we have no right to refuse it."
+
+"But sanctuary is obsolete, your Holiness."
+
+"Nothing can be obsolete that is of divine institution, your Eminence."
+
+"But, your Holiness, it can only exist by virtue of concession from the
+State, and the present relation of the Church to the State of Italy..."
+
+"Your Eminence, I will ask you to let the young man come in."
+
+"Your Holiness, I beg, I pray, reflect..."
+
+"Let the young man come in, your Em..."
+
+The Pope had not finished when the words were struck out of his mouth by
+an apparition which appeared at his bedroom door. It was that of a young
+man, whose eyes were wild, whose nostrils were quivering, and whose
+clothes hung about him in rags as if they had been torn in a recent
+struggle. He had a look of despair and suffering, yet it was the same to
+the Pope at that moment as if he were looking at his own features in a
+glass.
+
+The young man was surrounded by Swiss Guards, and the Maestro di Camera
+pushed in ahead of him. Coming face to face with the Pope propped up in
+his bed, the loud tones on which he was protesting died in his throat,
+and he stood in silence on the threshold of the room.
+
+The Pope was the first to speak.
+
+"What is it you wish to say to me, my son?"
+
+The young man seemed to recover his self-possession, but without a
+genuflexion or even a bow of the head, and with a slightly defiant
+manner, he said, "My name is David Leone. They call me Rossi, because
+that was my mother's name, and they said I had no right to my father's.
+I am a Roman, and I have been two months abroad. For ten years I have
+worked for the people, and now I am denounced and betrayed to the
+police. Three days ago I was arrested on returning to Italy, and
+to-night by the help of friends I have escaped from the Carabineers. But
+every gate is closed against me, and I cannot get out of Rome. This is
+the Vatican, and the Vatican is sanctuary. Will you take me in?"
+
+The Pope looked at the Swiss Guard, and said in a tremulous voice,
+"Gentlemen, you will take this young man to your own quarters, and see
+that no Carabineer lays hand on him without my knowledge and consent."
+
+"Your Holiness!" protested the Cardinal Secretary, but the Pope raised
+his hand and silenced him.
+
+Rossi's defiant manner left him. "Wait," he said. "Before you decide to
+take me in you must know more about me, and what I am charged with. I am
+the Deputy Rossi who is said to have instigated the late riots. The
+warrant for my arrest accuses me of treason and an attempt on the person
+of the late King. It is false, but you must look at it for yourself.
+Here it is."
+
+So saying he plunged into his pocket for the paper, and then said, "It
+is gone! I remember now--I flung it at the feet of my betrayer."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Pope, still addressing the Swiss Guard, "if the
+civil authorities attempt to arrest this young man, you may tell them
+they can only do so by giving a written promise of safety for life and
+limb."
+
+Rossi's wild eyes began to melt. "You are very good," he said, "and I
+will not deceive you. Although I am innocent of the crime they charge me
+with, I have broken the law of God and of my country, and if you have
+any fear of the consequences you must turn me out while there is still
+time."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Pope, "instead of taking this young man to your
+quarters, let him be lodged in the empty apartment below my own, which
+was formerly occupied by the Secretary of State."
+
+Rossi broke down utterly and fell to his knees. The Pope raised two
+fingers and blessed him.
+
+"Go to your room and rest, my son, and God grant you a little repose."
+
+"Father!"
+
+By an impulse he could not resist, Rossi had risen from his knees, taken
+two or three steps forward, knelt again by the side of the bed, and put
+his lips to the Pope's hand.
+
+With wet eyes that gleamed under his grey brows the Pope followed the
+young man out until, surrounded by the Swiss Guard, he had passed from
+the room. Then he rose and turned into his private chapel for his early
+Mass.
+
+
+                                II
+
+Less than half-an-hour afterwards a rumour swept through the Vatican
+like the gust of whistling wind that goes before a storm. The Pope met
+it as he was coming from Mass.
+
+"What is it, Gaetanino?" he asked.
+
+"Something about an assassination, your Holiness," said the valet, and
+the Pope stood as if thunderstruck, for he thought of Rossi and the
+King.
+
+After a while the vague report became more definite. It was not the King
+but the Prime Minister who had been assassinated.
+
+The Pope's private room began to fill with pallid faces. The Cardinal
+Secretary was there, the Maestro di Camera, and at length the little
+Majordomo. By this time a special message had reached the Vatican from
+one of its watchers outside, and they were able to discuss the
+circumstances. The Prime Minister had been found dead in his official
+palace in the Piazza Navona. He had dined at the Quirinal and remained
+there for the opening of the State Ball, therefore he could not have
+reached the Palazzo Braschi before eleven or twelve o'clock. Two shots
+had been heard about midnight, and the body had been discovered in the
+early morning.
+
+The Pope listened and said nothing.
+
+The Cardinal Secretary told another story. The Deputy Rossi, who had
+been brought to Rome by the train from Genoa, which arrived punctually
+at 11.45, had been rescued by a gang of ruffians at the station. The
+rescue had been prearranged, and the man had jumped into a coupé and
+driven off at a gallop. The coupé had gone down the Via Nazionale, and a
+few minutes before twelve o'clock it had been seen to turn into the
+Piazza Navona. It was by the accident that the Carabineers had followed
+in pursuit of the escaped prisoner that the murder had been discovered.
+
+Still the Pope said nothing. But his head was held down, and his soul
+was full of trouble.
+
+The group of prelates looked into each other's faces with suspicion and
+terror. A storm was gathering round the Vatican, and who could say what
+would happen if the Pope persisted in the course he had just taken? At
+length the Cardinal Secretary approached his Holiness, and said, with a
+deep genuflexion:
+
+"Holy Father, I fear the tenderness of your fatherly heart has betrayed
+you into sheltering a criminal. It is not merely that the man Rossi is a
+revolutionary accused of an attempt to overthrow the Government of his
+country. There cannot be a question that he is a murderer also, and if
+you keep him here you will violate the law of every civilised State and
+expose yourself to the condemnation of the world."
+
+The Pope did not reply. Other words in another voice were drumming in
+his ears with a new and terrible meaning: "I have broken the law of God
+and of my country, and if you have any fear of the consequences you must
+turn me out while there is still time."
+
+"Your Holiness will also remember," said the Cardinal Secretary, "that
+by the regulation of the civil authorities which guarantees to the Holy
+Father the rights of sovereignty, it is expressly stated that he holds
+no powers which are contrary to the laws of the State and of public
+order. Therefore to conceal and protect a criminal would be of itself to
+commit a crime, and God alone can say what the consequence might be to
+the Vatican and to the Church."
+
+"Oh, silence! silence!" cried the Pope, lifting a face full of
+suffering. "Leave me! leave me!"
+
+The Cardinal Secretary and his colleagues bowed to the Pope and backed
+out of the room. A moment afterwards the young Monsignor entered. He was
+bringing a newspaper in his hand, for as Cameriere Participante he was
+one of the Pope's readers.
+
+"Holy Father," he said in his nervous voice, "I bring you bad news."
+
+"What is it, my son?" said the Pope, with a pitiful expression.
+
+"The assassin of the Prime Minister turns out to be some one..."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Some one known to your Holiness."
+
+"Don't be afraid for the Holy Father.... Tell me, Monsignor."
+
+"It is a lady, your Holiness."
+
+"A lady?"
+
+"She has been arrested and has confessed."
+
+"Confessed?"
+
+"It is Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness. She shot the Prime Minister
+with a revolver, and her motive was revenge."
+
+The Pope lifted his head, and looked at the young Monsignor with an
+expression which no language can describe. Relief, joy, shame, and
+remorse were mingled in one flash on his broken and bankrupt face. He
+was silent for a moment, and then he said:
+
+"Say nothing of this to the young man in the room below. If he is in
+sanctuary let him also be in peace. Whatever he is to hear of the world
+without must come through me alone. Give that as my order to everybody.
+And may God who has had mercy on His servant be good to us all!"
+
+
+                                III
+
+In penance for the joy he had felt on learning that Roma, not Rossi, had
+assassinated the Minister, the Pope became her advocate in his own mind,
+and watched for an opportunity to save her. Every day for a week
+Monsignor Mario read the newspapers to the Pope that he might be fully
+abreast of what occurred.
+
+The first morning the journals merely reported the crime. The headless
+one with the fearful hands had stalked over the city in the middle of
+night in the shape of incarnate murder, and the citizens of Rome would
+awake to hear the news with consternation, horror, and shame.
+
+The evening journals contained obituary articles and appreciations of
+the dead man's character. He was the Richelieu of Italy, the chivalrous
+and devoted servant of his country, and one of the noblest figures of
+the age.
+
+"Extras" were published giving descriptions of the city under the first
+effects of the terrible news. Rome was literally draped in mourning. It
+was a forest of flags at half-mast. All public buildings, embassies,
+cafés, and places of public amusement were closed.
+
+The Pope was puzzled, and calling a member of his Noble Guard (it was
+the Count de Raymond) he sent him out into the city to see.
+
+When the Count de Raymond returned he told another story. The people,
+while deploring the crime, were not surprised at it. Baron Bonelli had
+refused to understand the wants of the nation. He had treated the people
+as slaves and shed their blood in the streets. Where such opinions were
+not openly expressed there was a gloomy silence. Groups could be seen
+under the great lamps in the Corso reading the evening papers. Sometimes
+a man would mount a chair in front of the Café Aragno and read aloud
+from the latest "extra." The crowd would listen, stand a moment, and
+then disperse.
+
+Next day the journals were full of the assassin. Many things were
+incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the
+right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great
+coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin,
+she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous
+intrigue, and her last victim had been her first friend.
+
+Once more the Pope was puzzled, and he sent out his Noble Guard again.
+The Count de Raymond returned to say that in corners of the cafés people
+spoke of the Baron as a dead dog, and said that if Donna Roma had killed
+him she did a good act, and God would reward her.
+
+Parliament opened after its Easter vacation, and the Count de Raymond
+was sent in plain clothes to its first sitting. The galleries and
+lobbies were filled, and there was suppressed but intense excitement.
+Rumour said the Government had resigned, and that the King, who was in
+despair, had been unable to form another ministry. A leader of the Right
+was heard to say that Donna Roma had done more for the people in a day
+than the Opposition could have accomplished in a hundred years. "If
+these agitators on the Left have any qualities of statesmen, now's their
+time to show it," he said. But what would Parliament say about the dead
+man? The President entered and took his chair. After the minutes had
+been read there was a moment's silence. Not a word was uttered, not a
+voice was raised. "Let us pass on to the next business," said the
+President.
+
+The assizes happened to be in session, and the opening of the trial was
+reported on the following day. When the prisoner was asked whether she
+pleaded guilty or not guilty, she answered guilty. The court, however,
+requested her to reconsider her plea, assigned her an advocate, and went
+through all the formalities of an ordinary case. A principal object of
+the prosecution had been to discover accomplices, but the prisoner
+continued to protest that she had none. She neither denied nor
+extenuated the crime, and she acknowledged it to have been premeditated.
+When asked to state her motive, she said it was hatred of the methods
+adopted by the dead man to wipe out political opponents, and a
+determination to send to the bar of the Almighty one who had placed
+himself above human law.
+
+The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the next day's hearing of the trial,
+and when the Count de Raymond came back his eyes were red and swollen.
+The beautiful and melancholy face of the young prisoner sitting behind
+iron bars that were like the cage of a wild beast had made a pitiful
+impression. Her calmness, her total self-abandonment, the sublime
+feelings that even in the presence of a charge of murder expressed
+themselves in her sweet voice, had moved everybody to tears. Then the
+prosecution had been so debasing in its questions about her visits to
+the Vatican and in its efforts to implicate David Rossi by means of a
+letter addressed to the prison at Milan.
+
+"But _I_ did it," the young prisoner had said again and again with
+steadfast fervour, only deepening to alarm when evidence concerning the
+revolver seemed to endanger the absent man.
+
+There had been some conflicting medical evidence as to whether the death
+could have been due to a pistol-shot, and certain astounding disclosures
+of police corruption and prison tyranny. A judge of the Military
+Tribunal had given startling proof of the Prime Minister's complicity in
+an infamous case, ending with the suicide of the prisoner's man-servant
+in open court, and an old Garibaldian among the people, packed away
+beyond the barrier, had cried out:
+
+"He was just a black-dyed villain, and God Almighty save us from such
+another."
+
+This laying bare of the machinery of statecraft had made a great
+sensation, and even the judge on the bench, being a just man, had
+lowered his eyes before the accused at the bar. As the prisoner was
+taken back to prison past the Castle of St. Angelo and the Military
+College, the crowds had cheered her again and again, and sitting in an
+open car with a Carabineer by her side, she had looked frightened at
+finding herself a heroine where she had expected to be a malefactor.
+
+"Poor child!" said the Pope. "But who knows the hidden designs of
+Providence, whether manifest in the path of His justice or His mercy?"
+
+Next day, when the Noble Guard returned to the Vatican, he could
+scarcely speak to tell his story. The trial had ended and the prisoner
+was condemned. Reluctantly the judge had sentenced her to life-long
+imprisonment. She had preserved the same lofty demeanour to the last,
+thanked her advocate, and even the judge and jury, and said they had
+taken the only true view of her act. Her great violet eyes were
+extraordinarily dilated and dark, and her face was transparent as
+alabaster.
+
+"You have done right to condemn me," she said, "but God, who sees all,
+will weigh my conduct in the scale of His holy justice." The entire
+court was in tears.
+
+When the time came to remove the lady the crowd ran out to see the last
+of her. There was a van and a company of Carabineers, but the emotion of
+the people mastered them and they tried to rescue the prisoner. This was
+near the Castle of St. Angelo, and the gates being open, the military
+rushed her into the fortress for safety. She was there now.
+
+The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the Castle of St. Angelo to inquire
+after the prisoner, and the young soldier brought back a pitiful tale.
+Donna Roma was ill and could not be removed at present. Her nervous
+system was completely exhausted and nobody could say what might not
+occur. Nevertheless, she was very brave, very sweet and very cheerful,
+and everybody was in love with her. The Castle was occupied by a brigade
+of Military Engineers, and the Major in command was a good Catholic and
+a faithful son of the Holy Father. He had lodged his prisoner in the
+bright apartments that used to be the Pope's, although the prison for
+persons committed by the Penal Tribunals was a dark cell in the middle
+of the Maschio. She had expressed a desire to be received into the
+Church, and had asked the Major to send for Father Pifferi.
+
+"Go back and tell the Major that I will go instead," said the Pope.
+
+"Holy Father!"
+
+"Ask him if the secret passage between the Vatican and the Castle of St.
+Angelo can still be opened up."
+
+Count de Raymond returned to say that the Major would open it. In the
+present political crisis no one could tell what a day would bring forth,
+and in any case he would take the consequences.
+
+The Noble Guard held four unopened letters in his hand. They were
+addressed to the Honourable Rossi in a woman's writing, and had been
+re-addressed to the Chamber of Deputies from London, Paris, and Berlin.
+
+"An official from the post-office gave me these letters, and asked me if
+I could deliver them," said the young soldier.
+
+"My son, my son, didn't you see that it was a trap?" said the Pope. "But
+no matter! Give them to me. We must leave all to the Holy Spirit."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+"The dress of a simple priest to-day, Gaetanino," said the Pope, when
+his valet came to his bedroom on the following morning.
+
+After Mass and the usual visit of the Cardinal Secretary, the Pope
+called for the young Count de Raymond.
+
+"We'll go down to our guest first," he said, putting into the
+side-pocket of his cassock the letters which the Noble Guard had given
+him.
+
+They found Rossi sitting in a large, sparsely furnished room, by an
+almost untouched breakfast. He lifted his head when he heard steps, and
+rose as the Pope entered. His pale face was a picture of despair.
+"Something has died in him," thought the Pope, and an aching sadness,
+which had been gnawing at his heart for days, returned.
+
+"They make you comfortable in this old place, my son?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness."
+
+"And you have everything you wish for?"
+
+"More than I deserve, your Holiness."
+
+"You have suffered, my son. But, in the providence of God, who knows
+what may happen yet? Don't lose heart. Take an old man's word for
+it--life is worth living. The Holy Father has found it so in spite of
+many sorrows."
+
+A kind of pitying smile passed over the young man's miserable face.
+"Mine is a sorrow your Holiness can know nothing about--I have lost my
+wife," he said.
+
+There was a moment of silence. Then the Pope said in a voice that shook
+slightly, "You don't mean that your wife _is_ dead, but only...."
+
+"Only," said Rossi, with a curl of the lip, "that it was she who
+betrayed me."
+
+"It's hard, my son, very hard. But who knows what influences...."
+
+"Curse them! Curse the influences, whatever they were, which caused a
+wife to betray her husband."
+
+The Pope, who was sitting with both hands on the knob of his stick,
+quivered perceptibly. "My son," he said, "you have much to justify you,
+and it is not for me to gainsay you altogether. But God rules His world
+in righteousness, and if this had not happened, who knows but what worse
+might have befallen you?"
+
+"Nothing worse _could_ have befallen me, your Holiness."
+
+There was another moment of silence, and then the Pope said, "Yes, I
+understand what it is to build one's faith on a human foundation. The
+foundation fails, and then the heart sinks, the soul totters. But bad as
+this ... this betrayal is, you do very wrong if you refuse to see that
+it saved you from the consequences--the awful consequences before God
+and man--of your intended conduct."
+
+"What conduct, your Holiness?"
+
+"The terrible conduct which formed the basis of your plans on returning
+to Rome."
+
+"You mean ... what the newspapers talked about?"
+
+The Pope bent his head.
+
+"A conspiracy to kill the King?"
+
+Again the Pope bent his head.
+
+"You believed that, your Holiness?"
+
+"Unhappily I was compelled to do so."
+
+"And she ... do you suppose she believed it?"
+
+"She believed you were engaged in conspiracies. There was nothing else
+she could believe in the light of what you had said and written."
+
+After a moment Rossi began to laugh. "And yet you say the world is ruled
+in righteousness!" he said.
+
+The Pope's face was whitening. "Do you tell me it was a mistake?" he
+asked.
+
+"Indeed I do. The only conspiracies I was engaged in were conspiracies
+to found associations of freedom which had been forbidden by the
+tyrannical new decree. But what matter? If an error like that can lead
+to results like these, what's the good of trying?" And he laughed again.
+
+The Pope, who was deeply moved, looked up into the young man's tortured
+face, without knowing that his own tears were streaming. Old memories
+were astir within him, and he was carried back into the past of his own
+life. He was remembering the days when he too had reeled beneath the
+blow of a terrible fate, and all his hopes and beliefs had been mown
+down as by a scythe. But God had been good. His gracious hand had healed
+the wound and made all things well.
+
+Taking the letters from the pocket of his cassock, the Pope laid them on
+the table.
+
+"These are for you, my son," he said, and then he turned away.
+
+Going down the narrow roofed-in passage to the Castle of St. Angelo,
+with shafts of morning sunshine slanting through its lancet windows, and
+the voices of children at play coming up from the street below, the Pope
+told himself that he must be severe with Roma. The only thing
+irremediable in all that had happened was the assassination, and though
+that, in God's hands, had teen turned to the good of the people, yet it
+raised a barrier between two unhappy souls that might never in this life
+be passed.
+
+"Poor child! Poor flower broken by the storms of fate! But I must
+reprove her. Before I give her the Blessed Sacrament she must confess
+and show a full contrition."
+
+
+                                V
+
+Roma was lying on a bed-chair in the frescoed room which had once been
+the Pope's salon. She was wearing a white dress, and it made her
+unruffled brow look like alabaster. Her large eyes, which were closed,
+had blue rings on the lids, and her mouth, once so rosy and so gay with
+laughter and light words, was colourless as marble.
+
+A lay Sister, in a black and white habit, moved softly about the room.
+It was Bruno's widow, Elena. She was the Sister Angelica who had entered
+the convent of the Sacred Heart. It was there she had buried her own
+trouble until, hearing of Roma's, she had begged to be allowed to nurse
+her.
+
+A door opened and an officer, in a mixed light and dark blue uniform,
+entered. It was the doctor of the regiment.
+
+"Sleeping, Sister?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Poor soul! Let her sleep as long as she can."
+
+But at that moment Roma opened her eyes, and held out her white hand.
+"Is it you, doctor?" she said with a smile.
+
+"And how is my patient this morning? Better, I think."
+
+"Much better. In fact, I feel no pain at all to-day."
+
+"She never does. She never feels anything if you believe her," said
+Elena.
+
+"Tired, Sister?"
+
+"Why should I be tired, I wonder?"
+
+"Sitting up all night with me. Your big burden is very troublesome,
+doctor."
+
+"Tut! You mustn't talk like that."
+
+"If all jailors were as good to their prisoners as mine are to me!"
+
+"And if all prisoners were as good to their jailors.... But I forbid
+that subject. I absolutely forbid it.... Ah, here comes your breakfast."
+
+A soldier in uniform trousers and a linen jacket and cap had come in
+with a tray on which there was a smoking basin.
+
+"You are from Sicily, aren't you, cook?"
+
+"Yes, from Sicily, Signora."
+
+Roma leaned back to Elena and said in an undertone, "That's where _he_
+has gone to, isn't it?"
+
+"Some people say so, but nobody knows where he is."
+
+"No news yet?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"Sicily must be a lovely place, cook?"
+
+"It is, Signora. It's the loveliest place in the world."
+
+"Last night I had such a beautiful dream, doctor. Somebody who had been
+away came back, and all the church bells rang for him. I thought it was
+noon, I remember, for the big gun of the Castle had just been fired. But
+when I awoke it was quite dark, yet there was really something going on,
+for I could hear people singing in the city and bands of music playing."
+
+"Ah, that ... I'm afraid that was only ... only the sequel to the Prime
+Minister's funeral. Rome is not sorry that Baron Bonelli is dead, and
+last night a procession of men and women marched along the streets with
+songs and hymns, as on a night of carnival.... But I must be going.
+Sister, see she takes her medicine as usual, and lies quiet and does not
+excite herself. Good-morning!"
+
+When the cook also had gone Roma raised herself on her elbow. "Did you
+hear what the doctor said, Elena? The death of the Baron has altered
+everything. It was really no crime to kill that man, and by rights
+nobody should suffer for it."
+
+"Donna Roma!"
+
+"Ah! no, I didn't mean that. Yet why shouldn't I? And why shouldn't you?
+Didn't he kill Bruno and our poor dear little Joseph?..."
+
+Elena was crying. "I'm not thinking of myself," she said.
+
+"I'm not thinking of myself, either," said Roma, "and I'm not going to
+give in at the eleventh hour. But David Rossi will come back. I am sure
+he will, and then..."
+
+"And then... _you_, Donna Roma?"
+
+"I?"
+
+Roma fell back on her bed-chair. "No, _I_ shall not be here, that's
+true. It's a pity, but after all it makes no difference. And if David
+Rossi has to come back... over... over my dead body, as you might say...
+who is to know... or care... except perhaps... some day... when he..."
+
+Roma struggled on, but Elena broke down utterly.
+
+The door opened again, and a sentry on guard outside announced the
+English Ambassador.
+
+"Ah! Sir Evelyn, is it you?"
+
+The English gentleman held down his head. "Forgive me if I intrude upon
+your trouble, Donna Roma."
+
+"Sit! Give his Excellency a chair, Sister.... Times have changed since I
+knew you first, Sir Evelyn. I was a thoughtless, happy woman in those
+days. But they are gone, and I do not regret them."
+
+"You are very brave, Donna Roma. Too brave. Only for that your trial
+must have gone differently."
+
+"It's all for the best, your Excellency. But was there anything you
+wished to say to me?"
+
+"Yes. The report of your condemnation has been received with deep
+emotion in my country, and as the evidence given in court showed that
+you were born in England, I feel that I am justified in intervening on
+your behalf."
+
+"But I don't want you to intervene, dear friend."
+
+"Donna Roma, it is still possible to appeal to the Court of Cassation."
+
+"I have no desire to appeal--there is nothing to appeal against."
+
+"There might be much if you could be brought to see that--that.... In
+fact so many pleas are possible, and all of them good ones. For
+instance...."
+
+The Englishman dropped both eyes and voice.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Donna Roma, you were tried and condemned on a charge of going to the
+Prime Minister's cabinet with the intention of killing him, and of
+killing him there. But if it could be proved that _he_ came to _your_
+house, and that, to shield _another person not now in the hands of
+justice_, you...."
+
+"What are you saying, your Excellency?"
+
+"Look!"
+
+The Englishman had drawn from his breast-pocket a crumpled sheet of
+white paper.
+
+"Last night I visited your deserted apartment in the Piazza Navona, and
+there, amid other signs that were clear and convincing--the marks of two
+pistol-shots--I found--this."
+
+"What is it? Give it to me," cried Roma. She almost snatched it out of
+his hand. It was the warrant which Rossi had rolled up and flung away.
+
+"How did that warrant come there, Donna Roma? Who brought it? What other
+person was with you in those rooms that night? What does he say to this
+evidence of his presence on the scene of the crime?"
+
+Roma did not speak immediately. She continued to look at the Englishman
+with her large mournful eyes until his own eyes fell, and there was no
+sound but the crinkling of the warrant in her hand. Then she said, very
+softly:
+
+"Excellency, you must please let me keep this paper. As you see, it is
+nothing in itself, and without my testimony you can make nothing of it.
+I shall never appeal against my sentence, and therefore it can be no
+good to me or to anybody. But it may prove to be a danger to somebody
+else--somebody whose name should be above reproach."
+
+She stretched out a sweet white hand and touched his own.
+
+"Haven't I done enough wrong to him already, and isn't this paper a
+proof of it? Must I go farther still, and bring him to the galleys? You
+cannot wish it. Don't you see that the police would have to deny
+everything? And I--if you forced me to speak, I should deny everything
+also."
+
+A gentle, brave dauntlessness rang in her voice, and the Englishman
+could with difficulty keep back his tears.
+
+"Excellency, Sir Evelyn, friend ... tell me I may keep the paper."
+
+The Englishman rose and turned his head away. "It is yours, Donna
+Roma--you must do as you please with it."
+
+She kissed the paper and put it in her breast.
+
+"Good-bye, dear friend."
+
+He tried to answer, "Good-bye! God bless you!" But the words would not
+come.
+
+"The Major!" said the voice of the sentry. The Commandant of the Castle
+came into the room.
+
+"Ah! Major!" cried Roma.
+
+"The doctor tells me you are better this morning."
+
+"Much better."
+
+"It is my duty--my unhappy duty--to bring you a painful message. The
+authorities, thinking your presence in Rome a cause of excitement to the
+populace, have decided to send you to Viterbo."
+
+"When is it to be, Major?"
+
+"To-morrow about mid-day."
+
+"I shall be quite-ready. But have you sent for Father Pifferi?"
+
+"I came to speak about that also. Sister, return to your room for the
+present."
+
+Elena went out.
+
+"Donna Roma, a great personage has asked to see you in the place of the
+Father General. He will come in through that doorway. It leads by a
+passage long sealed up to the apartment of the Pope in the Vatican, and
+he who comes and goes by it must be unknown and unseen by any one except
+yourself."
+
+"Major!"
+
+But the Major was going hurriedly out of the room. A moment afterwards
+the Pope entered in his black cassock as a priest.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+"Rise, my child! God knows if the Holy Father ought to give you his
+blessing. Far be it from me to add bitterness to your remorse in finding
+yourself in this place and guilty of this sin, but.... Are we alone?"
+
+"Quite alone, your Holiness."
+
+"Sit down. The Holy Father will sit beside you."
+
+He was trying to be severe with her, but it was very difficult. His hand
+strayed down to hers, and at every hard word there was a tender
+pressure.
+
+"The Baron is dead. He was a cruel, heartless tyrant, without mercy or
+humanity. His death has altered everything, and the load that lay on
+Italy has been lifted away. But none the less you did wrong, very, very
+wrong, and by the mad act of a moment.... My child! My poor child! God
+help you! God help this little lost one!"
+
+He patted the hand that lay in his as if he had been quieting a crying
+child.
+
+"My child, I cannot save you from the consequences of your sin. You must
+go where I cannot follow you. But since the Holy Father induced you to
+make that cruel denunciation--but let us be calm--let us be calm!"
+
+Roma was perfectly calm, but the Pope could barely control himself.
+
+"I see now that we made a mistake. The conspiracies of David Rossi were
+not criminal, and his aims were not unrighteous. I have been instructed
+on this subject, and now I see everything in a different light. Yes, a
+great mistake, although a natural and excusable one, and if that was the
+cause and origin of this terrible event, the Holy Father who led you so
+far...."
+
+"Your Holiness!"
+
+"Nay, you must not expect too much. It is little I can do. But now that
+governments are falling and parliaments are being dissolved, David Rossi
+must come back...."
+
+Roma made a cry of joy, and the Pope raised a warning finger.
+
+"Ah, you must never think of that, my child--you must never think of it.
+It is a pity, a great pity, but, alas! it cannot be otherwise now. If
+your husband is to come back, his name must be kept clean and
+unblemished, and you can never rejoin him whatever happens."
+
+Dizzy with a sense of the Pope's awful error, Roma turned away her face.
+
+"But if you tell me that what you did was due to the compulsion that was
+put upon you to denounce David Rossi, he must come forward, whatever the
+consequences, to defend you and plead for you. He must say to the world
+and to your judges: 'It is true that this poor lady has committed a
+crime--an awful crime, such as shuts the guilty one out of the fold of
+the human family--but she was provoked to it by a falsehood. The dead
+man deceived her. He was her betrayer, her assassin, for he tried to
+slay her soul. Therefore you will have mercy upon her as you hope for
+mercy, you will forgive her as you hope for forgiveness, and in the
+peace and penance of some holy convent she will wipe out the past of her
+unhappy life as Mary wiped out her sins in the tears with which she
+washed her Master's feet.'"
+
+He had risen in the exaltation of his emotion, and raised one hand over
+his head, but Roma, in the toils of the terrible error, had dropped to
+her knees at his feet.
+
+"Oh, I cannot die with a lie on my lips. Holy Father, let me make my
+confession."
+
+A vague foreshadowing of the coming revelation seemed to light on the
+Pope, and he sat down again without a word. Mechanically he prepared to
+receive the penitent into the Church, questioning her, instructing her,
+calling on her to repeat the profession of faith, and finally baptizing
+her conditionally.
+
+"Baptism wipes out all your sins, my daughter," he said, "but if for
+your soul's comfort you wish to make a full confession before I give you
+the Blessed Sacrament...."
+
+"I do. I have wished it ever since the end of my trial, and that was why
+I asked for Father Pifferi."
+
+"Then take care--accuse nobody else, my daughter."
+
+Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said:
+
+"Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court
+with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another."
+
+"My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet.
+
+There was a moment of painful silence, and then the Pope sat down again
+with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice:
+
+"Go on, my daughter."
+
+Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came
+to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her
+husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the
+incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out
+on her awful errand.
+
+"But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness,
+and then...."
+
+"In ... your own rooms?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Somebody else came afterwards."
+
+"Somebody else?"
+
+"A friend."
+
+"A ... friend?"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, and then put her hand into her breast and
+drew out the warrant.
+
+"This one," she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible.
+
+The Pope took the paper, and it rustled as he opened it. There was no
+other sound in the prison cell except the rasping noise of his rapid
+breathing.
+
+"David Leone! You don't mean to say--to imply...."
+
+The Pope's eyes wandered vaguely around, but they came back to the face
+at his feet, and he said:
+
+"No, no! You cannot mean that, my child. Tell me I have misunderstood
+you and come to a wrong conclusion."
+
+Roma did not reply. Her head sunk lower and lower, and seeing this, the
+Pope rose again, and standing over her he cried:
+
+"Tell me! Tell me, I command you! You wish me to believe that it was he,
+not you, who committed the crime! Out on you! out on you!"
+
+But having said this in a hoarse and angry voice, he passed his arm over
+his eyes as if to brush away the clouds that had gathered there, and
+muttered in a broken and feeble way, "O God, Thou knowest my
+foolishness. I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God! Hide not
+Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble."
+
+Roma was crying at the Pope's feet, and after a moment he became aware
+of it, and stooped to lift her up.
+
+"My child! My poor, poor child! You must bear with me. I am an old man
+now. Only a weak old man. My brain is confused. Things run together in
+it. But I understand. I think I understand."
+
+She rose and kissed his trembling hand. He was still holding the
+warrant.
+
+"Where did this paper come from?"
+
+"The English Ambassador brought it this morning. He had found it in our
+rooms in the Piazza Navona."
+
+"The place where the crime was committed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Pope straightened himself up, and said in a firm voice:
+
+"My daughter, you must permit me to keep this warrant."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Yes, yes! If I said before that your husband should come out and defend
+you, I say now that he shall come out and accuse himself."
+
+"Your Holiness!"
+
+"He shall go to the courts and say: 'This lady is innocent. She
+sacrificed herself to save my life. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for
+justice. Liberate her and arrest me.'"
+
+Roma had knelt again, and was fingering the skirt of the Pope's cassock.
+
+"But, Holy Father," she said, "there is something I have not told you.
+He who killed the Minister did so in self-defence...."
+
+"In self-defence!"
+
+"His act was an accident, and if it had not happened the Minister would
+have killed him, whereas I...."
+
+"In self-defence, you say?"
+
+"I am really guilty of the crime, because I intended to commit it."
+
+"But if it was done in self-defence it was no crime, and you must not
+and shall not suffer."
+
+Roma dropped the Pope's cassock and took hold of his hand.
+
+"Holy Father," she said, "how can I wish to live when he who loved me
+loves me no longer? I know quite well it is better that I should go, and
+that when he comes it should be all over. I dreamt of it last night,
+your Holiness. I thought my husband had come back and all the church
+bells were ringing. Only a dream, and perhaps you do not believe in such
+foolishness. But it was very sweet to think that if I could not live for
+my love I could die for him, and so wipe out everything."
+
+The Pope's white head was bent very low.
+
+"And then I cannot suffer very much, your Holiness. I am ill, really
+ill, and my trouble will not last very long. And if God is using what
+has happened to bring out all things well, perhaps He intends that I
+shall give myself in the place of some one who is better and more
+necessary."
+
+The Pope could bear no more. His lip quivered and his voice shook, but
+his eyes were shining.
+
+"It is not for me to gainsay you, my daughter. I came here to see Mary
+Magdalene, and find the soul of the saints themselves. The world's
+judgment on a woman who has sinned is merciless and cruel, but if David
+Rossi is worthy of his mother and his name, he will come back to you on
+his knees."
+
+"Bless me, your Holiness."
+
+"I bless you, my daughter. May He in whose hands are the issues of life
+and death cover your transgressions with the vast wings of His gracious
+pardon and bring you joy and peace."
+
+The Pope went out with a brightening face, and Roma staggered back to
+her couch.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+David Rossi sat all day in his room in the Vatican reading the letters
+the Pope had left with him. They were the letters which Roma had
+addressed to him in London, Paris, and Berlin.
+
+He read them again and again, and save for the tick of the clock there
+was no sound in the large gaunt room but his stifled moans. The most
+violently opposed feelings possessed him, and he hardly knew whether he
+was glad or sorry that thus late, and after a cruel fate had fallen,
+these messages of peace had reached him.
+
+A spirit seemed to emanate from the thin transparent sheets of paper,
+and it penetrated his whole being. As he read the words, now gay, now
+sad, now glowing with joy, now wailing with sorrow, a world of fond and
+tender emotions swelled up and blotted out all darker passions.
+
+He could see Roma herself, and his heart throbbed as of old under the
+influence of her sweet indescribable presence. Those dear features,
+those marvellous eyes, that voice, that smile--they swam up and tortured
+him with love and with remorse.
+
+How bravely she had withstood his enemies! To think of that young,
+ardent, brilliant, happy life sacrificed to his sufferings! And then her
+poor, pathetic secret--how sweet and honest she had been about it! Only
+a pure and courageous woman could have done as she did; while he, in his
+blundering passion and mad wrath, had behaved like a foul-minded tyrant
+and a coward. What loud protestations of heroic love he had made when he
+imagined the matter affected another man! And when he had learned that
+it concerned himself, how his vaunted constancy had failed him, and he
+had cursed the poor soul whose confidence he had invited!
+
+But above all the pangs of love and remorse, Rossi was conscious of an
+overpowering despair. It took the form of revolt against God, who had
+allowed such a blind and cruel sequence of events to wreck the lives of
+two of His innocent children. When he took refuge in the Vatican he must
+have been clinging to some waif and stray of hope. It was gone now, and
+there was no use struggling. The nothingness of man against the
+pitilessness of fate made all the world a blank.
+
+Rossi had rung the bell to ask for an audience with his Holiness when
+the door opened and the Pope himself entered.
+
+"Holy Father, I wished to speak to you."
+
+"What about, my son?"
+
+"Myself. Now I see that I did wrong to ask for your protection. You
+thought I was innocent, and there was something I did not tell you. When
+I said I was guilty before God and man, you did not understand what I
+meant. Holy Father, I meant that I had committed murder."
+
+The Pope did not answer, and Rossi went on, his voice ringing with the
+baleful sentiments which possessed him.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Holy Father, I hardly thought of it myself. What
+I had done was partly in self-defence, and I did not consider it a
+crime. And then, he whose life I had taken was an evil man, with the
+devil's dues in him, and I felt no more remorse after killing him than
+if I had trodden on a poisonous adder. But now I see things differently.
+In coming here I exposed you to danger at the hands of the State. I ask
+your pardon, and I beg you to let me go."
+
+"Where will you go to?"
+
+"Anywhere--nowhere--I don't know yet."
+
+The Pope looked at the young face, cut deep with lines of despair, and
+his heart yearned over it.
+
+"Sit down, my son. Let us think. Though you did not tell me of the
+assassination, I soon knew all about it.... Partly in self-defence, you
+say?"
+
+"That is so, but I do not urge it as an excuse. And if I did, who else
+knows anything about it?"
+
+"Is there nobody who knows?"
+
+"One, perhaps. But it is my wife, and she could have no interest in
+saving me now, even if I wished to be saved.... I have read her
+letters."
+
+"If I were to tell you it is not so, my son--that your wife is still
+ready to sacrifice herself for your safety...."
+
+"But that is impossible, your Holiness. There are so many things you do
+not know."
+
+"If I were to tell you that I have just seen her, and, notwithstanding
+your want of faith in her, she still has faith in you...."
+
+The deep lines of despair began to pass from Rossi's face, and he made a
+cry of joy.
+
+"If I were to say that she loves you, and would give her life for
+you...."
+
+"Is it possible? Do you tell me that? In spite of everything? And
+she--where is she? Let me go to her. Holy Father, if you only knew! I'll
+go and beg her pardon. I cursed her! Yes, it is true that in my blind,
+mad passion I.... But let me go back to her on my knees. The rest of my
+life spent at her feet will not be enough to wipe out my fault."
+
+"Stay, my son. You shall see her presently."
+
+"Can it be possible that I shall see her? I thought I should never see
+her again; but I counted without God. Ah! God is good after all. And
+you, Holy Father, you are good too. I will beg her forgiveness, and she
+will forgive me. Then we'll fly away somewhere--we'll escape to Africa,
+India, anywhere. We'll snatch a few years of happiness, and what more
+has anybody a right to expect in this miserable world?"
+
+Exalted in the light of his imaginary future, he seemed to forget
+everything else--his crime, his work, his people.
+
+"Is she at home still?"
+
+"She is only a few paces from this place, my son."
+
+"Only a few paces! Oh, let me not lose a moment more. Where is she?"
+
+"In the Castle of St. Angelo," said the Pope.
+
+A dark cloud crossed Rossi's beaming face and his mouth opened as if to
+emit a startling cry.
+
+"In ... in prison?"
+
+The Pope bowed.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"The assassination of the Minister."
+
+"Roma?... But what a fool I was not to think of it as a thing that might
+happen! I left her with the dead man. Who was to believe her when she
+denied that she had killed him?"
+
+"She did not deny it. She avowed it."
+
+"Avowed it? She said that she had...."
+
+The Pope bowed again.
+
+"Then ... then it was ... was it to shield me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Rossi's eyes grew moist. He was like another man.
+
+"But the court ... surely no court will believe her."
+
+"She has been tried and sentenced, my son."
+
+"Sentenced? Do you say sentenced? For a crime she did not commit? And to
+shield me? Holy Father, would you believe that the last words I spoke to
+that woman ... but she is an angel. The authorities must be mad, though.
+Did nobody think of me? Didn't it occur to any one that I had been there
+that night?"
+
+"There was only one piece of evidence connecting you with the scene of
+the crime, my son. It was this."
+
+The Pope drew from his breast the warrant he had taken from Roma.
+
+"_She_ had it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Rossi's emotions whirled within him in a kind of hurricane. The despair
+which had clamoured so loud looked mean and contemptible in the presence
+of the mighty passion which had put it to shame. But after a while his
+swimming eyes began to shine, and he said:
+
+"Holy Father, this paper belongs to me and you must permit me to keep
+it."
+
+"What do you intend to do, my son?"
+
+"There is only one thing to do now."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"_To save her._"
+
+There was no need to ask how. The Pope understood, and his breast
+throbbed and swelled. But now that he had accomplished what he came for,
+now that he had awakened the sleeping soul and given it hope and faith
+and courage to face justice, and even death if need be, the Pope became
+suddenly conscious of a feeling in his own heart which he struggled in
+vain to suppress.
+
+"Far be it from me to excuse a crime, my son, but the merciful God who
+employs our poor passions to His own great purposes has used your acts
+to great ends. The world is trembling on the verge of unknown events and
+nobody knows what a day may bring forth. Let us wait a while."
+
+Rossi shook his head.
+
+"It is true that a crime will be the same to-morrow as to-day, but the
+dead man was a tyrant, a ferocious tyrant, and if he forced you in
+self-defence..."
+
+Again Rossi shook his head, but still the Pope struggled on.
+
+"You have your own life to think about, my son, and who knows but in
+God's good service..."
+
+"Let me go."
+
+"You intend to give yourself up?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Pope could say no more. He rose to his feet. His saintly face was
+full of a dumb yearning love and pride, which his tongue might never
+tell. He thought of his years of dark searching, ending at length in
+this meeting and farewell, and an impulse came to him to clasp the young
+man to his swelling and throbbing breast. But after a moment, with
+something of his old courageous calm of voice, he said:
+
+"I am not surprised at your decision, my son. It is worthy of your blood
+and name. And now that we are parting for the last time, I could wish to
+tell you something."
+
+David Rossi did not speak.
+
+"I knew your mother, my son."
+
+"My mother?"
+
+The Pope bowed and smiled.
+
+"She was a great soul, too, and she suffered terribly. Such are the ways
+of God."
+
+Still Rossi did not speak. He was looking steadfastly into the Pope's
+quivering face and making an effort to control himself.
+
+The Pope's voice shook and his lip trembled.
+
+"Naturally, you think ill of your father, knowing how much your mother
+suffered. Isn't that so?"
+
+Rossi put one hand to his forehead as if to steady his reeling brain,
+and said, "Who am I to think ill of any one?"
+
+The Pope smiled again, a timid smile.
+
+"David...."
+
+Rossi caught his breath.
+
+"If, in the providence of God, you were to meet your father somewhere,
+and he held out his hand to you, would you ... wherever you met and
+whatever he might be ... would you _shake hands with him_?"
+
+"Yes," said Rossi; "if I were a King on his throne, and he were the
+lowest convict at the galleys."
+
+The Pope fetched a long breath, took a step forward, and silently held
+out his hand. At the next moment the young man and the old Pope were
+hand to hand and eye to eye.
+
+They tried to speak and could not.
+
+"Farewell!" said the Pope in a choking voice, and turning away he
+tottered out of the room.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+The doctor of the Engineers, not entirely satisfied with his diagnosis
+of Roma's illness, prescribed a remedy of unfailing virtue--hope. It was
+a happy treatment. The past of her life seemed to have disappeared from
+her consciousness and she lived entirely in the future. It was always
+shining in her eyes like a beautiful sunrise.
+
+The sunrise Roma saw was beyond the veil of this life, but the good
+souls about her knew nothing of that. They brought every piece of
+worldly intelligence that was likely to be good news to her. By this
+time they imagined they knew where her heart lay, and such happiness was
+in her white face when as soldiers of the King they whispered treason
+that they thought themselves rewarded.
+
+They told her of an attempted attack on the Vatican, with all its
+results and consequences--army disorganised, the Borgo Barracks shut up,
+soldiers wearing cockades and marching arm in arm, the Government
+helpless and the Quirinal in despair.
+
+"I'm sorry for the young King," she said, "but still...."
+
+It was the higher power working with blind instruments. Rossi would come
+back. His hopes, so nearly laid waste, would at length be realised. And
+if, as she had told Elena, he had to return over her own dead body, so
+to speak, there would be justice even in that. It would be pitiful, but
+it would be glorious also. There were mysteries in life and death, and
+this was one of them.
+
+She was as gentle and humble as ever, but every hour she grew more
+restless. This conveyed to her guards the idea that she was expecting
+something. Notwithstanding her plea of guilty, they thought perhaps she
+was looking for her liberty out of the prevailing turmoil.
+
+"I will be very good and do everything you wish, doctor. But don't
+forget to ask the Prefect to let me stay in Rome over to-morrow. And,
+Sister, do please remember to waken me early in the morning, because I'm
+certain that something is going to happen. I've dreamt of it three
+times, you know."
+
+"A pity!" thought the doctor. "Governments may fall and even dynasties
+may disappear, but judicial authorities remain the same as ever, and the
+judgment of the court must be carried out."
+
+Nevertheless he would speak to the Prefect. He would say that in the
+prisoner's present condition the journey to Viterbo might have serious
+consequences. As he was setting out on this errand early the following
+morning, he met Elena in the anteroom, and heard that Roma was paying
+the most minute attention to the making of her toilet.
+
+"Strange! You would think she was expecting some one," said Elena.
+
+"She is, too," said the doctor. "And he is a visitor who will not keep
+her long."
+
+The soldier who brought Roma her breakfast that morning brought
+something else that she found infinitely more appetising. Rossi had
+returned to Rome! One of the men below had seen him in the street last
+night. He was going in the direction of the _Piazza_ Navona, and nobody
+was attempting to arrest him.
+
+Roma's eyes flashed like stars, and she sent down a message to the
+Major, asking to be allowed to see the soldier who had seen Rossi.
+
+He was a big ungainly fellow, but in Roma's eyes who shall say how
+beautiful? She asked him a hundred questions. His dense head was utterly
+bewildered.
+
+The doctor came back with a smiling face. The Prefect had agreed to
+postpone indefinitely the transfer of their prisoner to the
+penitentiary. The good man thought she would be very grateful.
+
+"Ah, indefinitely? I only wished to remain over to-day! After that I
+shall be quite ready."
+
+But the doctor brought another piece of news which threw her into the
+wildest excitement. Both Senate and Chamber of Deputies had been
+convoked late last night for an early hour this morning. Rumour said
+they were to receive an urgent message from the King. There was the
+greatest commotion in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament, and
+the public tribunes were densely crowded. The doctor himself had
+obtained a card for the Chamber, but he was unable to get beyond the
+corridors. Nevertheless, the doors being open owing to the heat and
+crush, he had heard something. Vaguely, for five minutes, he had heard
+one of their great speakers.
+
+"Was it ... was it, perhaps...."
+
+"It was."
+
+Again the big eyes flashed like stars.
+
+"You heard him speak?"
+
+"I heard his voice at all events."
+
+"It's a wonderful voice, isn't it? And you really heard him? Can it be
+possible?"
+
+Elena, the sad figure in the background of these bright pathetic scenes,
+thought Roma was hoping for a reconciliation with Rossi. She hinted as
+much, and then the fierce joy in the white face faded away.
+
+"Ah, no! I'm not thinking of that, Elena."
+
+Her love was too large for personal thoughts. It had risen higher than
+any selfish expectations.
+
+They helped her on to the loggia. The day was warm, and the fresh air
+would do her good. She looked out over the city with a loving gaze,
+first towards the Piazza Navona, then towards the tower of Monte
+Citorio, and last of all towards Trinità de' Monti and the House of the
+Four Winds. But she was seeing things as they would be when she was
+gone, not to Viterbo, but on a longer journey.
+
+"Elena?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Do you think he will ever learn the truth?"
+
+"About the denunciation?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should think he is certain to do so."
+
+"Why I did it, and what tempted me, and ... and everything?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, everything."
+
+"Do you think he will think kindly of me then, and forgive me and be
+merciful?"
+
+"I am sure he will."
+
+A mysterious glow came into the pallid face.
+
+"Even if he never learns the truth here, he will learn it hereafter,
+won't he? Don't you believe in that, Elena--that the dead know all?"
+
+"If I didn't, how could I bear to think of Bruno?"
+
+"True. How selfish I am! I hadn't thought of that. We are in the same
+case in some things, Elena."
+
+The future was shining in the brilliant eyes with the radiance of an
+unseen sunrise.
+
+"Dear Elena?"
+
+"Ye-s."
+
+"Do you think it will seem long to wait until he comes?"
+
+"Don't talk like that, Donna Roma."
+
+"Why not? It's only a little sooner or later, you know. Will it?"
+
+Elena had turned aside, and Roma answered herself.
+
+"_I_ don't. I think it will pass like a dream--like going to bed at
+night and awaking in the morning. And then both together--there."
+
+She took a long deep breath of unutterable joy.
+
+"Oh," she said, "that I may sleep until he comes--knowing all, forgiving
+everything, loving me the same as before, and every cruel thought dead
+and gone and forgotten."
+
+She asked for pen and paper and wrote a letter to Rossi:
+
+    "DEAREST,--I hear the good news, just as I am on the point of
+    leaving Rome, that you have returned to it, and I write to ask you
+    not to try to alter what has happened. Believe me, it is better
+    so. The world wants you, dear, and it doesn't want me any longer.
+    Therefore return to life, be brave and strong and great, and think
+    of me no more until we meet again.
+
+    "You will know by what I have done that what you thought was quite
+    unfounded. Whatever people say of me, you must always believe that
+    I loved you from the first, and that I have never loved anybody
+    but you.
+
+    "You were angry with me when we parted, but more than ever I love
+    you now. Don't think our love has been wasted. ''Tis better to
+    have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' How beautiful!
+                                                                  ROMA."
+
+Having written her letter, and put her lips to the enclosure, she
+addressed the envelope in a bold hand and with a brave flourish: "All'
+Illustrissimo Signor Davide Rossi, Camera dei Deputati."
+
+"You'll post this immediately I am gone, Sister," she said.
+
+Elena pretended to put the letter away for that purpose, but she really
+smuggled it down to the Major, who despatched it forthwith to the
+Chamber of Deputies.
+
+"And now I'll go to sleep," said Roma.
+
+She slept until mid-day with the sun's reflection from the white plaster
+of the groined ceiling of the loggia on her still whiter face. Then the
+twelve o'clock gun shook the walls of the Castle, and she awoke while
+the church bells were ringing.
+
+"I thought it was my dream coming true, Sister," she said.
+
+The doctor came up at that moment in a high state of excitement.
+
+"Great news, Donna Roma. The King...."
+
+"I know!"
+
+"Failing to form a Government to follow that of the Baron, appealed to
+Parliament to nominate a successor...."
+
+"So Parliament...."
+
+"Parliament has nominated the Honourable Rossi, the King has called for
+him, the warrant for his arrest has been cancelled, and all persons
+imprisoned for the recent insurrection have been set at liberty."
+
+Roma's trembling and exultant eyelids told a touching story.
+
+"Is there anything to see?"
+
+"Only the flag on the Capitol."
+
+"Let me look at it."
+
+He helped her to rise. "Look! There it is on the clock tower."
+
+"I see it.... That will do. You can put me down now, doctor."
+
+An ineffable joy shone in her face.
+
+"It _was_ my dream after all, Elena."
+
+After a moment she said, "Doctor, tell the Prefect I am quite ready to
+go to Viterbo. In fact I wish to go. I should like to go immediately."
+
+"I'll tell him," said the doctor, and he went out to hide his emotion.
+
+The Major came to the open arch of the loggia. He stood there for a
+moment, and there was somebody behind him. Then the Major disappeared,
+but the other remained. It was David Rossi. He was standing like a man
+transfixed, looking in speechless dismay at Roma's pallid face with the
+light of heaven on it.
+
+Roma did not see Rossi, and Elena, who did, was too frightened to speak.
+Lying back in her bed-chair with a great happiness in her eyes, she
+said:
+
+"Sister, if he should come here when I am gone ... no, I don't mean
+that ... but if you should see him and he should ask about me, you will
+say that I went away quite cheerfully. Tell him I was always thinking
+about him. No, don't say that either. But he must never think I
+regretted what I did, or that I died broken-hearted. Say farewell for
+me, Elena. _Addio Carissima!_ That's his word, you know. _Addio
+Carissimo!_"
+
+Rossi, blinded with his tears, took a step into the loggia, and in a low
+voice, very soft and tremulous, as if trying not to startle her, he
+cried:
+
+"Roma!"
+
+She raised herself, turned, saw him, and rose to her feet. Without a
+word he opened his arms to her, and with a little frightened cry she
+fell into them and was folded to his breast.
+
+[Illustration: WITH A FRIGHTENED CRY, SHE WAS FOLDED TO HIS BREAST.]
+
+
+                                IX
+
+It was ten days later. Rossi had surrendered to Parliament, but
+Parliament had declined to order his arrest. Then he had called for the
+liberation of Roma, but Roma had neither been liberated nor removed. "It
+will not be necessary," was the report of the doctor at the Castle to
+the officers of the Prefetura. The great liberator and remover was on
+his way.
+
+At Rossi's request Dr. Fedi had been called in, and he had diagnosed the
+case exactly. Roma was suffering from an internal disease, which was
+probably hereditary, but certainly incurable. Strain and anxiety had
+developed it earlier in life than usual, but in any case it must have
+come.
+
+At first Rossi rebelled with all his soul and strength. To go through
+this long and fierce fight with life, and to come out victorious, and
+then, when all seemed to promise peace and a kind of tempered happiness,
+to be met by Death--the unconquerable, the inevitable--it was terrible,
+it was awful!
+
+He called in specialists; talked of a change of air; even brought
+himself, when he was far enough away from Roma, to the length of
+suggesting an operation. The doctors shook their heads. At last he bowed
+his own head. His bride-wife must leave him. He must live on without
+her.
+
+Meantime Roma was cheerful, and at moments even gay. Her gaiety was
+heart-breaking. Blinding bouts of headache were her besetting trouble,
+but only by the moist red eyes did any one know anything about that.
+When people asked her how she felt, she told them whatever she thought
+they wished to hear. It brought a look of relief to their faces, and
+that made her very happy.
+
+With Rossi, during these ten days, she had carried on the fiction that
+she was getting better. This was to break the news to him, and he on his
+part, to break the news to her, had pretended to believe the story. They
+made Elena help the little artifice, and even engaged the doctors in
+their mutual deception.
+
+"And how is my darling to-day?"
+
+"Splendid! There's really nothing to do with me. It's true I have
+suffered. That's why I look so pale. But I'm better now. Elena will tell
+you how well I slept last night. Didn't I sleep well, Elena? Elena....
+Poor Elena is going a little deaf and doesn't always speak when she is
+spoken to. But I'm all right, David. In fact, I'll feel no pain at all
+before long, and then I shall be well."
+
+"Yes, dear, you'll feel no pain at all before long, and then you'll be
+well."
+
+It was pitiful. All their words seemed to be laden with double meanings.
+They could find none that were not.
+
+But the time had come when Roma resolved she must speak plainly. Rossi
+had lifted her into the loggia. He did so every day, carrying her, not
+on his arm as a woman carries a child, but against his breast, as a man
+carries his wife when he loves her. She always put her arms around his
+neck, pretending it was necessary for her safety, and when he had laid
+her gently in the bed-chair she pulled down his head and kissed him. The
+two little journeys were the delight of the day to Roma, but to Rossi
+they were a deepening trouble.
+
+It was the sweetest day of the sweet Roman spring, and Roma wore a light
+tea-gown with a coil of white silk about her head such as is seen in the
+portraits of Beatrice Cenci. The golden complexion was quite gone, there
+was a hard line along the cheek, a deep shadow under the chin, the
+nostrils were pinched and the mouth was drawn. But the large eyes,
+though heavy with pain, were full of joy. They did not weep any more,
+for all their tears were shed, and the light of another world was
+reflected in their depths.
+
+Rossi sat by her side, and she took one of his hands and held it on her
+lap between both her own. Sometimes she looked at him and then she
+smiled. She, who had lost him for a little while, had got him back at
+last. It was only just in time. A little break, and they would continue
+this--there. Ah, she was very happy!
+
+Rossi's free hand was supporting his head, and he was trying to look
+another way. Do what he would to conquer it, the spirit of rebellion was
+rising in his heart again. "O God, is this just? Is this right?"
+
+They were alone on the loggia. Above was the cloudless blue sky, below
+was the city, hardly seen or heard.
+
+"David," she began, in a faint voice.
+
+"Dearest?"
+
+"I have been so happy in having you with me again that there is
+something I have forgotten to tell you."
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"Promise me you will not be shocked or startled."
+
+"What is it, dearest?" he repeated, although he knew too well.
+
+"It is nothing.... Yes, hold my hands tight. So!... Really it's nothing.
+And yet it is everything. It is ... it is death."
+
+"Roma!"
+
+Her eyelids trembled, but she tried to laugh.
+
+"Yes, dear. True! Not immediately. Oh, no! not immediately. But signed
+and sealed, you know, and not to be put aside that anybody may be happy
+much longer."
+
+She was laughing almost gaily. But all the same she was watching him
+closely, and now that her word was spoken she suddenly became conscious
+of a secret desire which she had not suspected. She wanted him to
+contradict her, to tell her she was quite wrong, to convince and defeat
+her.
+
+"Poor little me! Pity, isn't it? It would have been so sweet to go on a
+little longer--especially after this reconciliation. And when one has
+kept one's heart under bolt and bar so long...."
+
+Her sad gaiety was breaking down. "But it's better so, isn't it?"
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Ah, yes, it's better so when you come to think of it."
+
+"It's terrible!" said Rossi.
+
+"Don't say that. It's a thing of every day. Here, there, everywhere. God
+wouldn't allow it to go on if it were terrible."
+
+"It's bitterly cruel for all that."
+
+"Not so cruel as life. Not nearly. For instance, if I lived you would
+have to put me away, and that would be harder to bear than death--far
+harder."
+
+"My darling! What are you saying?"
+
+"It's true, dear. You know it's true. God can forgive a woman even if
+she's a sinner, but the world can't if she's only a victim of sin. It's
+part of the cruelty of things, but there's no use repining."
+
+"Roma," said Rossi, "I take God to witness that if that were all that
+stood between us nothing and nobody should separate you and me. I should
+tell the world that you had every virtue and every heroism, and without
+you I could do nothing."
+
+Her eyes filled with a fresh joy.
+
+"You set me too high still, dear. Yet you know that I was far too small
+and weak for your great work. That was why I failed you at the end. It
+wasn't my fault that I betrayed you..."
+
+"Don't speak of my betrayal. I thank God for it, and see now that it was
+the best that could have happened."
+
+She closed her eyes. "Is it your own voice, dearest? Really yours? Hush!
+I shall wake and the dream will pass."
+
+A little jet from his heart of flame burst out in spite of his warning
+brain, and he was carried away for the moment.
+
+"My poor darling, you must get well for my sake. You must think of
+nothing but getting well. Then we'll go away somewhere--to Switzerland,
+as you said in your letter. Or perhaps to England, where you were born,
+and where your father lived his years of exile. Dear old England!
+Motherland of liberty! I'll show you all the places."
+
+She was dizzy with the beautiful vision.
+
+"Oh, if I could only go on like this for ever! But I mustn't listen to
+you, dearest. It's no use, you know. Now, is it?"
+
+The spirit which had exalted him for a moment took flight, and his heart
+rose into his throat.
+
+"Now, is it?" she repeated.
+
+He did not answer, and she dropped back with a sigh. Ah, it was cruel
+fencing. Every word was a sword, and it was cutting a hundred ways.
+
+At that moment a band of music passed down the street. Roma, who loved
+bands of music, asked Rossi to lift her up that she might look at it. A
+little drummer boy was marching at the head of a procession, gaily
+rolling his rataplan.
+
+"He reminds me of little Joseph," she said, and she laughed heartily.
+Strange mystery of life that robs death of all its terrors!
+
+He put his arm about her to support her as they stood by the parapet,
+and this brought a new tremor of affection, as well as a little of the
+old physical thrill and a world of fond and tender memories. She looked
+into his eyes, he looked into hers; they both looked across to Trinità
+de' Monti, and in the eye-asking between them she said plainly, "Do you
+remember--over there?"
+
+Roma was assisted back to the bed-chair, and then, conversation being
+impossible, Rossi began to read. Every day he had read something. Roma
+had made the selections. They were always about the great
+lovers--Francesca and Paolo, Dante and Beatrice, even Alfred de Musset
+and poor John Keats, with the skull cap which burnt his brain. To-day it
+was Roma's favourite poem:
+
+    "Teach me, only teach, Love!
+      As I ought
+    I will speak thy speech, Love,
+      Think thy thought...."
+
+His right hand held the book. His left was between Roma's hands, lying
+blue-veined in her lap. She was looking out on the sunlit city as if
+taking a last farewell of it. He stopped to stroke her glossy black hair
+and she reached up to his lips and kissed them. Then she closed her eyes
+to listen. His voice rose and swelled with the ocean of his love, and he
+felt as if he were pouring his life into her frail body.
+
+    "Meet, if thou require it,
+      Both demands,
+    Laying flesh and spirit
+      In thy hands."
+
+Her blanched lips moved. She took a deep breath and made a faint cry. He
+rose softly, and bent over her with a trembling heart. Her breathing
+seemed to have ceased. Had sleep overtaken her? Or had the tender flame
+expired?
+
+"Roma!"
+
+She opened her eyes and smiled.
+
+"Not yet, dear--soon," she said.
+
+
+                                  THE END
+
+
+The illustrations in this book are from scenes of the play as produced
+by Messrs. LIEBLER & COMPANY, and photographed by Mr. BYRON.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+                     New, Clever, Entertaining.
+
+
+GRET: The Story of a Pagan. By Beatrice Mantle. Illustrated by C. M.
+Relyea.
+
+The wild free life of an Oregon lumber camp furnishes the setting for
+this strong original story. Gret is the daughter of the camp and is
+utterly content with the wild life--until love comes. A fine book,
+unmarred by convention.
+
+
+OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle.
+
+A vivid yet delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town.
+Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of
+all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine,
+healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the
+books that abide.
+
+
+THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY. By Josephine Daskam. Illustrated by F. Y. Cory.
+
+The dawning intelligence of the baby was grappled with by its great
+aunt, an elderly maiden, whose book knowledge of babies was something at
+which even the infant himself winked. A delicious bit of humor.
+
+
+REBECCA MARY. By Annie Hamilton Donnell. Illustrated by Elizabeth
+Shippen Green.
+
+The heart tragedies of this little girl with no one near to share them,
+are told with a delicate art, a keen appreciation of the needs of the
+childish heart and a humorous knowledge of the workings of the childish
+mind.
+
+
+THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
+Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.
+
+An Irish story of real power, perfect in development and showing a true
+conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the
+tragic as well as the tender phases of life.
+
+
+THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+Illustrated by Harrison Fisher.
+
+An island in the South Sea is the setting for this entertaining tale,
+and an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most
+complicated plot. One of Mr. McCutcheon's best books.
+
+
+TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illustrated by A. B.
+Frost, J. M. Conde and Frank Verbeck.
+
+Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another
+little boy to that non-locatable land called "Brer Rabbit's Laughing
+Place," and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play
+their parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience.
+
+
+THE CLIMBER. By E. F. Benson. With frontispiece.
+
+An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman's soul--a woman who believed
+that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds instead
+the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away.
+
+
+LYNCH'S DAUGHTER. By Leonard Merrick. Illustrated by Geo. Brehm.
+
+A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful
+and simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings
+of her father, "Old Man Lynch" of Wall St. True to life, clever in
+treatment.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. A Picture of New England Home Life. With
+illustrations by C. W. Reed, and Scenes Reproduced from the Play.
+
+One of the best New England stories ever written. It is full of homely
+human interest * * * there is a wealth of New England village character,
+scenes and incidents * * * forcibly, vividly and truthfully drawn. Few
+books have enjoyed a greater sale and popularity. Dramatized, it made
+the greatest rural play of recent times.
+
+
+THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. By Charles Felton Pidgin.
+
+Illustrated by Henry Roth.
+
+All who love honest sentiment, quaint and sunny humor, and homespun
+philosophy will find these "Further Adventures" a book after their own
+heart.
+
+
+HALF A CHANCE. By Frederic S. Isham. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.
+
+The thrill of excitement will keep the reader in a state of suspense,
+and he will become personally concerned from the start, as to the
+central character, a very real man who suffers, dares--and achieves!
+
+
+VIRGINIA OF THE AIR LANES. By Herbert Quick. Illustrated by William R.
+Leigh.
+
+The author has seized the romantic moment for the airship novel, and
+created the pretty story of "a lover and his lass" contending with an
+elderly relative for the monopoly of the skies. An exciting tale of
+adventure in midair.
+
+
+THE GAME AND THE CANDLE. By Eleanor M. Ingram. Illustrated by P. D.
+Johnson.
+
+The hero is a young American, who, to save his family from poverty,
+deliberately commits a felony. Then follow his capture and imprisonment,
+and his rescue by a Russian Grand Duke. A stirring story, rich in
+sentiment.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                          GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                          DRAMATIZED NOVELS
+
+              A Few that are Making Theatrical History
+
+
+MARY JANE'S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes from the play.
+
+Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find
+himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he
+wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most
+humorous bits of recent fiction.
+
+
+CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford.
+
+"Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man, is brought in
+touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a
+merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more
+than ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the
+flock.
+
+
+A WOMAN'S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with scenes from the
+play.
+
+A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her
+husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently
+tragic situation into one of delicious comedy.
+
+
+THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks.
+
+With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little
+village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to
+train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets
+love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she
+works, how she studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.
+
+
+A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated by Edmund
+Magrath and W. W. Fawcett.
+
+A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the
+influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on,
+how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make
+a story of unflinching realism.
+
+
+THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin Milton Royle.
+Illustrated with scenes from the play.
+
+A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine
+courageous hero and a beautiful English heroine.
+
+
+THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated with scenes from the
+play.
+
+A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a
+venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities.
+
+
+THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated with scenes from
+the play.
+
+A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in
+dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring,
+mysterious as the hero.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+BRUVVER JIM'S BABY. By Philip Verrill Mighels.
+
+An uproariously funny story of a tiny mining settlement in the West,
+which is shaken to the very roots by the sudden possession of a baby,
+found on the plains by one of its residents. The town is as disreputable
+a spot as the gold fever was ever responsible for, and the coming of
+that baby causes the upheaval of every rooted tradition of the place.
+Its christening, the problems of its toys and its illness supersede in
+the minds of the miners all thought of earthy treasure.
+
+
+THE FURNACE OF GOLD. By Philip Verrill Mighels, author of "Bruvver Jim's
+Baby." Illustrations by J. N. Marchand.
+
+An accurate and informing portrayal of scenes, types, and conditions of
+the mining districts in modern Nevada.
+
+The book is an out-door story, clean, exciting, exemplifying nobility
+and courage of character, and bravery, and heroism in the sort of men
+and women we all admire and wish to know.
+
+
+THE MESSAGE. By Louis Tracy. Illustrations by Joseph C. Chase.
+
+A breezy tale of how a bit of old parchment, concealed in a figurehead
+from a sunken vessel, comes into the possession of a pretty girl and an
+army man during regatta week in the Isle of Wight. This is the message
+and it enfolds a mystery, the development of which the reader will
+follow with breathless interest.
+
+
+THE SCARLET EMPIRE. By David M. Parry. Illustrations by Hermann C. Wall.
+
+A young socialist, weary of life, plunges into the sea and awakes in the
+lost island of Atlantis, known as the Scarlet Empire, where a social
+democracy is in full operation, granting every man a living but limiting
+food, conversation, education and marriage.
+
+The hero passes through an enthralling love affair and other adventures
+but finally returns to his own New York world.
+
+
+THE THIRD DEGREE. By Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow. Illustrations by
+Clarence Rowe.
+
+A novel which exposes the abuses in this country of the police system.
+
+The son of an aristocratic New York family marries a woman socially
+beneath him, but of strong, womanly qualities that, later on, save the
+man from the tragic consequences of a dissipated life.
+
+The wife believes in his innocence and her wit and good sense help her
+to win against the tremendous odds imposed by law.
+
+
+THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT. By Brand Whitlock.
+
+A realistic western story of love and politics and a searching study of
+their influence on character. The author shows with extraordinary
+vitality of treatment the tricks, the heat, the passion, the tumult of
+the political arena, the triumph and strength of love.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. Illustrated by John Rae.
+
+This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a German
+musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has well
+portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied experiences in
+endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained to an
+appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in the
+rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, now a
+beautiful young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit of
+fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The play in
+which David Warfield scored his highest success.
+
+
+DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE. By Margaret Deland.
+
+Illustrated by Lucius Hitchcock.
+
+Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales that this
+volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lovable doctor is
+more ripened in this later book, and the simple comedies and tragedies
+of the old village are told with dramatic charm.
+
+
+OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle.
+
+Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint people in a
+sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable "preacher," is
+the connecting link between these dramatic stories from life.
+
+
+HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E. P. Roe.
+
+With frontispiece.
+
+The hero is a farmer--a man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft
+of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of
+varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source,
+comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his
+respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance,
+revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties and
+survives the censure of friends as well as the bitterness of enemies.
+
+
+THE YOKE. By Elizabeth Miller.
+
+Against the historical background of the days when the children of
+Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has sketched
+a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great as any since
+"Ben Hur."
+
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by André Castaigne.
+
+The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome and
+Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod Agrippa and the
+Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the mighty figures that move
+through the pages. Wonderful descriptions, and a love story of the
+purest and noblest type mark this most remarkable religious romance.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+HAPPY HAWKINS. By Robert Alexander Wason. Illustrated by Howard Giles.
+
+A ranch and cowboy novel. Happy Hawkins tells his own story with such a
+fine capacity for knowing how to do it and with so much humor that the
+reader's interest is held in surprise, then admiration and at last in
+positive affection.
+
+COMRADES. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Illustrated by C. D. Williams.
+
+The locale of this story is in California, where a few socialists
+establish a little community.
+
+The author leads the little band along the path of disillusionment, and
+gives some brilliant flashes of light on one side of an important
+question.
+
+
+TONO-BUNGAY. By Herbert George Wells.
+
+The hero of this novel is a young man who, through hard work, earns a
+scholarship and goes to London.
+
+Written with a frankness verging on Rousseau's, Mr. Wells still uses
+rare discrimination and the border line of propriety is never crossed.
+An entertaining book with both a story and a moral, and without a dull
+page--Mr. Wells's most notable achievement.
+
+
+A HUSBAND BY PROXY. By Jack Steele.
+
+A young criminologist, but recently arrived in New York city, is drawn
+into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his
+interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and
+again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling detective story.
+
+
+LIKE ANOTHER HELEN. By George Horton. Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.
+
+Mr. Horton's powerful romance stands in a new field and brings an almost
+unknown world in reality before the reader--the world of conflict
+between Greek and Turk on the Island of Crete. The "Helen" of the story
+is a Greek, beautiful, desolate, defiant--pure as snow.
+
+There is a certain new force about the story, a kind of
+master-craftsmanship and mental dominance that holds the reader.
+
+
+THE MASTER OF APPLEBY. By Francis Lynde.
+
+Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup.
+
+A novel tale concerning itself in part with the great struggle in the
+two Carolinas, but chiefly with the adventures therein of two gentlemen
+who loved one and the same lady.
+
+A strong, masculine and persuasive story.
+
+
+A MODERN MADONNA. By Caroline Abbot Stanley.
+
+A story of American life, founded on facts as they existed some years
+ago in the District of Columbia. The theme is the maternal love and
+splendid courage of a woman.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                            The Novels Of
+                        GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
+
+
+GRAUSTARK.
+
+A story of love behind a throne, telling how a young American met a
+lovely girl and followed her to a new and strange country. A thrilling,
+dashing narrative.
+
+
+BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK.
+
+Beverly is a bewitching American girl who has gone to that stirring
+little principality--Graustark--to visit her friend the princess, and
+there has a romantic affair of her own.
+
+
+BREWSTER'S MILLIONS.
+
+A young man is required to spend _one_ million dollars in one year in
+order to inherit _seven_. How he does it forms the basis of a lively
+story.
+
+
+CASTLE CRANEYCROW.
+
+The story revolves round the abduction of a young American woman, her
+imprisonment in an old castle and the adventures created through her
+rescue.
+
+
+COWARDICE COURT.
+
+An amusing social feud in the Adirondacks in which an English girl is
+tempted into being a traitor by a romantic young American, forms the
+plot.
+
+
+THE DAUGHTER OF ANDERSON CROW.
+
+The story centers about the adopted daughter of the town marshal in a
+western village. Her parentage is shrouded in mystery, and the story
+concerns the secret that deviously works to the surface.
+
+
+THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S.
+
+The hero meets a princess in a far-away island among fanatically hostile
+Musselmen. Romantic love making amid amusing situations and exciting
+adventures.
+
+
+NEDRA.
+
+A young couple elope from Chicago to go to London traveling as brother
+and sister. They are shipwrecked and a strange mix-up occurs on account
+of it.
+
+
+THE SHERRODS.
+
+The scene is the Middle West and centers around a man who leads a double
+life. A most enthralling novel.
+
+
+TRUXTON KING.
+
+A handsome good natured young fellow ranges on the earth looking for
+romantic adventures and is finally enmeshed in most complicated
+intrigues in Graustark.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                               LOUIS TRACY'S
+                    Captivating And Exhilarating Romances
+
+
+THE STOWAWAY GIRL. Illustrated by Nesbitt Benson.
+
+The story of a shipwreck, a lovely girl who shipped stowaway fashion, a
+rascally captain, a fascinating young officer and thrilling adventure
+enroute to South America.
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS.
+
+A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians--of desperate fighting and a tender romance.
+A story of extraordinary freshness.
+
+
+THE MESSAGE. Illustrated by Joseph Cummings Chase.
+
+A bit of parchment many, many years old, telling of a priceless ruby
+secreted in ruins far in the interior of Africa is the "message" found
+in the figurehead of an old vessel. A mystery develops which the reader
+will follow with breathless interest.
+
+
+THE PILLAR OF LIGHT.
+
+The pillar thus designated was a lighthouse, and the author tells with
+exciting detail the terrible dilemma of its cutoff inhabitants and
+introduces the charming comedy of a man eloping with his own wife.
+
+
+THE RED YEAR: A Story of the Indian Mutiny.
+
+The never-to-be-forgotten events of 1857 form the background of this
+story. The hero who begins as lieutenant and ends as Major Malcolm, has
+as stirring a military career as the most jaded novel reader could wish.
+A powerful book.
+
+
+THE WHEEL O'FORTUNE. With illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg.
+
+The story deals with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars
+of the hiding of some of the treasures of the Queen of Sheba. The
+glamour of mystery added to the romance of the lovers, gives the novel
+an interest that makes it impossible to leave until the end is reached.
+
+
+THE WINGS OF THE MORNING.
+
+A sort of Robinson Crusoe _redivivus_, with modern settings and a very
+pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of
+a wreck, and have adventures on their desert island such as never could
+have happened except in a story.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+1. Punctuation normalized to comtemporary standards.
+
+2. All illustrations in the text bear the credits: "By courtesy of
+   Liebler & Co; from photographs by Byron."
+
+3. Typographical errors corrected:
+   p. 139 "Fod" replaced with "God": "For Fod's sake let us bury it!"
+   p. 146 "use" repaced with "us": "what is best for both of use."
+   p. 377 "donwpour" replaced with "downpour": "donwpour of rain"
+   p. 409 "sittting-room" replaced with "sitting-room"
+
+4. The oe ligature as used in C[oe]li is shown as "[oe]" in this
+   document. It appears only in this proper name.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL CITY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19732-8.txt or 19732-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/3/19732/
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine.
+    </title>
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Eternal City
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2006 [EBook #19732]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL CITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-000" id="illus-000"></a>
+<img src='images/eternal-cover.jpg' alt='book cover' title='' width = '300' height = '445'/><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 5em;'>
+<a name="illus-001" id="illus-001"></a>
+<img src='images/eternal-fp.png' alt='"WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."' title='' width = '300' height = '490'/><br />
+<span class='caption'>"WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."</span>
+</div>
+
+<table width='400' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='title page' border='1'><tr><td>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 200%; margin-top: 40px; font-style:italic;'>The</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 240%; margin-bottom: 40px;'>ETERNAL CITY</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 120%;'>By</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 60px;'>HALL CAINE</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 90%; margin-bottom: 30px;'>Author of "The Christian," etc.</p>
+<p class='titleblock'>"He looked for a city which hath foundations</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' margin-bottom: 60px;'>whose builder and maker is God."</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 120%; margin-bottom: 5px;'>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' font-size: 120%; margin-bottom: 30px;'>Publishers :: New York</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<table width='450' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='copyright page' ><tr><td>
+<p class='titleblock'> <span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1901, 1902</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' margin-bottom: 5px;'> <span class="smcap">By</span> HALL CAINE</p>
+<p class='titleblock' style=' margin-bottom: 50px;'> <i>Popular Edition</i></p>
+<p class='titleblock'> <i>Published October, 1902</i></p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Table of Contents</h2>
+<div class="smcap">
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<col style="width:85%;" />
+<col style="width:15%;" />
+<tr><td align="left">PROLOGUE</td><td align="right"><a href="#PROLOGUE">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART ONE&mdash;THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_ONE_THE_HOLY_ROMAN_EMPIRE">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART TWO&mdash;THE REPUBLIC OF MAN</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_TWO_THE_REPUBLIC_OF_MAN">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART THREE&mdash;ROMA</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_THREE_ROMA">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART FOUR&mdash;DAVID ROSSI</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_FOUR_DAVID_ROSSI">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART FIVE&mdash;THE PRIME MINISTER</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_FIVE_THE_PRIME_MINISTER">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART SIX&mdash;THE ROMAN OF ROME</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_SIX_THE_ROMAN_OF_ROME">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART SEVEN&mdash;THE POPE</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_SEVEN_THE_POPE">298</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART EIGHT&mdash;THE KING</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_EIGHT_THE_KING">375</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">PART NINE&mdash;THE PEOPLE</td><td align="right"><a href="#PART_NINE_THE_PEOPLE">414</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PREFACE_TO_THIS_EDITION" id="PREFACE_TO_THIS_EDITION"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">v</a></span>
+<h2>PREFACE TO THIS EDITION</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, to
+condense it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, and
+otherwise so to change it that to all outward appearance it is
+practically a new book? I leave this point in literary ethics to the
+consideration of those whose business it is to discuss such questions,
+and content myself with telling the reader the history of the present
+story.</p>
+
+<p>About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwards
+abandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial struggle
+which culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities of
+that country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which I
+witnessed there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. The
+sights of the day often followed me through the night, and after a more
+than usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of a
+Jewish woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russian
+police under a promise that they would spare his life, which they said
+he had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The husband
+came to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his wife as his
+worst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his safety had been
+the only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her again. His cause was
+lost, his hopes were dead, his people were in despair, because the one
+being whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up to
+his enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in the
+morning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story of
+Samson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of a
+play with the incident of husband and wife as the central situation.</p>
+
+<p>How from this germ came the novel which was published last year under
+the title of "The Eternal City" would be a long story to tell, a story
+of many personal experiences, of reading, of travel, of meetings in
+various countries with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a></span> statesmen, priests, diplomats, police
+authorities, labour leaders, nihilists and anarchists, and of the
+consequent growth of my own political and religious convictions; but it
+will not be difficult to see where and in what way time and thought had
+little by little overlaid the humanities of the early sketch with many
+extra interests. That these interests were of the essence, clothing, and
+not crushing the human motive, I trust I may continue to believe, and
+certainly I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception of my
+book at the hands of that wide circle of general readers who care less
+for a contribution to a great social propaganda than for a simple tale
+of love.</p>
+
+<p>But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale
+of love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of
+producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and requested to
+prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences at the
+theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics and
+religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests with
+which alone the drama is allowed to deal. This has not been an easy
+thing to do, and now that it is done I am by no means sure that I may
+not have alienated the friends whom the abstract problems won for me
+without conciliating the readers who called for the story only. But not
+to turn my back on the work of three laborious years, or to discredit
+that part of it which expressed, however imperfectly, my sympathy with
+the struggles of the poor, and my participation in the social problems
+with which the world is now astir, I have obtained the promise of my
+publisher that the original version of "The Eternal City" shall be kept
+in print as long as the public calls for it.</p>
+
+<p>In this form of my book, the aim has been to rely solely on the
+humanities and to go back to the simple story of the woman who denounced
+her husband in order to save his life. That was the theme of the draft
+which was the original basis of my novel, it is the central incident of
+the drama which is about to be produced in New York, and the present
+abbreviated version of the story is intended to follow the lines of the
+play in all essential particulars down to the end of the last chapter
+but one.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>H. C.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Isle of Man</span>, <i>Sept.</i> 1902.</p>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<p style='font-weight:bold; font-size:180%; text-align:center;'>THE ETERNAL CITY</p>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center;'>
+<a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span>
+<h2>PROLOGUE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or
+twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one
+shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a
+grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad
+had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his
+short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was going
+home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something fantastic
+in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he was
+dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the London
+boys and the attentions of policemen.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to the Italian quarter in Soho, he stopped at the door of a shop
+to see the time. It was eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before
+he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the
+window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the
+pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red
+glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy
+blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and
+brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence.
+Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not
+a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to count,
+but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic was not
+at fault.</p>
+
+<p>The air grew warmer, and it began to snow. At first it was a fine
+sprinkle that made a snow-mist, and adhered wherever it fell. The
+traffic speedily became less, and things looked big in the thick air.
+The boy was wandering aimlessly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span> through the streets, waiting for nine
+o'clock. When he thought the hour was near, he realised that he had lost
+his way. He screwed up his eyes to see if he knew the houses and shops
+and signs, but everything seemed strange.</p>
+
+<p>The snow snowed on, and now it fell in large, corkscrew flakes. The boy
+brushed them from his face, but at the next moment they blinded him
+again. The few persons still in the streets loomed up on him out of the
+darkness, and passed in a moment like gigantic shadows. He tried to ask
+his way, but nobody would stand long enough to listen. One man who was
+putting up his shutters shouted some answer that was lost in the
+drumlike rumble of all voices in the falling snow.</p>
+
+<p>The boy came up to a big porch with four pillars, and stepped in to rest
+and reflect. The long tunnels of smoking lights which had receded down
+the streets were not to be seen from there, and so he knew that he was
+in a square. It would be Soho Square, but whether he was on the south or
+east of it he could not tell, and consequently he was at a loss to know
+which way to turn. A great silence had fallen over everything, and only
+the sobbing nostrils of the cab-horses seemed to be audible in the
+hollow air.</p>
+
+<p>He was very cold. The snow had got into his shoes, and through the rents
+in his cross-gartered stockings. His red waistcoat wanted buttons, and
+he could feel that his shirt was wet. He tried to shake the snow off by
+stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could
+scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light coming
+from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his squirrel.
+The little thing was trembling pitifully in its icy bed, and he took it
+out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The
+sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within
+the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour
+cast outward from the fanlight he could see nothing but the crystal
+snowflakes falling wearily.</p>
+
+<p>He grew dizzy, and sat down by one of the pillars. After a while a
+shiver passed along his spine, and then he became warm and felt sleepy.
+A church clock struck nine, and he started up with a guilty feeling, but
+his limbs were stiff and he sank back again, blew two or three breaths
+on to the squirrel inside his waistcoat, and fell into a doze. As he
+dropped off into unconsciousness he seemed to see the big, cheerless
+house, almost destitute of furniture, where he lived with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span> thirty or
+forty other boys. They trooped in with their organs and accordions,
+counted out their coppers to a man with a clipped moustache, who was
+blowing whiffs of smoke from a long, black cigar, with a straw through
+it, and then sat down on forms to eat their plates of macaroni and
+cheese. The man was not in good temper to-night, and he was shouting at
+some who were coming in late and at others who were sharing their supper
+with the squirrels that nestled in their bosoms, or the monkeys, in red
+jacket and fez, that perched upon their shoulders. The boy was perfectly
+unconscious by this time, and the child within the house was singing
+away as if her little breast was a cage of song-birds.</p>
+
+<p>As the church clock struck nine a class of Italian lads in an upper room
+in Old Compton Street was breaking up for the night, and the teacher,
+looking out of the window, said:</p>
+
+<p>"While we have been telling the story of the great road to our country a
+snowstorm has come, and we shall have enough to do to find our road
+home."</p>
+
+<p>The lads laughed by way of answer, and cried: "Good-night, doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, boys, and God bless you," said the teacher.</p>
+
+<p>He was an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face,
+a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his
+manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a
+black cloak with a red lining, and followed them into the street.</p>
+
+<p>He had not gone far into the snowy haze before he began to realise that
+his playful warning had not been amiss.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," he thought, "only a few steps, and yet so difficult to
+find."</p>
+
+<p>He found the right turnings at last, and coming to the porch of his
+house in Soho Square, he almost trod on a little black and white object
+lying huddled at the base of one of the pillars.</p>
+
+<p>"A boy," he thought, "sleeping out on a night like this! Come, come," he
+said severely, "this is wrong," and he shook the little fellow to waken
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The boy did not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone,
+"Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again.
+Ninepence, sir, and Jinny is so cold."</p>
+
+<p>The man paused a moment, then turned to the door rang the bell sharply.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the
+doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a
+shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off
+and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and
+moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a
+saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and
+legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the
+eyelids and twitching of the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"He is coming to, mother," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"At last," said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood,
+black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the
+lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch,
+and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a
+little longer."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he
+raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for
+something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on
+which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It
+was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it
+tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and
+after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted.</p>
+
+<p>"Italiano&mdash;si?"</p>
+
+<p>"Si, Signore."</p>
+
+<p>"From which province?"</p>
+
+<p>"Campagna Romana, Signore."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he say he comes from, doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at
+Maccari's in Greek Street&mdash;isn't that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been in England&mdash;one year, two years?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Two years and a half, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your name, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"David Leone."</p>
+
+<p>"A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor,
+smoothing the curly hair.</p>
+
+<p>"A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some
+institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that
+name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?"</p>
+
+<p>But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed
+upon, and he made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no father," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Carino! But your mother is alive&mdash;yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my
+son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the
+sun had shone on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, father!"</p>
+
+<p>Two little feet were drumming on the floor above.</p>
+
+<p>"Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the
+boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently."</p>
+
+<p>"Let her come down now," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a
+bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a
+little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy
+black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a
+train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and
+carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was
+coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit.</p>
+
+<p>But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up
+suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the
+doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at
+the stranger in silence and aloofness.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the
+mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> her she might have a
+brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has
+brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this
+was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly
+child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly
+frozen to death in the snow?"</p>
+
+<p>But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in
+search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow
+there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second
+suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still
+holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to
+anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's
+side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for
+sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to
+proper overtures.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo a boy?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy smiled again and assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo me brodder?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy's smile paled perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo lub me?"</p>
+
+<p>The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo lub me eber and eber?"</p>
+
+<p>The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark
+curls again, said:</p>
+
+<p>"You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna
+Romana&mdash;yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it's a brother?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last
+word with a thud.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face
+smote her instantly and she said no more.</p>
+
+<p>"Time for bed, baby."</p>
+
+<p>But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy,
+and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat
+pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other,
+kneeling face to the fire, but screwing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span> her half-closed eyes at
+intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little
+waif-and-stray hands together and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be
+done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and
+forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And
+lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and
+eber. Amen."</p>
+
+<p>The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the
+surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the
+fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and
+listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at
+length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat
+of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the
+little head on the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which
+great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels&mdash;sweet,
+soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna
+Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death!</p>
+
+<p>The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a
+long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken
+bondage.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not
+some day ... God forbid!"</p>
+
+<p>The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like
+the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of
+painful reverie.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and
+the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the
+dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was
+praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless
+darling cast adrift upon the world!</p>
+
+<p>The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the
+doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had
+ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were
+casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the
+yellow light of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed
+where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol.</p>
+
+<p>
+"While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,<br />
+The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his
+lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed.</p>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+<h2><a name="PART_ONE_THE_HOLY_ROMAN_EMPIRE" id="PART_ONE_THE_HOLY_ROMAN_EMPIRE"></a>PART ONE&mdash;THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>TWENTY YEARS LATER<br />
+I</h3>
+
+<p>It was the last day of the century. In a Bull proclaiming a Jubilee the
+Pope had called his faithful children to Rome, and they had come from
+all quarters of the globe. To salute the coming century, and to dedicate
+it, in pomp and solemn ceremony, to the return of the world to the Holy
+Church, one and universal, the people had gathered in the great Piazza
+of St. Peter.</p>
+
+<p>Boys and women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a
+bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the
+obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who were listening
+to their cicerone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is the Vatican," said the guide, pointing to a square
+building at the back of the colonnade, "and the apartments of the Pope
+are those on the third floor, just on the level of the Loggia of
+Raphael. The Cardinal Secretary of State used to live in the rooms
+below, opening on the grand staircase that leads from the Court of
+Damasus. There's a private way up to the Pope's apartment, and a secret
+passage to the Castle of St. Angelo."</p>
+
+<p>"Say, has the Pope got that secret passage still?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. When the Castle went over to the King the connection with the
+Vatican was cut off. Ah, everything is changed since those days! The
+Pope used to go to St. Peter's surrounded by his Cardinals and Bishops,
+to the roll of drums and the roar of cannon. All that is over now. The
+present Pope is trying to revive the old condition seemingly, but what
+can he do? Even the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee laments the loss of the
+temporal power which would have permitted him to renew the enchantments
+of the Holy City."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him it's just lovely as it is," said the girl on the obelisk, "and
+when the illuminations begin...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say, friend," said her parent again, "Rome belonged to the Pope&mdash;yes?
+Then the Italians came in and took it and made it the capital of
+Italy&mdash;so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, and ever since then the Holy Father has been a prisoner in the
+Vatican, going into it as a cardinal and coming out of it as a corpse,
+and to-day will be the first time a Pope has set foot in the streets of
+Rome!"</p>
+
+<p>"My! And shall we see him in his prison clothes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lilian Martha! Don't you know enough for that? Perhaps you expect to
+see his chains and a straw of his bed in the cell? The Pope is a king
+and has a court&mdash;that's the way I am figuring it."</p>
+
+<p>"True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his
+officers of state&mdash;Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies,
+Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard,
+as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the
+precincts night and day."</p>
+
+<p>"Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this
+piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and
+outrage&mdash;and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well! this goes clear ahead of me!"</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in
+positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one
+of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid,
+fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his
+carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly
+dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up
+moustache and cropped black mane.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge
+since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir.
+'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and
+even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where
+it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for
+instance&mdash;this one with the people in the balcony...."</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on
+the farther side of the piazza.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know whose palace that is?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the
+Interior."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted
+the Papacy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir&mdash;old Baron Leone!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the
+grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say,
+'will be the richest man in Rome some day&mdash;richer than all their Roman
+princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"</p>
+
+<p>"He has, apparently."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and
+having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the
+poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the
+Prime Minister of Italy&mdash;an infidel, an Antichrist."</p>
+
+<p>"So the Pope is a good man, is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in
+life&mdash;the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation.
+Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for
+poor boys. Boys&mdash;that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything
+tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a
+rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the
+square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace.
+It had one occupant only&mdash;a man in a soft black hat. He was quite
+without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general
+commotion, and all faces were turning toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in
+the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"David Rossi, the anarchist?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some people call him so. Do you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing about the man except that he is an enemy of his
+Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"He intends to present a petition to the Pope this morning,
+nevertheless."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you heard of it? These are his followers with the banners and
+badges."</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the line of working-men who had ranged themselves about
+the cab, with banners inscribed variously, "Garibaldi Club," "Mazzini
+Club," "Republican Federation," and "Republic of Man."</p>
+
+<p>"Your friend Antichrist," tipping a finger over his shoulder in the
+direction of the palace, "has been taxing bread to build more
+battleships, and Rossi has risen against him. But failing in the press,
+in Parliament and at the Quirinal, he is coming to the Pope to pray of
+him to let the Church play its old part of intermediary between the poor
+and the oppressed."</p>
+
+<p>"Preposterous!"</p>
+
+<p>"So?"</p>
+
+<p>"To whom is the Pope to protest? To the King of Italy who robbed him of
+his Holy City? Pretty thing to go down on your knees to the brigand who
+has stripped you! And at whose bidding is he to protest? At the bidding
+of his bitterest enemy? Pshaw!"</p>
+
+<p>"You persist that David Rossi is an enemy of the Pope?"</p>
+
+<p>"The deadliest enemy the Pope has in the world."</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The subject of the Frenchman's denunciation looked harmless enough as he
+sat in his hackney carriage under the shadow of old Baron Leone's gloomy
+palace. A first glance showed a man of thirty-odd years, tall, slightly
+built, inclined to stoop, with a long, clean-shaven face, large dark
+eyes, and dark hair which covered the head in short curls of almost
+African profusion. But a second glance revealed all the characteristics
+that give the hand-to-hand touch with the common people, without which
+no man can hope to lead a great movement.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment of David Rossi's arrival there was a tingling movement
+in the air, and from time to time people approached and spoke to him,
+when the tired smile struggled through the jaded face and then slowly
+died away. After a while, as if to subdue the sense of personal
+observation, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> took a pen and oblong notepaper and began to write on
+his knees.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the quick-eyed facile crowd around him beguiled the tedium of
+waiting with good-humoured chaff. One great creature with a shaggy mane
+and a sanguinary voice came up, bottle in hand, saluted the downcast
+head with a mixture of deference and familiarity, then climbed to the
+box-seat beside the driver, and in deepest bass began the rarest
+mimicry. He was a true son of the people, and under an appearance of
+ferocity he hid the heart of a child. To look at him you could hardly
+help laughing, and the laughter of the crowd at his daring dashes showed
+that he was the privileged pet of everybody. Only at intervals the
+downcast head was raised from its writing, and a quiet voice of warning
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the shaggy head on the box-seat slewed round and bobbed downward
+with an apologetic gesture, and ten seconds afterwards plunged into
+wilder excesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw!" mopping with one hand his forehead under his tipped-up
+billicock, and holding the bottle with the other. "It's hot! Dog of a
+Government, it's hot, I say! Never mind! here's to the exports of Italy,
+brother; and may the Government be the first of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno!"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, sir; the tongue breaks no bones, sir! All Governments are
+bad, and the worst Government is the best."</p>
+
+<p>A feeble old man was at that moment crushing his way up to the cab.
+Seeing him approach, David Rossi rose and held out his hand. The old man
+took it, but did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you wish to speak to me, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't yet," said the old man, and his voice shook and his eyes were
+moist.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi stepped out of the cab, and with gentle force, against many
+protests, put the old man in his place.</p>
+
+<p>"I come from Carrara, sir, and when I go home and tell them I've seen
+David Rossi, and spoken to him, they won't believe me. 'He sees the
+future clear,' they say, 'as an almanack made by God.'"</p>
+
+<p>Just then there was a commotion in the crowd, an imperious voice cried,
+"Clear out," and the next instant David Rossi, who was standing by the
+step of his cab, was all but run down by a magnificent equipage with two
+high-stepping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> horses and a fat English coachman in livery of scarlet
+and gold.</p>
+
+<p>His face darkened for a moment with some powerful emotion, then resumed
+its kindly aspect, and he turned back to the old man without looking at
+the occupant of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lady. She was tall, with a bold sweep of fulness in figure,
+which was on a large scale of beauty. Her hair, which was abundant and
+worn full over the forehead, was raven black and glossy, and it threw
+off the sunshine that fell on her face. Her complexion had a golden
+tint, and her eyes, which were violet, had a slight recklessness of
+expression. Her carriage drew up at the entrance of the palace, and the
+porter, with the silver-headed staff, came running and bowing to receive
+her. She rose to her feet with a consciousness of many eyes upon her,
+and with an unabashed glance she looked around on the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sulky silence among the people, almost a sense of
+antagonism, and if anybody had cheered there might have been a counter
+demonstration. At the same time, there was a certain daring in that
+marked brow and steadfast smile which seemed to say that if anybody had
+hissed she would have stood her ground.</p>
+
+<p>She lifted from the blue silk cushions of the carriage a small
+half-clipped black poodle with a bow of blue ribbon on its forehead,
+tucked it under her arm, stepped down to the street, and passed into the
+courtyard, leaving an odour of ottar of roses behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Only then did the people speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>The name seemed to pass over the crowd in a breathless whisper,
+soundless, supernatural, like the flight of a bat in the dark.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The Baron Bonelli had invited certain of his friends to witness the
+Pope's procession from the windows and balconies of his palace
+overlooking the piazza, and they had begun to arrive as early as
+half-past nine.</p>
+
+<p>In the green courtyard they were received by the porter in the cocked
+hat, on the dark stone staircase by lackeys in knee-breeches and yellow
+stockings, in the outer hall, intended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> for coats and hats, by more
+lackeys in powdered wigs, and in the first reception-room, gorgeously
+decorated in the yellow and gold of the middle ages, by Felice, in a
+dress coat, the Baron's solemn personal servant, who said, in sepulchral
+tones:</p>
+
+<p>"The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some
+of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia,
+Excellency?"</p>
+
+<p>"So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English
+Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>"A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's
+doings, I guess, and is urgent and important."</p>
+
+<p>"A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true."</p>
+
+<p>"Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you
+regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is
+the greatest man in the country&mdash;greater than the King himself&mdash;and a
+statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who
+carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are
+bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn."</p>
+
+<p>"And the other view?"</p>
+
+<p>General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains,
+from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and
+then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and
+cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant."</p>
+
+<p>"Which view do the people take?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with
+which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up."</p>
+
+<p>"And the clergy, and the Court, and the aristocracy?"</p>
+
+<p>"The clergy fear him, the Court detests him, and the Roman aristocracy
+are rancorously hostile."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he rules them all, nevertheless?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, with a rod of iron&mdash;people, Court, princes, Parliament, King
+as well&mdash;and seems to have only one unsatisfied desire, to break up the
+last remaining rights of the Vatican and rule the old Pope himself."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he invites us to sit in his Loggia and look at the Pope's
+procession."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps because he intends it shall be the last we may ever see of it."</p>
+
+<p>"The Princess Bellini and Don Camillo Murelli," said Felice's sepulchral
+voice from the door.</p>
+
+<p>An elderly aristocratic beauty wearing nodding white plumes came in with
+a pallid young Roman noble dressed in the English fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> come to church, Don Camillo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heard it was a service which happened only once in a hundred years,
+dear General, and thought it mightn't be convenient to come next time,"
+said the young Roman.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Princess! Come now, confess, is it the perfume of the incense
+which brings you to the Pope's procession, or the perfume of the
+promenaders?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, General!" said the little woman, tapping the American with
+the tip of her lorgnette. "Who comes to a ceremony like this to say her
+prayers? Nobody whatever, and if the Holy Father himself were to
+say...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Which reminds me," said the little lady, "where is Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, where is Donna Roma?" said the young Roman.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Who</i> is Donna Roma?" said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"Santo Dio! the man doesn't know Donna Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>The white plumes bobbed up, the powdered face fell back, the little
+twinkling eyes closed, and the company laughed and seated themselves in
+the Loggia.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, dear sir," said the young Roman, "is a type of the fair
+lady who has appeared in the history of every nation since the days of
+Helen of Troy."</p>
+
+<p>"Has a woman of this type, then, identified herself with the story of
+Rome at a moment like the present?" said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>The young Roman smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did the Prime Minister appoint so-and-so?&mdash;Donna Roma! Why did he
+dismiss such-and-such?&mdash;Donna Roma! What feminine influence imposed upon
+the nation this or that?&mdash;Donna Roma! Through whom come titles,
+decorations, honours?&mdash;Donna Roma! Who pacifies intractable politicians
+and makes them the devoted followers of the Ministers?&mdash;Donna Roma! Who
+organises the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> charitable committees, collects funds and
+distributes them?&mdash;Donna Roma! Always, always Donna Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>"So the day of the petticoat politician is not over in Italy yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Over? It will only end with the last trump. But dear Donna Roma is
+hardly that. With her light play of grace and a whole artillery of love
+in her lovely eyes, she only intoxicates a great capital and"&mdash;with a
+glance towards the curtained door&mdash;"takes captive a great Minister."</p>
+
+<p>"Just that," and the white plumes bobbed up and down.</p>
+
+<p>"Hence she defies conventions, and no one dares to question her actions
+on her scene of gallantry."</p>
+
+<p>"Drives a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and
+threatens to buy an automobile."</p>
+
+<p>"Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had
+never known what it was to be poor."</p>
+
+<p>"And has she?"</p>
+
+<p>The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that
+moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody
+mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old
+papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young
+Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy
+days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was
+expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when
+the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican,
+conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel.
+Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from
+Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the
+homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as
+a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life
+as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among
+the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life
+he came back to Italy as a conspirator&mdash;enticed back, his friends
+say&mdash;was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the
+island of Elba without a word of public report or trial."</p>
+
+<p>"Domicilio Coatto&mdash;a devilish and insane device," said the American
+Ambassador.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared
+from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and
+going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English
+wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out
+of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent
+her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established
+her in an apartment on the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti, under the care of an old
+aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose
+which has long since seen its June."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by
+what appears&mdash;Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best
+milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess,
+"and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her
+extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated,
+she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio,
+full of nymphs and cupids and limbs."</p>
+
+<p>"And all by virtue of&mdash;what?" said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"By virtue of being&mdash;the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!"</p>
+
+<p>"Meaning by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she
+likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why
+doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because the Baron has a Baroness already."</p>
+
+<p>"A wife living?"</p>
+
+<p>"Living and yet dead&mdash;an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in
+his castle in the Alban hills."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The curtain parted over the inner doorway, and three gentlemen came out.
+The first was a tall, spare man, about fifty years of age, with an
+intellectual head, features cut clear and hard like granite, glittering
+eyes under overhanging brows, black moustaches turned up at the ends,
+and iron-grey hair cropped very short over a high forehead. It was the
+Baron Bonelli.</p>
+
+<p>One of the two men with him had a face which looked as if it had been
+carved by a sword or an adze, good and honest but blunt and rugged; and
+the other had a long, narrow head, like the head of a hen&mdash;a lanky
+person with a certain mixture of arrogance and servility in his
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>The company rose from their places in the Loggia, and there were
+greetings and introductions.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Evelyn Wise, gentlemen, the new British Ambassador&mdash;General Morra,
+our Minister of War; Commendatore Angelelli, our Chief of Police. A
+thousand apologies, ladies! A Minister of the Interior is one of the
+human atoms that live from minute to minute and are always at the mercy
+of events. You must excuse the Commendatore, gentlemen; he has urgent
+duties outside."</p>
+
+<p>The Prime Minister spoke with the lucidity and emphasis of a man
+accustomed to command, and when Angelelli had bowed all round he crossed
+with him to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is any suspicion of commotion, arrest the ringleaders at once.
+Let there be no trifling with disorder, by whomsoever begun. The first
+to offend must be the first to be arrested, whether he wears cap or
+cassock."</p>
+
+<p>"Good, your Excellency," and the Chief of Police went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Commotion! Disorder! Madonna mia!" cried the little Princess.</p>
+
+<p>"Calm yourselves, ladies. It's nothing! Only it came to the knowledge of
+the Government that the Pope's procession this morning might be made the
+excuse for a disorderly demonstration, and of course order must not be
+disturbed even under the pretext of liberty and religion."</p>
+
+<p>"So that was the public business which deprived us of your society?"
+said the Princess.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And left my womanless house the duty of receiving you in my absence,"
+said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron bowed his guests to their seats, stood with his back to a wide
+ingle, and began to sketch the Pope's career.</p>
+
+<p>"His father was a Roman banker&mdash;lived in this house, indeed&mdash;and the
+young Leone was brought up in the Jesuit schools and became a member of
+the Noble Guard: handsome, accomplished, fond of society and social
+admiration, a man of the world. This was a cause of disappointment to
+his father, who has intended him for a great career in the Church. They
+had their differences, and finally a mission was found for him and he
+lived a year abroad. The death of the old banker brought him back to
+Rome, and then, to the astonishment of society, he renounced the world
+and took holy orders. Why he gave up his life of gallantry did not
+appear...."</p>
+
+<p>"Some affair of the heart, dear Baron," said the little Princess, with a
+melting look.</p>
+
+<p>"No, there was no talk of that kind, Princess, and not a whisper of
+scandal. Some said the young soldier had married in England, and lost
+his wife there, but nobody knew for certain. There was less doubt about
+his religious vocation, and when by help of his princely inheritance he
+turned his mind to the difficult task of reforming vice and ministering
+to the lowest aspects of misery in the slums of Rome, society said he
+had turned Socialist. His popularity with the people was unbounded, but
+in the midst of it all he begged to be removed to London. There he set
+up the same enterprises, and tramped the streets in search of his waifs
+and outcasts, night and day, year in, year out, as if driven on by a
+consuming passion of pity for the lost and fallen. In the interests of
+his health he was called back to Rome&mdash;and returned here a white-haired
+man of forty."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! what did I say, dear Baron? The apple falls near the tree, you
+know!"</p>
+
+<p>"By this time he had given away millions, and the Pope wished to make
+him President of his Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, but he begged to be
+excused. Then Apostolic Delegate to the United States, and he prayed
+off. Then Nuncio to Spain, and he went on his knees to remain in the
+Campagna Romana, and do the work of a simple priest among a simple
+people. At last, without consulting him they made him Bishop, and
+afterwards Cardinal, and, on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> death of the Pope, he was Scrutator to
+the Conclave, and fainted when he read out his own name as that of
+Sovereign Pontiff of the Church."</p>
+
+<p>The little Princess was wiping her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;all the world was changed. The priest of the future disappeared
+in a Pope who was the incarnation of the past. Authority was now his
+watchword. What was the highest authority on earth? The Holy See!
+Therefore, the greatest thing for the world was the domination of the
+Pope. If anybody should say that the power conferred by Christ on his
+Vicar was only spiritual, let him be accursed! In Christ's name the Pope
+was sovereign&mdash;supreme sovereign over the bodies and souls of
+men&mdash;acknowledging no superior, holding the right to make and depose
+kings, and claiming to be supreme judge over the consciences and crimes
+of all&mdash;the peasant that tills the soil, and the prince that sits on the
+throne!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tre-men-jous!" said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear Baron," said the little Princess, "don't you think there was
+an affair of the heart after all?" and the little plumes bobbed
+sideways.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron laughed again. "The Pope seems to have half of humanity on his
+side already&mdash;he has the women apparently."</p>
+
+<p>All this time there had risen from the piazza into the room a humming
+noise like the swarming of bees, but now a shrill voice came up from the
+crowd with the sudden swish of a rocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out!"</p>
+
+<p>The young Roman, who had been looking over the balcony, turned his head
+back and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>But the Baron had gone from the room.</p>
+
+<p>"He knew her carriage wheels apparently," said Don Camillo, and the lips
+of the little Princess closed tight as if from sudden pain.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>The return of the Baron was announced by the faint rustle of a silk
+under-skirt and a light yet decided step keeping pace with his own. He
+came back with Donna Roma on his arm, and over his coolness and calm
+dignity he looked pleased and proud.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The lady herself was brilliantly animated and happy. A certain swing in
+her graceful carriage gave an instant impression of perfect health, and
+there was physical health also in the brightness of her eyes and the
+gaiety of her expression. Her face was lighted up by a smile which
+seemed to pervade her whole person and make it radiant with overflowing
+joy. A vivacity which was at the same time dignified and spontaneous
+appeared in every movement of her harmonious figure, and as she came
+into the room there was a glow of health and happiness that filled the
+air like the glow of sunlight through a veil of soft red gauze.</p>
+
+<p>She saluted the Baron's guests with a smile that fascinated everybody.
+There was a modified air of freedom about her, as of one who has a right
+to make advances, a manner which captivates all women in a queen and all
+men in a lovely woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it is you, General Potter? And my dear General Morra? Camillo mio!"
+(The Italian had rushed upon her and kissed her hand.) "Sir Evelyn Wise,
+from England, isn't it? I'm half an Englishwoman myself, and I'm very
+proud of it."</p>
+
+<p>She had smiled frankly into Sir Evelyn's face, and he had smiled back
+without knowing it. There was something contagious about her smile. The
+rosy mouth with its pearly teeth seemed to smile of itself, and the
+lovely eyes had their separate art of smiling. Her lips parted of
+themselves, and then you felt your own lips parting.</p>
+
+<p>"You were to have been busy with your fountain to-day...." began the
+Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"So I expected," she said in a voice that was soft yet full, "and I did
+not think I should care to see any more spectacles in Rome, where the
+people are going in procession all the year through&mdash;but what do you
+think has brought me?"</p>
+
+<p>"The artist's instinct, of course," said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"No, just the woman's&mdash;to see a man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky fellow, whoever he is!" said the American. "He'll see something
+better than you will, though," and then the golden complexion gleamed up
+at him under a smile like sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"But who is he?" said the young Roman.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you. Bruno&mdash;you remember Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno!" cried the Baron.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Bruno is all right," she said, and, turning to the others, "Bruno
+is my man in the studio&mdash;my marble pointer, you know. Bruno Rocco, and
+nobody was ever so rightly named. A big, shaggy, good-natured bear,
+always singing or growling or laughing, and as true as steel. A terrible
+Liberal, though; a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, and everything
+that's shocking."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ever since I began my fountain ... I'm making a fountain for the
+Municipality&mdash;it is to be erected in the new part of the Piazza Colonna.
+I expect to finish it in a fortnight. You would like to see it? Yes?
+I'll send you cards&mdash;a little private view, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"But Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes, Bruno! Well, I've been at a loss for a model for one of my
+figures ... figures all round the dish, you know. They represent the
+Twelve Apostles, with Christ in the centre giving out the water of
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"But Bruno! Bruno! Bruno!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and the merry ring of her laughter set them all laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Bruno has sung the praises of one of his friends until I'm
+crazy ... crazy, that's English, isn't it? I told you I was half an
+Englishwoman. American? Thanks, General! I'm 'just crazy' to get him
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"Simple enough&mdash;hire him to sit to you," said the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," with a mock solemnity, "he is far too grand a person for that! A
+member of Parliament, a leader of the Left, a prophet, a person with a
+mission, and I daren't even dream of it. But this morning, Bruno tells
+me, his friend, his idol, is to stop the Pope's procession, and present
+a petition, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone&mdash;see my
+man and see the spectacle&mdash;and here I am to see them!"</p>
+
+<p>"And who is this paragon of yours, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"The great David Rossi!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That</i> man!"</p>
+
+<p>The white plumes were going like a fan.</p>
+
+<p>"The man is a public nuisance and ought to be put down by the police,"
+said the little Princess, beating her foot on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"He has a tongue like a sword and a pen like a dagger," said the young
+Roman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Donna Roma's eyes began to flash with a new expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, he is a journalist, isn't he, and libels people in his paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"The creature has ruined more reputations than anybody else in Europe,"
+said the little Princess.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember now. He made a terrible attack on our young old women and
+our old young men. Declared they were meddling with everything&mdash;called
+them a museum of mummies, and said they were symbolical of the ruin that
+was coming on the country. Shameful, wasn't it? Nobody likes to be
+talked about, especially in Rome, where it's the end of everything. But
+what matter? The young man has perhaps learned freedom of speech in some
+free country. We can afford to forgive him, can't we? And then he is so
+interesting and so handsome!"</p>
+
+<p>"An attempt to stop the Pope's procession might end in tumult," said the
+American General to the Italian General. "Was that the danger the Baron
+spoke about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said General Morra. "The Government have been compelled to tax
+bread, and of course that has been a signal for the enemies of the
+national spirit to say that we are starving the people. This David Rossi
+is the worst Roman in Rome. He opposed us in Parliament and lost.
+Petitioned the King and lost again. Now he intends to petition the
+Pope&mdash;with what hope, Heaven knows."</p>
+
+<p>"With the hope of playing on public opinion, of course," said the Baron
+cynically.</p>
+
+<p>"Public opinion is a great force, your Excellency," said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"A great pestilence," said the Baron warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"What is David Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"An anarchist, a republican, a nihilist, anything as old as the hills,
+dear friend, only everything in a new way," said the young Roman.</p>
+
+<p>"David Rossi is the politician who proposes to govern the world by the
+precepts of the Lord's Prayer," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord's Prayer!"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron paraded on the hearthrug. "David Rossi," he said
+compassionately, "is a creature of his age. A man of generous impulses
+and wide sympathies, moved to indignation at the extremes of poverty and
+wealth, and carried away by the promptings of the eternal religion in
+the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> soul. A dreamer, of course, a dreamer like the Holy Father
+himself, only his dream is different, and neither could succeed without
+destroying the other. In the millennium Rossi looks for, not only are
+kings and princes to disappear, but popes and prelates as well."</p>
+
+<p>"And where does this unpractical politician come from?" said the
+Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"We must ask you to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed
+to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country.
+As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows
+certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was.
+Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his
+mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never talks about himself,
+and cannot be got to lift the veil which surrounds his birth and early
+life. Came back to Rome eight years ago, and made a vast noise by
+propounding his platonic scheme of politics&mdash;was called up for his term
+of military service, refused to serve, got himself imprisoned for six
+months and came out a mighty hero&mdash;was returned to Parliament for no
+fewer than three constituencies, sat for Rome, took his place on the
+Extreme Left, and attacked every Minister and every measure which
+favoured the interest of the army&mdash;encouraged the workmen not to pay
+their taxes and the farmers not to pay their rents&mdash;and thus became the
+leader of a noisy faction, and is now surrounded by the degenerate class
+throughout Italy which dreams of reconstructing society by burying it
+under ruins."</p>
+
+<p>"Lived in England, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently, and if his early life could be traced it would probably be
+found that he was brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracy&mdash;perhaps
+under the influence of some vile revolutionary living in London under
+the protection of your too liberal laws."</p>
+
+<p>Donna Roma sprang up with a movement full of grace and energy. "Anyhow,"
+she said, "he is young and good-looking and romantic and mysterious, and
+I'm head over ears in love with him already."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, every man is a world," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"And what about woman?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>He threw up his hands, she smiled full into his face, and they laughed
+together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>A fanfare of trumpets came from the piazza, and with a cry of delight
+Roma ran into the balcony, followed by all the women and most of the
+men.</p>
+
+<p>"Only the signal that the cort&egrave;ge has started," said Don Camillo.
+"They'll be some minutes still."</p>
+
+<p>"Santo Dio!" cried Roma. "What a sight! It dazzles me; it makes me
+dizzy!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face beamed, her eyes danced, and she was all aglow from head to
+foot. The American Ambassador stood behind her, and, as permitted by his
+greater age, he tossed back the shuttlecock of her playful talk with
+chaff and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"How patient the people are! See the little groups on camp-stools
+munching biscuits and reading the journals. 'La Vera Roma!'" (mimicking
+the cry of the newspaper sellers). "Look at that pretty girl&mdash;the fair
+one with the young man in the Homburg hat! She has climbed up the
+obelisk, and is inviting him to sit on an inch and a half of corbel
+beside her."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, those who love take up little room!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they? What a lovely world it is! I'll tell you what this makes me
+think about&mdash;a wedding! Glorious morning, beautiful sunshine, flowers,
+wreaths, bridesmaids ready; coachman all a posy, only waiting for the
+bride!"</p>
+
+<p>"A wedding is what you women are always dreaming about&mdash;you begin
+dreaming about it in your cradles&mdash;it's in a woman's bones, I do
+believe," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"Must be the ones she got from Adam, then," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the Baron was still parading the hearthrug inside and listening
+to the warnings of his Minister of War.</p>
+
+<p>"You are resolved to arrest the man?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he gives us an opportunity&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not forget that he is a Deputy?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is because I remember it that my resolution is fixed. In Parliament
+he is a privileged person; let him make half as much disorder outside
+and you shall see where he will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Anarchists!" said Roma. "That group below the balcony? Is David Rossi
+among them? Yes? Which of them? Which? Which? Which? The tall man in the
+black hat with his back to us? Oh! why doesn't he turn his face? Should
+I shout?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Roma!" from the little Princess.</p>
+
+<p>"I know; I'll faint, and you'll catch me, and the Princess will cry
+'Madonna mia!' and then he'll turn round and look up."</p>
+
+<p>"My child!"</p>
+
+<p>"He'll see through you, though, and then where will you be?"</p>
+
+<p>"See through me, indeed!" and she laughed the laugh a man loves to hear,
+half-raillery, half-caress.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of a line of princes, making love to a
+nameless nobody!"</p>
+
+<p>"Shows what a heavenly character she is, then! See how good I am at
+throwing bouquets at myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is love, anyway? A certain boy and a certain girl agree to
+go for a row in the same boat to the same place, and if they pull
+together, what does it matter where they come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, indeed?" she said, and a smile, partly serious, played about the
+parted mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Could <i>you</i> think like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could! I could! I could!"</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck eleven. Another fanfare of trumpets came from the
+direction of the Vatican, and then the confused noises in the square
+suddenly ceased and a broad "Ah!" passed over it, as of a vast living
+creature taking breath.</p>
+
+<p>"They're coming!" cried Roma. "Baron, the cort&egrave;ge is coming."</p>
+
+<p>"Presently," the Baron answered from within.</p>
+
+<p>Roma's dog, which had slept on a chair through the tumult, was awakened
+by the lull and began to bark. She picked it up, tucked it under her arm
+and ran back to the balcony, where she stood by the parapet, in full
+view of the people below, with the young Roman on one side, the American
+on the other, and the ladies seated around.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the procession had begun to appear, issuing from a bronze
+gate under the right arm of the colonnade, and passing down the channel
+which had been kept open by the cordon of infantry.</p>
+
+<p>Roma abandoned herself to the fascinations of the scene, and her gaiety
+infected everybody.</p>
+
+<p>"Camillo, you must tell me who they all are. There now&mdash;those men who
+come first in black and red?"</p>
+
+<p>"Laymen," said the young Roman. "They're called the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span> Apostolic Cursori.
+When a Cardinal is nominated they take him the news, and get two or
+three thousand francs for their trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"And these little fat folk in white lace pinafores?"</p>
+
+<p>"Singers of the Sistine Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro
+Mustafa&mdash;used to be the greatest soprano of the century."</p>
+
+<p>"And this dear old friar with the mittens and rosary and the comfortable
+linsey-woolsey sort of face?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's Father Pifferi of San Lorenzo, confessor to the Pope. He knows
+all the Pope's sins."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment her dog barked furiously, and the old friar looked up at
+her, whereupon she smiled down on him, and then a half-smile played
+about his good-natured face.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a Capuchin, and those Frati in different colours coming behind
+him...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know them; see if I don't," she cried, as there passed under the
+balcony a double file of friars and monks. "The brown ones&mdash;Capuchins
+and Franciscans! Brown and white&mdash;Carmelites! Black&mdash;Augustinians and
+Benedictines! Black with a white cross&mdash;Passionists! And the monks all
+white are Trappists. I know the Trappists best, because I drive out to
+Tre Fontane to buy eucalyptus and flirt with Father John."</p>
+
+<p>"Shocking!" said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? What are their vows of celibacy but conspiracies against us
+poor women? Nearly every man a woman wants is either mated or has sworn
+off in some way. Oh, how I should love to meet one of those anchorites
+in real life and make him fly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I dare say the whisk of a petticoat would be more frightening
+than all his doctors of divinity."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!"</p>
+
+<p>From a part of the procession which had passed the balcony there came
+the sound of harmonious voices.</p>
+
+<p>"The singers of the Sistine Chapel! They're singing a hymn."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it. '<i>Veni, Creator!</i>' How splendid! How glorious! I feel as if
+I wanted to cry!"</p>
+
+<p>All at once the singing stopped, the murmuring and speaking of the crowd
+ceased too, and there was a breathless moment, such as comes before the
+first blast of a storm. A nervous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> quiver, like the shudder that passes
+over the earth at sundown, swept across the piazza, and the people stood
+motionless, every neck stretched, and every eye turned in the direction
+of the bronze gate, as if God were about to reveal Himself from the Holy
+of Holies. Then in that grand silence there came the clear call of
+silver trumpets, and at the next instant the Presence itself.</p>
+
+<p>"The Pope! Baron, the Pope!"</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere was charged with electricity. A great roar of cheering
+went up from below like the roaring of surf, and it was followed by a
+clapping of hands like the running of the sea off a shingly beach after
+the boom of a tremendous breaker.</p>
+
+<p>An old man, dressed wholly in white, carried shoulder-high on a chair
+glittering with purple and crimson, and having a canopy of silver and
+gold above him. He wore a triple crown, which glistened in the sunlight,
+and but for the delicate white hand which he upraised to bless the
+people, he might have been mistaken for an image.</p>
+
+<p>His face was beautiful, and had a ray of beatified light on it&mdash;a face
+of marvellous sweetness and great spirituality.</p>
+
+<p>It was a thrilling moment, and Roma's excitement was intense. "There he
+is! All in white! He's on a gilded chair under the silken canopy! The
+canopy is held up by prelates, and the chairmen are in knee-breeches and
+red velvet. Look at the great waving plumes on either side!"</p>
+
+<p>"Peacock's feathers!" said a voice behind her, but she paid no heed.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the acolytes swinging incense, and the golden cross coming
+before! What thunders of applause&mdash;I can hardly hear myself speak. It's
+like standing on a cliff while the sea below is running mountains high.
+No, it's like no other sound on earth; it's human&mdash;fifty thousand
+unloosed throats of men! That's the clapping of ladies&mdash;listen to the
+weak applause of their white-gloved fingers. Now they're waving their
+handkerchiefs. Look! Like the wings of ten thousand butterflies
+fluttering up from a meadow."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's abandonment was by this time complete; she was waving her
+handkerchief and crying "<i>Viva il Papa Re!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"They're bearing him slowly along. He's coming this way. Look at the
+Noble Guard in their helmets and jackboots. And there are the Swiss
+Guard in Joseph's coat of many colours! We can see him plainly now. Do
+you smell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> the incense? It's like the ribbon of Bruges. The pluviale?
+That gold vestment? It's studded on his breast with precious stones. How
+they blaze in the sunshine! He is blessing the people, and they are
+falling on their knees before him."</p>
+
+<p>"Like the grass before the scythe!"</p>
+
+<p>"How tired he looks! How white his face is! No, not white&mdash;ivory! No,
+marble&mdash;Carrara marble! He might be Lazarus who was dead and has come
+back from the tomb! No humanity left in him! A saint! An angel!"</p>
+
+<p>"The spiritual autocrat of the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Viva il Papa Re!</i> He's going by! <i>Viva il Papa Re!</i> He has
+gone.... Well!"</p>
+
+<p>She was rising from her knees and wiping her eyes, trying to cover up
+with laughter the confusion of her rapture.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of voices in the distance chanting dolorously.</p>
+
+<p>"The cantors intoning <i>Tu es Petrus</i>," said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I mean the commotion down there. Somebody is pushing through the
+Guard."</p>
+
+<p>"It's David Rossi," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that David Rossi? Oh, dear me! I had forgotten all about him." She
+moved forward to see his face. "Why ... where have I ... I've seen him
+before somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>A strange physical sensation tingled all over her at that moment, and
+she shuddered as if with sudden cold.</p>
+
+<p>"What's amiss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing! But I like him. Do you know, I really like him."</p>
+
+<p>"Women are funny things," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"They're nice, though, aren't they?" And two rows of pearly teeth
+between parted lips gleamed up at him with gay raillery.</p>
+
+<p>Again she craned forward. "He is on his knees to the Pope! Now he'll
+present the petition. No ... yes ... the brutes! They're dragging him
+away! The procession is going on! Disgraceful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Long live the Workmen's Pope!" came up from the piazza, and under the
+shrill shouts of the pilgrims were heard the monotonous voices of the
+monks as they passed through the open doors of the Basilica intoning the
+praises of God.</p>
+
+<p>"They're lifting him on to a car," said the American.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"David Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he is going to speak."</p>
+
+<p>"How delightful! Shall we hear him? Good! How glad I am that I came! He
+is facing this way! Oh, yes; those are his own people with the banners!
+Baron, the Holy Father has gone on to St. Peter's, and David Rossi is
+going to speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!"</p>
+
+<p>A quivering, vibrating voice came up from below, and in a moment there
+was a dead silence.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>"Brothers, when Christ Himself was on the earth going up to Jerusalem,
+He rode on the colt of an ass, and the blind and the lame and the sick
+came to Him, and He healed them. Humanity is sick and blind and lame
+to-day, brothers, but the Vicar of Christ goes on."</p>
+
+<p>At the words an audible murmur came from the crowd, such as goes before
+the clapping of hands in a Roman theatre, a great upheaval of the heart
+of the audience to the actor who has touched and stirred it.</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers, in a little Eastern village a long time ago, there arose
+among the poor and lowly a great Teacher, and the only prayer He taught
+His followers was the prayer 'Our Father who art in Heaven.' It was the
+expression of man's utmost need, the expression of man's utmost hope.
+And not only did the Teacher teach that prayer&mdash;He lived according to
+the light of it. All men were His brothers, all women His sisters; He
+was poor, He had no home, no purse, and no second coat; when He was
+smitten He did not smite back, and when He was unjustly accused He did
+not defend Himself. Nineteen hundred years have passed since then,
+brothers, and the Teacher who arose among the poor and lowly is now a
+great Prophet. All the world knows and honours Him, and civilised
+nations have built themselves upon the religion He founded. A great
+Church calls itself by His name, and a mighty kingdom, known as
+Christendom, owes allegiance to His faith. But what of His teaching? He
+said: 'Resist not evil,' yet all Christian nations maintain standing
+armies. He said: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' yet
+the wealthiest men are Christian men, and the richest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> organisation in
+the world is the Christian Church. He said: 'Our Father who art in
+Heaven,' yet men who ought to be brothers are divided into states, and
+hate each other as enemies. He said: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
+on earth as it is done in Heaven,' yet he who believes it ever will come
+is called a fanatic and a fool."</p>
+
+<p>Some murmurs of dissent were drowned in cries of "Go on!" "Speak!"
+"Silence!"</p>
+
+<p>"Foremost and grandest of the teachings of Christ are two inseparable
+truths&mdash;the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But in Italy,
+as elsewhere, the people are starved that king may contend with king,
+and when we appeal to the Pope to protest in the name of the Prince of
+Peace, he remembers his temporalities and passes on!"</p>
+
+<p>At these words the emotion of the crowd broke into loud shouts of
+approval, with which some groans were mingled.</p>
+
+<p>Roma had turned her face aside from the speaker, and her profile was
+changed&mdash;the gay, sprightly, airy, radiant look had given way to a
+serious, almost a melancholy expression.</p>
+
+<p>"We have two sovereigns in Rome, brothers, a great State and a great
+Church, with a perishing people. We have soldiers enough to kill us,
+priests enough to tell us how to die, but no one to show us how to
+live."</p>
+
+<p>"Corruption! Corruption!"</p>
+
+<p>"Corruption indeed, brothers; and who is there among us to whom the
+corruptions of our rulers are unknown? Who cannot point to the wars made
+that should not have been made? to the banks broken that should not have
+broken? And who in Rome cannot point to the Ministers who allow their
+mistresses to meddle in public affairs and enrich themselves by the ruin
+of all around?"</p>
+
+<p>The little Princess on the balcony was twisting about.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Are you deserting us, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>And Roma answered from within the house, in a voice that sounded strange
+and muffled:</p>
+
+<p>"It was cold on the balcony, I think."</p>
+
+<p>The little Princess laughed a bitter laugh, and David Rossi heard it and
+misunderstood it, and his nostrils quivered like the nostrils of a
+horse, and when he spoke again his voice shook with passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Who has not seen the splendid equipages of these privileged ones of
+fortune&mdash;their gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold&mdash;emblems of the
+acid which is eating into the public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span> organs? Has Providence raised this
+country from the dead only to be dizzied in a whirlpool of scandal,
+hypocrisy, and fraud&mdash;only to fall a prey to an infamous traffic without
+a name between high officials of low desires and women whose reputations
+are long since lost? It is men and women like these who destroy their
+country for their own selfish ends. Very well, let them destroy her; but
+before they do so, let them hear what one of her children says: The
+Government you are building up on the whitened bones of the people shall
+be overthrown&mdash;the King who countenances you, and the Pope who will not
+condemn you, shall be overthrown, and then&mdash;and not till then&mdash;will the
+nation be free."</p>
+
+<p>At this there was a terrific clamour. The square resounded with confused
+voices. "Bravo!" "Dog!" "Dog's murderer!" "Traitor!" "Long live David
+Rossi!" "Down with the Vampire!"</p>
+
+<p>The ladies had fled from the balcony back to the room with cries of
+alarm. "There will be a riot." "The man is inciting the people to
+rebellion!" "This house will be first to be attacked!"</p>
+
+<p>"Calm yourselves, ladies. No harm shall come to you," said the Baron,
+and he rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>There came from below a babel of shouts and screams.</p>
+
+<p>"Madonna mia! What is that?" cried the Princess, wringing her hands; and
+the American Ambassador, who had remained on the balcony, said:</p>
+
+<p>"The Carabineers have charged the crowd and arrested David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>"They're going through the Borgo," said Don Camillo, "and kicking and
+cuffing and jostling and hustling all the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be alarmed! There's the Hospital of Santo Spirito round the
+corner, and stations of the Red Cross Society everywhere," said the
+Baron, and then Felice answered the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"See our friends out by the street at the back, Felice. Good-bye,
+ladies! Have no fear! The Government does not mean to blunt the weapons
+it uses against the malefactors who insult the doctrines of the State."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent Minister!" said the Princess. "Such canaglia are not fit to
+have their liberty, and I would lock them all up in prison."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And then Don Camillo offered his arm to the little lady with the white
+plumes, and they came almost face to face with Roma, who was standing by
+the door hung with curtains, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and
+parting from the English Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma," he was saying, "if I can ever be of use to you, either now
+or in the future, I beg of you to command me."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at her!" whispered the Princess. "How agitated she is! A moment
+ago she was finding it cold in the Loggia! I'm so happy!"</p>
+
+<p>At the next instant she ran up to Roma and kissed her. "Poor child! How
+sorry I am! You have my sympathy, my dear! But didn't I tell you the man
+was a public nuisance, and ought to be put down by the police?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shameful, isn't it?" said Don Camillo. "Calumny is a little wind, but
+it raises such a terrible tempest."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody likes to be talked about," said the Princess, "especially in
+Rome, where it is the end of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"But what matter? Perhaps the young man has learned freedom of speech in
+a free country!" said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"And then he is so interesting and so handsome," said the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>Roma made no answer. There was a slight drooping of the lovely eyes and
+a trembling of the lips and nostrils. For a moment she stood absolutely
+impassive, and then with a flash of disdain she flung round into the
+inner room.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>Roma had taken refuge in the council-room. There had been much business
+that morning, and a copy of the constitutional statute lay open on a
+large table, which had a plate-glass top with photographs under the
+surface.</p>
+
+<p>In this passionless atmosphere, so little accustomed to such scenes,
+Roma sat in her wounded pride and humiliation, with her head down, and
+her beautiful white hands over her face.</p>
+
+<p>She heard measured footsteps approaching, and then a hand touched her on
+the shoulder. She looked up and drew back as if the touch stung her. Her
+lips closed sternly, and she got up and began to walk about the room,
+and then she burst into a torrent of anger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear them? The cats! How they loved to claw me, and still purr
+and purr! Before the sun is set the story will be all over Rome! It has
+run off already on the hoofs of that woman's English horses. To-morrow
+morning it will be in every newspaper in the kingdom. Olga and Lena and
+every woman of them all who lives in a glass house will throw stones.
+'The new Pompadour! Who is she?' Oh, I could die of vexation and shame!"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron leaned against the table and listened, twisting the ends of
+his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"The Court will turn its back on me now. They only wanted a good excuse
+to put their humiliations upon me. It's horrible! I can't bear it. I
+won't. I tell you, I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>But the lips, compressed with scorn, began to quiver visibly, and she
+threw herself into a chair, took out her handkerchief, and hid her face
+on the table.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Felice came into the room to say that the Commendatore
+Angelelli had returned and wished to speak with his Excellency.</p>
+
+<p>"I will see him presently," said the Baron, with an impassive
+expression, and Felice went out silently, as one who had seen nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's calm dignity was wounded. "Be so good as to have some regard
+for me in the presence of my servants," he said. "I understand your
+feelings, but you are much too excited to see things in their proper
+light. You have been publicly insulted and degraded, but you must not
+talk to me as if it were my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she
+said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an
+expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no
+reply, and his silence broke her answer.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and
+he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held
+it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her
+head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is all over," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring
+forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander
+and justify you in the eyes of all."</p>
+
+<p>At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span> look beyond the
+Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the
+table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and
+revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of
+the Baron's castle in the Alban hills.</p>
+
+<p>"Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno."</p>
+
+<p>"I will discharge him this very day&mdash;I will! I will! I will!"</p>
+
+<p>There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had
+said must have come of what her own servant told him&mdash;that Bruno had
+watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the
+two men had discussed her between them.</p>
+
+<p>"I could kill him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno Rocco?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"He shall be put on his trial."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime
+Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow
+has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."</p>
+
+<p>"What good will that do?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will be silenced&mdash;and crushed."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her
+heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning
+him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly
+enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater
+in his prison than the King on his throne."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on
+trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public
+will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was
+punished for telling the truth."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span> double injury. The
+insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate
+for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will
+quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed
+until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale,
+behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of
+vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring.</p>
+
+<p>"I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this
+humiliating situation."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already.</p>
+
+<p>"If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no
+good to the King."</p>
+
+<p>"It's true."</p>
+
+<p>"Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and
+the King some service."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who
+he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from
+Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"I would certainly give a good deal to know."</p>
+
+<p>"You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his
+fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he
+belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether
+he is in league with the Vatican."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will find it all out for you."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"&mdash;she laughed, a
+little ashamed&mdash;"the inmost secrets of his soul."</p>
+
+<p>She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into
+her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms&mdash;to
+draw him on and then fling him away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span> and thus pay him back for what he
+has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do
+nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He
+should appear to regard them with contempt."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire.
+The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the
+only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm
+of jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are
+irresistible! But remember&mdash;the man is one of the incorruptible."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it
+is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."</p>
+
+<p>She tossed her head and laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can
+forgive."</p>
+
+<p>"And what about Bruno?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."</p>
+
+<p>"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has
+turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of
+his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'&mdash;he
+shall fall."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes
+catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of
+vinegar. We shall see."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable
+Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the
+table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied
+that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the
+forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."</p>
+
+<p>"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that
+the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Excellency!"</p>
+
+<p>"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him
+safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."</p>
+
+<p>The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore
+Angelelli backed out of the room.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_TWO_THE_REPUBLIC_OF_MAN" id="PART_TWO_THE_REPUBLIC_OF_MAN"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+<h2>PART TWO&mdash;THE REPUBLIC OF MAN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters
+of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is
+this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona
+you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"</p>
+
+<p>In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during
+the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The
+ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with
+rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples
+with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the
+Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the
+staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp,
+which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.</p>
+
+<p>In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie
+hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red
+handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's
+apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the
+front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to
+the roof.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a
+young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of
+six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a
+comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was
+a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to
+the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'"</p>
+
+<p>But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the
+mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran
+home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley
+of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came
+unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great
+strength lieth....' But, mamma...."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'"</p>
+
+<p>"'And she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man, and
+she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head....'"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there came a knock at the door, whereupon the boy uttered
+a cry of delight, and with a radiant face went plunging and shouting out
+of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle David! It's Uncle David!"</p>
+
+<p>The tumultuous voice rolled like baby thunder through the apartment
+until it reached the door, and then it dropped to a dead silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it, Joseph?"</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman," said the boy.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up
+moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza
+of St. Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to speak with Mr. Rossi. I bring him an important message from
+abroad. He is coming along with the people, but to make sure of an
+interview I hurried ahead. May I wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! Come in, sir! You say he is coming? Yes? Then he is free?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman's liquid eyes were glistening visibly, and the man's watchful
+ones seemed to notice everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madam, he is free. I saw him arrested, and I also saw him set at
+liberty."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Then you can tell me all about it? That's good! I have heard so
+little of all that happened, and my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span> boy and I have not been able to
+think of anything else. Sit down, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"As the police were taking him to the station-house in the Borgo," said
+the stranger, "the people made an attempt to rescue him, and it seemed
+as if they must certainly have succeeded if it had not been for his own
+intervention."</p>
+
+<p>"He stopped them, didn't he? I'm sure he stopped them!"</p>
+
+<p>"He did. The delegate had given his three warnings, and the Brigadier
+was on the point of ordering his men to fire, when the prisoner threw up
+his hands before the crowd."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it! Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Brothers,' he said, 'let no blood be shed for my sake. We are in God's
+hands. Go home!'"</p>
+
+<p>"How like him! And then, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then the crowd broke up like a bubble, and the officer who was in
+charge of him uncovered his head. 'Room for the Honourable Rossi!' he
+cried, and the prisoner went into the prison."</p>
+
+<p>The liquid eyes were running over by this time, and the soft voice was
+trembling: "You say you saw him set at liberty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I was in the public service myself until lately, so they allowed
+me to enter the police station, and when the order for release came I
+was present and heard all. 'Deputy,' said the officer, 'I have the
+honour to inform you that you are free.' 'But before I go I must say
+something,' said the Deputy. 'My only orders are that you are to be set
+at liberty,' said the officer. 'Nevertheless, I must see the Minister,'
+said Mr. Rossi. But the crowd had pressed in and surrounded him, and in
+a moment the flood had carried him out into the street, with shouts and
+the waving of hats and a whirlwind of enthusiasm. And now he is being
+drawn by force through the city in a mad, glad, wild procession."</p>
+
+<p>"But he deserves it all, and more&mdash;far, far more!"</p>
+
+<p>The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not
+his wife&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But you live here?"</p>
+
+<p>"We live in the rooms on the roof."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that is to say&mdash;yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by
+a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical
+noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was
+also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty
+canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a
+gigantic bird-cage.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rossi's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and he is fond of animals also&mdash;dogs and cats and rabbits and
+squirrels, especially squirrels."</p>
+
+<p>"Squirrels?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some
+people who love animals&mdash;he loves children, too. He loves all children,
+and as for Joseph...."</p>
+
+<p>"The little boy who cried 'Uncle David' at the door?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. One day my husband said 'Uncle David' to Mr. Rossi, and he
+has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the dining-room, no doubt," said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Why unfortunately?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there's not even a
+curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to
+everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give
+the chicken off his plate if he hadn't anything else. I have to scold
+him a little sometimes&mdash;I can't help it. And as for father, he says he
+has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people
+away."</p>
+
+<p>"That will be his bedroom, I suppose," said the stranger, indicating a
+door which the boy had passed through.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in
+Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers
+and so forth. Come in, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth,
+Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been
+furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with
+incongruous furniture.</p>
+
+<p>"Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a
+porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span> father's fishing-rod, you
+see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his
+mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets
+presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but
+nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the
+bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this."</p>
+
+<p>"A phonograph?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island
+of Elba."</p>
+
+<p>"Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an
+instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very
+next day the carriers brought the phonograph."</p>
+
+<p>"And then he reproduced the message?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the
+boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you
+may come in."</p>
+
+<p>It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white
+counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass
+to keep it from the flies.</p>
+
+<p>"How sweet!" said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the
+other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid
+heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from
+the herring net.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from
+the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on
+his finger-nail.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A
+six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he
+threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture
+in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait
+of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.</p>
+
+<p>"Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for
+all that."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great
+crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> the broad piazza. At
+the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another
+voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"They're coming! It's my husband! Bruno!" said the woman, and the ripple
+of her dress told the stranger she had gone.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi's people had
+brought him home in triumph, and now they were crowding upon him to kiss
+his hand, the big-hearted, baby-headed, beloved children of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The object of this aurora of worship stood with his back to the table in
+the dining-room, looking down and a little ashamed, while Bruno Rocco,
+six feet three in his stockings, hoisted the boy on to his shoulder, and
+shouted as from a tower to everybody as they entered by the door:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, sonny, come in! Don't stand there like the Pope between the
+devil and the deep sea. Come in among the people," and Bruno's laughter
+rocked through the room to where the crowd stood thick on the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"The Baron has had a lesson," said a man with a sheet of white paper in
+his hand. "He dreamed of getting the Collar of the Annunziata out of
+this."</p>
+
+<p>"The pig dreamed of acorns," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lesson to the Church as well," said the man with the paper. "She
+wouldn't have anything to do with us. 'I alone strike the hour of the
+march,' says the Church."</p>
+
+<p>"And then she stands still!" said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"The mountains stand still, but men are made to walk," said the man with
+the paper, "and if the Pope doesn't advance with the people, the people
+must advance without the Pope."</p>
+
+<p>"The Pope's all right, sonny," said Bruno, "but what does he know about
+the people? Only what his black-gowned beetles tell him!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Pope has no wife and children," said the man with the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Vampire could find him a few," said Bruno, and then there was
+general laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers," said David Rossi, "let us be temperate. There's nothing to
+be gained by playing battledore and shuttlecock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> with the name of an old
+man who has never done harm to any one. The Pope hasn't listened to us
+to-day, but he is a saint all the same, and his life has been a lesson
+in well-doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody can sail with a fair wind, sir," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us be prudent. There's no need for violence, whether of the hand or
+of the tongue. You've found that out this morning. If you had rescued me
+from the police, I should have been in prison again by this time, and
+God knows what else might have happened. I'm proud of your patience and
+forbearance; and now go home, boys, and God bless you."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop a minute!" said the man with the paper. "Something to read before
+we go. While the Carabineers kept Mr. Rossi in the Borgo, the Committee
+of Direction met in a caf&eacute; and drew up a proclamation."</p>
+
+<p>"Read it, Luigi," said David Rossi, and the man opened his paper and
+read:</p>
+
+<p>"Having appealed in vain to Parliament and to the King against the
+tyrannical tax which the Government has imposed upon bread in order that
+the army and navy may be increased, and having appealed in vain to the
+Pope to intercede with the civil authorities, and call back Italy to its
+duty, it now behoves us, as a suffering and perishing people, to act on
+our own behalf. Unless annulled by royal decree, the tax will come into
+operation on the 1st of February. On that day let every Roman remain
+indoors until an hour after Ave Maria. Let nobody buy so much as one
+loaf of bread, and let no bread be eaten, except such as you give to
+your children. Then, at the first hour of night, let us meet in the
+Coliseum, tens of thousands of fasting people, of one mind and heart, to
+determine what it is our duty to do next, that our bread may be sure and
+our water may not fail."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" "Beautiful!" "Splendid!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only wants the signature of the president," said the reader, and Bruno
+called for pen and ink.</p>
+
+<p>"Before I sign it," said Rossi, "let it be understood that none come
+armed. There is nothing our enemies would like better than to fix on us
+the names of rioters and rebels. We must defeat them. We must show the
+world that we alone are the people of law and order. Therefore I call on
+you to promise that none come armed."</p>
+
+<p>"We promise," cried several voices.</p>
+
+<p>"And now go home, boys, and God bless you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After a moment there was only one man left in the room. It was the
+fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"For you, sir!" said the young man, taking a letter from a pocket inside
+his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi opened the letter and read: "The bearer of this, Charles
+Minghelli, is one of ourselves. He has determined upon the
+accomplishment of a great act, and wishes to see you with respect to
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"You come from London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You wish to speak to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"You may speak freely."</p>
+
+<p>The young man glanced in the direction of Bruno and of Bruno's wife, who
+stood beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a delicate matter, sir," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Come this way," said David Rossi, and he took the stranger into his
+bedroom.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a
+sign to the man to take a chair that stood near.</p>
+
+<p>"Your name is Charles Minghelli?" said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own
+hands."</p>
+
+<p>The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence
+David Rossi replied as calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"I will ask you to explain what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will
+permit me to speak plainly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name
+to it. It is beautiful as a theory&mdash;most beautiful! And the Republic of
+Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span> ideal thread that
+runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to
+tug at it."</p>
+
+<p>"I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest
+against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your
+principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and
+without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then
+where are you?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines
+with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on
+the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with
+more vigour.</p>
+
+<p>"If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where
+are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men
+marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the
+other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or
+paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to
+overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of
+the world!"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and
+forward with a step that was long and slow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and what do <i>you</i> say we ought to do?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation."</p>
+
+<p>"The Prime Minister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You expect me to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right
+to resist violence."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of
+introduction, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you come to me?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of
+Parliament, and can give me cards to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span> Chamber. You can show me the
+way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the
+moment when he is to be found alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death."</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people."</p>
+
+<p>"On the day he dies, sir, the people will live."</p>
+
+<p>"Or that crimes&mdash;great crimes&mdash;have been the means of bringing about
+great reforms."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, sir&mdash;but it would be no crime."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned
+over to the desk and took up the dagger.</p>
+
+<p>"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet
+of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the
+word&mdash;may I take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know
+himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."</p>
+
+<p>The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done&mdash;to
+know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the
+things; the actors, not the parts."</p>
+
+<p>The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open,
+and balancing the dagger on one hand.</p>
+
+<p>"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by
+every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy
+of liberty&mdash;that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight
+otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."</p>
+
+<p>The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you talked like that to the people&mdash;statesmen do
+sometimes&mdash;that's all right&mdash;it's pretty, and it keeps the people
+quiet&mdash;but <i>we</i>...."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."</p>
+
+<p>"So you dismiss me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the
+progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of
+authority to describe our efforts as devilish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span> machinations for the
+destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as
+one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal
+quarrel against an enemy."</p>
+
+<p>The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime
+Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his
+mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who
+is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna
+at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and
+has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a
+liar and a cheat?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.</p>
+
+<p>"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing
+that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy
+in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police
+authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in
+Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy&mdash;she had been
+living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had
+turned out badly and run away."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy
+stare.</p>
+
+<p>"I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the
+magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we
+didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month
+later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared
+entirely."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into
+his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I
+saw her?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the
+Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and
+one of my relatives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span> took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her
+I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was
+lost in the streets of London."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.</p>
+
+<p>"You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.</p>
+
+<p>The man staggered back and stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why ... what...."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant
+companion&mdash;she was the same as my sister&mdash;and her father was the same as
+my father&mdash;and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous
+wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one
+word, but I won't. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my
+path again I'll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an
+assassin."</p>
+
+<p>Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and
+tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street," said
+Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"A man whose room was better than his company, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"What's his name?" said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Charles Minghelli."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the
+Embassy in London, and got dismissed."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought as much!" said David Rossi. "No doubt the man attributed his
+dismissal to the Prime Minister, and wanted to use me for his private
+revenge."</p>
+
+<p>"That was his game, was it? Why didn't you let me know, sir? He would
+have gone downstairs like a falling star. Now that I remember, he's the
+nephew of old Polomba, the Mayor, and I've seen him at Donna Roma's."</p>
+
+<p>A waiter in a white smock, with a large tin box on his head, entered the
+hall, and behind him came the old woman from the porter's lodge, with
+the wrinkled face and the red cotton handkerchief.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come in," cried Bruno. "I ordered the best dinner in the Trattoria,
+sir, and thought we might perhaps dine together for once."</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is, a whole basketful of the grace of God, sir! Out with it,
+Riccardo," and while the women laid the table, Bruno took the dishes
+smoking hot from their temporary oven with its charcoal fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Artichokes&mdash;good. Chicken&mdash;good again. I must be a fox&mdash;I was dreaming
+of chicken all last night! <i>Gnocchi!</i> (potatoes and flour baked).
+<i>Agradolce</i>! (sour and sweet). <i>Fagioletti</i>! (French beans boiled)
+and&mdash;a half-flask of Chianti! Who said the son of my mother couldn't
+order a dinner? All right, Riccardo; come back at Ave Maria."</p>
+
+<p>The waiter went off, and the company sat down to their meal, Bruno and
+his wife at either end of the table, and David Rossi on the sofa, with
+the boy on his right, and the cat curled up into his side on the left,
+while the old woman stood in front, serving the food and removing the
+plates.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at him!" said the old woman, who was deaf, pointing to David
+Rossi, with his two neighbours. "Now, why doesn't the Blessed Virgin
+give him a child of his own?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has, mother, and here he is," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll let her give him a woman first, won't you?" said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that will never be," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?" said the old woman with her hand at her ear like a
+shell.</p>
+
+<p>"He says he won't have any of you," bawled Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"What an idea! But I've heard men say that before, and they've been
+married sooner than you could say 'Hail Mary.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't an incident altogether unknown in the history of this planet,
+is it, mother?" said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"A heart to share your sorrows and joys is something, and the man is not
+wise who wastes the chance of it," said the old woman. "Does he think
+parliaments will make up for it when he grows old and wants something to
+comfort him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, mother!" said Elena, but Bruno made mouths at her to let the old
+woman go on.</p>
+
+<p>"As for me, I'll want somebody of my own about me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span> to close my eyes when
+the time comes to put the sacred oil on them," said the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"If a man has dedicated his life to work for humanity," said David
+Rossi, "he must give up many things&mdash;father, mother, wife, child."</p>
+
+<p>The corner of Elena's apron crept up to the corner of her eye, but the
+old woman, who thought the subject had changed, laughed and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I say to Tommaso. 'Tommaso,' I say, 'if a man is going
+to be a policeman he must have no father, or mother, or wife, or
+child&mdash;no, nor bowels neither,' I say. And Tommaso says, 'Francesca,' he
+says, 'the whole tribe of gentry they call statesmen are just policemen
+in plain clothes, and I do believe they've only liberated Mr. Rossi as a
+trap to catch him again when he has done something.'"</p>
+
+<p>"They won't catch <i>you</i> though, will they, mother?" shouted Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"That they won't! I'm deaf, praise the saints, and can't hear them."</p>
+
+<p>A knock came to the door, and seizing his mace the boy ran and opened
+it. An old man stood on the threshold. He was one of David Rossi's
+pensioners. Ninety years of age, his children all dead, he lived with
+his grandchildren, and was one of the poor human rats who stay indoors
+all day and come out with a lantern at night to scour the gutters of the
+city for the refuse of cigar-ends.</p>
+
+<p>"Come another night, John," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>But David Rossi would not send him away empty, and he was going off with
+the sparkling eyes of a boy, when he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I heard you in the piazza this morning, Excellency! Grand! Only sorry
+for one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was that, sonny?" asked Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"What his Excellency said about Donna Roma. She gave me a half-franc
+only yesterday&mdash;stopped the carriage to do it, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"So that's your only reason...." began Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Good reason, too. Good-night, John!" said David Rossi, and Joseph
+closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she has her virtues, like every other kind of spider," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I spoke of her," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't be, though. She deserved all she got. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span> haven't been two
+years in her studio without knowing what she is."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the man I was thinking of, and if I had remembered that the
+woman must suffer...."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! She'll have to make her Easter confession a little earlier, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"If she hadn't laughed when I was speaking...."</p>
+
+<p>"You're on the wrong track now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the
+little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and
+screeching like an old gandery goose."</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was now over, and the boy called for the phonograph. David Rossi
+went into the sitting-room to fetch it, and Elena went in at the same
+time to light the fire. She was kneeling with her back to him, blowing
+on to the wood, when she said in a trembling voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a little sorry myself, sir, if I may say so. I can't believe what
+they say about the mistress, but even if it's true we don't know <i>her</i>
+story, do we?"</p>
+
+<p>Then the phonograph was turned on, and Joseph marched to the tune of
+"Swannee River" and the strains of Sousa's band.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rossi," said Bruno, between a puff and a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you tried the cylinder that came first?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"How's that, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"The man who brought it said the friend who had spoken into it was
+dead." And then with a shiver, "It would be like a voice from the
+grave&mdash;I doubt if I dare hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a ghost speaking to a man, certainly&mdash;especially if the friend was
+a close one."</p>
+
+<p>"He was the closest friend I ever had, Bruno&mdash;he was my father."</p>
+
+<p>"Father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Foster-father, anyway. For four years he clothed and fed and educated
+me, and I was the same as his own son."</p>
+
+<p>"Had he no children of his own?"</p>
+
+<p>"One little daughter, no bigger than Joseph when I saw her last&mdash;Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, her father was a Liberal, and her name was Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"What became of her?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When the doctor came to Italy on the errand which ended in his
+imprisonment he gave her into the keeping of some Italian friends in
+London. I was too young to take charge of her then. Besides, I left
+England shortly afterward and went to America."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she now?" said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"When I returned to England ... she was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's nothing new under the sun of Rome&mdash;Donna Roma came from
+London," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi felt the muscles of his face quiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Her father was an exile in England, too, and when he came back on the
+errand that ended in Elba, he gave her away to some people who treated
+her badly&mdash;I've heard old Teapot, the Countess, say so when she's been
+nagging her poor niece."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi breathed painfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange if it should be the same," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Rossi's Roma is dead," said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, of course, certainly! What a fool I am!" said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi had a sense of suffocation, and he went out on to the lead
+flat.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>The Ave Maria was ringing from many church towers, and the golden day
+was going down with the sun behind the dark outline of the dome of St.
+Peter's, while the blue night was rising over the snow-capped Apennines
+in a premature twilight with one twinkling star.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi's ears buzzed as with the sound of a mighty wind rushing
+through trees at a distance. Bruno's last words on top of Charles
+Minghelli's had struck him like an alarum bell heard through the mists
+of sleep, and his head was stunned and his eyes were dizzy. He buttoned
+his coat about him, and walked quickly to and fro on the lead flat by
+the side of the cage, in which the birds were already bunched up and
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>Before he was aware of the passing of time, the church bells were
+tolling the first hour of night. Presently he became aware of flares
+burning in the Piazza of St. Peter, and of the shadows of giant heads
+cast up on the walls of the vast Basilica. It was the crowd gathering
+for the last ceremonial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> of the Pope's Jubilee, and at the sound of a
+double rocket, which went up as with the crackle of musketry, little
+Joseph came running on to the roof, followed by his mother and Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi took the boy into his arms and tried to dispel the gloom of
+his own spirits in the child's joy at the illuminations.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever see 'luminations before, Uncle David?" said Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"Once, dear, but that was long ago and far away. I was a boy myself in
+those days, and there was a little girl with me then who was no bigger
+than you are now. But it's growing cold, there's frost in the air,
+besides it's late, and little boys must go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, God is God, and the Pope is His Prophet," said Bruno, when Elena
+and Joseph had gone indoors. "It was like day! You could see the
+lightning conductor over the Pope's apartment! Pshew!" blowing puffs of
+smoke from his twisted cigar. "Won't keep the lightning off, though."</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma's father would be Prince Volonna?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the last prince of the old papal name. When the Volonna estates
+were confiscated, the title really lapsed, but old Vampire got the
+lands."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever hear that he bore any other name during the time he was in
+exile?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure to, but there was no trial and nothing was known. They all changed
+their names, though."</p>
+
+<p>"Why ... what...." said David Rossi in an unsteady voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said Bruno. "Because they were all condemned in Italy, and the
+foreign countries were told to turn them out. But what am I talking
+about? You know all that better than I do, sir. Didn't your old friend
+go under a false name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely&mdash;I don't know," said David Rossi, in a voice that testified
+to jangled nerves.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he ever tell you, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say that he ever.... Certainly the school of revolution has
+always had villains enough, and perhaps to prevent treachery...."</p>
+
+<p>"You may say so! The devil has the run of the world,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span> even in England.
+But I'm surprised your old friend, being like a father to you, didn't
+tell you&mdash;at the end anyway...."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he intended to&mdash;and then perhaps...."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi put his hand to his brow as if in pain and perplexity, and
+began again to walk backward and forward.</p>
+
+<p>A screamer in the piazza below cried "<i>Trib-un-a</i>!" and Bruno said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's early! What's up, I wonder? I'll go down and get a paper."</p>
+
+<p>Darkness had by this time re-invaded the sky, and the stars looked down
+from their broad dome, clear, sweet, white, and serene, putting to shame
+by their immortal solemnity the poor little mimes, the paltry
+puppet-shows of the human jackstraws who had just been worshipping at
+their self-made shrine.</p>
+
+<p>As David Rossi returned to the house, Elena, who was undressing the boy,
+saw a haggard look in his eyes, but Bruno, who was reading his evening
+journal, saw nothing, and cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Helloa! Listen to this, sir. It's Olga. She's got a pen, I can tell
+you. 'Madame de Pompadour. Hitherto we have had the pleasure of having
+Madame &mdash;&mdash;, whose pressure on the State and on Italy's wise counsellors
+was only incidental, but now that the fates have given us a Madame
+Pompadour....' Then there's a leading article on your speech in the
+piazza. Praises you up to the skies. Look! 'Thank God we have men like
+the Honourable Rossi, who at the risk of....'"</p>
+
+<p>But with a clouded brow David Rossi turned away from him and passed into
+the sitting-room, and Bruno looked around in blank bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you want the lamp, sir?" said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, thank you," he answered through the open door.</p>
+
+<p>The wood fire was glowing on the hearth, and in the acute state of his
+nerves he shuddered involuntarily as its reflection in the window
+opposite looked back at him like a fiery eye. He opened the case of the
+phonograph, which had been returned to its place on the piano, and then
+from a drawer in the bureau he took a small cardboard box. The wood in
+the fire flickered at that moment and started some ghastly shadows on
+the ceiling, but he drew a cylinder from the box<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span> and slid it on to the
+barrel of the phonograph. Then he stepped to the door, shut and locked
+it.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>"Well!" said Bruno. "If that isn't enough to make a man feel as small as
+a sardine!"</p>
+
+<p>There was only one thing to do, but to conceal the nature of it Bruno
+flourished the newspaper and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Elena, I must go down to the lodge and read these articles to your
+father. Poor Donna Roma, she'll have to fly, I'm afraid. Bye-bye,
+Garibaldi-Mazzini! Early to bed, early to rise, and time enough to grow
+old, you know!... As for Mr. Rossi, he might be a sinner and a criminal
+instead of the hero of the hour! It licks me to little bits." And Bruno
+carried his dark mystery down to the caf&eacute; to see if it might be
+dispelled by a litre of autumnal light from sunny vineyards.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Joseph, being very tired, was shooting out a pettish lip
+because he had to go to bed without saying good-night to Uncle David; and
+his mother, making terms with this pretence, consented to bring down his
+nightdress, thinking Rossi might be out of the sitting-room by that
+time, and the boy be pacified. But when she returned to the dining-room
+the sitting-room door was still closed, and Joseph was pleading to be
+allowed to lie on the sofa until Uncle David carried him to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not asleep, mamma," came in a drowsy voice from the sofa, but
+almost at the same moment the measured breath slowed down, the
+watch-lights blinked themselves out, and the little soul slid away into
+the darksome kingdom of unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, in the silence of the room, Elena was startled by a voice. It
+came from the sitting-room. Was it Mr. Rossi's voice? No! The voice was
+older and feebler than Mr. Rossi's, and less clear and distinct. Could
+it be possible that somebody was with him? If so, the visitor must have
+arrived while she was in the bedroom above. But why had she not heard
+the knock? How did it occur that Joseph had not told her? And then the
+lamp was still on the dining-room table, and save for the firelight the
+sitting-room must be dark.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A chill began to run through her blood, and she tried to hear what was
+said, but the voice was muffled by its passage through the wall, and she
+could only catch a word or two. Presently the strange voice, without
+stopping, was broken in upon by a voice that was clear and familiar, but
+now faltering with the note of pain: "I swear to God I will!"</p>
+
+<p>That was Mr. Rossi's voice, and Elena's head began to go round. Whom was
+he speaking to? Who was speaking to him? He went into the room alone, he
+was sitting in the dark, and yet there were two voices.</p>
+
+<p>A light dawned on Elena, and she could have laughed. What had terrified
+her as a sort of supernatural thing was only the phonograph! But after a
+moment a fresh tremor struck upon her in the agony of the exclamations
+with which David Rossi broke in upon the voice that was being reproduced
+by the machine. She could hear his words distinctly, and he was in great
+trouble. Hardly knowing what she did, she crept up to the door and
+listened. Even then, she could only follow the strange voice in
+passages, which were broken and submerged by the whirring of the
+phonograph, like the flight of a sea-bird which dips at intervals and
+leaves nothing but the wash of the waves.</p>
+
+<p>"David," said the voice, "when this shall come to your hands ... in my
+great distress of mind ... do not trifle with my request ... but
+whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child ... remember
+that ... Adieu, my son ... the end is near ... if death does not
+annihilate ... those who remain on earth ... a helper and advocate in
+heaven ... Adieu!" And interrupting these broken words were half-smothered
+cries and sobs from David Rossi, repeating again and again: "I will!
+I swear to God I will!"</p>
+
+<p>Elena could bear the pain no longer, and mustering up her courage she
+tapped at the door. It was a gentle tap, and no answer was returned. She
+knocked louder, and then an angry voice said:</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's I&mdash;Elena," she answered timidly. "Is anything the matter? Aren't
+you well, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes," came back in a calmer voice, and after a shuffling sound as
+of the closing of drawers, David Rossi opened the door and came out.</p>
+
+<p>As he crossed the threshold he cast a backward glance into the dark
+room, as if he feared that some invisible hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span> would touch him on the
+shoulder. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood on his
+forehead, but he smiled, and in a voice that was a little hoarse, yet
+fairly under control, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've frightened you, Elena."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not well, sir. Sit down, and let me run for some cognac."</p>
+
+<p>"No! It's nothing! Only...."</p>
+
+<p>"Take this glass of water, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"That's good! I'm better now, and I'm ashamed. Elena, you mustn't think
+any more of this, and whatever I may do in the future that seems to you
+to be strange, you must promise me never to mention it."</p>
+
+<p>"I needn't <i>promise</i> you that, sir," said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno is a brave, bright, loyal soul, Elena, but there are times...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;and I'll never mention it to anybody. But you've taken a chill
+on the roof at sunset looking at the illuminations&mdash;that's all it is!
+The nights are frosty now, and I was to blame that I didn't send out
+your cloak."</p>
+
+<p>Then she tried to be cheerful, and turning to the sleeping boy, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Look! He was naughty again and wouldn't go to bed until you came out to
+carry him."</p>
+
+<p>"The dear little man!" said David Rossi. He stepped up to the couch, but
+his pale face was preoccupied, and he looked at Elena again and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Where does Donna Roma live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Trinit&agrave; de' Monti&mdash;eighteen," said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it late?"</p>
+
+<p>"It must be half-past eight at least, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take Joseph to bed then."</p>
+
+<p>He was putting his arms about the boy to lift him when a
+slippery-sloppery step was heard on the stairs, followed by a hurried
+knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was the old Garibaldian porter, breathless, bareheaded, and in his
+slippers.</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" cried Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"It's she. She's coming up."</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment a lady in evening dress was standing in the hall. It
+was Donna Roma. She had unclasped her ermine cloak, and her bosom was
+heaving with the exertion of the ascent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"May I speak to Mr. Rossi?" she began, and then looking beyond Elena and
+seeing him, where he stood above the sleeping child, a qualm of
+faintness seemed to seize her, and she closed her eyes for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi's face flushed to the roots of his hair, but he stepped
+forward, bowed deeply, led the way to the sitting-room, and, with a
+certain incoherency in his speech, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in! Elena will bring the lamp. I shall be back presently."</p>
+
+<p>Then, lifting little Joseph in his arms, he carried him up to bed,
+tucked him in his cot, smoothed his pillow, made the sign of the cross
+over his forehead, and came back to the sitting-room with the air of a
+man walking in a dream.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>Being left alone, Roma looked around, and at a glance she took in
+everything&mdash;the thin carpet, the plain chintz, the prints, the
+incongruous furniture. She saw the photograph on the piano, still
+standing open, with a cylinder exposed, and in the interval of waiting
+she felt almost tempted to touch the spring. She saw herself, too, in
+the mirror above the mantel-piece, with her glossy black hair rolled up
+like a tower, from which one curly lock escaped on to her forehead, and
+with the ermine cloak on her shoulders over the white silk muslin which
+clung to her full figure.</p>
+
+<p>Then she heard David Rossi's footsteps returning, and though she was now
+completely self-possessed she was conscious of a certain shiver of fear,
+such as an actress feels in her dressing-room at the tuning-up of the
+orchestra. Her back was to the door and she heard the whirl of her skirt
+as he entered, and then he was before her, and they were alone.</p>
+
+<p>He was looking at her out of large, pensive eyes, and she saw him pass
+his hand over them and then bow and motion her to a seat, and go to the
+mantel-piece and lean on it. She was tingling all over, and a certain
+glow was going up to her face, but when she spoke she was mistress of
+herself, and her voice was soft and natural.</p>
+
+<p>"I am doing a very unusual thing in coming to see you," she said, "but
+you have forced me to it, and I am quite helpless."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A faint sound came from him, and she was aware that he was leaning
+forward to see her face, so she dropped her eyes, partly to let him look
+at her, and partly to avoid meeting his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to
+disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me."</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and
+continued in the same soft voice:</p>
+
+<p>"If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can
+only come to you and tell you that you are wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to tell me...."</p>
+
+<p>He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was
+false."</p>
+
+<p>There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she
+knew that he was looking at her still.</p>
+
+<p>"If ... if...."&mdash;his voice was thick and indistinct&mdash;"if you tell me that
+I have done you an injury...."</p>
+
+<p>"You have&mdash;a terrible injury."</p>
+
+<p>She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should
+see something in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to
+accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I
+believe you will accept it."</p>
+
+<p>"If ... if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said&mdash;what
+I implied&mdash;was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it
+is all a cruel and baseless calumny...."</p>
+
+<p>She raised her head, looked him full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>do</i> give it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I
+believe you."</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on
+her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed
+with other men.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have
+lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so,
+perhaps it has been partly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span> fault of the men about me. When is a
+woman anything but what the men around have made her?"</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first
+man who has not praised and flattered me."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and
+perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to
+struggle and starve."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a
+man like you my life might have been different. I used to hope for such
+things long ago&mdash;that a man of high aims and noble purposes would come
+to meet me at the gate of life. Perhaps you have felt like that&mdash;that
+some woman, strong and true, would stand beside you for good or for ill,
+in your hour of danger and your hour of joy?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was not quite steady&mdash;she hardly knew why.</p>
+
+<p>"A dream! We all have our dreams," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"A dream indeed! Men came&mdash;he was not among them. They pampered every
+wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was
+dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my
+pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in
+secret ... what you said in public this morning."</p>
+
+<p>He was looking at her constantly with his wistful eyes, the eyes of a
+child, and through all the joy of her success she was conscious of a
+spasm of pain at the expression of his sad face and the sound of his
+tremulous voice.</p>
+
+<p>"We men are much to blame," he said. "In the battle of man with man we
+deal out blows and think we are fighting fair, but we forget that behind
+our foe there is often a woman&mdash;a wife, a mother, a sister, a
+friend&mdash;and, God forgive us, we have struck her, too."</p>
+
+<p>The half-smile that had gleamed on Roma's face was wiped out of it by
+these words, and an emotion she did not understand began to surge in her
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak of poor women who struggle and starve," she said. "Would it
+surprise you to hear that <i>I</i> know what it is to do that? Yes, and to be
+friendless and alone&mdash;quite, quite alone in a cruel and wicked city."</p>
+
+<p>She had lost herself for a moment, and the dry glitter in her eyes had
+given way to a moistness and a solemn expression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> But at the next
+instant she had regained her self-control, and went on speaking to avoid
+a painful silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never spoken of this to any other man," she said. "I don't know
+why I should mention it to you&mdash;to you of all men."</p>
+
+<p>She had risen to her feet, and he stepped up to her, and looking
+straight into her eyes he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever seen me before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>"You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you
+something of mine."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be
+pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge
+from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands.
+Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his
+voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust
+and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the
+edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a
+little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the
+house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever
+sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who
+nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can
+you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be
+homeless, nameless, and alone?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up&mdash;a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not
+seen there before.</p>
+
+<p>"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who
+has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I
+never knew my mother."</p>
+
+<p>The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied
+to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name,
+placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung
+herself into the Tiber."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Your</i> mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in
+the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope
+was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo
+Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a
+child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the
+white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered
+them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to
+foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was
+sent to London."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho&mdash;fifty
+foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the
+streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of
+white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and
+were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then&mdash;then
+the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little
+southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in
+the darkness and the snow."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to
+flow.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man,
+a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor,
+especially to the poor of his own people."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English
+courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less
+cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for
+light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs
+with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to
+them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span> dead, but
+his spirit is alive&mdash;alive in the souls he made to live."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her
+throat was choking, but she said:</p>
+
+<p>"What was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"What was his name?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"They called him Joseph Roselli."</p>
+
+<p>Roma half rose from her seat, then sank back, and the lace handkerchief
+dropped from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But I heard afterwards&mdash;long afterwards&mdash;that he was a Roman noble, one
+of the fearless few who had taken up poverty and exile and an unknown
+name for the sake of liberty and justice."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's head had fallen into her bosom, which was heaving with an emotion
+she could not conceal.</p>
+
+<p>"One day a letter came from Italy, telling him that a thousand men were
+waiting for him to lead them in an insurrection that was to dethrone an
+unrighteous king. It was the trick of a scoundrel who has since been
+paid the price of a hero's blood. I heard of this only lately&mdash;only
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment. David Rossi had put one arm over his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was enticed back from England to Italy; an English minister violated
+his correspondence with a friend, and communicated its contents to the
+Italian Government; he was betrayed into the hands of the police, and
+deported without trial."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he never heard of again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once&mdash;only once&mdash;by the friend I speak about."</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt dizzy, as if she were coming near to some deep places; but she
+could not stop&mdash;something compelled her to go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the friend?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"One of his poor waifs&mdash;a boy who owed everything to him, and loved and
+revered him as a father&mdash;loves and reveres him still, and tries to
+follow in the path he trod."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what was his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"David Leone."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a moment without being able to speak. Then she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Italian courts condemned him to death, and the English police drove
+him from England."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he has never been able to return to his own country?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has never been able to visit his mother's grave except by secret and
+at night, and as one who was perpetrating a crime."</p>
+
+<p>"What became of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He went to America."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he ever return?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Love of home in him, as in all homeless ones, was a consuming
+passion, and he came back to Italy."</p>
+
+<p>"Where&mdash;where is he <i>now</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi stepped up to her, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"In this room."</p>
+
+<p>She rose:</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>you</i> are David Leone!"</p>
+
+<p>He raised one hand:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>David Leone is dead!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment. She could hear the thumping of her
+heart. Then she said in an almost inaudible whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"I understand. David Leone is dead, but David Rossi is alive."</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak, but his head was held up and his face was shining.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not afraid to tell me this?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes glistened and her lips quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"You insulted and humiliated me in public this morning, yet you think I
+will keep your secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>know</i> you will."</p>
+
+<p>She felt a sensation of swelling in her throbbing heart, and with a slow
+and nervous gesture she held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ... may I shake hands with you?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of hesitation, and then their hands seemed to leap at
+each other and clasp with a clasp of fire.</p>
+
+<p>At the next instant he had lifted her hand to his lips and was kissing
+it again and again.</p>
+
+<p>A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span> instantly died
+away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not
+what. But <i>David Leone is dead</i> rang in her ears, and at the same moment
+she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly
+away without uttering another word. <i>She</i> could not speak, <i>he</i> could
+not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence
+could they hold their heads.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head
+and trembling limbs she stepped to the door.</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a
+voice still soft, but coming more from within:</p>
+
+<p>"I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are
+not the man I thought you were."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you."</p>
+
+<p>A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Then you had never seen me before?"</p>
+
+<p>And he answered after a moment:</p>
+
+<p>"I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me for coming to you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against
+you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to
+right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a
+mistake&mdash;let me ask your forgiveness."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean publicly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you
+to do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once
+started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the
+man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do&mdash;tell
+me, tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter! Tell me what it is."</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 492px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-002" id="illus-002"></a>
+<img src='images/eternal-068.png' alt='THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON A PRECIPICE.' title='' width = '492' height = '300'/><br />
+<span class='caption'>THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON A PRECIPICE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>"I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, I beg of you."</p>
+
+<p>He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze
+as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought if&mdash;if you would come to my house when my friends are there,
+your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have
+injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything.
+But...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that <i>all?</i>" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are not afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of something else," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the
+Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it...."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be coals of fire on my head."</p>
+
+<p>"You would need to sit to me."</p>
+
+<p>"When shall it be?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be years on years till then," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming
+eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she
+turned her face away.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of
+opening the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and
+bitterness."</p>
+
+<p>"If I ever had such a feeling it is gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go.</p>
+
+<p>One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her
+shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look
+seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the
+physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross
+the space that had divided them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let me see you to the door?" he said, and her eyes said openly, "Will
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and
+almost touching.</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot to give you my address&mdash;eighteen Trinit&agrave; de' Monti," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen Trinit&agrave; de' Monti," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the second storey. "I am trying to remember," she said.
+"After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"In a dream, perhaps," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said. "Perhaps in the dream I spoke about."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the street, and Roma's carriage, a hired <i>coup&eacute;</i>, stood
+waiting a few yards from the door.</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave
+him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Until to-morrow then," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow morning," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow morning," she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between
+them she seemed to say, "Come early, will you not?&mdash;there is still so
+much to say."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came
+back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and
+bowed through the glass.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_THREE_ROMA" id="PART_THREE_ROMA"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+<h2>PART THREE&mdash;ROMA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>The Piazza of Trinit&agrave; de' Monti takes its name from a church and convent
+which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill.</p>
+
+<p>A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height,
+goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna,
+which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their
+stalls around a fountain.</p>
+
+<p>At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all
+winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it,
+the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music
+of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two
+floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and
+entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was
+as a private apartment.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Roma's home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor,
+opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in
+red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by
+lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet.
+Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird
+in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its
+embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which
+looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of
+wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a
+statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides
+her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to
+familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was
+connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round
+with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her
+marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the morning after Donna Roma's visit to the Piazza Navona a letter
+came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. "The man
+is a treasure and sees nothing," he wrote. And he added in a footnote:
+"Don't look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them
+send to you say nothing."</p>
+
+<p>But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady
+journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in
+literature and love.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm 'Penelope,'" she said. "'Penelope' of the <i>Day</i>, you know. Come to
+see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi's speech
+yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if
+you would like to reply through me to Olga's shameful libels.... Haven't
+you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady
+could allow them to pass unnoticed."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," said Roma, "that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!"</p>
+
+<p>Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove
+up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with
+little twinkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of
+the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It's in all the newspapers&mdash;I've brought
+them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See&mdash;'A
+lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the
+Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.' Most
+damaging, isn't it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny
+the statement. Ah, don't be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets.
+Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy
+your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and
+explain before publishing anything."</p>
+
+<p>Roma said nothing, and the great man backed himself out with the air of
+one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask
+in return.</p>
+
+<p>"It's rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to
+organise a system of secret police&mdash;and quite right, too. You remember
+my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from
+Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The
+very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to
+an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span> will only say a word for
+him.... Thanks!... What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A
+masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome."</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was
+in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social
+pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her
+aristocratic customers.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust I am not <i>de trop</i>! I knew you wouldn't mind my calling in the
+morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody
+is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn't
+true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved!... By the way, my dear, don't
+trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but ... I'm giving a little
+reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend ... you'll
+mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"Count Mario," announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came
+tripping into the room. He was Roma's landlord and the Italian
+Ambassador at St. Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>"So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too,
+but I <i>do</i> hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account
+of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!"</p>
+
+<p>Then stepping to the window, "What a lovely view! The finest in Rome,
+and that's the finest in Europe! I'm always saying if it wasn't Donna
+Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here
+myself.... That reminds me of something. I'm ... well, I'm tired of
+Petersburg, and I've written to the Minister asking to be transferred to
+Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me.... How sweet of
+you! Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the
+person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a
+room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her
+aunt called to her from within.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent
+of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded
+mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony
+fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A
+cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its
+ribbon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!" she said in a
+withering whimper. "I thought you might have looked in last night, and I
+lay awake until after midnight."</p>
+
+<p>"I had a headache and went to bed," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me," said the old
+lady, and Roma went over to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite
+that man in spite of all my protests?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so! It's no use speaking. I don't know what girls are coming to.
+When I was young a man like that wouldn't have been allowed to cross the
+threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in
+prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime
+Minister."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I want to ask you a question."</p>
+
+<p>"Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where's
+Natalina?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left
+home and became an exile?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was
+broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the
+palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina,
+give me my smelling salts. And why haven't you brought the cushion for
+the cat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it
+right...."</p>
+
+<p>"Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only
+son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought they went to the Baron, auntie."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, aren't you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too,
+in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience.
+He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to
+the mercy of others&mdash;and all for what?"</p>
+
+<p>"For country, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My
+head is fit to split. Natalina, why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span> haven't you given me my smelling
+salts? And why will you always forget to...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed
+her down to the studio.</p>
+
+<p>Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy
+demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a
+cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but
+silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face.</p>
+
+<p>She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her
+own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off
+by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had
+roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles
+around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit
+for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but
+it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed
+her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was
+Judas.</p>
+
+<p>Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw
+that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the
+clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more
+until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">My dear Baron</span>,&mdash;Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great comfort
+in this household if only he can keep the peace with Monsignor Bruno,
+and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter's Lodge. Senator Tom-tit
+has been here to suggest some astonishing arrangement about my fountain,
+and to ask me to mention his nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and
+proper person to be chief of your new department of secret police.
+Madame de Trop and Count Signorina have also been, but of their modest
+messages more anon.</p>
+
+<p>"As for D. R., my barometer is 'set fair,' but it is likely to be a
+stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my best bib
+and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down to his
+apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had gone to find
+out all about <i>him</i>, I hadn't been ten minutes in his company before he
+told all about <i>me</i>&mdash;about my father, at all events, and his life in
+London. I believe he knew me in that connection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span> and expected to appeal
+to my filial feelings. Did too, so strong is the force of nature, and
+then and thereafter, and all night long, I was like somebody who had
+been shaken in an earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was
+not until I remembered what my father had been&mdash;or rather hadn't&mdash;and
+that he was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the
+cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from the
+shock of D. R.'s dynamite.</p>
+
+<p>"He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this
+morning!&mdash;Affectionately, </p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"P. S.&mdash;My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful
+voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a woman
+and has never been in love in his life, he has an astonishing way of
+getting at one. But I could laugh to think how little execution his
+fusillade will make in this direction."</p>
+
+<p>"Honourable Rossi!" said Felice's sepulchral voice behind her, and at
+that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>In spite of her protestations, Roma was nervous and confused. Putting
+David Rossi to sit in the arm-chair on the platform for sitters, she
+rattled on about everything&mdash;her clay, her tools, her sponge, and the
+water they had forgotten to change for her. He must not mind if she
+stared at him&mdash;that wasn't nice, but it was necessary&mdash;and he must
+promise not to look at her work while it was unfinished&mdash;children and
+fools, you know&mdash;the proverb was musty.</p>
+
+<p>And while she talked she told herself that Thomas was the apostle he
+must stand for. These anarchists were all doubters, and the chief of
+doubters was the figure that would represent them.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi did not speak much at first, and he did not join in Roma's
+nervous laughter. Sometimes he looked at her with a steadfast gaze,
+which would have been disconcerting if it had not been so simple and
+childlike. At length he looked out of the window to where the city lay
+basking in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span> the sunshine, and birds were swirling in the clear blue sky,
+and began to talk of serious subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"How beautiful!" he said. "No wonder the English and Americans who come
+to Italy for health and the pleasure of art think it a paradise where
+every one should be content. And yet...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Under the smile of this God-blessed land there is suffering such as can
+hardly be found in any other country of the world. Sometimes I think I
+cannot bear it any longer, and must go away, as others do."</p>
+
+<p>"A little more this way, please&mdash;thank you! That doesn't do much for
+them, does it?"</p>
+
+<p>"For them? No! God comfort the poor exiles&mdash;their path is a bridge of
+sighs! Poor, friendless, forgotten, huddled together in some dingy
+quarter of a foreign city, one a music-master, another a teacher of
+languages, a third a supernumerary at a theatre, a fourth an organ-man
+or even a beggar in the streets, yet weapons in the hand of God and
+shaking the thrones of the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> have seen something of that, haven't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have."</p>
+
+<p>"In London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. There's an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district.
+It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer
+of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of
+Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty,
+has many bedfellows."</p>
+
+<p>"You lived there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of
+the window. "And your old friend, Doctor Roselli&mdash;he lived in Soho?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and
+had a porch and trees in front of it."</p>
+
+<p>The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She
+took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.</p>
+
+<p>"A little more that way, please&mdash;thanks! Do you think your friend had a
+right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of
+his father&mdash;he would be broken-hearted."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He was&mdash;I've heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and
+forbade him to call himself his son."</p>
+
+<p>"There!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he would never hear a word against the old man. 'He's my
+father&mdash;that's enough,' he would say."</p>
+
+<p>The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma's fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"How stupid! But his mother...."</p>
+
+<p>"That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray
+him to come home. 'You are the best of mothers,' he would answer, 'but I
+cannot do so.'"</p>
+
+<p>"He never saw her again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength
+to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be
+merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!'"</p>
+
+<p>Roma's throat was throbbing. "He ... he was married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Eyes the other way, at the window&mdash;thank you!... Did she know who he
+was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho."</p>
+
+<p>"They ... they were ... happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty
+came...."</p>
+
+<p>"He became poor&mdash;very poor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then
+his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to
+be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now,
+one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them,
+but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the
+radiance of her sunny soul."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ...
+died?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her
+death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very
+cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a
+cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days
+altogether. She lay in the back room; it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span> quieter. The doctor nursed
+her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little
+daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll
+on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>His voice had enough to do to control itself.</p>
+
+<p>"When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a
+blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now&mdash;the child
+with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the
+wall."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma's eyes the tears
+were gathering.</p>
+
+<p>"We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh,
+the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma could not look at him any longer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the
+grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the
+doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there
+too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed
+at the sights in the streets. Only six&mdash;and she had never been in a
+coach before!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the
+Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't mind, I'll not try to do any more to-day," she said in a
+husky voice. "Somehow it isn't coming right this morning. It's like that
+sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow...."</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure," said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Thomas," she thought. "John&mdash;the beloved disciple! That would fit
+him exactly."</p>
+
+<p>As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope
+bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was
+missing.</p>
+
+<p>"He must have followed Mr. Rossi," said Roma, and without ado she read
+the letter.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dear Roma</span>,&mdash;A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I sent
+for him, saw him, and appointed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span> him immediately. Thanks, too, for the
+clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it to Minghelli,
+and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly. Adieu, my dear! You
+are on the right track! I will observe your request and not come near
+you.&mdash;Affectionately,</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Bonelli</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.</p>
+
+<p>After coffee she went into the Countess's room as usual. The old lady
+had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the
+police?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have
+expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a
+thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to
+anybody else while there was no judgment against your father."</p>
+
+<p>"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of
+kin."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm
+tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of
+your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and
+somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if
+you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice
+person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up
+for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten
+the baker's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> shop in London&mdash;or was it a pastry cook's, or what?&mdash;where
+they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given
+you away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches!
+Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not defending my father, but still...."</p>
+
+<p>"Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in
+search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to
+go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and
+now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and
+forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be?
+Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had
+consigned you!"</p>
+
+<p>The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the
+drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work,
+work, work!"</p>
+
+<p>The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody has heard that <i>he</i> is sitting to you, and everybody
+understands. That reminds me&mdash;I've a box at the new opera to-morrow
+night:&mdash;'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but
+if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular
+Samson...."</p>
+
+<p>"Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the
+room, with the black poodle bounding before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It followed
+me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day...."</p>
+
+<p>"Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and
+then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that
+if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night...."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi glanced at Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...."</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure, Princess."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel.
+Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I
+leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so
+well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer
+from it shockingly. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work
+afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,"
+she said. "No, that way, please&mdash;eyes as before&mdash;thank you! About your
+old friend, I mean. He was a good man&mdash;I don't doubt that&mdash;but he made
+everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has
+anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the
+world?"</p>
+
+<p>"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must
+reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter,
+for example. She was to lose everything&mdash;her father himself at last. How
+could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."</p>
+
+<p>"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except
+the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."</p>
+
+<p>A half-smile parted her lovely lips.</p>
+
+<p>"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all
+his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to
+gather itself up in the child."</p>
+
+<p>The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.</p>
+
+<p>"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house
+with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways&mdash;a gleam of the
+sun from our sunny Italy."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her
+after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"He did."</p>
+
+<p>"How could he know what would happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant
+fear of being taken away from his daughter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> before her little mind was
+stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness!
+Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel,
+and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be
+led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he
+did not love her."</p>
+
+<p>Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.</p>
+
+<p>"He gave her away, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist
+it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break
+down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To
+take her with him was impossible. A neighbour came&mdash;a
+fellow-countryman&mdash;he kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm
+only a poor man,' he said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same
+age as yours, and two sticks will burn better than one. Give the child
+to me and do as your heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven.
+He saw his way at last."</p>
+
+<p>Roma listened with head aside.</p>
+
+<p>"One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her
+glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and
+would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed
+and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for
+the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets
+happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to
+bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one,
+and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was holding her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was
+playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were
+aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and
+the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The
+doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a
+glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too,
+and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said,
+'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too&mdash;you'll
+be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then
+you'll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.' But I could see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+that the doctor was not listening. 'Let us slip away now,' I said, and
+we stole out somehow."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by
+the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns
+and children of Trinit&agrave; de' Monti were singing their Benediction&mdash;<i>Ora
+pro nobis!</i></p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I'll do any more to-day," said Roma. "The light is
+failing me, and my eyes...."</p>
+
+<p>"The day after to-morrow, then," said Rossi, rising.</p>
+
+<p>"But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked steadfastly into her face and answered "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to
+atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp
+cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner she replied to the Baron's letter of the day before.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dear Baron</span>,&mdash;I have misgivings about being on the right track, and feel
+sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime Ministers appoint
+people at the mere mention of their names by wards, second cousins, and
+lady friends generally? Wouldn't it have been wise to make inquiries?
+What was the fault for which Minghelli was dismissed in London?</p>
+
+<p>"As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He
+doesn't seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by way of
+my father was a fluke. At all events, I'm satisfied that it is going in
+the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail. <i>Leave him to me
+alone.</i>&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S.&mdash;Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to the new
+opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he will be seen
+with me in public!</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so wonderfully
+good-looking when you look at him closely."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove
+to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre
+was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people
+arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere
+which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when
+he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in
+the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house.
+This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the
+place with her opera-glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Crowded already!" she said. "And every face looking up at my box!
+That's what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the
+most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be,
+though, when your illustrious friend arrives."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess
+welcomed him effusively.</p>
+
+<p>"So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you&mdash;Honourable Rossi,
+Don Camillo Luigi Murelli."</p>
+
+<p>Roma looked at him&mdash;he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as
+comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma&mdash;she wore a white gown
+with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful
+white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes
+twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain
+everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not
+sit back. <i>You</i> can't mind observation&mdash;so used to it, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and
+then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of
+surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it,
+and was taking it as a penance.</p>
+
+<p>Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on
+talking. "These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society
+generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and
+the stalls are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span> filled by all sorts and conditions of people&mdash;political
+people, literary people, even trades-people if they're rich enough or
+can pretend to be."</p>
+
+<p>"And the upper circles?" asked Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," in a tired voice, "professional people, I think&mdash;Collegio Romano
+and University of Rome, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And the gallery?"</p>
+
+<p>"Students, I suppose." Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below,
+"Gi-gi, there's Lu-lu. Don't forget to ask him to supper.... All the
+beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently
+they'll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes."</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the
+conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the
+lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a
+constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an
+almost unbroken chatter.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera
+had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the
+lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in
+the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each
+other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors
+below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and
+there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful
+young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and
+there was a good deal of gossip and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his
+character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General
+Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess's box.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew
+an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?" said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him&mdash;jaw-bones as well," said
+the General. "The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if
+it was only as a <i>jettatura</i>." And then in a low voice to the Princess,
+with a glance at Roma, "Your beautiful young friend doesn't look so well
+to-night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Princess shrugged her shoulders. "Of the pains of love one suffers
+but does not die," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"You surely cannot mean...."</p>
+
+<p>The Princess put the tip of her fan to his lips and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Roma was conscious of a strange conflict of feelings. The triumph she
+had promised herself by David Rossi's presence with her in public&mdash;the
+triumph over the envious ones who would have rejoiced in her
+downfall&mdash;brought her no pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>The third act dealt with the allurements of Delilah, and was received
+with a good deal of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, these sweet, round, soft things&mdash;they can do anything they like
+with the giants," said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron, who had dined with the King, came round at the end of the
+next act, wearing a sash diagonally across his breast, with crosses,
+stars, and other decorations. He bowed to David Rossi with ceremonious
+politeness, greeted Don Camillo familiarly, kissed the hand of the
+Princess, and offered his arm to Roma to take her into the corridor to
+cool&mdash;she was flushed and overheated.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you are getting on, my child! Excellent idea to bring him here!
+Everybody is saying you cannot be the person he intended, so his trumpet
+has brayed to no purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"You received my letters?" she said in a faltering voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but don't be uneasy. I'm neither the prophet nor the son of a
+prophet if we are not on the right track. What a fortunate thought about
+the man Minghelli! An inspiration! You asked what his fault was in
+London&mdash;forgery, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's serious enough, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a Secretary of Legation, yes, but in a police agent...."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed significantly, and she felt her skin creep.</p>
+
+<p>"Has he found out anything?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, but he is clearly on the track of great things. It is nearly
+certain that your King David is a person wanted by the law."</p>
+
+<p>Her hand twitched at his arm, but they were turning at the end of the
+corridor and she pretended to trip over her train.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some clues missing still, however, and to find them we are sending
+Minghelli to London."</p>
+
+<p>"London? Anything connected with my father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly! We shall see. But there's the orchestra and here's your box!
+You're wonderful, my dear! Already you've undone the mischief he did
+you, and one half of your task is accomplished. Diplomatists! Pshaw!
+We'll all have to go to school to a girl. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>All through the next act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where
+the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the
+Princess said:</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody is looking this way, my dear! See what it is to be the most
+talked-of girl in Rome!"</p>
+
+<p>And then she felt David Rossi's hand on the back of her chair, and heard
+his soft voice saying:</p>
+
+<p>"The light is in your eyes, Donna Roma. Let me change places with you
+for a while."</p>
+
+<p>After that everything passed in a kind of confusion. She heard somebody
+say:</p>
+
+<p>"He's putting a good deal of heart into it, poor thing!"</p>
+
+<p>And somebody answered, "Yes, of broken heart apparently."</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a crash and the opera was over, and she was going out in
+a crowd on David Rossi's arm, and feeling as if she would fall if she
+dropped it.</p>
+
+<p>The magnificent English carriage drew up under the portico and all four
+of them got into it.</p>
+
+<p>"Grand Hotel!" cried Don Camillo. Then dropping back to his place he
+laughed and chanted:</p>
+
+<p>"And the dead he slew at his death were more than he slew in his
+life ... and he judged Israel twenty years."</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>A marshy air from the Campagna shrouded the city as with a fog, and
+pierced through the closed windows of the carriage, but there was warmth
+and glow in the Grand Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>One woman after another came in clothed in diamonds under the fur cloak
+which hung over her bare arms and shoulders, until the room was a
+dazzling blaze of jewels.</p>
+
+<p>People caught each other's eyes through lorgnettes and eye-glasses, and
+there were constant salutations. The men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span> chattered, the women laughed,
+and there was an affectation of baby-talk at nearly every table. Then
+supper was served, glasses were held up as signals, and bright eyes
+began to play about the room, until the atmosphere was tingling with
+electric currents and heated by human passion.</p>
+
+<p>Roma sat facing the Princess. She was still confused and preoccupied,
+but when rallied upon her silence she brightened up for a moment and
+tried to look buoyant and happy. David Rossi, who was on her left, was
+still quiet and collected, but bore the same air as before, of a man
+going through a penance.</p>
+
+<p>This was observed by Don Camillo, who sat on the right of the Princess,
+and led to various little scenes.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good company here, Mr. Rossi. Always sure of seeing some beautiful
+young women," said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"And beautiful young men, apparently," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful young man called Lu-lu was there, and reaching over to Don
+Camillo, and speaking in a whisper between the puff of a cigarette and a
+sip of coffee, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why doesn't the Minister buy the man up? Easy enough to buy the press
+these days."</p>
+
+<p>"He's doing better than that," said Don Camillo. "He's drawing him from
+opposition by the allurements of...."</p>
+
+<p>"Office?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, the lady," whispered Don Camillo, but Roma heard him.</p>
+
+<p>She was ashamed. The innuendoes which belittled David Rossi were
+belittling herself as well, and she wanted to get up and fly.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi himself seemed to be unconscious of anything hurtful. Although
+silent, he was calm and cheerful, and his manner was natural and polite.
+The wife of one of the royal aides-de-camp sat next to him, and talked
+constantly of the King.</p>
+
+<p>Roma found herself listening to every word that was said to David Rossi,
+but she also heard a conversation that was going on at the other end of
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Wants to be another Cola di Rienzi, doesn't he?" said Lu-lu.</p>
+
+<p>"Another Christ," said Don Camillo. "He'll be asking for a crown of
+thorns by-and-by, and calling on the world to immolate him for the sake
+of humanity. Look! He's talking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span> to the little Baroness, but he is
+fifteen thousand miles above the clouds at this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he come from, I wonder?" said Lu-lu, and then the two hands
+of Don Camillo played the invisible accordion.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame de Trop says his father was Master of the House to Prince
+Petrolium&mdash;vice-prince, you know, and brought up in the little palace,"
+said the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't believe a word of it," said Don Camillo, "and I'll wager he never
+supped at a decent hotel before."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask him! Listen now! Some fun," said the Princess. "Honourable
+Rossi!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Princess," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the little Princess swept the table with a sparkling light.</p>
+
+<p>"Beautiful room, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Never been here before, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi looked steadfastly into her eyes and answered, "Oh yes,
+Princess. When I first returned to Italy eight years ago I was a waiter
+in this house for a month."</p>
+
+<p>The sparkling face of the little Princess broke up like a snowball in
+the sun, and the two other men dropped their heads.</p>
+
+<p>Roma hardly knew what her own feelings were. Humiliation, shame,
+confusion, but above all, pride&mdash;pride in David Rossi's courage and
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>The white mist from the Campagna pierced to the bone as they came out by
+the glass-covered hall, and an old woman with an earthenware scaldino,
+crouching by the marble pillars in the street, held out a chill, damp
+hand and cried:</p>
+
+<p>"A penny for God's sake! May I die unconfessed if I've eaten anything
+since yesterday!... God bless you, my daughter! and the Holy Virgin and
+all the saints!"</p>
+
+<p>At the door of her house Roma parted from the Princess, and said to
+Rossi, as the carriage drove away, "Come early to-morrow. I've not yet
+been able to work properly somehow."</p>
+
+<p>She was restless and feverish, and she would have gone to bed
+immediately, but crossing the drawing-room she heard the fretful voice
+of her aunt saying, "Is that you, Roma?" and she had no choice but to go
+into the Countess's bedroom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A red lamp burned before the shrine, and the old lady was in an
+embroidered nightdress, but she was wide awake, and her eyes flashed and
+her lips trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it's you at last! Sit down! I want to speak to you. Natalina!"
+cried the Countess. "Oh, dear me, the girl has gone to bed. Give me the
+cognac. There it is&mdash;on the dressing-table."</p>
+
+<p>She sipped the brandy, fidgeted with her cambric handkerchief, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, I'm surprised at you! You hadn't used to be so stupid! How? Don't
+you see what that woman is doing? What woman? The Princess, of course.
+Inviting you to share her box at the opera so that you may be seen in
+public with that man. She hates him like poison, but she would swallow
+anything to throw you and this Rossi together. Do you expect the Baron
+to approve of that? His enemy, and you on such terms with the man? Here,
+take back this cognac. I feel as if I would choke&mdash;Natalina...."</p>
+
+<p>"You're quite mistaken, Aunt Betsy," said Roma. "The Baron was at the
+opera and came into the box himself, and he approved of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! Don't tell me! Because he has some respect for himself and keeps
+his own counsel you are simple enough to think he will not be offended."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady's voice was dying down to a choking whisper, but she went
+on without a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"If you've no thought for yourself, you might have some for me. You are
+young, and anything may come to you, but I'm old and I'm tied down to
+this mattress, and what is to happen if the Baron takes offence? The
+income he allows us from your father's estates is under his own control
+still. He can cut it off at any moment, and if he does, what is to
+become of me?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma's bosom was swelling under her heavy breathing, her heart was
+beating violently and her head was dizzy. All the bitterness of the
+evening was boiling in her throat, and it burst out at length in a
+flood.</p>
+
+<p>"So that is all your moral protestations come to, is it?" she said.
+"Because the Baron is necessary to you and you cannot exist without him,
+you expect me to buy and sell myself according to your necessities."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma! What are you saying? Aren't you ashamed...."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't <i>you</i> ashamed? You've been trying to throw me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> into the arms of
+the Baron, and you haven't cared what would happen so long as I kept up
+appearances."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear! I see what it is. You want to be the death of me! You will,
+too, before you've done. Natalina! Where is...."</p>
+
+<p>"More than that, you've poisoned my mind against my father, and because
+I couldn't remember him, you've brought me up to think of him as selfish
+and vain and indifferent to his own daughter. But my father wasn't that
+kind of man at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you that, miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind who told me. My father was a saint and a martyr, and a great
+man, and he loved me with all his heart and soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my head! My poor head!... A martyr indeed! A socialist, a
+republican, a rebel, an anarchist, you mean!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind what his politics were. He was my father&mdash;that is
+enough&mdash;and you had no right to make <i>me</i> think ill of him, whatever the
+world might do."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was superb at that moment, with her head thrown back, her eyes
+flaming, and her magnificent figure swelling and heaving under her
+clinging gown.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll kill me, I tell you. The cognac ... Natalina...." cried the
+Countess, but Roma was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Before going to bed Roma wrote to the Baron:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"Certain you are wrong. Why waste time sending Charles Minghelli to
+London? Why? Why? Why? The forger will find out nothing, and if he does,
+it will only be by exercise of his Israelitish art of making bricks
+without straw. Stop him at once if you wish to save public money and
+spare yourself personal disappointment. Stop him! Stop him! Stop him!</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"P.S.&mdash;To show you how far astray your man has gone, D. R. mentioned
+to-night that he was once a waiter at the Grand Hotel!"</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Next morning David Rossi arrived early.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we must get to work in earnest," said Roma. "I think I see my way
+at last."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was not John the beloved disciple, John who lay in the bosom of his
+Lord. It was Peter, the devoted, stalwart, brave individual, human,
+erring but glorious Peter. "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my
+church."</p>
+
+<p>"Same position as before. Eyes the other way. Thank you!... Afraid you
+didn't enjoy yourself last night&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the theatre? I was interested. But the human spectacle was perhaps
+more to me than the artistic one. I am no artist, you see.... How did
+<i>you</i> become a sculptor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I studied a little in the studios of Paris, where I went to school,
+you see."</p>
+
+<p>"But you were born in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you come to Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rome was the home of my people, you know. And then there was my
+name&mdash;Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew a Roma long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Another Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a tremor in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the little daughter of the friend I've spoken about."</p>
+
+<p>"How interest ... No, at the window, please&mdash;that will do."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was choking with a sense of duplicity, but save for a turn of the
+head David Rossi gave no sign.</p>
+
+<p>"She was only seven when I saw her last."</p>
+
+<p>"That was long ago, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seventeen years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she will be the same age as...."</p>
+
+<p>"The first time I saw her she was only three, and she was in her
+nightdress ready for bed."</p>
+
+<p>Roma laughed a little, but she knew that every note in her voice was
+confused and false.</p>
+
+<p>"She said her prayers with a little lisp at that time. 'Our Fader oo art
+in heben, alud be dy name.'"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a little now, as he mimicked the baby voice. They laughed
+together, then they looked at each other, and then with serious eyes
+they turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll think it strange, but I date my first conscious and definite
+aspiration to the memory of that hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten years afterward, when I was in America, the words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> of that prayer
+came back to me in Roma's little lisp. 'Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done
+on eard as it is in heben.'"</p>
+
+<p>For some time after that Roma worked on without speaking, feeling
+feverish and restless. But just as the silence was becoming painful, and
+she could bear it no longer, Felice came to announce lunch.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll stay? I want so much to work on while I'm in the mood," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>She ate hardly at all, for she was troubled by many misgivings. Did he
+know her? He did; he must; every word, every tone seemed to tell her
+that. Then why did he not speak out plainly? Because, having revealed
+himself to her, he was waiting for her to reveal herself to him. And why
+had she not done so? Because she was enmeshed in the nets of the society
+she lived in; because she was ashamed of the errand that had brought
+them together; and most of all because she had not dared to lay bare
+that secret of his life which, like an escaped convict, dragged behind
+it the broken chain of the prison-house.</p>
+
+<p><i>David Leone is dead!</i> To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact
+that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and
+listening at the grating of the confessional!</p>
+
+<p>No matter! She must do it! She must reveal herself as her heart and
+instinct might direct. She must claim the parentage of the noblest soul
+that ever died for liberty, and David Rossi must trust his secret to the
+bond of blood which would make it impossible for her to betray the
+foster-son of her own father.</p>
+
+<p>Having come to this conclusion, the light seemed to break in her heavy
+sky, but the clouds were charged with electricity. As they returned to
+the studio she was excited and a little hysterical, for she thought the
+time was near. At that moment a regiment of soldiers passed along under
+the ilex trees to the Pincio, with their band of music playing as they
+marched.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, the dear old days!" said David Rossi. "Everything reminds me of
+them! I remember that when she was six...."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;a regiment of troops returned from a glorious campaign, and the
+doctor took us to see the illuminations and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span> rejoicings. We came to a
+great piazza almost as large as the piazza of St. Peter's, with
+fountains and a tall column in the middle of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;Trafalgar Square!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dense crowds covered the square, but we found a place on the steps of a
+church."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember&mdash;St. Martin's Church. You see, I know London."</p>
+
+<p>"The soldiers came in by the big railway station close by...."</p>
+
+<p>"Charing Cross, isn't it."</p>
+
+<p>"And they marched to the tune of the 'British Grenadiers' and the
+thunder of fifty thousand throats. And as their general rode past, a
+beacon of electric lights in the centre of the square blazed out like an
+aureole about the statue of a great Englishman who had died long ago for
+the cause which had then conquered."</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon!" she cried&mdash;she was losing herself every moment.</p>
+
+<p>"'Look, darling!' said the doctor to little Roma. And Roma said, 'Papa,
+is it God?' I was a tall boy then, and stood beside him. 'She'll never
+forget that, David,' he said."</p>
+
+<p>"And she didn't ... she couldn't ... I mean.... Have you ever told me what
+became of her?"</p>
+
+<p>She would reveal herself in a moment&mdash;only a moment&mdash;after all, it was
+delicious to play with this sweet duplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you?" she said in a tremulous voice.</p>
+
+<p>His head was down. "Dead!" he answered, and the tool dropped out of her
+hand on to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"I was five years in America after the police expelled me from London,
+and when I returned to England I went back to the little shop in Soho."</p>
+
+<p>She was staring at him and holding her breath. He was looking out of the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>"The same people were there, and their own daughter was a grown-up girl,
+but Roma was gone."</p>
+
+<p>She could hear the breath in her nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>"They told me she had been missing for a week, and then ... her body had
+been found in the river."</p>
+
+<p>She felt like one struck dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"The man took me to the grave. It was the grave of her mother in Kensal
+Green, and under her mother's name I read her own inscription&mdash;'Sacred
+also to the memory of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span> Roma Roselli, found drowned in the Thames, aged
+twelve years.'"</p>
+
+<p>The warm blood which had tingled through her veins was suddenly frozen
+with horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-day," she thought, and at that moment a faint sound of the band
+on the Pincio came floating in by the open window.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go," said David Rossi, rising.</p>
+
+<p>Then she recovered herself and began to talk on other subjects. When
+would he come again? He could not say. The parliamentary session opened
+soon. He would be very busy.</p>
+
+<p>When David Rossi was gone Roma went upstairs, and Natalina met her
+carrying two letters. One of them was going to the post&mdash;it was from the
+Countess to the Baron. The other was from the Baron to herself.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">My dearest Roma</span>,&mdash;A thousand thanks for the valuable clue about the
+Grand Hotel. Already we have followed up your lead, and we find that the
+only David Rossi who was ever a waiter there gave as reference the name
+of an Italian baker in Soho. Minghelli has gone to London, and I am
+sending him this further information. Already he is fishing in strange
+waters, and I am sure you are dying to know if he has caught anything.
+So am I, but we must possess our souls in patience.</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dearest Roma, what is happening to your handwriting? It is so
+shaky nowadays that I can scarcely decipher some of it.&mdash;With love.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"B."</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Guardian</span>,&mdash;But I'm not&mdash;I'm not! I'm not in the least anxious to
+hear of what Mr. Minghelli is doing in London, because I know he is
+doing nothing, and whatever he says, either through his own mouth or the
+mouth of his Italian baker in Soho, I shall never believe a word he
+utters. As to Mr. Rossi, I am now perfectly sure that he does not
+identify me at all. He believes my father's daughter is dead, and he has
+just been telling me a shocking story of how the body of a young girl
+was picked out of the Thames (about the time you took me away from
+London) and buried in the name of Roma Roselli. He actually saw the
+grave and the tombstone! Some scoundrel has been at work somewhere. Who
+is it, I wonder?&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"R. V."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>Having
+written this letter in the heat and haste of the first moment
+after David Rossi's departure, she gave it to Bruno to post immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so!" said Bruno to himself, as he glanced at the superscription.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning she dressed carefully, as if expecting David Rossi as
+usual, but when he did not come she told herself she was glad of it.
+Things had happened too hurriedly; she wanted time to breathe and to
+think.</p>
+
+<p>All day long she worked on the bust. It was a new delight to model by
+memory, to remember an expression and then try to reproduce it. The
+greatest difficulty lay in the limitation of her beautiful art. There
+were so many memories, so many expressions, and the clay would take but
+one of them.</p>
+
+<p>The next day after that she dressed herself as carefully as before, but
+still David Rossi did not come. No matter! It would give her time to
+think of all he had said, to go over his words and stories.</p>
+
+<p>Did he know her? Certainly he knew her! He must have known from the
+first that she was her father's daughter, or he would never have put
+himself in her power. His belief in her was such a sweet thing. It was
+delicious.</p>
+
+<p>Next day also David Rossi did not come, and she began to torture herself
+with misgivings. Was he indifferent? Had all her day-dreams been
+delusions? Little as she wished to speak to Bruno, she was compelled to
+do so.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno hardly lifted his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer.
+"Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a
+party he has enough to do, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him to come to-morrow. Say I wish for one more sitting&mdash;only one."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell him," said Bruno, with a bob of his head over the block of
+marble.</p>
+
+<p>But David Rossi did not come the next day either, and Bruno had no
+better explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Busy with his new 'Republic' now, and no time to waste, I can tell
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"He will never come again," she thought, and then everything around and
+within her grew dark and chill.</p>
+
+<p>She was sleeping badly, and to tire herself at night she went out to
+walk in the moonlight along the path under the convent wall. She walked
+as far as the Pincio gates, where the path broadens to a circular space
+under a table of clipped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span> ilexes, beneath which there is a fountain and
+a path going down to the Piazza di Spagna. The night was soft and very
+quiet, and standing under the deep shadows of the trees, with only the
+cruel stars shining through, and no sound in the air save the sobbing of
+the fountain, she heard a man's footstep on the gravel coming up from
+below.</p>
+
+<p>It was David Rossi. He passed within a few yards, yet he did not see
+her. She wanted to call to him, but she could not do so. For a moment he
+stood by the deep wall that overlooks the city, and then turned down the
+path which she had come by. A trembling thought that was afraid to take
+shape held her back and kept her silent, but the stars beat kindly in an
+instant and the blood in her veins ran warm. She watched him from where
+she stood, and then with a light foot she followed him at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>It was true! He stopped at the parapet before the church, and looked up
+at her windows. There was a light in one of them, and his eyes seemed to
+be steadfastly fixed on it. Then he turned to go down the steps. He went
+down slowly, sometimes stopping and looking up, then going on again.
+Once more she tried to call to him. "Mr. Rossi." But her voice seemed to
+die in her throat. After a moment he was gone, the houses had hidden
+him, and the church clock was striking twelve.</p>
+
+<p>When she returned to her bedroom and looked at herself in the glass, her
+face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling. She did not want to sleep
+at all that night, for the beating of her heart was like music, and the
+moon and stars were singing a song.</p>
+
+<p>"If I could only be quite, quite sure!" she thought, and next morning
+she tackled Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno was no match for her now, but he put down his shaggy head, like a
+bull facing a stone fence.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you the honest truth, Donna Roma," he said, "Mr. Rossi is one of
+those who think that when a man has taken up a work for the world it is
+best if he has no ties of family."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Is that so?" she answered. "But I don't understand. He can't
+help having father and mother, can he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can help having a wife, though," said Bruno, "and Mr. Rossi thinks a
+public man should be like a priest, giving up home and love and so
+forth, that others may have them more abundantly."</p>
+
+<p>"So for that reason...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"For that reason he doesn't throw himself in the way of temptation."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think that's why...."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that's why he keeps out of the way of women."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he doesn't care for them&mdash;some men don't, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Care for them! Mr. Rossi is one of the men who think pearls and
+diamonds of women, and if he had to be cast on a desert island with
+anybody, he would rather have one woman than a hundred thousand men."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, but perhaps there's no 'one woman' in the world for him yet,
+Bruno."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't," said Bruno, and his hammer fell
+on the chisel and the white sparks began to fly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> would soon see if there were, wouldn't you, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn't," said Bruno, and then he wagged
+his wise head and growled, "In the battle of love he wins who flies."</p>
+
+<p>"Does <i>he</i> say that, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"He does. One day our old woman was trying to lead him on a bit. 'A
+heart to share your joys and sorrows is something in this world,' says
+she."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did Mr. Rossi say?"</p>
+
+<p>"'A woman's love is the sweetest thing in the world,' he said; 'but if I
+found myself caring too much for anybody I should run away.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Did Mr. Rossi really say that, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did&mdash;upon my life he did!"</p>
+
+<p>Bruno had the air of a man who had achieved a moral victory, and Roma,
+whose eyes were dancing with delight, wanted to fall on his stupid,
+sulky face and kiss and kiss it.</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon of the day following, the Princess Bellini came in
+with Don Camillo. "Here's Gi-gi!" she cried. "He comes to say there's to
+be a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow. If you'd like to
+come I'll take you, and if you think Mr. Rossi will come too...."</p>
+
+<p>"If he rides and has time to spare," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely," said Don Camillo. "The worst of being a prophet is that it
+gives one so much trouble to agree with one's self, you know. Rumour
+says that our illustrious Deputy has been a little out of odour with his
+own people lately, and is now calling a meeting to tell the world what
+his 'Creed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> and Charter' doesn't mean. Still a flight into the country
+might do no harm even to the stormy petrel of politics, and if any one
+could prevail with him...."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that to Roma, and see to everything else yourself," said the
+Princess. "On the way to that tiresome tea-room in the Corso, my dear.
+'Charity and Work,' you know. Committee for the protection of poor
+girls, or something. But we must see the old aunt first, I suppose. Come
+in, Gi-gi!"</p>
+
+<p>Three minutes afterwards Roma was dressed for the street, and her dog
+was leaping and barking beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Carriage, Eccellenza?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-day, thank you! Down, Black, down! Keep the dog from following
+me, Felice."</p>
+
+<p>As she passed the lodge the porter handed her an envelope bearing the
+seal of the Minister, but she did not stop to open it. With a light step
+she tripped along the street, hailed a <i>coup&eacute;</i>, cried "Piazza Navona,"
+and then composed herself to read her letter.</p>
+
+<p>When the Princess and Don Camillo came out of the Countess's room Roma
+was gone, and the dog was scratching at the inside of the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>"Now where can she have gone to so suddenly, I wonder? And there's her
+poor dog trying to follow her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the dog that goes to the Deputy's apartment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly it is! His name is Black. I'll hold him while you open the
+door, Felice. There! Good dog! Good Black! Oh, the brute, he has broken
+away from me."</p>
+
+<p>"Black! Black! Black!"</p>
+
+<p>"No use, Felice. He'll he half way through the streets by this time."</p>
+
+<p>And going down the stairs the little Princess whispered to her
+companion: "Now, if Black comes home with his mistress this evening it
+will be easy to see where <i>she</i> has been."</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Roma in her <i>coup&eacute;</i> was reading her letter&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'><span class="smcap">"Dearest</span>,&mdash;Been away from Rome for a few days, and hence the delay in
+answering your charming message. Don't trouble a moment about the
+dead-and-buried nightmare. If the story is true, so much the better. R.
+R. <i>is</i> dead, thank God, and her unhappy wraith will haunt your path no
+more. But if Dr. Roselli knew nothing about David Rossi, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> comes it
+that David Rossi knows so much about Dr. Roselli? It looks like another
+clue. Thanks again. A thousand thanks!</p>
+
+<p>"Still no news from London, but though I pretend neither to knowledge
+nor foreknowledge, I am still satisfied that we are on the right track.</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner-party to-night, dearest, and I shall be obliged to you if I may
+borrow Felice. Your Princess Potiphar, your Don Saint Joseph, your Count
+Signorina, your Senator Tom-tit, and&mdash;will you believe it?&mdash;your Madame
+de Trop! I can deny you nothing, you see, but I am cruelly out of luck
+that my dark house must lack the light of all drawing-rooms, the
+sunshine of all Rome!</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"How clever of you to throw dust in the eyes of your aunt herself! And
+these red-hot prophets in petticoats, how startled they will soon be!
+Adieu!</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Bonelli</span>."</p>
+
+<p>As the <i>coup&eacute;</i> turned into the Piazza Navona, Roma was tearing the
+letter into shreds and casting them out of the window.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>While Roma climbed the last flight of stairs to David Rossi's apartment,
+with the slippery-sloppery footsteps of the old Garibaldian going before
+her, Bruno's thunderous voice was rocking through the rooms above.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at him, Mr. Rossi! Republican, democrat, socialist, and rebel!
+Upsets the government of this house once a day regularly&mdash;dethrones the
+King and defies the Queen! Catch the piggy-wiggy, Uncle David! Here goes
+for it&mdash;one, two, three, and away!"</p>
+
+<p>Then shrieks and squeals of childish laughter, mingled with another
+man's gentler tones, and a woman's frightened remonstrance. And then
+sudden silence and the voice of the Garibaldian in a panting whisper,
+saying, "She's here again, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," cried David Rossi, and from the threshold of the open hall
+she saw him, in the middle of the floor, with a little boy pitching and
+heaving like a young sea-lion in his arms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He slipped the boy to his feet and said, "Run to the lady and kiss her
+hand, Joseph." But the boy stood off shyly, and, stepping into the room,
+Roma knelt to the child and put her arms about him.</p>
+
+<p>"What a big little man, to be sure! His name is Joseph, is it? And
+what's his age? Six! Think of that! Have I seen him before, Mrs. Rocco?
+Yes? Perhaps he was here the day I called before? Was he? So? How stupid
+of me to forget! Ah, of course, now I remember, he was in his
+nightdress and asleep, and Mr. Rossi was carrying him to bed."</p>
+
+<p>The mother's heart was captured in a moment. "Do you love children,
+Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I do!"</p>
+
+<p>During this passage between the women Bruno had grunted his way out of
+the room, and was now sidling down the staircase, being suddenly smitten
+by his conscience with the memory of a message he had omitted to
+deliver.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Joseph," said Elena. But Joseph, who had recovered from his
+bashfulness, was in no hurry to be off, and Roma said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! I've only called for a moment. It is to say," turning to David
+Rossi, "that there's a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow,
+and to tell you from Don Camillo that if you ride and would care to
+go...."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> are going?"</p>
+
+<p>"With the Princess, yes! But there will be no necessity to follow the
+hounds all day long, and perhaps coming home...."</p>
+
+<p>"I will be there."</p>
+
+<p>"How charming! That's all I came to say, and so...."</p>
+
+<p>She made a pretence of turning to go, but he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Now that you are here I have something to show to you."</p>
+
+<p>"To me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," he cried, and, blowing a kiss to the boy, Roma followed Rossi
+into the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment," he said, and he left her to go into the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>When he came back he had a small parcel in his hands wrapped in a lace
+handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"We have talked so much of my old friend Roselli that I thought you
+might like to see his portrait."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"His portrait? Have you really got his portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," and he put into her hands the English photograph which
+used to hang by his bed.</p>
+
+<p>She took it eagerly and looked at it steadfastly, while her lips
+trembled and her eyes grew moist. There was silence for a moment, and
+then she said, in a voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was
+the father of little Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it very like him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very."</p>
+
+<p>"What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on
+the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly."</p>
+
+<p>The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she
+lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath,
+and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my
+little namesake."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said
+with another nervous laugh:</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best
+father a girl ever had, but she...."</p>
+
+<p>"She was a child," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...."</p>
+
+<p>"She was only seven, remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a
+little selfish?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't abuse my friend Roma."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a
+sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best.
+And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father
+had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to give you that portrait," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You would like to have it?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Beyond anything I possess."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how can I take it from you?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it,
+and I am contented."</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible to hear the strain any longer without crying out, and
+to give physical expression to her feelings she lifted the portrait to
+her lips again and kissed and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her, she smiled back; the silence was hard to break, but
+just as they were on the edge of the precipice the big shock-head of the
+little boy looked in on them through the chink of the door and cried:</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't ask me to come in, 'cause I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>By the blessed instinct of the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood
+the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Would</i> you?" said Joseph, and in he came, with a face shining all
+over.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah! A piano!" said Roma, leaping up and seating herself at the
+instrument. "What shall I play for you, Joseph?"</p>
+
+<p>Joseph was indifferent so long as it was a song, and with head aside,
+Roma touched the keys and pretended to think. After a moment of sweet
+duplicity she struck up the air she had come expressly to play.</p>
+
+<p>It was the "British Grenadiers." She sang a verse of it. She sang in
+English and with the broken pronunciation of a child&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='margin-left:2em'>
+"Some talk of Allisander, and some of Hergoles;<br />
+Of Hector and Eyesander, and such gate names as these..."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she became aware that David Rossi was looking at her through
+the glass on the mantel-piece, and to keep herself from crying she began
+to laugh, and the song came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment the door burst open with a bang, and the dog came
+bounding into the room. Behind it came Elena, who said:</p>
+
+<p>"It was scratching at the staircase door, and I thought it must have
+followed you."</p>
+
+<p>"Followed Mr. Rossi, you mean. He has stolen my dog's heart away from
+me," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I say about my boy's," said Elena.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But Joseph is going for a soldier, I see."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a porter he wants to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Then so he shall&mdash;he shall be my porter some day," said Roma, whereupon
+Joseph was frantic with delight, and Elena was saying to herself, "What
+wicked lies they tell of her&mdash;I wonder they are not ashamed!"</p>
+
+<p>The fire was going down and the twilight was deepening.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I bring you the lamp, sir?" said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me," said Roma. "I am going immediately." But even when mother
+and child had gone she did not go. Unconsciously they drew nearer and
+nearer to each other in the gathering darkness, and as the daylight died
+their voices softened and there were quiet questions and low replies.
+The desire to speak out was struggling in the woman's heart with the
+delight of silence. But she would reveal herself at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been thinking a great deal about the story they told you in
+London&mdash;of Roma's death and burial, I mean. Had you no reason to think
+it might be false?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"It never occurred to you that it might be to anybody's advantage to say
+that she was dead while she was still alive?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could it? Who was to perpetrate a crime for the sake of the
+daughter of a poor doctor in Soho&mdash;a poor prisoner in Elba?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then it was not until afterward that you heard that the poor doctor was
+a great prince?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not until the night you were here before."</p>
+
+<p>"And you had never heard anything of his daughter in the interval?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once I had! It was on the same day, though. A man came here from London
+on an infamous errand..."</p>
+
+<p>"What was his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charles Minghelli."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said Roma Roselli was not dead at all, but worse than dead&mdash;that she
+had fallen into the hands of an evil man, and turned out badly."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ... did you believe that story?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not one word of it! I called the man a liar, and flung him out of the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you ... you think ... if she is still living...."</p>
+
+<p>"My Roma is a good woman."</p>
+
+<p>Her face burned up to the roots of her hair. She choked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span> with joy, she
+choked with pain. His belief in her purity stifled her. She could not
+speak now&mdash;she could not reveal herself. There was a moment of silence,
+and then in a tremulous voice she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not call <i>me</i> Roma, and try to think I am your little friend?"</p>
+
+<p>When she came to herself after that she was back in her own apartment,
+in her aunt's bedroom, and kissing the old lady's angular face. And the
+Countess was breaking up the stupefaction of her enchantment with sighs
+and tears and words of counsel.</p>
+
+<p>"I only want you to preserve yourself for your proper destiny, Roma. You
+are the <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> of the Baron, as one might say, and the poor maniac
+can't last long."</p>
+
+<p>Before dressing for dinner Roma replied to the Minister:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">Dear Baron Bonelli</span>,&mdash;Didn't I tell you that Minghelli would find out
+nothing? I am now more than ever sure that the whole idea is an error.
+Take my advice and drop it. Drop it! Drop it! I shall, at all
+events!&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"<span class="smcap">Roma Volonna</span>.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"Success to the dinner! Am sending Felice. He will give you this
+letter.&mdash;R. V."</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>It was the sweetest morning of the Roman winter. The sun shone with a
+gentle radiance, and the motionless air was fragrant with the odour of
+herbs and flowers. Outside the gate which leads to the old Appian Way
+grooms were waiting with horses, blanketed and hooded, and huntsmen in
+red coats, white breeches, pink waistcoats, and black boots, were
+walking their mounts to the place appointed for the meet. In a line of
+carriages were many ladies, some in riding-habits, and on foot there was
+a string of beggars, most of them deformed, with here and there, at
+little villages, a group of rosy children watching the procession as it
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>The American and English Ambassadors were riding side by side behind a
+magnificent carriage with coachman and tiger in livery of scarlet and
+gold.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who would think, to look on a scene like this, that the city is
+seething with dissatisfaction?" said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"Rome?" said the American. "Its aristocratic indifference will not allow
+it to believe that here, as everywhere else in the world, great and
+fatal changes are going on all the time. These lands, for example&mdash;to
+whom do they belong? Nominally to the old Roman nobility, but really to
+the merchants of the Campagna&mdash;a company of middlemen who grew rich by
+leasing them from the princes and subletting them to the poor."</p>
+
+<p>"And the nobles themselves&mdash;how are they faring?"</p>
+
+<p>"Badly! Already they are of no political significance, and the State
+knows them not."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't appear to go into the army or navy&mdash;what do they go into?"</p>
+
+<p>"Love!"</p>
+
+<p>"And meantime the Italian people?"</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime the great Italian people, like the great English people, the
+great German people, and the people of every country where the
+privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep
+all this sea-wrack high and dry on to the rocks."</p>
+
+<p>"And this wave of the people," said the Englishman, inclining his head
+toward the carriage in front, "is represented by men like friend Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would be, if he could keep himself straight," said the American.</p>
+
+<p>"And where is the Tarpeian rock of friend Rossi's politics?"</p>
+
+<p>The American slapped his glossy boot with his whip, lowered his voice,
+and said, "There!"</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fortnight ago you heard his speech on the liveries of scarlet and
+gold, and look! He's under them himself already."</p>
+
+<p>"You think there is no other inference?"</p>
+
+<p>The American shook his head. "Always the way with these leaders of
+revolution. It's Samson's strength with Samson's weakness in every
+mother's son of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, General Potter!" said a cheerful voice from the carriage
+in front.</p>
+
+<p>It was Roma herself. She sat by the side of the little Princess, with
+David Rossi on the seat before them. Her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span> eyes were bright, there was a
+glow in her cheeks, and she looked lovelier than ever in her
+close-fitting riding-habit.</p>
+
+<p>At the meeting-place there was a vast crowd of on-lookers, chiefly
+foreigners, in cabs and carriages and four-in-hand coaches from the
+principal hotels. The Master of the Hunt was ready, with his impatient
+hounds at his feet, and around him was a brilliant scene. Officers in
+blue, huntsmen in red, ladies in black, jockeys in jackets, a sea of
+feathers and flowers and sunshades, with the neighing of the horses and
+yapping of the dogs, the vast undulating country, the smell of earth and
+herbs, and the morning sunlight over all.</p>
+
+<p>Don Camillo was waiting with horses for his party, and they mounted
+immediately. The horse for Roma was a quiet bay mare with limpid eyes.
+General Potter helped her to the saddle, and she went cantering through
+the long lush grass.</p>
+
+<p>"What has your charming young charge been doing with herself, Princess?"
+said the American. "She was always beautiful, but to-day she's lovely."</p>
+
+<p>"She's like Undine after she had found her soul," said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>The little Princess laughed. "Love and a cough cannot be hidden,
+gentlemen," she whispered, with a look toward David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean...."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!"</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Rossi, in ordinary walking dress, was approaching the horse he
+was intended to ride. It was a high strong-limbed sorrel with wild eyes
+and panting nostrils. The English groom who held it was regarding the
+rider with a doubtful expression, and a group of booted and spurred
+huntsmen were closing around.</p>
+
+<p>To everybody's surprise, the deputy gathered up the reins and leaped
+lightly to the saddle, and at the next moment he was riding at Roma's
+side. Then the horn was sounded, the pack broke into music, the horses
+beat their hoofs on the turf and the hunt began.</p>
+
+<p>There was a wall to jump first, and everybody cleared it easily until it
+came to David Rossi's turn, when the sorrel refused to jump. He patted
+the horse's neck and tried it again, but it shied and went off with its
+head between its legs. A third time he brought the sorrel up to the
+wall, and a third time it swerved aside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The hunters had waited to watch the result, and as the horse came up for
+a fourth trial, with its wild eyes flashing, its nostrils quivering, and
+its forelock tossed over one ear, it was seen that the bridle had broken
+and Rossi was riding with one rein.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be lucky if he isn't hurt," said some one.</p>
+
+<p>"Why doesn't he give it the whip over its quarters?" said another.</p>
+
+<p>But David Rossi only patted his horse until it came to the spot where it
+had shied before. Then he reached over its neck on the side of the
+broken rein, and with open hand struck it sharply across the nose. The
+horse reared, snorted, and jumped, and at the next moment it was
+standing quietly on the other side of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Roma, on her bay mare, was ashen pale, and the American Ambassador
+turned to her and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Never knew but one man to do a thing like that, Donna Roma."</p>
+
+<p>Roma swallowed something in her throat and said: "Who was it, General
+Potter?"</p>
+
+<p>"The present Pope when he was a Noble Guard."</p>
+
+<p>"He can ride, by Jove!" said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"That sort of stuff has to be in a man's blood. Born in him&mdash;must be!"
+said the Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>And then David Rossi came up with a new bridle to his sorrel, and Sir
+Evelyn added: "You handle a horse like a man who began early, Mr.
+Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said David Rossi; "I was a stable-boy two years in New York, your
+Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the huntsman who was leading with two English terriers
+gave the signal that the fox was started, whereupon the hounds yelped,
+the whips whistled, and the horses broke into a canter.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours afterwards the poor little creature that had been the origin
+of the holiday was tracked to earth and killed. Its head and tail were
+cut off, and the rest of its body was thrown to the dogs. After that
+flasks were taken out, healths were drunk, cheers were given, and then
+the hunt broke up, and the hunters began to return at an easy trot.</p>
+
+<p>Roma and David Rossi were riding side by side, and the Princess was a
+pace or two behind them.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!" cried the Princess, "what a stretch for a gallop!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it?" said Roma, and in a moment she was off.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe her mare has mastered her," said the Princess, and at the
+next instant David Rossi was gone too.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace be with them! They're a lovely pair!" said the Princess,
+laughing. "But we might as well go home. They are like Undine, and will
+return no more."</p>
+
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+<p>Meantime, with the light breeze in her ears, and the beat of her horse's
+hoofs echoing among the aqueducts and tombs, Roma galloped over the
+broad Campagna. After a moment she heard some one coming after her, and
+for joy of being pursued she whipped up and galloped faster. Without
+looking back she knew who was behind, and as her horse flew over the
+hillocks her heart leaped and sang. When the strong-limbed sorrel came
+up with the quiet bay mare, they were nearly two miles from their
+starting-place, and far out of the track of their fellow-hunters. Both
+were aglow from head to foot, and as they drew rein they looked at each
+other and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Might as well go on now, and come out by the English cemetery," said
+Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's half-past two," said Roma, looking at her little watch, "and
+I'm as hungry as a hunter."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally," said David Rossi, and they laughed again. There was an
+osteria somewhere in that neighbourhood. He had known it when he was a
+boy. They would dine on yellow beans and macaroni.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they saw a house smoking under a scraggy clump of eucalyptus.
+It was the osteria, half farmstead and half inn. A timid lad took their
+horses, an evil-looking old man bowed them into the porch, and an
+elderly woman, with a frightened expression and a face wrinkled like the
+bark of a cedar, brought them a bill of fare.</p>
+
+<p>They laughed at everything&mdash;at the unfamiliar menu, because it was
+soiled enough to have served for a year; at the food, because it was so
+simple; and at the prices, because they were so cheap.</p>
+
+<p>Roma looked over David Rossi's shoulder as he read out the bill of fare,
+and they ordered the dinner together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Macaroni&mdash;threepence! Right! Trout&mdash;fourpence! Shall we have
+fourpennyworth of trout? Good! Lamb&mdash;sixpence! We'll take two lambs&mdash;I
+mean two sixpenny-worths," and then more laughter.</p>
+
+<p>While the dinner was cooking they went out to walk among the eucalyptus,
+and came upon a beautiful dell surrounded by trees and carpeted with
+wild flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"Carnival!" cried Roma. "Now if there was anybody here to throw a flower
+at one!"</p>
+
+<p>He picked up a handful of violets and tossed them over her head.</p>
+
+<p>"When I was a boy this was where men fought duels," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"The brutes! What a lovely spot! Must be the place where Pharaoh's
+daughter found Moses in the bulrushes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Or where Adam found Eve in the garden of Eden?"</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"What a surprise that must have been to him," said Roma. "Whatever did
+he think she was, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>"An angel who had come down in the moonlight and forgotten to go up in
+the morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! He would know in a moment she was a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Think of it! She was the only woman in the world for him!"</p>
+
+<p>"And fancy! He was the only man!"</p>
+
+<p>The dinner was one long delight. Even its drawbacks were no
+disadvantage. The food was bad, and it was badly cooked and badly
+served, but nothing mattered.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one fork for all these dishes?" asked David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the best of it," said Roma. "You only get one dirty one."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she dropped knife and fork, and held up both hands. "I forgot!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was to be little Roma all day to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, so you are, and so you have been."</p>
+
+<p>"That cannot be, or you would call her by her name, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do so the moment she calls me by mine."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not fair," said Roma, and her face flushed up, for the wine of
+life had risen to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In a vineyard below a girl working among the orange trees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span> was singing
+<i>stornelli</i>. It was a song of a mother to her son. He had gone away from
+the old roof-tree, but he would come back some day. His new home was
+bright and big, but the old hearthstone would draw him home. Beautiful
+ladies loved him, but the white-haired mother would kiss him again.</p>
+
+<p>They listened for a short dreaming space, and their laughter ceased and
+their eyes grew moist. Then they called for the bill, and the old man
+with the evil face came up with a forced smile from a bank that had
+clearly no assets of that kind to draw upon.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been a long time in this house, landlord," said David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Very long time, Excellency," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>"You came from the Ciociaria."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, I did," said the man, with a look of surprise. "I was poor
+then, and later on I lived in the caves and grottoes of Monte Parioli."</p>
+
+<p>"But you knew how to cure the phylloxera in the vines, and when your
+master died you married his daughter and came into his vineyard."</p>
+
+<p>"Angelica! Here's a gentleman who knows all about us," said the old man,
+and then, grinning from ear to ear, he added:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps your Excellency was the young gentleman who used to visit with
+his father at the Count's palace on the hill twenty to thirty years
+ago?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi looked him steadfastly in the face and said: "Do you
+remember the poor boy who lived with you at that time?"</p>
+
+<p>The forced smile was gone in a moment. "We had no boy then, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"He came to you from Santo Spirito and you got a hundred francs with him
+at first, and then you built this pergola."</p>
+
+<p>"If your Excellency is from the Foundling, you may tell them again, as I
+told the priest who came before, that we never took a boy from there,
+and we had no money from the people who sent him to London."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't remember him, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor you?"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman hesitated, and the old man made mouths at her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi took a long breath. "Here is the amount of your bill, and
+something over. Good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>The timid lad brought round the horses and the riders prepared to mount.
+Roma was looking at the boy with pitying eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been here?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten years, Excellency," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>He was just twelve years of age and both his parents were dead.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little fellow!" said Roma, and before David Rossi could prevent
+her she was emptying her purse into the boy's hand.</p>
+
+<p>They set off at a trot, and for some time they did not exchange a word.
+The sun was sinking and the golden day was dying down. Over the broad
+swell of the Campagna, treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping
+like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath
+of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except
+the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like
+the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of
+cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies.
+Here and there were wretched straw huts, with groups of fever-stricken
+people crouching over the embers of miserable fires, and here and there
+were dirty pothouses, which alternated with wooden crosses of the Christ
+and grass-covered shrines of the Madonna.</p>
+
+<p>The rhythm of the saddles ceased and the horses walked.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that the place where you were brought up?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And those were the people who sold you into slavery, so to speak?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!"</p>
+
+<p>"What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders."</p>
+
+<p>"No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you
+could hate him for what he has made you suffer?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the
+saint who saved me from so much besides.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span> 'Don't try to find out who
+your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out,
+don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world.
+By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for
+what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't.
+Leave him to God!'"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?"
+said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"And then&mdash;who knows?&mdash;perhaps some day you may discover that your
+father deserved your love and pity after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps!"</p>
+
+<p>They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus
+trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was
+everywhere in this home of silence.</p>
+
+<p>They went up on to the roof. From that height the whole world around
+seemed to be invaded by silence.</p>
+
+<p>It was the silence of all sacred things, the silence of the mass; and
+the undying paganism in the hearts of the two that stood there had its
+eloquent silence also.</p>
+
+<p>Roma was leaning on the parapet with David Rossi behind her, when
+suddenly she began to weep. She wept violently and sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked, but she did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>After a while she grew calm and dried her eyes, called herself foolish,
+and began to laugh. But the heart-beats were too audible without saying
+something, and at length she tried to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the poor boy at the inn," she said; "the sight of his sweet face
+brought back a scene I had quite forgotten," and then, in a faltering
+voice, turning her head away, she told him everything.</p>
+
+<p>"It was in London, and my father had found a little Roman boy in the
+streets on a winter's night, carrying a squirrel and playing an
+accordion. He wore a tattered suit of velveteens, and that was all that
+sheltered his little body from the cold. His fingers were frozen stiff,
+and he fainted when they brought him into the house. After a while he
+opened his eyes, and gazed around at the fire and the faces about him,
+and seemed to be looking for something. It was his squirrel, and it was
+frozen dead. But he grasped it tight and big tears rolled on to his
+cheeks, and he raised himself as if to escape. He was too weak for that,
+and my father comforted him and he lay still. That was when I saw him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+first; and looking at the poor boy at the inn I thought ... I thought
+perhaps he was another ... perhaps my little friend of long ago...."</p>
+
+<p>Her throat was throbbing, and her faltering voice was failing like a
+pendulum that is about to stop.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!" he cried over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"David!"</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met, their hands clasped, their pent-up secret was out, and
+in the dim-lit catacombs of love two souls stood face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you known it?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Since the night you came to the Piazza Navona. And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Since the moment I heard your voice." And then she shuddered and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>When they left the house of silence a blessed hush had fallen on them, a
+great wonder which they had never known before, the wonder of the
+everlasting miracle of human hearts.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was sitting behind Rome in a glorious blaze of crimson, with the
+domes of churches glistening in the horizontal rays, and the dark globe
+of St. Peter's hovering over all. The mortal melancholy which had been
+lying over the world seemed to be lifted away, and the earth smiled with
+flowers and the heavens shone with gold.</p>
+
+<p>Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung
+to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and
+then they smiled, but they did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>The sun went down, and there was a far-off ringing of bells. It was Ava
+Maria. They drew up the horses for a moment and dropped their heads.
+Then they started again.</p>
+
+<p>The night chills were coming, and they rode hard. Roma bent over the
+mane of her horse and looked proud and happy.</p>
+
+<p>Grooms were waiting for them at the gate of St. Paul, and, giving up
+their horses, they got into a carriage. When they reached Trinit&agrave; de'
+Monti the lamplighter was lighting the lamps on the steps of the piazza,
+and Roma said in a low voice, with a blush and a smile:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't come in to-night&mdash;not to-night, you know."</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to be alone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>XI</h3>
+
+<p>Felice met Roma at the door of her own apartment, and in more than
+usually sepulchral tones announced that the Countess had wished to see
+her as soon as she came home. Without waiting to change her
+riding-habit, Roma turned into her aunt's room.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady was propped up with pillows, and Natalina was fussing about
+her. Her eyes glittered, her thin lips were compressed, and regardless
+of the presence of the maid, she straightway fell upon Roma with bitter
+reproaches.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you wish to see me, aunt?" said Roma, and the old lady answered in
+a mocking falsetto:</p>
+
+<p>"Did I wish to see you, miss? Certainly I wished to see you, although
+I'm a broken-hearted woman and sorry for the day I saw you first."</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done now?" said Roma, and the radiant look in her face
+provoked the old lady to still louder denunciations.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done? Mercy me!... Give me my salts, Natalina!"</p>
+
+<p>"Natalina," said Roma quietly, "lay out my studio things, and if Bruno
+has gone, tell Felice to light the lamps and see to the stove
+downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady fanned herself with her embroidered handkerchief and began
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you meant to mend your ways when you came in yesterday,
+miss&mdash;you were so meek and modest. But what was the fact? You had come
+to me straight from that man's apartments. You had! You know you had!
+Don't try to deny it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deny it," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Virgin! She doesn't deny it! Perhaps you admit it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do admit it."</p>
+
+<p>"Madonna mia! She admits it! Perhaps you made an appointment?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I went without an appointment."</p>
+
+<p>"Merciful heavens! She is on such terms with the man that she can go to
+his apartments without even an appointment! Perhaps you were alone with
+him, miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we were quite alone," said Roma.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The old lady, who was apparently about to faint right away, looked up at
+her little shrine, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness! A girl! Not even a married woman! And without a maid, too!"</p>
+
+<p>Trying not to lose control of herself, Roma stepped to the door, but her
+aunt followed her up.</p>
+
+<p>"A man like that, too! Not even a gentleman! The hypocrite! The
+impostor! With his airs of purity and pretence!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I was sorry I spoke to you as I did the other
+night, not because anything I said was wrong, but because you are weak
+and bedridden and suffering. Don't provoke me to speak again as I spoke
+before. I did go to Mr. Rossi's rooms yesterday, and if there is any
+fault in that, I alone am to blame."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you indeed?" said the old lady, with a shrill, piping cry. "Holy
+Saints! she admits so much! Do you know what people will call you when
+they hear of it? A hussy! A shameless hussy!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma was flaming up, but she controlled herself and put her hand on the
+door-handle.</p>
+
+<p>"They <i>will</i> hear of it, depend on that," cried the Countess. "Last
+night at dinner the women were talking of nothing else. Felice heard all
+their chattering. That woman let the dog out to follow you, knowing it
+would go straight to the man's rooms. 'Whom did it come home with,
+Felice?' 'Donna Roma, your Excellency.' 'Then it's clear where Donna
+Roma had been.' Ugh! I could choke to think of it. My head is fit to
+split! Is there any cognac...?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma's bosom was visibly stirred by her breathing, but she answered
+quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"No matter! Why should I care what is thought of my conduct by people
+who have no morality of their own to judge me by?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really now?" said the Countess, twisting the wrinkles of her old face
+into skeins of mock courtesy. "Upon my word, I didn't think you were so
+simple. Understand, miss, it isn't the opinion of the Princess Bellini I
+am thinking about, but that of the Baron Bonelli. He has his dignity to
+consider, and when the time comes and he is free to take a wife, he is
+not likely to marry a girl who has been talked of with another man.
+Don't you see what that woman is doing? She has been doing it all along,
+and like a simpleton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span> you've been helping her. You've been flinging away
+your chances with this Rossi and making yourself impossible to the
+Minister."</p>
+
+<p>Roma tossed her head and answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care if I have, Aunt Betsy. I'm not of the same mind as I used
+to be, and I think no longer that the holiest things are to be bought
+and sold like so much merchandise."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady, who had been bending forward in her vehemence, fell back
+on the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll kill me!" she cried. "Where did you learn such folly? Goodness
+knows I've done my best by you. I have tried to teach you your duty to
+the baron and to society. But all this comes of admitting these
+anarchists into the house. You can't help it, though. It's in your
+blood. Your father before you...."</p>
+
+<p>Crimson and trembling from head to foot, Roma turned suddenly and left
+the room. Natalina and Felice were listening on the other side of the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>But not even this jarring incident could break the spell of Roma's
+enchantment, and when dinner was over, and she had gone to the studio
+and closed the door, the whole world seemed to be shut out, and nothing
+was of the slightest consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the damp cloth from the bust, she looked at her work again. In
+the light of the aurora she now lived in, the head she had wrought with
+so much labour was poor and inadequate. It did not represent the
+original. It was weak and wrong.</p>
+
+<p>She set to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began
+to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was
+audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She was not afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed, but she did not heed it. She was working at lightning
+speed, and with a power she had never felt before.</p>
+
+<p>Night came on, and the old Rome, the Rome of the Popes, repossessed
+itself of the Eternal City. The silent streets, the dark patches, the
+luminous piazzas, the three lights on the loggia of the Vatican, the
+grey ghost of the great dome, the kind stars, the sweet moon, and the
+church bells striking one by one during the noiseless night.</p>
+
+<p>At length she became aware of a streak of light on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span> floor. It was
+coming through the shutters of the window. She threw them open, and the
+breeze of morning came up from the orange trees in the garden below. The
+day was dawning over the sleepy city. Convent bells were ringing for
+matins, but all else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep.</p>
+
+<p>She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now.
+She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on
+the stars. She was happy, happy, happy!</p>
+
+<p>Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams
+tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome,
+the Rome of the Kings, awoke.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his
+work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although
+the sunlight was streaming into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Been working all night, Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now."</p>
+
+<p>She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did
+that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet!</p>
+
+<p>She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment,
+when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post,
+and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters.</p>
+
+<p>One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for
+Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his
+translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking
+her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over
+her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an
+immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life.</p>
+
+<p>There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had
+seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made
+her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must!</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">My darling Child</span>,&mdash;News at last, too, and success within hail!
+Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the
+dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything!
+Prepare for a great surprise&mdash;David Rossi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span> is <i>not</i> David Rossi, but a
+<i>condemned man who has no right to live in Italy</i>! Prepare for a still
+greater surprise&mdash;<i>he has no right to live at all</i>!</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He insulted me
+also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio and put my private
+life on its defence. You set out to undo the effects of his libel and to
+punish him for his outrage. You've done it! You have avenged yourself
+for both of us! It's all your work! You are magnificent! And now let us
+draw the net closer ... let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have
+begun...."</p>
+
+<p>Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped
+out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the
+sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and
+her face was pale and rigid.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will <i>not</i> go on!" she thought. "I will <i>not</i> betray him! I will
+<i>save</i> him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I
+love him! I love him!"</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_FOUR_DAVID_ROSSI" id="PART_FOUR_DAVID_ROSSI"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+<h2>PART FOUR&mdash;DAVID ROSSI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>David Rossi was in his bedroom writing his leader for next morning's
+paper. A lamp with a dark shade burned on the desk, and the rest of the
+room was in shadow. It was late, and the house was quiet.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened softly, and Bruno, in shirt-sleeves and slippered feet,
+came on tiptoe into the room. He brought a letter in a large violet
+envelope with a monogram on the front of it, and put it down on the desk
+by Rossi's side. It was from Roma.</p>
+
+<p  style='padding-top:.5em;'><span class="smcap">"Dear David Rossi</span>,&mdash;Without rhyme or reason I have been expecting to see
+you here to-day, having something to say which it is important that you
+should hear. May I expect you in the morning? Knowing how busy you are,
+I dare not bid you come, yet the matter is of great consequence and
+admits of no delay. It is not a subject on which it is safe or proper to
+write, and how to speak of it I am at a loss to decide. But you shall
+help me. Therefore come without delay! There! I have bidden you come in
+spite of myself. Judge from that how eager is my expectation.&mdash;In haste,</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"<span class="smcap">Roma V</span>.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"P.S.&mdash;I open my envelope, to wonder if you can ever forgive me the
+humiliations you have suffered for my sake. To think that <i>I</i> threw you
+into the way of them! And merely to wipe out an offence that is not
+worth considering! I am ashamed of myself. I am also ashamed of the
+people about me. You will remember that I told you they were pitiless
+and cruel. They are worse&mdash;they are heartless and without mercy. But how
+bravely you bore their insults and innuendoes! I almost cry to think of
+it, and if I were a good Catholic I should confess and do penance. See?
+I do confess, and if you want me to do penance you will come yourself
+and impose it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+It was the first letter that David Rossi had received from Roma, and as
+he read it the air seemed to him to be filled with the sweet girlish
+voice. He could see the play of her large, bright, violet eyes. The
+delicate fragrance of the scented paper rose to his nostrils, and
+without being conscious of what he was doing he raised the letter to his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>Then he became aware that Bruno was still in the room. The good fellow
+was in the shadow behind him, pushing things about under some pretext
+and trying to make a noise.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me keep you up, Bruno."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you don't want anything, sir?" said Bruno with confusion.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi rose and walked about the room with his slow step.</p>
+
+<p>"You have something to say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, sir&mdash;yes, I have."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Bruno scratched his shock head and looked about as if for help. His eyes
+fell on the letter lying open in the light on the desk.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the
+monogram."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled
+out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you."</p>
+
+<p>"What are they saying, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'?
+Sun in the eyes&mdash;that's what they're saying, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"So they're saying that, are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like
+it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of
+you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>"'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right,
+sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called
+out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first
+of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span> we
+hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet
+they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house
+of a bad woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno!" cried Rossi in a stern voice, "what right have you to talk to
+me like this?"</p>
+
+<p>Bruno was frightened at what he had said, but he tried to carry it off
+with a look of passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Right? The right of a friend, sir, who can't stand by and see you
+betrayed. Yes, betrayed, that's the word for it. Betrayed! Betrayed!
+It's a plot to ruin the people through the weakness of their leader. A
+woman drawn across a man's trail. The trick is as old as the ages. Never
+heard what we say in Rome?&mdash;'The man is fire, the woman is tow; then
+comes the devil and puts them together.'"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi was standing face to face with Bruno, who was growing hot
+and trying to laugh bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know what I'm saying, sir. The Prime Minister is at the bottom of
+everything. David Rossi never goes to Donna Roma's house but the Baron
+Bonelli knows all about it. They write to each other every day, and I've
+posted her letters myself. <i>Her</i> house is <i>his</i> house. Carriages,
+horses, servants, liveries&mdash;how else could she support it? By her art,
+her sculpture?"</p>
+
+<p>Bruno was frightened to the bottom of his soul, but he continued to talk
+and to laugh bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"She's deceiving you, sir. Isn't it as plain as daylight? You hit her
+hard, and old Vampire too, in your speech on the morning of the Pope's
+Jubilee, and she's paying you out for both of them."</p>
+
+<p>"That's enough, Bruno."</p>
+
+<p>"All Rome knows it, and everybody will be laughing at you soon."</p>
+
+<p>"You've said enough, I tell you. Go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know! The heart has its reasons, but it listens to none."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to bed, I tell you! Isn't it sufficient that by your tittle-tattle
+you caused me to wrong the lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> did?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> did."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not."</p>
+
+<p>"You did, and if it hadn't been for the tales you told me before I knew
+her, or had ever seen her, I should never have spoken of her as I did."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She deserved all you said of her."</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't deserve one word of it, and it was your lies that made me
+slander her."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno's eyes flinched as if a blow had fallen on them. Then he tried to
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Hit me again. The skin of the ass is used to blows. Only don't go too
+far with me, David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't <i>you</i> go too far with your falsehoods and suspicion."</p>
+
+<p>"Suspicion! Holy Virgin! Is it suspicion that she has had you at her
+studio to make a Roman holiday for her friends and cronies? By the
+saints! Suspicion!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, if it becomes you."</p>
+
+<p>"If what becomes me?"</p>
+
+<p>"To eat her bread and talk against her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie, David Rossi, and you know it. It's my own bread I'm
+eating. My labour belongs to me, and I sell it to my employer. But my
+conscience belongs to God, and she cannot buy it."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi's white and angry face broke up like a snow-flake in the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wrong when I said that, Bruno, and I ask your pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you say that, sir? And after I've insulted you?"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi held out his hand, and Bruno clasped it.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no right to be angry with you, Bruno, but you are wrong about
+Donna Roma. Believe me, dear friend, cruelly, awfully, terribly wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"You think she is a good woman."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she is, and if I said otherwise, I take it back and am ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>"Beautiful! If I could only believe in her as you do, sir. But I've
+known her for two years."</p>
+
+<p>"And I've known her for twenty."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> have?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have. Shall I tell you who she is? She is the daughter of my old
+friend in England."</p>
+
+<p>"The one who died in Elba?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"The good man who found you and fed you, and educated you when you were
+a boy in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was the father of Donna Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he was Prince Volonna, after all?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and they lied to me when they told me she was dead and buried."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno was silent for a moment, and then in a choking voice he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you strike me dead when I said she was deceiving you?
+Forgive me, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do forgive you, Bruno, but not for myself&mdash;for her."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno turned away with a dazed expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Forget what I said about going to Donna Roma's, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi sat down and took up his pen.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I cannot forget it," he said. "I <i>will not</i> forget it. I will go to
+her house no more."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to
+travel."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Bruno."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to
+Roma.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">My dear</span> R.,&mdash;You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard to my
+poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if the penalties
+had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the cud of my bargain
+now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a secret motive, and
+perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should confess too, although not
+with a view to penance. Apparently, it has come out well, and now that
+it seems to be all over, both your scheme and mine, now that the wrong I
+did you is to some extent undone, and my own object is in some measure
+achieved, I find myself face to face with a position in which it is my
+duty to you as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason that
+I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much interested, and
+because there are obstacles between that person and myself which are
+decisive and insurmountable. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> alone puts it on me as a point of
+honour that you and I should never see each other again. Each of my
+visits adds to my embarrassment, to the feeling that I am doing wrong in
+paying them, and to the certainty that I must give them up altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we have
+spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the memory of them
+in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part of the painful but
+unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot explain, that we should not
+write to each other as occasion may arise. Continue to think of me as
+your brother&mdash;your brother far away&mdash;to be called upon for counsel in
+your hour of need and necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall
+be there.</p>
+
+<p>"What you say of an important matter suggests that something has come to
+your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities; but when a man
+has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice, the most urgent
+perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not to be alarmed for my
+sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of the atmosphere of danger I
+have always lived in&mdash;the glacier I have always walked upon&mdash;and 'if it
+is not now, it is to come; if it is not to come, it will be now&mdash;the
+readiness is all.' Good-bye!&mdash;Yours, dear R&mdash;&mdash;,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>D."</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Next day brought Roma's reply.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">My dear</span> D.,&mdash;Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of
+excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and when
+Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you dear, dear
+dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or talked.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you can't
+mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you can't, or my
+eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing with delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so
+indefinite, and I have no right to understand anything. If you cannot
+write by post, or even send messages by hand, if my man F. is your
+enemy, and your housemate B. is mine, isn't that precisely the best
+reason why you should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> come and talk matters over? Come at once. I bid
+you come! In a matter of such inconceivable importance, surely a sister
+has a right to command.</p>
+
+<p>"In that character, I suppose, I ought to be glad of the news you give
+me. Well, I <i>am</i> glad! But being a daughter of Eve, I have a right to be
+curious. I want to ask questions. You say I know the lady, and am,
+unhappily, too deeply interested in her&mdash;who is she? Does she know of
+your love for her? Is she beautiful? Is she charming? Give me one
+initial of her name&mdash;only one&mdash;and I will be good. I am so much in the
+dark, and I cannot commit myself until I know more.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak of obstacles, and say they are decisive and insurmountable.
+That's terrible, but perhaps you are only thinking of what the poets
+call the 'cruel madness' of love, as if its madness and cruelty were
+sufficient reason for flying away from it. Or perhaps the obstacles are
+those of circumstances; but in that case, if the woman is the right one,
+she will be willing to wait for such difficulties to be got over, or
+even to find her happiness in sharing them.</p>
+
+<p>"See how I plead for my unknown sister! Which is sweet of me,
+considering that you don't tell me who she is, but leave me to find out
+if she is likely to suit me. But why not let me help you? Come at once
+and talk things over.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet how vain I am! Even while I proffer assistance with so loud a
+voice, I am smitten cold with the fear of an impediment which you know a
+thousand times better than I do how to measure and to meet. Perhaps the
+woman you speak of is unworthy of your friendship and love. I can
+understand that to be an insurmountable obstacle. You stand so high, and
+have to think about your work, your aims, your people. And perhaps it is
+only a dream and a delusion, a mirage of the heart, that love lifts a
+woman up to the level of the man who loves her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there may be some fault&mdash;some grave fault. I can understand that
+too. We do not love because we should, but because we must, and there is
+nothing so cruel as the inequality of man and woman in the way the world
+regards their conduct. But I am like a bat in the dark, flying at gleams
+of light from closely-curtained windows. Will you not confide in me? Do!
+Do! Do!</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, I have the other matter to talk about. You remember telling me
+how you kicked out the man M&mdash;&mdash;?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span> He turned spy as the consequence, and
+has been sent to England. You ought to know that he has been making
+inquiries about you, and appears to have found out various particulars.
+Any day may bring urgent news of him, and if you will not come to me I
+may have to go to you in spite of every protest.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow is the day for your opening of Parliament, and I have a
+ticket for the Court tribune, so you may expect to see me floating
+somewhere above you in an atmosphere of lace and perfume.
+Good-night!&mdash;Your poor bewildered sister,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Next morning David Rossi put on evening dress, in obedience to the
+etiquette of the opening day of Parliament. Before going to the ceremony
+he answered Roma's letter of the night before.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">Dear R.</span>,&mdash;If anything could add to the bitterness of my regret at
+ending an intercourse which has brought me the happiest moments of my
+life, it would be the tone of your sweet and charming letter. You ask me
+if the woman I love is beautiful. She is more than beautiful, she is
+lovely. You ask me if she knows that I love her. I have never dared to
+disclose my secret, and if I could have believed that she had ever so
+much as guessed at it, I should have found some consolation in a feeling
+which is too deep for the humiliations of pride. You ask me if she is
+worthy of my friendship and love. She is worthy of the love and
+friendship of a better man than I am or can ever hope to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet even if she were not so, even if there were, as you say, a fault in
+her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? I am not one of those who
+think that a woman is fallen because circumstances and evil men have
+conspired against her. I reject the monstrous theory that while a man
+may redeem the past, a woman never can. I abhor the judgment of the
+world by which a woman may be punished because she is trying to be pure,
+and dragged down because she is rising from the dirt. And if she had
+sinned as I have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I would pray
+for strength enough to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we stand
+or fall together.'</p>
+
+<p>"But she is sweet, and pure, and true, and brave, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span> noble-hearted,
+and there is no fault in her, or she would not be the daughter of her
+father, who was the noblest man I ever knew or ever expect to know. No,
+the root of the separation is in myself, in myself only, in my
+circumstances and the personal situation I find myself in.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet it is difficult for me to state the obstacle which divides us,
+or to say more about it than that it is permanent and insurmountable. I
+should deceive myself if I tried to believe that time would remove or
+lessen it, and I have contended in vain with feelings which have tempted
+me to hold on at any price to the only joy and happiness of my life.</p>
+
+<p>"To go to her and open my heart is impossible, for personal intercourse
+is precisely the peril I am trying to avoid. How weak I am in her
+company! Even when her dress touches me at passing, I am thrilled with
+an emotion I cannot master; and when she lifts her large bright eyes to
+mine, I am the slave of a passion which conquers all my will.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it is not lightly and without cause that I have taken a step which
+sacrifices love to duty. I love her, with all my heart and soul and
+strength I love her, and that is why she and I, for her sake more than
+mine, should never meet again.</p>
+
+<p>"I note what you say about the man M&mdash;&mdash;, but you must forgive me if I
+cannot be much concerned about it. There is nobody in London who knows
+me in the character I now bear, and can link it to the one you are
+thinking of. Good-bye, again! God be with you and keep you always!</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>D."</p>
+
+<p>Having written this letter, David Rossi sealed it carefully and posted
+it with his own hand on his way to the opening of Parliament.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>The day was fine, and the city was bright with many flags in honour of
+the King. All the streets leading from the royal palace to the Hall of
+the Deputies were lined with people. The square in front of the
+Parliament House was kept clear by a cordon of Carabineers, but the open
+windows of the hotels and houses round about were filled with faces.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi entered the house by the little private door for deputies in
+the side street. The chamber was already thronged, and as full of
+movement as a hive of bees. Ladies in light dresses, soldiers in
+uniform, diplomatists wearing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span> decorations, senators and deputies in
+white cravats and gloves, were moving to their places and saluting each
+other with bows and smiles.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi slipped into the place he usually occupied among the deputies. It
+was the corner seat by the door on the left of the royal canopy,
+immediately facing the section, which had been apportioned to the Court
+tribune. He did not lift his eyes as he entered, but he was conscious of
+a tall, well-rounded yet girlish figure in a grey dress that glistened
+in a ray of sunshine, with dark hair under a large black hat, and
+flashing eyes that seemed to pierce into his own like a shaft of light.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful ladies with big oriental eyes were about her, and young
+deputies were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised
+curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of
+gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching
+gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom.</p>
+
+<p>The clock over the reporters' gallery showed seven minutes after the
+hour appointed, when the walls of the chamber shook with the vibration
+of a cannon-shot. It was a gun fired at the Castle of St. Angelo to
+announce the King's arrival. At the same moment there came the muffled
+strains of the royal hymn played by the band in the piazza. The little
+gales of gossip died down in an instant, and in dead silence the
+assembly rose to its feet.</p>
+
+<p>A minute afterwards the King entered amid a fanfare of trumpets, the
+shouts of many voices, and the clapping of hands. He was a young man, in
+the uniform of a general, with a face that was drawn into deep lines
+under the eyes by ill-health and anxiety. Two soldiers, carrying their
+brass helmets with waving plumes, walked by his side, and a line of his
+Ministers followed. His Queen, a tall and beautiful girl, came behind,
+surrounded by many ladies.</p>
+
+<p>The King took his seat under the baldacchino, with his Ministers on his
+left. The Queen sat on his right hand, with her ladies beside her. They
+bowed to the plaudits of the assembly, and the drawn face of the young
+King wore a painful smile.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron Bonelli, in court dress and decorations, stood at the King's
+elbow, calm, dignified, self-possessed&mdash;the one strong face and figure
+in the group under the canopy. After the cheering and the shouting had
+subsided he requested the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span> assembly, at the command of His Majesty, to
+resume their seats. Then he handed a paper to the King.</p>
+
+<p>It was the King's speech to his Parliament, and he read it nervously in
+a voice that had not learned to control itself. But the speech was
+sufficiently emphatic, and its words were grandiose and even florid.</p>
+
+<p>It consisted of four clauses. In the first clause the King thanked God
+that his country was on terms of amity with all foreign countries, and
+invoked God's help in the preservation of peace. The second clause was
+about the increase of the army.</p>
+
+<p>"The army," said the King, "is very dear to me, as it has always been
+dear to my family. My illustrious grandfather, who granted freedom to
+the kingdom, was a soldier; my honoured father was a soldier, and it is
+my pride that I am myself a soldier also. The army was the foundation of
+our liberty and it is now the security of our rights. On the strength
+and stability of the army rest the power of our nation abroad and the
+authority of our institutions at home. It is my firm resolve to maintain
+the army in the future as my illustrious ancestors have maintained it in
+the past, and therefore my Government will propose a bill which is
+intended to increase still further its numbers and its efficiency."</p>
+
+<p>This was received with a great outburst of applause and the waving of
+many handkerchiefs. It was observed that some of the ladies shed tears.</p>
+
+<p>The third clause was about the growth and spread of anarchism.</p>
+
+<p>"My house," said the King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my
+duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to
+Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but
+throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most
+devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and
+divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the
+most innocent and the most highly placed, which have sent a thrill of
+horror into all humane hearts. My Government asks for an absolute power
+over such criminals, and if we are to bring security to the State, we
+must reinvigorate the authority to which society trusts the high mandate
+of protecting and governing."</p>
+
+<p>A still greater outburst of cheering interrupted the young King, who
+raised his head amid the shouts, the clapping of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span> hands, and the
+fluttering of handkerchiefs, and smiled his painful smile.</p>
+
+<p>"More than that," continued the King, "I have to deplore the spread of
+associations, sodalities, and clubs, which, by an erroneous conception
+of liberty, are disseminating the germs of revolt against the State.
+Under the most noble propositions about the moral and economical
+redemption of the people is hidden a propaganda for the conquest of the
+public powers.</p>
+
+<p>"My aim is to gain the affection of my people, and to interest them in
+the cause of order and public security, and therefore my Government will
+present an urgent bill, which is intended to stop the flowering of these
+parasitic organisations, by revising these laws of the press and of
+public meeting, in whose defects agitators find opportunity for their
+attacks on the doctrines of the State."</p>
+
+<p>A prolonged outburst of applause followed this passage, mingled with a
+tumult of tongues, which went on after the King had begun to read again,
+rendering his last clause&mdash;an invocation of God's blessing on the
+deliberations of Parliament&mdash;almost inaudible.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the speech was a signal for further cheering, and when the
+King left the hall, bowing as before, and smiling his painful smile, the
+shouts of "Long live the King," the clapping of hands, and the waving of
+handkerchiefs followed him to the street. The entire ceremony had
+occupied twelve minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Then the clamour of voices drowned the sound of the royal hymn outside.
+Deputies were climbing about to join their friends among the ladies,
+whose light laughter was to be heard on every side.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi rose to go. Without lifting his head, he had been conscious
+that during the latter part of the King's speech many eyes were fixed
+upon him. Playing with his watch-chain, he had struggled to look calm
+and impassive. But his heart was sick, and he wished to get away
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>A partition, shielding the door of the corridor, stood near to his seat,
+and he was trying to get round it. He heard his name in the air around
+him, mingled with significant trills and unmistakable accents. All at
+once he was conscious of a perfume he knew, and of a girlish figure
+facing him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-day, Honourable," said a voice that thrilled him like the strings
+of a harp drawn tight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He lifted his head and answered. It was Roma. Her face was lighted up
+with a fire he had never seen before. Only one glance he dared to take,
+but he could see that at the next instant those flashing eyes would
+burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>The tide was passing out by the front doors where the carriages and the
+reporters waited, but Rossi stepped round to the back. He was on the way
+to the office of his newspaper, and dipping into the Corso from a lane
+that crossed it, he came upon the King's carriage returning to the
+Quirinal. It was entirely surrounded by soldiers, the military commander
+of Rome on the right, the commander of the Carabineers on the left, and
+the Cuirassiers, riding two deep, before and behind, so that the King
+and Queen were scarcely visible to the cheering crowd. Last in the royal
+procession came an ordinary cab containing two detectives in plain
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The office of the <i>Sunrise</i> was in a narrow lane out of the Corso. It
+was a dingy building of three floors, with the machine-rooms on the
+ground-level, the composing-rooms at the top, and the editorial rooms
+between. Rossi's office was a large apartment, with three desks, that
+were intended for the editor and his day and night assistants.</p>
+
+<p>His day assistant received him with many bows and compliments. He was a
+small man with an insincere face.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi drank a cup of coffee and settled to his work. It was an article
+on the day's doings, more fearless and outspoken than he had ever
+published before. Such a day as they had just gone through, with the
+flying of flags and the playing of royal hymns, was not really a day of
+joy and rejoicing, but of degradation and shame. If the people had known
+what they were doing, they would have hung their flags with crape and
+played funeral marches.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a scene as we have witnessed to-day," he wrote, "like all such
+scenes throughout the world, whether in Germany, Russia, and England, or
+in China, Persia, and the darkest regions of Africa, is but proof of the
+melancholy fact that while man, as the individual, has been nineteen
+hundred years converted to Christianity, man, as the nation, remains to
+this day for the most part utterly pagan."</p>
+
+<p>The assistant editor, who had glanced over the pages of manuscript as
+Rossi threw them aside, looked up at last and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure, sir, that you wish to print this article?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man made a shrug of his shoulders, and took the copy upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The short day had closed in when Rossi was returning home. Screamers in
+the streets were crying early editions of the evening papers, and the
+caf&eacute;s in the Corso were full of officers and civilians, sipping vermouth
+and reading glowing accounts of the King's enthusiastic reception.
+Pitiful! Most pitiful! And the man who dared to tell the truth must be
+prepared for any consequences.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi told himself that he <i>was</i> prepared. Henceforth he would
+devote himself to the people, without a thought of what might happen.
+Nothing should come between him and his work&mdash;nothing whatever&mdash;not
+even ... but, no, he could not think of it!</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Two letters were awaiting David Rossi in his rooms at home.</p>
+
+<p>One was a circular from the President of the Chamber of Deputies
+summoning Parliament for the day after to-morrow to elect officials and
+reply to the speech of the King.</p>
+
+<p>The other was from Roma, and the address was in a large, hurried hand.
+David Rossi broke the seal with nervous fingers.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">My dear Friend</span>,&mdash;I know! I know! I know now what the obstacle is.
+B. gave me the hint of it on one of the days of last week, when I was so
+anxious to see you and you did not come. It is your unflinching devotion
+to your mission and to your public duties. You are one of those who
+think that when a man has dedicated his life to work for the world, he
+should give up everything else&mdash;father, mother, wife, child&mdash;and live
+like a priest, who puts away home, and love, and kindred, that others
+may have them more abundantly. I can understand that, and see a sort of
+nobility in it too, especially in days when the career of a statesman is
+only a path to vainglory of every kind. It is great, it is glorious, it
+thrills me to think of it.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in spite of
+all my pleading. You say she is beautiful&mdash;that's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span> well enough, but it
+comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true, and charming&mdash;and I am
+willing to take it all on trust. But when you say she is noble-hearted I
+respectfully refuse to believe it. If she were that, you would be sure
+that she would know that friendship is the surest part of love, and to
+be the friend of a great man is to be a help to him, and not an
+impediment.</p>
+
+<p>"My gracious! What does she think you are? A <i>cavaliere servente</i> to
+dance attendance on her ladyship day and night? Give me the woman who
+wants her husband to be a man, with a man's work to do, a man's burdens
+to bear, and a man's triumphs to win.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet perhaps I am too hard on my unknown sister that is to be, or ought
+to be, and it is only your own distrust that wrongs her. If she is the
+daughter of one brave man and really loves another, she knows her place
+and her duty. It is to be ready to follow her husband wherever he must
+go, to share his fate whatever it may be, and to live his life, because
+it is now her own.</p>
+
+<p>"And since I am in the way of pleading for her again, let me tell you
+how simple you are to suppose that because you have never disclosed your
+secret she may never have guessed it. Goodness me! To think that men who
+can make women love them to madness itself can be so ignorant as not to
+know that a woman can always tell if a man loves her, and even fix the
+very day, and hour, and minute when he looked into her eyes and loved
+her first.</p>
+
+<p>"And if my unknown sister that ought to be knows that you love her, be
+sure that she loves you in return. Then trust her. Take the counsel of a
+woman and go to her. Remember, that if you are suffering by this
+separation, perhaps she is suffering too, and if she is worthy of the
+love and friendship of a better man than you are, or ever hope to be
+(which, without disparaging her ladyship, I respectfully refuse to
+believe), let her at least have the refusal of one or both of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night! I go to the Chamber of Deputies again the day after
+to-morrow, being so immersed in public matters (and public men) that I
+can think of nothing else at present. Happily my bust is out of hand,
+and the caster (not B. this time) is hard at work on it.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't hear anything about the M&mdash;&mdash; doings, yet I assure you they
+are a most serious matter. Unless I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> much mistaken there is an effort
+on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely sufficiently
+alarming. M&mdash;&mdash; is returning to Rome, and I hear rumours of an intention
+to bring pressure on some one <i>here</i> in the hope of leading to
+identification. Think of it, I beg, I pray!&mdash;Your friend,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"R."</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>Next day Rossi's editorial assistant came with a troubled face. There
+was bad news from the office. The morning's edition of the <i>Sunrise</i> had
+been confiscated by the police owing to the article on the King's speech
+and procession. The proprietors of the paper were angry with their
+editor, and demanded to see him immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them I'll be at the office at four o'clock, as usual," said Rossi,
+and he sat down to write a letter.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Roma. The moment he took up the pen to write to her the air of
+the room seemed to fill with a sweet feminine presence that banished
+everything else. It was like talking to her. She was beside him. He
+could hear her soft replies.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"If it were possible to heighten the pain of my feelings when I decided
+to sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter like your last
+would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you deal with is not the
+one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a very real impediment, not
+altogether disposed of by the sweet and tender womanliness with which
+you put it aside. In that regard what troubles me most is the hideous
+inequality between what the man gives and what he gets, and the splendid
+devotion with which the woman merges her life in the life of the man she
+marries only quickens the sense of his selfishness in allowing himself
+to accept so great a prize.</p>
+
+<p>"In my own case, the selfishness, if I yielded to it, would be greater
+far than anybody else could be guilty of, and of all men who have
+sacrificed women's lives to their own career, I should feel myself to be
+the most guilty and inexcusable. My dear and beloved girl is nobly born,
+and lives in wealth and luxury, while I am poor&mdash;poor by choice, and
+therefore poor for ever, brought up as a foundling, and without a name
+that I dare call my own.</p>
+
+<p>"What then? Shall such a man as I am ask such a woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span> as she is to come
+into the circle of his life, to exchange her riches for his poverty, her
+comfort for his suffering? No.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, what woman could do it if I did? Women can be unselfish, they
+can be faithful, they can be true; but&mdash;don't ask me to say things I do
+not want to say&mdash;women love wealth and luxury and ease, and shrink from
+pain and poverty and the forced marches of a hunted life. And why
+shouldn't they? Heaven spare them all such sufferings as men alone
+should bear!</p>
+
+<p>"Yet all this is still outside the greater obstacle which stands between
+me and the dear girl from whom I must separate myself now, whatever it
+may cost me, as an inexorable duty. I entreat you to spare me the pain
+of explaining further. Believe that for her sake my resolution, in spite
+of all your sweet and charming pleading, is strong and unalterable.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one thing more. If it is as you say it may be, that she loves me,
+though I had no right to believe so, that will only add to my
+unhappiness in thinking of the wrench that she must suffer. But she is
+strong, she is brave, she is the daughter of her father, and I have
+faith in the natural power of her mind, in her youth and the chances of
+life for one so beautiful and so gifted, to remove the passing
+impression that may have been made.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye yet again! And God bless you!</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>D.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"P. S.&mdash;I am not afraid of M&mdash;&mdash;, and come when he may, I shall
+certainly stand my ground. There is only one person in Rome who could be
+used against me in the direction you indicate, and I could trust her
+with my heart's blood."</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>Before two o'clock next day the Chamber of Deputies was already full.
+The royal chair and baldacchino had been removed, and their place was
+occupied by the usual bench of the President.</p>
+
+<p>When the Prime Minister took his place, cool, collected, smiling,
+faultlessly dressed and wearing a flower in his button-hole, he was
+greeted with some applause from the members, and the dry rustle of fans
+in the ladies' tribune was distinctly heard. The leader of the
+Opposition had a less marked reception, and when David Rossi glided
+round the partition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> to his place on the extreme Left, there was a
+momentary hush, followed by a buzz of voices.</p>
+
+<p>Then the President of the Chamber entered, with his secretaries about
+him, and took his seat in a central chair under a bust of the young
+King. Ushers, wearing a linen band of red, white, and green on their
+arms, followed with portfolios, and with little trays containing
+water-bottles and glasses. Conversation ceased, and the President rang a
+hand-bell that stood by his side, and announced that the sitting was
+begun.</p>
+
+<p>The first important business of the day was the reply to the speech of
+the King, and the President called on the member who had been appointed
+to undertake this duty. A young Deputy, a man of letters, then made his
+way to a bar behind the chairs of the Ministers and read from a printed
+paper a florid address to the sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>Having read his printed document, the Deputy proceeded to move the
+adoption of the reply.</p>
+
+<p>With the proposal of the King and the Government to increase the army he
+would not deal. It required no recommendation. The people were patriots.
+They loved their country, and would spend the last drop of their blood
+to defend it. The only persons who were not with the King in his desire
+to uphold the army were the secret foes of the nation and the
+dynasty&mdash;persons who were in league with their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said the speaker, "brings us to the next clause of our reply to
+His Majesty's gracious speech. We know that there exists among the
+associations aimed at a compact between strangely varying
+forces&mdash;between the forces of socialism, republicanism, unbelief, and
+anarchy, and the forces of the Church and the Vatican."</p>
+
+<p>At this statement there was a great commotion. Members on the Left
+protested with loud shouts of "It is not true," and in a moment the
+tongues and arms of the whole assembly were in motion. The President
+rang his bell, and the speaker concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us draw the teeth of both parties to this secret conspiracy, that
+they may never again use the forces of poverty and discontent to disturb
+public order."</p>
+
+<p>When the speaker sat down, his friends thronged around him to shake
+hands with him and congratulate him.</p>
+
+<p>Then the eyes of the House and of the audience in the gallery turned to
+David Rossi. He had sat with folded arms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span> and head down while his
+followers screamed their protests. But passing a paper to the President,
+he now rose and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I ask permission to propose an amendment to the reply to the King's
+speech."</p>
+
+<p>"You have the word," said the President.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi read his amendment. At the feet of His Majesty it humbly
+expressed an opinion that the present was not a time at which fresh
+burdens should be laid upon the country for the support of the army,
+with any expectation that they could be borne. Misfortune and suffering
+had reached their climax. The cup of the people was full.</p>
+
+<p>At this language some of the members laughed. There were cries of
+"Order" and "Shame," and then the laughter was resumed. The President
+rang his bell, and at length silence was secured. David Rossi began to
+speak, in a voice that was firm and resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"If," he said, "the statement that members of this House are in alliance
+with the Pope and the Vatican is meant for me and mine, I give it a flat
+denial. And, in order to have done with this calumny once and for ever,
+permit me to say that between the Papacy and the people, as represented
+by us, there is not, and never can be, anything in common. In temporal
+affairs, the theory of the Papacy rejects the theory of the democracy.
+The theory of the democracy rejects the theory of the Papacy. The one
+claims a divine right to rule in the person of the Pope because he is
+Pope. The other denies all divine right except that of the people to
+rule themselves."</p>
+
+<p>This was received with some applause mingled with laughter, and certain
+shouts flung out in a shrill hysterical voice. The President rang his
+bell again, and David Rossi continued.</p>
+
+<p>"The proposal to increase the army," he said, "in a time of tranquillity
+abroad but of discord at home, is the gravest impeachment that could be
+made of the Government of a country. Under a right order of things
+Parliament would be the conscience of the people, Government would be
+the servant of that conscience, and rebellion would be impossible. But
+this Government is the master of the country and is keeping the people
+down by violence and oppression. Parliament is dead. For God's sake let
+us bury it!"</p>
+
+<p>Loud shouts followed this outburst, and some of the Deputies rose from
+their seats, and crowding about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> speaker in the open space in front,
+yelled and screamed at him like a pack of hounds. He stood calm, playing
+with his watch-chain, while the President rang his bell and called for
+silence. The interruptions died down at last, and the speaker went on:</p>
+
+<p>"If you ask me what is the reason of the discontent which produces the
+crimes of anarchism, I say, first, the domination of a Government which
+is absolute, and the want of liberty of speech and meeting. In other
+countries the discontented are permitted to manifest their woes, and are
+not punished unless they commit deeds of violence; but in Italy alone,
+except Russia, a man may be placed outside the law, torn from his home,
+from the bedside of his nearest and dearest, and sent to <i>domicilio
+coatto</i> to live or die in a silence as deep as that of the grave. Oh, I
+know what I am saying. I have been in the midst of it. I have seen a
+father torn from his daughter, and the motherless child left to the
+mercy of his enemies."</p>
+
+<p>This allusion quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead
+silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the
+President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters
+rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised,
+pointing at the same time to the ladies' tribune.</p>
+
+<p>One of the ladies had cried out. David Rossi heard the voice, and, when
+he began again, his own voice was softer and more tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"Next, I say that the cause of anarchism in Italy, as everywhere else,
+is poverty. Wait until the 1st of February, and you shall see such an
+army enter Rome as never before invaded it. I assert that within three
+miles of this place, at the gates of this capital of Christendom, human
+beings are living lives more abject than that of savage man.</p>
+
+<p>"Housed in huts of straw, sleeping on mattresses of leaves, clothed in
+rags or nearly nude, fed on maize and chestnuts and acorns, worked
+eighteen hours a day, and sweated by the tyranny of the overseers, to
+whom landlords lease their lands while they idle their days in the
+<i>salons</i> of Rome and Paris, men and women and children are being treated
+worse than slaves, and beaten more than dogs."</p>
+
+<p>At that there was a terrific uproar, shouts of "It's a lie!" and
+"Traitor!" followed by a loud outbreak of jeers and laughter. Then, for
+the first time, David Rossi lost control<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> of himself, and, turning upon
+Parliament with flaming eyes and quivering voice, he cried:</p>
+
+<p>"You take these statements lightly&mdash;you that don't know what it is to be
+hungry, you that have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest
+it. But <i>I</i> know these things by bitter knowledge&mdash;by experience. Don't
+talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and
+comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a
+poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the
+miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the
+Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At
+the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living
+lives of moral an&aelig;mia and physical atrophy more terrible by far than
+those which made the pagan poet say two thousand years ago&mdash;<i>Paucis
+vivit humanum genus</i>&mdash;the human race exists for the benefit of the few."</p>
+
+<p>The silence was breathless while the speaker made this personal
+reference, and when he sat down, after a denunciation of the militarism
+which was consuming the heart of the civilised world, the House was too
+dazed to make any manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>In the dead hush that followed, the President put the necessary
+questions, but the amendment fell through without a vote being taken,
+and the printed reply was passed.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Minister of War rose to give notice of his bill for increased
+military expenditure, and proposed to hand it over to the general
+committee of the budget.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron Bonelli rose next as Minister of the Interior, and gave notice
+of his bill for the greater security of the public, and the remodelling
+of the laws of the press and of association.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke incisively and bitterly, and he was obviously excited, but he
+affected his usual composure.</p>
+
+<p>"After the language we have heard to-day," he said, "and the knowledge
+we possess of mass meetings projected, it will not surprise the House
+that I treat this measure as urgent, and propose that we consider it on
+the principle of the three readings, taking the first of them in four
+days."</p>
+
+<p>At that there were some cries from the Left, but the Minister continued:</p>
+
+<p>"It will also not surprise the House that, to prevent the obstruction of
+members who seem ready to sing their Miserere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span> without end, I will ask
+the House to take the readings without debate."</p>
+
+<p>Then in a moment the whole House was in an uproar and members were
+shaking their fists in each other's faces. In vain the President rang
+his bell for silence. At length he put on his hat and left the Chamber,
+and the sitting was at an end.</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">My dear, dear Friend</span>,&mdash;It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown and
+invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and oughtn't to
+be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell me that she is good
+and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would have me believe that she
+loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and that she could not give them up
+even for the sweetest thing that ever comes into a woman's life. Out on
+her! What does she think a wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be
+dressed up and danced on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is,
+I know what I should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and
+the point of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have
+it out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any
+more about the bravery of a woman like that.</p>
+
+<p>"The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what that
+means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless lengths of
+friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between him and her, and
+differences of class do not exist for either of them. Her pride died the
+instant love looked out of her eyes at him, and if people taunt her with
+his poverty, or his birth, she answers and says: 'It's true he is poor,
+but his glory is, that he was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or
+mother to care for him, and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him,
+and not all the wealth of the world shall take me away.'</p>
+
+<p>"One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be, and that
+is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that she is going to
+reconcile herself to your separation while she is kept in the dark as to
+the cause of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span> It is all very well for you to pay compliments to her
+beauty and youth and the natural strength of her mind to remove passing
+impressions, but perhaps the impressions are the reverse of passing
+ones, and if you go out of her life, what is to become of her? Have you
+thought of that? Of course you haven't.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In my
+darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am she and she
+is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't for nothing I was a
+daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for her and beaten you out
+and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go to her?' You will&mdash;I know you
+will.</p>
+
+<p>"My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine, but
+I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul was not
+there, and I was injuring the face at every touch.</p>
+
+<p>"No further news of M&mdash;&mdash;, and my heart's blood is cold at the silence.
+But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?&mdash;Your friend's
+friend,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>R."</p>
+
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+<p>Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"My Dearest,&mdash;Bruno will take this letter, and I will charge him on his
+soul to deliver it safely into your hands. When you have read it, you
+will destroy it immediately, both for your sake and my own.</p>
+
+<p>"From this moment onward I throw away all disguises. The duplicities of
+love are sweet and touching, but I cannot play hide-and-seek with you
+any longer.</p>
+
+<p>"You are right&mdash;it is you that I love, and little as I understand and
+deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and strength.
+I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is madness to do so,
+for the obstacles to our union are just as insurmountable as before.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that separates
+us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only the inequality
+of our birth and social conditions, though that is an honest difficulty.
+The barrier between us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> is not merely a barrier made by man, it is a
+barrier made by God&mdash;it is death.</p>
+
+<p>"Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by disease. A
+man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even while he is
+engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and most relentless
+conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of life and happiness. What
+then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for him henceforth by visions of the
+end that is so near, in every embrace he feels the arms of death about
+him, and in every kiss the chill breath of the tomb.</p>
+
+<p>"Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her miracles
+are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of God's healing hand
+may come down from heaven and make all things well. Not so the death I
+speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable, without hope or dreams.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here first.
+Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt at regicide,
+as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported without trial, and I,
+who shared his views, and had expressed them in letters that were
+violated, being outside the jurisdiction of the courts, was tried in
+contumacy and condemned to death.</p>
+
+<p>"I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's name,
+which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws of my
+country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have never deceived
+myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me still, and though the
+court which condemned me was a military court, and its sentence would be
+modified by a Court of Assize, I see no difference between death in a
+moment on the gallows, and in five, ten, twenty years in a cell.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor
+consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late, conceal
+everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging myself with
+dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel, it would be wrong
+and wicked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or liberty
+is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament and in public
+life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter that you have written
+to me shows plainly that you know it. And when you say your heart's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+blood runs cold at the thought of what may happen when Minghelli returns
+from England, you betray the weakness, the natural weakness, the tender
+and womanly weakness, which justifies me in saying that, as long as we
+love each other, you and I should never meet again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that hangs over
+me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In every true cause
+some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the right, for humanity, to
+lay down all you hold most dear for the sake of the poor and the weak
+and the down-trodden and God's holy justice&mdash;it is a magnificent duty, a
+privilege! And I am ready. If my death is enough, let me give the last
+drop of my blood, and be dragged through the last degrees of infamy.
+Only don't let me drag another after me, and endanger a life that is a
+thousand times dearer to me than my own.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is certain;
+it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be there; <i>it may come
+to me to-morrow</i>, or next day, or next year, but it is coming, I feel
+it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly away. But if I go on until my
+beloved is my bride, and my name is stamped all over her, and she has
+taken up my fate, and we are one, and the world knows no difference,
+what then? Then death with its sure step will come in to separate us,
+and after death for me, danger, shame, poverty for you, all the
+penalties a woman pays for her devotion to a man who is down and done.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It would
+turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the grave itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting myself
+with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams like other
+men&mdash;dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man for his
+support&mdash;the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm and tempest,
+and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman is equal to a lot
+like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all women safe from it!</p>
+
+<p>"Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on
+reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied at last
+that the obstacles to our union are permanent and insuperable. The time
+is come when I am forced to tell you the secrets which I have never
+before revealed to any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span> human soul. You know them now. <i>They are in your
+keeping, and it is enough</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven be over you! And when you are reconciled to our separation, and
+both of us are strong, remember that if you want me I will come, and
+that as long as I live, as long as I am at liberty, I shall be always
+ready, always waiting, always near. God bless you, my dear one! Adieu!</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'><span class="smcap">"David Leone</span>."</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon of the following day a letter came by a flying
+messenger on a bicycle. It was written in pencil in large and straggling
+characters.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Rossi</span>,&mdash;Your letter has arrived and been read, and, yes, it
+has been destroyed, too, according to your wish, although the flames
+that burnt it burnt my hand also, and scorched my heart as well.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt you have done wisely. You know better than I do what is best
+for both of us, and I yield, I submit. Only&mdash;and therefore&mdash;I must see
+you immediately. There is a matter of some consequence on which I wish
+to speak. It has nothing to do with the subject of your letter&mdash;nothing
+directly, at all events&mdash;or yet is it in any way related to the
+Minghelli mischief-making. So you may receive me without fear. And you
+will find me with a heart at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I tell you that if you wouldn't come to me I must go to you?
+Expect me this evening about Ave Maria, and arrange it that I may see
+you alone.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma V.</span>"</p>
+
+<h3>XI</h3>
+
+<p>As Ave Maria approached, David Rossi became still more agitated. The sky
+had darkened, but there was no wind; the air was empty, and he listened
+with strained attention for every sound from the staircase and the
+street. At length he heard a cab stop at the door, and a moment
+afterwards a light hurrying footstep in the outer room seemed to beat
+upon his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Roma came in quickly, with a scarcely audible
+salutation. He saw her with her golden complexion and her large violet
+eyes, wearing a black hat and an astrachan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> coat, but his head was going
+round and his pulses were beating violently, and he could not control
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come for a minute only," she said. "You received my letter?"</p>
+
+<p>Rossi bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"David, I want the fulfilment of your promise."</p>
+
+<p>"What promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"The promise to come to me when I stand in need of you. I need you now.
+My fountain is practically finished, and to-morrow afternoon I am to
+have a reception to exhibit it. Everybody will be there, and I want you
+to be present also."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that necessary?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"For my purposes, yes. Don't ask me why. Don't question me at all. Only
+trust me and come."</p>
+
+<p>She was speaking in a firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that
+her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly
+flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that
+before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only
+answered, after a brief pause:</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I will be there."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. I might have written, but I was afraid you might object,
+and I wished to make quite certain. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>He had only bowed to her as she entered, and now she was going away
+without offering her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," he said, in a voice that sounded choked.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped but did not speak, and he felt himself growing hot all over.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm relieved&mdash;so much relieved&mdash;to hear that you agree with what I said
+in my letter."</p>
+
+<p>"The last&mdash;in which you wish me to forget you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is better so&mdash;far better. I am one of those who think that if either
+party to a marriage"&mdash;he was talking in a constrained way&mdash;"entertains
+beforehand any rational doubt about it, he is wiser to withdraw, even at
+the church door, rather than set out on a life-long voyage under doubtful
+auspices."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't we promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then
+their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself
+and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," he said again, "if you want me in the future you must write."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her face clouded over.</p>
+
+<p>"For your own sake, you know...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that! That's nothing at all&mdash;nothing now."</p>
+
+<p>"But people are insulting me about you, and...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;and you?"</p>
+
+<p>The colour rushed to his cheeks and he smote the back of a chair with
+his clenched fist.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell them...."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," she said, and her eyes began to shine again. But she
+only turned away, saying: "I'm sorry you are angry that I came."</p>
+
+<p>"Angry!" he cried, and at the sound of his voice as he said the word
+their love for each other went thrilling through and through them.</p>
+
+<p>The rain had begun to fall, and it was beating with smart strokes on the
+window panes.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again
+there is something you ought to hear."</p>
+
+<p>She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on
+to her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was
+bubbling like a lake.</p>
+
+<p>"The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the
+matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that
+you should hear it now."</p>
+
+<p>Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her
+lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy
+hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed
+himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is,"
+he thought. "What is the meaning of it?"</p>
+
+<p>He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all I do remember about my father. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is here in this cylinder."</p>
+
+<p>She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner
+at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The
+legal term of <i>domicilio coatto</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span> is from one year to five, but excuses
+were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come
+and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the
+world outside."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he ever hear of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David
+Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised
+David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send
+me a message."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it about...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out
+by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a
+way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to
+one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet
+at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were
+certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the
+time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the
+cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to."</p>
+
+<p>With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular
+cardboard-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust,"
+and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only&mdash;to
+be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him."</p>
+
+<p>The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying
+fire he could see that her face had turned white.</p>
+
+<p>"And this contains my father's voice?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"His last message."</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead&mdash;two years dead&mdash;and yet...."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you bear to hear it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," she said, hardly audibly.</p>
+
+<p>He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the
+instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain,
+lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the
+machine began.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a
+clear, full voice:</p>
+
+<p>"David Leone&mdash;your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying
+message...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking
+whisper, Roma said:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Give me one moment."</p>
+
+<p>She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a
+ghostly presence.</p>
+
+<p>She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast.</p>
+
+<p>"I am better now. Go on," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came
+as before:</p>
+
+<p>"My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled
+faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was
+meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long
+a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was
+the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies,
+nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England <i>as</i>
+Volonna&mdash;nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma."</p>
+
+<p>The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim.</p>
+
+<p>"Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has
+happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter
+which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the
+police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for
+his treachery."</p>
+
+<p>"The Baron?"</p>
+
+<p>Rossi had stopped the phonograph.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you bear it?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>The pale young face flushed with resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," she said.</p>
+
+<p>When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and
+husky than before.</p>
+
+<p>"After he had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity
+prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all
+hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the
+streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the
+guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to
+the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the
+name of my beloved child."</p>
+
+<p>The hand on Rossi's arm trembled feebly, and slipped down to his own
+hand. It was cold as ice. The voice from the phonograph was growing
+faint.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She is now in Rome, living in the name that was mine in Italy, amid an
+atmosphere of danger and perhaps of shame. My son, save her from it. The
+man who betrayed the father may betray the daughter also. Take her from
+him. Rescue her. It is my dying prayer."</p>
+
+<p>The hand in Rossi's hand was holding it tightly, and his blood was
+throbbing at his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"David," the voice from the phonograph was failing rapidly, "when this
+shall come to your hands the darkness of the grave will be over me....
+In my great distress of mind I torture myself with many terrors.... Do
+not trifle with my request. But whatever you decide to do ... be gentle
+with the child.... I dream of her every night, and send my heart's heart
+to her on the swelling tides of love.... Adieu, my son. The end is near.
+God be with you in all you do that I did ill or left undone. And if
+death's great sundering does not annihilate the memory of those who
+remain on earth, be sure you have a helper and an advocate in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>The voice ceased, the whirring of the instrument came to an end, and an
+invisible spirit seemed to fade into the air. The pattering of the rain
+had stopped, and there was the crackle of cab wheels on the pavement
+below. Roma had dropped Rossi's hand, and was leaning forward on her
+knees with both hands over her face. After a moment, she wiped her eyes
+with her handkerchief and began to put on her hat.</p>
+
+<p>"How long is it since you received this message?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"On the night you came here first."</p>
+
+<p>"And when I asked you to come to my house on that ... that useless
+errand, you were thinking of ... of my father's request as well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You have known all this about the Baron for a month, yet you have said
+nothing. <i>Why</i> have you said nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't have believed me at first, whatever I had said against
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"But afterwards?"</p>
+
+<p>"Afterwards I had another reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Did it concern me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now that I have to part from you I am compelled to tell you what he
+is."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But if you had known that all this time he has been trying to use
+somebody against you...."</p>
+
+<p>"That would have made no difference."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head, and a look of fire, almost of fierceness, came into
+her face, but she only said, with a little hysterical cry, as if her
+throat were swelling:</p>
+
+<p>"Come to me to-morrow, David! Be sure you come! If you don't come I
+shall never, never forgive you! But you will come! You will! You will!"</p>
+
+<p>And then, as if afraid of breaking out into sobs, she turned quickly and
+hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>"She can never fall into that man's hands now," he thought. And then he
+lit his lamp and sat down to his work, but the light was gone, and the
+night had fallen on him.</p>
+
+<h3>XII</h3>
+
+<p>Next morning David Rossi had not yet risen when some one knocked at his
+door. It was Bruno. The great fellow looked nervous and troubled, and he
+spoke in a husky whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going to Donna Roma's to-day, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen her bust of yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. My case, too. She has taken care of that&mdash;locking it up every
+night, and getting another caster to cast it. But I saw it the first
+morning after she began, and I know what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be angry again, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judas&mdash;that's what it is, sir; the study for Judas in the fountain for
+the Municipality."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"All?... But it's a caricature, a spiteful caricature! And you sat four
+days and never even looked at it! I tell you it's disgusting, sir.
+Simply disgusting. It's been done on purpose, too. When I think of it I
+forget all you said, and I hate the woman as much as ever. And now she
+is to have a reception, and you are going to it, just to help her to
+have her laugh. Don't go, sir! Take the advice of a fool, and don't
+go!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bruno," said Rossi, lying with his head on his arm, "understand me once
+for all. Donna Roma may have used my head as a study for Judas&mdash;I cannot
+deny that since you say it is so&mdash;but if she had used it as a study for
+Satan, I would believe in her the same as ever."</p>
+
+<p>"You would?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, by God! So now, like a good fellow, go away and leave her alone."</p>
+
+<p>The streets were more than usually full of people when Rossi set out for
+the reception. Thick groups were standing about the hoardings, reading a
+yellow placard, which was still wet with the paste of the bill-sticker.
+It was a proclamation, signed by the Minister of the Interior, and it
+ran:</p>
+
+<p style='font-style:italic'><span class="smcap">"Romans</span>,&mdash;It having come to the knowledge of the Government that a
+set of misguided men, the enemies of the throne and of society, known to
+be in league with the republican, atheist, and anarchist associations of
+foreign countries, are inciting the people to resist the just laws made
+by their duly elected Parliament, and sanctioned by their King, thus
+trying to lead them into outbreaks that would be unworthy of a
+cultivated and generous race, and would disgrace us in the view of other
+nations&mdash;the Government hereby give notice that they will not allow
+the laws to be insulted with impunity, and therefore they warn the
+public against the holding of all such mass meetings in public
+buildings, squares, and streets, as may lead to the possibility of
+serious disturbances."</p>
+
+<h3>XIII</h3>
+
+<p>The little Piazza of Trinit&agrave; de' Monti was full of carriages, and Roma's
+rooms were thronged. David Rossi entered with the calmness of a man who
+is accustomed to personal observation, but Roma met him with an almost
+extravagant salutation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you have come at last," she said in a voice that was intended to be
+heard by all. And then, in a low tone, she added, "Stay near me, and
+don't go until I say you may."</p>
+
+<p>Her face had the expression that had puzzled him the day before, but
+with the flushed cheeks, the firm mouth and the shining eyes, there was
+now a strange look of excitement, almost of hysteria.</p>
+
+<p>The company was divided into four main groups. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span> first of them
+consisted of Roma's aunt, powdered and perfumed, propped up with
+cushions on an invalid chair, and receiving the guests by the door, with
+the Baron Bonelli, silent and dignified, but smiling his icy smile, by
+her side. A second group consisted of Don Camillo and some ladies of
+fashion, who stood by the window and made little half-smothered trills
+of laughter. The third group included Lena and Olga, the journalists,
+with Madame Sella, the modiste; and the fourth group was made up of the
+English and American Ambassadors, Count Mario, and some other
+diplomatists.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation was at first interrupted by the little pauses that
+follow fresh arrivals; and after it had settled down to the dull buzz of
+a beehive, when the old brood and her queen are being turned out, it
+consisted merely of hints, giving the impression of something in the air
+that was scandalous and amusing, but could not be talked about.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard that" ... "Is it true that" ... "No?" "Can it be
+possible?" "How delicious!" and then inaudible questions and low
+replies, with tittering, tapping of fans, and insinuating glances.</p>
+
+<p>But Roma seemed to hear everything that was said about her, and
+constantly broke in upon a whispered conversation with disconcerting
+openness.</p>
+
+<p>"That man here!" said one of the journalists at Rossi's entrance. "In
+the same room with the Prime Minister!" said another. "After that
+disgraceful scene in the House, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hear that he was abominably rude to the Baron the other day," said
+Madame Sella.</p>
+
+<p>"Rude? He has blundered shockingly, and offended everybody. They tell me
+the Vatican is now up in arms against him, and is going to denounce him
+and all his ways."</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder! He has made himself thoroughly disagreeable, and I'm only
+surprised that the Prime Minister...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, leave the Prime Minister alone. He has something up his sleeve....
+Haven't you heard why we are invited here to-day? No? Not heard that...."</p>
+
+<p>"Really! So that explains ... I see, I see!" and then more tittering and
+tapping of fans.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, he is an extraordinary man, and one of the first statesmen
+in Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"It's so unselfish of you to say that," said Roma, flashing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span> round
+suddenly, "for the Minister has never been a friend of journalists, and
+I've heard him say that there wasn't one of them who wouldn't sell his
+mother's honour if he thought he could make a sensation."</p>
+
+<p>"Love?" said the voice of Don Camillo in the silence that followed
+Roma's remark. "What has marriage to do with love except to spoil it?"
+And then, amidst laughter, and the playful looks of the ladies by whom
+he was surrounded, he gave a gay picture of his own poverty, and the
+necessity of marrying to retrieve his fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you have? Look at my position! A great name, as ancient as
+history, and no income. A gorgeous palace, as old as the pyramids, and
+no cook!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be so conceited about your poverty, Gi-gi," said Roma. "Some of
+the Roman ladies are as poor as the men. As for me, Madame Sella could
+sell up every stick in my house to-morrow, and if the Municipality
+should throw up my fountain...."</p>
+
+<p>"Senator Palomba," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door.</p>
+
+<p>The suave, oily little Mayor came in, twinkling his eyes and saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Did I hear my name as I entered?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was saying," said Roma, "that if the Municipality should throw up my
+fountain...."</p>
+
+<p>The little man made an amusing gesture, and the constrained silence was
+broken by some awkward laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," said the testy voice of the Countess, "I think I've done my duty
+by you, and now the Baron will take me back. Natalina! Where's
+Natalina?"</p>
+
+<p>But half-a-dozen hands took hold of the invalid chair, and the Baron
+followed it into the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful man!" "Wonderful!" whispered various voices as the Minister's
+smile disappeared through the door.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation had begun to languish when the Princess Bellini
+arrived, and then suddenly it became lively and general.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm late, but do you know, my dear," she said, kissing Roma on both
+cheeks, "I've been nearly torn to pieces in coming. My carriage had to
+plough its way through crowds of people."</p>
+
+<p>"Crowds?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, and the streets are nearly impassable. Another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+demonstration, I suppose! The poor must always be demonstrating."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes," said Don Camillo. "Haven't you heard the news, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been working all night and all day, and I have heard nothing,"
+said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to prevent a recurrence of the disgraceful scene of yesterday,
+the King has promulgated the Public Security Act by royal decree, and
+the wonderful crisis is at an end."</p>
+
+<p>"And now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now the Prime Minister is master of the situation, and has begun by
+proclaiming the mass meeting which was to have been held in the
+Coliseum."</p>
+
+<p>"Good thing too," said Count Mario. "We've heard enough of liberal
+institutions lately."</p>
+
+<p>"And of the scandalous speeches of professional agitators," said Madame
+Sella.</p>
+
+<p>"And of the liberty of the press," said Senator Palomba. And then the
+effeminate old dandy, the fashionable dressmaker, and the oily little
+Mayor exchanged significant nods.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Only wait!" said Roma, in a low voice, to Rossi, who was standing
+in silence by her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy Italy!" said the American Ambassador. "With the largest array
+of titled nobility and the largest army of beggars. The one class
+sipping iced drinks in the piazzas during the playing of music, and the
+other class marching through the streets and conspiring against
+society."</p>
+
+<p>"You judge us from a foreign standpoint, dear friend," said Don Camillo,
+"and forget our love of a pageant. The Princess says our poor are always
+demonstrating. We are all always demonstrating. Our favourite
+demonstration is a funeral, with drums beating and banners waving. If we
+cannot have a funeral we have a wedding, with flowers and favours and
+floods of tears. And when we cannot have either, we put up with a
+revolution, and let our Radical orators tell us of the wickedness of
+taxing the people's bread."</p>
+
+<p>"Always their bread," said the Princess, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"In America, dear General, you are so tragically sincere, but in Italy
+we are a race of actors. The King, the Parliament, the Pope himself...."</p>
+
+<p>"Shocking!" said the little Princess. "But if you had said as much of
+our professional agitators...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they are the most accomplished and successful actors,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span> Princess.
+But we are all actors in Italy, from the greatest to the least, and the
+'curtain' is to him who can score off everybody else."</p>
+
+<p>"So," began the American, "to be Prime Minister in Rome...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is to be the chief actor in Europe, and his leading part is that in
+which he puts an end to his adversary amidst a burst of inextinguishable
+laughter."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he driving at?" said the English to the American Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know? Haven't you heard what is coming?" And then some
+further whispering.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, only wait!" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Gi-gi," said the Princess, "how stupid you are! You're all wrong about
+Roma. Look at her now. To think that men can be so blind! And the Baron
+is no better than the rest of you. He's too proud to believe what I tell
+him, but he'll learn the truth some day. He is here, of course? In the
+Countess's room, isn't he?... How do you like my dress?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfect."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? The black and the blue make a charming effect, don't they? They
+are the Baron's favourite colours. How agitated our hostess is! She
+seems to have all the world here. When are we to see the wonderful work?
+What's she waiting for? Ah, there's the Baron coming out at last!"</p>
+
+<p>"They're all here, aren't they?" said Roma, looking round with flushed
+cheeks and flaming eyes at the jangling, slandering crew, who had
+insulted and degraded David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care," he answered, but she only threw up her head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Then the company went down the circular iron staircase to the studio.
+Roma walked first with her rapid step, talking nervously and laughing
+frequently.</p>
+
+<p>The fountain stood in the middle of the floor, and the guests gathered
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Superb!" they exclaimed one after another. "Superb!" "Superb!"</p>
+
+<p>The little Mayor was especially enthusiastic. He stood near the Baron,
+and holding up both hands he cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Marvellous! Miraculous! Fit to take its place beside the masterpieces
+of old Rome!"</p>
+
+<p>"But surely this is 'Hamlet' without the prince," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span> the Baron. "You
+set out to make a fountain representing Christ and His twelve apostles,
+and the only figure you leave unfinished is Christ Himself."</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the central figure above the dish, which was merely shaped
+out and indicated.</p>
+
+<p>"Not only one, your Excellency," said Don Camillo. "Here is another
+unfinished figure&mdash;intended for Judas, apparently."</p>
+
+<p>"I left them to the last on purpose," said Roma. "They were so
+important, and so difficult. But I have studies for both of them in the
+boudoir, and you shall give me your advice and opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"The saint and the satyr, the God and the devil, the betrayed and the
+betrayer&mdash;what subjects for the chisel of the artist!" said Don Camillo.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said the Mayor. "She must do the one with all the emotions of
+love, and the other with all the faculties of hate."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that art," said Don Camillo, "has anything to do with life&mdash;that is
+to say, real life...."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" said Roma sharply. "The artist has to live in the world, and
+he isn't blind. Therefore, why shouldn't he describe what he sees around
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"But is that art? If so, the artist is at liberty to give his views on
+religion and politics, and by the medium of his art he may even express
+his private feelings&mdash;return insults and wreak revenge."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly he may," said Roma; "the greatest artists have often done
+so." Saying this, she led the way upstairs, and the others followed with
+a chorus of hypocritical approval.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only human, to say the least." "Of course it is!" "If she's a
+woman and can't speak out, or fight duels, it's a lady-like way, at all
+events." And then further tittering, tapping of fans, and significant
+nods at Rossi when his back was turned.</p>
+
+<p>Two busts stood on pedestals in the boudoir. One of them was covered
+with a damp cloth, the other with a muslin veil. Going up to the latter
+first, Roma said, with a slightly quavering voice:</p>
+
+<p>"It was so difficult to do justice to the Christ that I am almost sorry
+I made the attempt. But it came easier when I began to think of some one
+who was being reviled and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> humiliated and degraded because he was poor
+and wasn't ashamed of it, and who was always standing up for the weak
+and the down-trodden, and never returning anybody's insult, however
+shameful and false and wicked, because he wasn't thinking of himself at
+all. So I got the best model I could in real life, and this is the
+result."</p>
+
+<p>With that she pulled off the muslin veil and revealed the sculptured
+head of David Rossi, in a snow-white plaster cast. The features
+expressed pure nobility, and every touch was a touch of sympathy and
+love.</p>
+
+<p>A moment of chilling silence was followed by an under-breath of gossip.
+"Who is it?" "Christ, of course." "Oh, certainly, but it reminds me of
+some one." "Who can it be?" "The Pope?" "Why, no; don't you see who it
+is?" "Is it really?" "How shameful!" "How blasphemous!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma stood looking on with a face lighted up by two flaming eyes. "I'm
+afraid you don't think I've done justice to my model," she said. "That's
+quite true. But perhaps my Judas will please you better," and she
+stepped up to the bust that was covered by the wet cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"I found this a difficult subject also, and it was not until yesterday
+evening that I felt able to begin on it."</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a hand that trembled visibly, she took from the wall the
+portrait of her father, and offering it to the Minister, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Some one told me a story of duplicity and treachery&mdash;it was about this
+poor old gentleman, Baron&mdash;and then I knew what sort of person it was
+who betrayed his friend and master for thirty pieces of silver, and
+listened to the hypocrisy, and flattery, and lying of the miserable
+group of parasites who crowded round him because he was a traitor, and
+because he kept the purse."</p>
+
+<p>With that she threw off the damp cloth, and revealed the clay model of a
+head. The face was unmistakable, but it expressed every
+baseness&mdash;cunning, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality.</p>
+
+<p>The silence was freezing, and the company began to turn away, and to
+mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the
+Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A
+scarecrow!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma watched them for a moment, and then said: "You don't like my Judas?
+Neither do I. You're right&mdash;it <i>is</i> disgusting."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And taking up in both hands a piece of thin wire, she cut the clay
+across, and the upper part of it fell face downward with a thud on to
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess, who stood by the side of the Baron, offered him her
+sympathy, and he answered in his icy smile:</p>
+
+<p>"But these artists are all slightly insane, you know. That is an evil
+which must be patiently endured, without noticing too much the ludicrous
+side of it."</p>
+
+<p>Then, stepping up to Roma, and handing back the portrait, the Baron
+said, with a slight frown:</p>
+
+<p>"I must thank you for a very amusing afternoon, and bid you good-day."</p>
+
+<p>The others looked after him, and interpreted his departure according to
+their own feelings. "He is done with her," they whispered. "He'll pay
+her out for this." And without more ado they began to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>Roma, flushed and excited, bowed to them as they went out one by one,
+with a politeness that was demonstrative to the point of caricature. She
+was saying farewell to them for ever, and her face was lighted up with a
+look of triumphant joy. They tried to bear themselves bravely as they
+passed her, but her blazing eyes and sweeping curtseys made them feel as
+if they were being turned out of the house.</p>
+
+<p>When they were all gone, she shut the door with a bang, and then turning
+to David Rossi, who alone remained, she burst into a flood of hysterical
+tears, and threw herself on to her knees at his feet.</p>
+
+<h3>XIV</h3>
+
+<p>"David!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do that. Get up," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts were in a whirl. He had been standing aside, trembling for
+Roma as he had never trembled for himself in the hottest moments of his
+public life. And now he was alone with her, and his blood was beating in
+his breast in stabs.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I done enough?" she cried. "You taunted me with my wealth, but
+I am as poor as you are now. Every penny I had in the world came from
+the Baron. He allowed me to use part of the revenues of my father's
+estates, but the income was under his control, and now he will stop it
+altogether. I am in debt. I have always been in debt. That was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> my
+benefactor's way of reminding me of my dependence on his bounty. And now
+all <i>I</i> have will be sold to satisfy my creditors, and I shall be turned
+out homeless."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma...." he began, but her tears and passion bore down everything.</p>
+
+<p>"House, furniture, presents, carriages, horses, everything will go soon,
+and I shall have nothing whatever! No matter! You said a woman loved
+ease and wealth and luxury. Is that all a woman loves? Is there nothing
+else in the world for any of us? Aren't you satisfied with me at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," he answered, breathing hard, "don't talk like that. I cannot
+bear it."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not listen. "You taunted me with being a woman," she said
+through a fresh burst of tears. "A woman was incapable of friendship and
+sacrifices. She was intended to be a man's plaything. Do you think I
+want to be my husband's mistress? I want to be his wife, to share his
+fate, whatever it may be, for good or bad, for better or worse."</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Roma!" he cried. But she broke in on him again.</p>
+
+<p>"You taunted me with the dangers you had to go through, as if a woman
+must needs be an impediment to her husband, and try to keep him back. Do
+you think I want my husband to do nothing? If he were content with that
+he would not be the man I had loved, and I should despise him and leave
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!..."</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>you</i> taunted me with the death that hangs over you. When you were
+gone I should be left to the mercy of the world. But that can never
+happen. Never! Do you think a woman can outlive the man she loves as I
+love you?... There! I've said it. You've shamed me into it."</p>
+
+<p>He could not speak now. His words were choking in his throat, and she
+went on in a torrent of tears:</p>
+
+<p>"The death that threatens you comes from no fault of yours, but only
+from your fidelity to my father. Therefore I have a right to share it,
+and I will not live when you are dead."</p>
+
+<p>"If I give way now," he thought, "all is over."</p>
+
+<p>And clenching his hands behind his back to keep himself from throwing
+his arms around her, he began in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, you have broken your promise to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>don't</i> care," she interrupted. "I would break ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span> thousand
+promises. I deceived you. I confess it. I pretended to be reconciled to
+your will, and I was not reconciled. I wanted you to see me strip myself
+of all I had, that you might have no answer and excuse. Well, you have
+seen me do it, and now ... what are you going to do <i>now</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," he began again, trembling all over, "there have been two men in
+me all this time, and one of them has been trying to protect you from
+the world and from yourself, while the other ... the other has been
+wanting you to despise all his objections, and trample them under your
+feet.... If I could only believe that you know all you are doing, all
+the risk you are running, and the fate you are willing to share ... but
+no, it is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"David," she cried, "you love me! If you didn't love me, I should know
+it now&mdash;at this moment. But I am braver than you are...."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go. I cannot answer for myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I am braver than you are, for I have not only stripped myself of all my
+possessions, and of all my friends ... I have even compromised myself
+again and again, and been daring and audacious, and rude to everybody
+for your sake.... I, a woman ... while you, a man ... you are afraid ...
+yes, afraid ... you are a coward&mdash;that's it, a coward!... No, no, no!
+What am I saying?... David Leone!"</p>
+
+<p>And with a cry of passion and remorse she flung both arms about his
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>He had stood, during this fierce struggle of love and pain, holding
+himself in until his throbbing nerves could bear the strain no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to me, then&mdash;come to me," he cried, and at the moment when she
+threw herself upon him he stretched out his arms to receive her.</p>
+
+<p>"You do love me?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, yes! And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>He clasped her in his arms with redoubled ardour, and pressed her to his
+breast and kissed her. The love so long pent up was bursting out like a
+liberated cataract that sweeps the snow and the ice before it.</p>
+
+<p>All at once the girl who had been so brave in the great battle of her
+love became weak and womanish in the moment of her victory. Under the
+warmth of his tenderness she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span> dropped her head on to his breast to
+conceal her face in her shame.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never think the worse of me?" she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"The worse of you! For loving me?"</p>
+
+<p>"For telling you so and forcing myself into your life?"</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, no!"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head, and he kissed away the tears that were shining in
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"But tell me," he said, "are you sure&mdash;quite sure? Do you know what is
+before you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only know I love you."</p>
+
+<p>He folded her afresh in his strong embrace, and kissed her head as it
+lay on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Think again," he said. "A man's enemies can be merciless. They may
+watch you and put pressure upon you, and even humiliate you for my
+sake."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter, I am not afraid," she answered, and again he tightened his
+arms about her in a passionate embrace, and covered her hair and her
+neck and her hands and her finger-tips with kisses.</p>
+
+<p>They did not speak for a long time after that. There was no need for
+words. He was conquered, yet he was conqueror, and she was happy and at
+peace. The long fight was over, and everything was well.</p>
+
+<p>He put her to sit in a chair, and sat himself on the arm of it, with his
+face to her face, and her arms still round his neck. It was like a
+dream. She could scarcely believe it. He whom she had looked up to with
+adoration was caressing her. She was like a child in her joy, blushing
+and half afraid.</p>
+
+<p>He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead. She threw back
+her head that she might put her lips to his forehead in return, and he
+kissed her full, round throat.</p>
+
+<p>Then they exchanged rings as the sign of their eternal union. When she
+put her diamond ring, set in gold, on to his finger, he looked grave and
+even sad; but when he put his plain silver one on to hers, she lifted up
+her glorified hand to the light, and kissed and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>They began to talk in low tones, as if some one had been listening. It
+was the whispering of their hearts, for the angel of happy love has no
+voice louder than a whisper. She asked him to say again that he loved
+her, but as soon as he began to say it she stopped his mouth with a
+kiss.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They talked of their love. She was sure she had loved him before he
+loved her, and when he said that he had loved her always, she protested
+in that case he did not love her at all.</p>
+
+<p>They rose at length to close the windows, and side by side, his arm
+about her waist, her head leaning lightly on his shoulder, they stood
+for a moment looking out. The mother of cities lay below in its
+lightsome whiteness, and over the ridge of its encircling hills the glow
+of the departing sun was rising in vaporous tints of amber and crimson
+into the transparent blue, with the dome of St. Peter's, like a balloon
+ready to rise into a celestial sky.</p>
+
+<p>"A storm is coming," he said, looking at the colours in the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>"It has come and gone," she whispered, and then his arm folded closer
+about her waist.</p>
+
+<p>It took him half-an-hour to say adieu. After the last kiss and the last
+handshake, their arms would stretch out to the utmost limit, and then
+close again for another and another and yet another embrace.</p>
+
+<h3>XV</h3>
+
+<p>When at length Rossi was gone, Roma ran into her bedroom to look at her
+face in the glass. The golden complexion was heightened by a bright spot
+on either cheek, and a teardrop was glistening in the corner of each of
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She went back to the boudoir. David Rossi was no longer there, but the
+room seemed to be full of his presence. She sat in the chair again, and
+again she stood by the window. At length she opened her desk and wrote a
+letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,&mdash;You are only half-an-hour gone, and here I am sending this
+letter after you, like a handkerchief you had forgotten. I have one or
+two things to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple things, but I cannot
+think of them sensibly for joy of the certainty that you love me. Of
+course I knew it all the time, but I couldn't be at ease until I had
+heard it from your own lips; and now I feel almost afraid of my great
+happiness. How wonderful it seems! And, like all events that are long
+expected, how suddenly it has happened in the end. To think that a month
+ago&mdash;only a little month&mdash;you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span> and I were both in Rome, within a mile of
+each other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed
+by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it!</p>
+
+<p>"Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said so
+savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your anxiety
+about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of the women who
+think that a wife should further a man's aims in life if she can; and if
+she can't do that, she should stand aside and not impede him. So go on,
+dear heart, without fear for me. I will take care of myself, whatever
+occurs. Don't let one hour or one act of your life be troubled by the
+thought of what would happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am
+your beloved, but I am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow
+where my captain calls:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 2em;">
+"'Teach me, only teach, Love!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As I ought</span><br />
+I will speak thy speech, Love!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Think thy thought.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"And if I was not half afraid that you would think it bolder than is
+modest in your bride to be, I would go on with the next lines of my
+sweet quotation.</p>
+
+<p>"Another thing. You went away without saying you forgive me for the
+wicked duplicity I practised upon you. It was very wrong, I suppose, and
+yet for my life I cannot get up any real contrition on the subject.
+There's always some duplicity in a woman. It is the badge of every
+daughter of Eve, and it must come out somewhere. In my case it came out
+in loving you to all the lengths and ends of love, and drawing you on to
+loving me. I ought to be ashamed, but I'm not&mdash;I'm glad.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>did</i> love first, and, of course, I knew you from the beginning, and
+when you wrote about being in love with some one else, I knew quite well
+you meant me. But it was so delicious to pretend not to know, to come
+near and then to sheer off again, to touch and then to fly, to tempt you
+and then to run away, until a strong tide rushed at me and overwhelmed
+me, and I was swooning in your arms at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, don't think I made light of the obstacles you urged against
+our union. I knew all the time that the risks of marriage were serious,
+though perhaps I am not in a position even yet to realise how serious
+they may be. Only I knew also that the dangers were greater still if we
+kept apart,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> and that gave me courage to be bold and to defy
+conventions.</p>
+
+<p>"Which brings me to my last point, and please prepare to be serious, and
+bend your brow to that terrible furrow which comes when you are
+fearfully in earnest. What you said of your enemies being merciless, and
+perhaps watching me and putting pressure upon me to injure you, is only
+too imminent a danger. The truth is that I have all along known more
+than I had courage to tell, but I was hoping you would understand, and
+now I tremble to think how I have suffered myself to be silent.</p>
+
+<p>"The Minghelli matter is an alarming affair, for I have reason to
+believe that the man has lit on the name you bore in England, and that
+when he returns to Rome he will try to fix it upon you by means of me.
+This is fearful to contemplate, and my heart quakes to think of it. But
+happily there is a way to checkmate such a devilish design, and it is
+within your own power to save me from life-long remorse.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think the laws of any civilized country compel a man's <i>wife</i>
+to compromise him, and thinking of this gives me courage to be
+unmaidenly and say: Don't let it be long, dearest! I could die to bring
+it to pass in a moment. With all my great, great happiness, I shall have
+the heartache until it is done, and only when it is over shall I begin
+to live.</p>
+
+<p>"There! You didn't know what a forward hussy I could be if I tried, and
+really I have been surprised at myself since I began to be in love with
+you. For weeks and weeks I have been thin and haggard and ugly, and only
+to-day I begin to be a little beautiful. I couldn't be anything but
+beautiful to-day, and I've been running to the glass to look at myself,
+as the only way to understand why you love me at all. And I'm glad&mdash;so
+glad for your sake.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, dearest! You cannot come to-morrow or the next day, and what
+a lot I shall have to live before I see you again! Shall I look older?
+No, for thinking of you makes me feel younger and younger every minute.
+How old are you? Thirty-four? I'm twenty-four and a half, and that is
+just right, but if you think I ought to be nearer your age I'll wear a
+bonnet and fasten it with a bow.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"<span class="smcap">Roma</span>.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>
+"P.S.&mdash;Don't
+delay the momentous matter. Don't! Don't! Don't!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She dined alone that night that she might be undisturbed in her thoughts
+of Rossi. Ordinary existence had almost disappeared from her
+consciousness, and every time Felice spoke as he served the dishes his
+voice seemed to come from far away.</p>
+
+<p>She went to bed early, but it was late before she slept. For a long time
+she lay awake to think over all that had happened, and, when the night
+was far gone, and she tried to fall asleep in order to dream of it also,
+she could not do so for sheer delight of the prospect. But at last amid
+the gathering clouds of sleep she said "Good-night," with the ghost of a
+kiss, and slept until morning.</p>
+
+<p>When she awoke it was late, and the sun was shining into the room. She
+lay on her back and stretched out both arms for sheer sweetness of the
+sensation of health and love. Everything was well, and she was very
+happy. Thinking of yesterday, she was even sorry for the Baron, and told
+herself she had been too bold and daring.</p>
+
+<p>But that thought was gone in a moment. Body and soul were suffused with
+joy, and she leapt out of bed with a spring.</p>
+
+<p>A moment afterwards Natalina came with a letter. It was from the Baron
+himself, and it was dated the day before:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"Minghelli has returned from London, and therefore I must see you
+to-morrow at eleven o'clock. Be so good as to be at home, and give
+orders that for half-an-hour at least we shall be quite undisturbed."</p>
+
+<p>Then the sun went out, the air grew dull, and darkness fell over all the
+world.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_FIVE_THE_PRIME_MINISTER" id="PART_FIVE_THE_PRIME_MINISTER"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+<h2>PART FIVE&mdash;THE PRIME MINISTER</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>It was Sunday. The storm threatened by the sunset of the day before had
+not yet come, but the sun was struggling through a veil of clouds, and a
+black ridge lay over the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock to the moment the Baron arrived. As usual, he was
+faultlessly dressed, and he looked cool and tranquil.</p>
+
+<p>"I am to show you into this room, Excellency," said Felice, leading the
+way to the boudoir.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks!... Anything to tell me, Felice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, Excellency," said Felice. Then, pointing to the plaster bust
+on its pedestal in the corner, he added in a lower tone, "<i>He</i> remained
+last night after the others had gone, and...."</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment there was the rustle of a woman's dress outside, and,
+interrupting Felice, the Baron said in a high-pitched voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; and please tell the Countess I shall not forget to look in
+upon her before I go."</p>
+
+<p>Roma came into the room with a gloomy and firm-set face. The smile that
+seemed always to play about her mouth and eyes had given place to a
+slight frown and an air of defiance. But the Baron saw in a moment that
+behind the lips so sternly set, and the straight look of the eyes, there
+was a frightened expression which she was trying to conceal. He greeted
+her with his accustomed calm and naturalness, kissed her hand, offered
+her the flower from his button-hole, put her to sit in the arm-chair
+with its back to the window, took his own seat on the couch in front of
+it, and leisurely drew off his spotless gloves.</p>
+
+<p>Not a word about the scene of yesterday, not a look of pain or reproof.
+Only a few casual pleasantries, and then a quiet gliding into the
+business of his visit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What an age since we were here alone before! And what changes you've
+made! Your pretty nest is like a cell! Well, I've obeyed your mandate,
+you see. I've stayed away for a month. It was hard to do&mdash;bitterly
+hard&mdash;and many a time I've told myself it was imprudent. But you were a
+woman. You were inexorable. I was forced to submit. And now, what have
+you got to tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," she answered, looking straight before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever."</p>
+
+<p>She did not move or turn her face, and he sat for a moment watching her.
+Then he rose, and began to walk about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us understand each other, my child," he said gently. "Will you
+forgive me if I recall facts that are familiar?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer, but looked fixedly into the fire, while he leaned on
+the stove and stood face to face with her.</p>
+
+<p>"A month ago, a certain Deputy, an obstructionist politician, who has
+for years made the task of government difficult, uttered a seditious
+speech, and brought himself within the power of the law. In that speech
+he also attacked me, and&mdash;shall I say?&mdash;grossly slandered you.
+Parliament was not in session, and I was able to order his arrest. In
+due course, he would have been punished, perhaps by imprisonment,
+perhaps by banishment, but you thought it prudent to intervene. You
+urged reasons of policy which were wise and far-seeing. I yielded, and,
+to the bewilderment of my officials, I ordered the Deputy's release. But
+he was not therefore to escape. You undertook his punishment. In a
+subtle and more effectual way, you were to wipe out the injury he had
+done, and requite him for his offence. The man was a mystery&mdash;you were
+to find out all about him. He was suspected of intrigue&mdash;you were to
+discover his conspiracies. Within a month, you were to deliver him into
+my hands, and I was to know <i>the inmost secrets of his soul</i>."</p>
+
+<p>It was with difficulty that Roma maintained her calmness while the Baron
+was speaking, but she only shook a stray lock of hair from her forehead,
+and sat silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the month is over. I have given you every opportunity to deal
+with our friend as you thought best. Have you found out anything about
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>She put on a bold front and answered, "No."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So your effort has failed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are likely to give up your plan of punishing the man for
+defaming and degrading you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have given it up already."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange! Very strange! Very unfortunate also, for we are at this moment
+at a crisis when it is doubly important to the Government to possess the
+information you set out to find. Still, your idea was a good one, and I
+can never be sufficiently grateful to you for suggesting it. And
+although <i>your</i> efforts have failed, you need not be uneasy. You have
+given us the clues by which <i>our</i> efforts are succeeding, and you shall
+yet punish the man who insulted you so publicly and so grossly."</p>
+
+<p>"How is it possible for me to punish him?"</p>
+
+<p>"By identifying David Rossi as one who was condemned in contumacy for
+high treason sixteen years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"That is ridiculous," she said. "Sixteen months ago I had never heard
+the name of David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron stooped a little and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Had you ever heard the name of David Leone?"</p>
+
+<p>She dropped back in her chair, and again looked straight before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, my child," said the Baron caressingly, and moving across
+the room to look out of the window, he tapped her lightly on the
+shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>"I told you that Minghelli had returned from London."</p>
+
+<p>"That forger!" she said hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt! One who spends his life ferreting out crime is apt to have
+the soul of a criminal. But civilisation needs its scavengers, and it
+was a happy thought of yours to think of this one. Indeed, everything
+we've done has been done on your initiative, and when our friend is
+finally brought to justice, the deed will really be due to you, and you
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>The defiant look was disappearing from her eyes, and she rose with an
+expression of pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you torture me like this?" she said. "After what has happened,
+isn't it quite plain that I am his friend, and not his enemy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said the Baron. His face assumed a death-like rigidity. "Sit
+down and listen to me."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down, and he returned to his place by the stove.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I say you gave us the clues we have worked upon. Those clues were
+three. First, that David Rossi knew the life-story of Doctor Roselli in
+London. Second, that he knew the story of Doctor Roselli's daughter,
+Roma Roselli. Third, that he was for a time a waiter at the Grand Hotel
+in Rome. Two minor clues came independently, that David Rossi was once a
+stable-boy in New York, that his mother drowned herself in the Tiber,
+and he was brought up in a Foundling. By these five clues the
+authorities have discovered eight facts. Permit me to recite them."</p>
+
+<p>Leaning his elbow on the stove and opening his hand, the Baron ticked
+off the facts one by one on his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact one. Some thirty odd years ago a woman carrying a child presented
+herself at the office in Rome for the registry of births. She gave the
+name of Leonora Leone, and wished her child, a boy, to be registered as
+David Leone. But the officer in attendance discovered that the woman's
+name was Leonora Rossi, and that she had been married according to the
+religious rites of the Church, but not according to the civil
+regulations of the State. The child was therefore registered as David
+Rossi, son of Leonora Rossi and of a father unknown."</p>
+
+<p>"Shameful!" cried Roma. "Shameful! shameful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fact two," said the Baron, without the change of a tone. "One night a
+little later the body of a woman found drowned in the Tiber was
+recognised as the body of Leonora Rossi, and buried in the pauper part
+of the Campo Verano under that name. The same night a child was placed
+by an unknown hand in the <i>rota</i> of Santo Spirito, with a paper attached
+to its wrist, giving particulars of its baptism and its name. The name
+given was David Leone."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron ticked off the third of his fingers and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Fact three. Fourteen years afterwards a boy named David Leone, fourteen
+years of age, was living in the house of an Italian exile in London. The
+exile was a Roman prince under the incognito of Doctor Roselli; his
+family consisted of his wife and one child, a daughter named Roma, four
+years of age. David Leone had been adopted by Doctor Roselli, who had
+picked him up in the street."</p>
+
+<p>Roma covered her face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact four. Four years later a conspiracy to assassinate the King of
+Italy was discovered at Milan. The chief conspirator<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span> turned out to be,
+unfortunately, the English exile known as Doctor Roselli. By the good
+offices of a kinsman, jealous of the honour of his true family name, he
+was not brought to public trial, but deported by one of the means
+adopted by all Governments when secrecy or safety is in question. But
+his confederates and correspondents were shown less favour, and one of
+them, still in England, being tried in contumacy by a military court
+which sat during a state of siege, was condemned for high treason to the
+military punishment of death. The name of that confederate and
+correspondent was David Leone."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's slippered foot was beating the floor fast, but the Baron went on
+in his cool and tranquil tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact five. Our extradition treaty excluded the delivery of political
+offenders, but after representations from Italy, David Leone left
+England. He went to America. There he was first employed in the stables
+of the Tramway Company in New York, and lived in the Italian quarter of
+the city, but afterwards he rose out of his poverty and low position and
+became a journalist. In that character he attracted attention by a new
+political and religious propaganda. Jesus Christ was lawgiver for the
+nation as well as for the individual, and the redemption of the world
+was to be brought to pass by a constitution based on the precepts of the
+Lord's Prayer. The creed was sufficiently sentimental to be seized upon
+by fanatics in that country of countless faiths, but it cut at the roots
+of order, of poverty, even of patriotism, and being interpreted into
+action, seemed likely to lead to riot."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache, and said, with a smile,
+"David Leone disappeared from New York. From that time forward no trace
+of him has yet been found. He was as much gone as if he had ceased to
+exist. <i>David Leone was dead.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Roma's hands had come down from her face, and she was picking at the
+buttons of her blouse with twitching fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact six," said the Baron, ticking off the thumb of his other hand.
+"Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David
+Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving
+the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a
+baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor
+Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> Italy. They
+told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on
+a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the
+Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer,
+propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New
+York, and exciting the same interest."</p>
+
+<p>"Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David
+Rossi is David Rossi&mdash;there is no more in it than that."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and
+said, in a slightly exalted tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the
+Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the
+woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The
+pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but
+the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been
+buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his
+knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At
+length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it
+worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the
+mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?&mdash;David
+Rossi! Who was David Rossi?&mdash;David Leone! The circle had closed around
+him&mdash;the evidence was complete."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh! oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma had leapt up and was moving about the room. Her lips were
+compressed with scorn, her eyes were flashing, and she burst into a
+torrent of words, which spluttered out of her quivering lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to think of it! To think of it! You are right! The man who spends
+his life looking for crime must have the soul of a criminal! He has no
+conscience, no humanity, no mercy, no pity. And when he has tracked and
+dogged a man to his mother's grave&mdash;<i>his mother's grave</i>&mdash;he can dine,
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> can laugh, he can go to the theatre! Oh, I hate you! There, I've
+told you! Now, do with me as you please!"</p>
+
+<p>The death-like rigidity in the Baron's face decomposed into an expression
+of intense pain, but he only passed his hand over his brow, and said,
+after a moment of silence:</p>
+
+<p>"My child, you are not only offending me, you are offending the theory
+and principle of Justice. Justice has nothing to do with pity. In the
+vocabulary of Justice there is but one word&mdash;duty. Duty called upon me
+to fix this man's name upon him, that his obstructions, his slanders,
+and his evil influence might be at an end. And now Justice calls upon
+you to do the same."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron leaned against the stove, and spoke in a calm voice, while
+Roma in her agitation continued to walk about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Being a Deputy, and Parliament being in session, David Rossi can only
+be arrested by the authorisation of the Chamber. In order to obtain that
+authorisation, it is necessary that the Attorney-General should draw up
+a statement of the case. The statement must be presented by the
+Attorney-General to the Government, by the Government to the President,
+by the President to a Committee, and by the Committee to Parliament.
+Towards this statement the police have already obtained important
+testimony, and a complete chain of circumstantial evidence has been
+prepared. But they lack one link of positive proof, and until that link
+is obtained the Attorney-General is unable to proceed. It is the
+keystone of the arch, the central fact, without which all other facts
+fall to pieces&mdash;the testimony of somebody who can swear, if need be,
+that she knew both David Leone and David Rossi, and can identify the one
+with the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron, who had stopped, continued in a calm voice: "My dear Roma,
+need I go on? Dead as a Minister is to all sensibility, I had hoped to
+spare you. There is only one person known to me who can supply that
+link. That person is yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's eyes were red with anger and terror, but she tried to laugh over
+her fear.</p>
+
+<p>"How simple you are, after all!" she said. "It was Roma Roselli who knew
+David Leone, wasn't it? Well, Roma Roselli is dead and buried. Oh, I
+know all the story. You did that yourself, and now it cuts the ground
+from under you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My dear Roma," said the Baron, with a hard and angry face, "if I did
+anything in that matter, it was done for your welfare, but whatever it
+was, it need not disturb me now. Roma Roselli is <i>not</i> dead, and it
+would be easy to bring people from England to say so."</p>
+
+<p>"You daren't! You know you daren't! It would expose them to persecution
+for perpetrating a crime."</p>
+
+<p>"In England, not in Italy."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's red eyes fell, and the Baron began to speak in a caressing voice:</p>
+
+<p>"My child, don't fence with me. It is so painful to silence you.... It
+is perhaps natural that you should sympathise with the weaker side. That
+is the sweet and tender if illogical way of all women. But you must not
+imagine that when David Rossi has been arrested he will be walked off to
+his death. As a matter of fact, he must go through a new trial, he must
+be defended, his sentence would in any case be reduced to imprisonment,
+and it may even be wiped out altogether. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>"All? And you ask me to help you to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you could if you would?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your first word was the better one, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I won't! I won't! Aren't you ashamed to ask me to do such a
+thing? According to your own story, David Leone was my father's friend,
+yet you wish me to give him up to the law that he may be imprisoned,
+perhaps for life, and at least turned out of Parliament. Do you suppose
+I am capable of treachery like that? Do you judge of everybody by
+yourself?... Ah, I know that story too! For shame! For shame!"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron was silent for a moment, and then said in an impassive voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not discuss that subject with you now, my child&mdash;you are
+excited, and don't quite know what you are saying. I will only point out
+to you that even if David Leone was your father's friend, David Rossi
+was your own enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"What of that? It's my own affair, isn't it? If I choose to forgive him,
+what matter is it to anybody else? I <i>do</i> forgive him! Now, whose
+business is it except my own?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Roma, I might tell you that it's mine also, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> that the
+insult that went through you was aimed at me. But I will not speak of
+myself.... That you should change your plans so entirely, and setting
+out a month ago to ... to ... shall I say betray ... this man Rossi, you
+are now striving to save him, is a problem which admits of only one
+explanation, and that is that ... that you...."</p>
+
+<p>"That I love him&mdash;yes, that's the truth," said Roma boldly, but flushing
+up to the eyes and trembling with fear.</p>
+
+<p>There was a death-like pause in the duel. Both dropped their heads, and
+the silent face in the bust seemed to be looking down on them. Then the
+Baron's icy cheeks quivered visibly, and he said in a low, hoarse voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry! Very sorry! For in that case I may be compelled to justify
+your conclusion that a Minister has no humanity and no pity. If David
+Rossi cannot be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament, he must be
+arrested when Parliament is not in session, and then his identity will
+have to be established in a public tribunal. In that event you will be
+forced to appear, and having refused to make a private statement in the
+secrecy of a magistrate's office, you will be compelled to testify in
+the Court of Assize."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but you can't make me do that!" cried Roma excitedly, as if seized
+by a sudden thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind why not. You can't do it, I tell you," she cried excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her as if trying to penetrate her meaning, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the fretful voice of the Countess was heard calling to
+the Baron from the adjoining room.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Roma went to her bedroom when the Baron left her, and remained there
+until late in the afternoon. In spite of the bold front she had put on,
+she was quaking with terror and tortured by remorse. Never before had
+she realised David Rossi's peril with such awful vividness, and seen her
+own position in relation to him in its hideous nakedness.</p>
+
+<p>Was it her duty to confess to David Rossi that at the beginning of their
+friendship she had set out to betray him?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> Only so could she be secure,
+only so could she be honest, only so could she be true to the love he
+gave her and the trust he reposed in her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet why should she confess? The abominable impulse was gone. Something
+sweet and tender had taken its place. To confess to him now would be
+cruel. It would wound his beautiful faith in her.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the seeds she had sown were beginning to fructify. They might
+spring up anywhere at any moment, and choke the life that was dearer to
+her than her own. Thank God, it was still impossible to injure him
+except by her will and assistance. But her will might be broken and her
+assistance might be forced, unless the law could be invoked to protect
+her against itself. It could and it should be invoked! When she was
+married to David Rossi no law in Italy would compel her to witness
+against him.</p>
+
+<p>But if Rossi hesitated from any cause, if he delayed their marriage, if
+he replied unfavourably to the letter in which she had put aside all
+modesty and asked him to marry her soon&mdash;what then? How was she to
+explain his danger? How was she to tell him that he must marry her
+before Parliament rose, or she might be the means of expelling him from
+the Chamber, and perhaps casting him into prison for life? How was she
+to say: "I was Delilah; I set out to betray you, and unless you marry me
+the wicked work is done!"</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was far spent; she had eaten nothing since morning, and
+was lying face down on the bed, when a knock came to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"The person in the studio to see you," said Felice.</p>
+
+<p>It was Bruno in Sunday attire, with little Joseph in top-boots, and more
+than ever like the cub of a young lion.</p>
+
+<p>"A letter from him," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>It was from Rossi. She took it without a word of greeting, and went back
+to her bedroom. But when she returned a moment afterwards her face was
+transformed. The clouds had gone from it and the old radiance had
+returned. All the brightness and gaiety of her usual expression were
+there as she came swinging into the drawing-room and filling the air
+with the glow of health and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That's</i> all right," she said. "Tell Mr. Rossi I shall expect to see
+him soon ... or no, don't say that ... say that as he is over head and
+ears in work this week, he is not to think it necessary.... Oh, say
+anything you like," she said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> and the pearly teeth and lovely eyes
+broke into an aurora of smiles.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno, whose bushy face and shaggy head had never once been raised since
+he came into the room, said:</p>
+
+<p>"He's busy enough, anyway&mdash;what with this big meeting coming off on
+Wednesday, and the stairs to his room as full of people as the Santa
+Scala."</p>
+
+<p>"So you've brought little Joseph to see me at last?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"He has bothered my life out to bring him ever since you said he was to
+be your porter some day."</p>
+
+<p>"And why not? Gentlemen ought to call on the ladies, oughtn't they,
+Joseph?"</p>
+
+<p>And Joseph, whose curly poll had been hiding behind the leg of his
+father's trousers, showed half of a face that was shining all over.</p>
+
+<p>"See! See here&mdash;do you know who <i>this</i> is? This gentleman in the bust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle David," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"What a clever boy you are, Joseph!"</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't want much cleverness to know that, though," said Bruno. "It's
+wonderful! it's magnificent! And it will shut up all their damned ...
+excuse me, miss, excuse <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And Joseph still intends to be a porter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dead set on it, and says he wouldn't change his profession to be a
+king."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, too! And now let us look at something a little birdie
+brought me the other day. Come along, Joseph. Here it is. Down on your
+knees, gentleman, and help me to drag it out. One&mdash;two&mdash;and away!"</p>
+
+<p>From the knee-hole of the desk came a large cardboard box, and Joseph's
+eyes glistened like big black beads.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what do you think is in this box, Joseph? Can't guess? Give it up?
+Sure? Well, listen! Are you listening? Which do you think you would like
+best&mdash;a porter's cocked hat, or a porter's long coat, or a porter's mace
+with a gilt hat and a tassel?"</p>
+
+<p>Joseph's face, which had gleamed at every item, clouded and cleared,
+cleared and clouded at the cruel difficulty of choice, and finally
+looked over at Bruno for help.</p>
+
+<p>"Choose now&mdash;which?"</p>
+
+<p>But Joseph only sidled over to his father, and whispered something which
+Roma could not hear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says it is his birthday on Wednesday," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless him! He shall have them all, then," said Roma, and Joseph's legs
+as well as his eyes began to dance.</p>
+
+<p>The cords were cut, the box was opened, the wonderful hat and coat and
+mace were taken out, and Joseph was duly invested. In the midst of this
+ceremony Roma's black poodle came bounding into the room, and when
+Joseph strutted out of the boudoir into the drawing-room the dog went
+leaping and barking beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear little soul!" said Roma, looking after the child; but Bruno, who
+was sitting with his head down, only answered with a groan.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, Bruno?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno brushed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, set his teeth, and said
+with a savage fierceness:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Treason's the matter, telling tales and taking away
+a good woman's character&mdash;that's what is the matter! A man who has been
+eating your bread for years has been lying about you, and he is a rascal
+and a sneak and a damned scoundrel, and I would like to kick him out of
+the house."</p>
+
+<p>"And who has been doing all this, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Myself! It was I who told Mr. Rossi the lies that made him speak
+against you on the day of the Pope's Jubilee, and when you asked him to
+come here, I warned him against you, and said you were only going to pay
+him back and ruin him."</p>
+
+<p>"So you said that, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did Mr. Rossi say to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say to me? 'She's a good woman,' says he, 'and if I have ever said
+otherwise, I take it all back, and am ashamed.'"</p>
+
+<p>Roma, who had turned to the window, heaved a sigh and said: "It has all
+come out right in the end, Bruno. If you hadn't spoken against me to Mr.
+Rossi, he wouldn't have spoken against me in the piazza, and then he and
+I should never have met and known each other and been friends. All's
+well that ends well, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so, but the miracle doesn't make the saint, and you oughtn't to
+keep me any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that I ought to dismiss you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno," said Roma, "I am in trouble just now, and I may be in worse
+trouble by-and-by. I don't know how long I may be able to keep you as a
+servant, but I may want you as a friend, and if you leave me now...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, put it like that, miss, and I'll never leave you, and as for your
+enemies...."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno was doubling up the sleeve of his right arm, when Joseph and the
+poodle came back to the room. Roma received them with a merry cry, and
+there was much noise and laughter. At length the gorgeous garments were
+taken off, the cardboard box was corded, and Bruno and the boy prepared
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come again, won't you, Joseph?" said Roma, and the boy's face
+beamed.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose this little man means a good deal to his mother, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything! I do believe she'd die, or disappear, or drown herself if
+anything happened to that boy."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's been a second father to the boy ever since the young monkey was
+born."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Joseph must come here sometimes, and let me try and be a second
+mother to him too.... What is he saying now?"</p>
+
+<p>Joseph had dragged down his father's head to whisper something in his
+ear.</p>
+
+<p>"He says he's frightened of your big porter downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Frightened of <i>him</i>! He is only a man, my precious! Tell him you are a
+little Roman boy, and he'll <i>have</i> to let you up. Will you remember? You
+will? That's right! By-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>Before going to sleep that night, Roma switched on the light that hung
+above her head and read her letter again. She had been hoarding it up
+for that secret hour, and now she was alone with it, and all the world
+was still.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; text-align:right;'>"<i>Saturday Night</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">My Dear One</span>,&mdash;Your sweet letter brought me the intoxication of delight,
+and the momentous matter you speak of is under way. It is my turn to be
+ashamed of all the great to-do I made about the obstacles to our union
+when I see how courageous you can be. Oh, how brave women are&mdash;every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+woman who ever marries a man! To take her heart into her hands, and face
+the unknown in the fate of another being, to trust her life into his
+keeping, knowing that if he falls she falls too, and will never be the
+same again! What <i>man</i> could do it? Not one who was ever born into the
+world. Yet some woman does it every day, promising some man that she
+will&mdash;let me finish your quotation&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 1em;">
+"'Meet, if thou require it,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Both demands,</span><br />
+Laying flesh and spirit<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In thy hands.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think I am too much troubled about the Minghelli matter, and yet
+it is pitiful to think how merciless the world can be even in the matter
+of a man's name. A name is only a word, but it is everything to the man
+who bears it&mdash;honour or dishonour, poverty or wealth, a blessing or a
+curse. If it is a good name, everybody tries to take it away from him,
+but if it's a bad name and he has attempted to drop it, everybody tries
+to fix it on him afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"The name I was compelled to leave behind me when I returned to Italy
+was a bad name in nothing except that it was the name of my father, and
+if the spies and ferrets of authority ever fix it upon me God only knows
+what mischief they may do. But one thing <i>I</i> know&mdash;that if they do fix
+my father's name upon me, and bring me to the penalties which the law
+has imposed on it, it will not be by help of my darling, my beloved, my
+brave, brave girl with the heart of gold.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, I wrote to the Capitol immediately on receiving your letter,
+and to-morrow morning I will go down myself to see that everything is in
+train. I don't yet know how many days are necessary to the preparations,
+but earlier than Thursday it would not be wise to fix the event, seeing
+that Wednesday is the day of the great mass meeting in the Coliseum,
+and, although the police have proclaimed it, I have told the people they
+are to come. There is some risk at the outset, which it would be
+reckless to run, and in any case the time is short.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night! I can't take my pen off the paper. Writing to you is like
+talking to you, and every now and then I stop and shut my eyes, and hear
+your voice replying. Only it is myself who make the answers, and they
+are not half so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> sweet as they would be in reality. Ah, dear heart, if
+you only knew how my life was full of silence until you came into it,
+and now it is full of music! Good-night, again!</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"D. R.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; text-align:right;'>"<i>Sunday Morning.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Just returned from the Capitol. The legal notice for the celebration of
+a marriage is longer than I expected. It seems that the ordinary term
+must be twelve days at least, covering two successive Sundays (on which
+the act of publication is posted on the board outside the office) and
+three days over. Only twelve days more, my dear one, and you will be
+mine, mine, mine, and all the world will know!"</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>It took Roma a good three-quarters of an hour to read this letter, for
+nearly every word seemed to be written out of a lover's lexicon, which
+bore secret meanings of delicious import, and imperiously demanded their
+physical response from the reader's lips. At length she put it between
+the pillow and her cheek, to help the sweet delusion that she was cheek
+to cheek with some one and had his strong, protecting arms about her.
+Then she lay a long time, with eyes open and shining in the darkness,
+trying in vain to piece together the features of his face. But in the
+first dream of her first sleep she saw him plainly, and then she ran,
+she raced, she rushed to his embrace.</p>
+
+<p>Next day brought a message from the Baron:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'><span class="smcap">"Dear Roma</span>,&mdash;Come to the Palazzo Braschi to-morrow (Tuesday) morning at
+eleven o'clock. Don't refuse, and don't hesitate. If you do not come,
+you will regret it as long as you live, and reproach yourself for ever
+afterwards.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"<span class="smcap">Bonelli</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The Palazzo Braschi is a triangular palace, whereof one front faces to
+the Piazza Navona and the two other fronts to side streets. It is the
+official palace of the Minister of the Interior, usually the President
+of the Council and Prime Minister of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Roma arrived at eleven o'clock, and was taken to the Minister's room
+immediately, by way of an outer chamber,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span> in which colleagues and
+secretaries were waiting their turn for an interview. The Baron was
+seated at a table covered with books and papers. There was a fur rug
+across his knees, and at his right hand lay a small ivory-handled
+revolver. He rose as Roma entered, and received her with his great but
+glacial politeness.</p>
+
+<p>"How prompt! And how sweet you look to-day, my child! On a cheerless
+morning like this you bring the sun itself into a poor Minister's gloomy
+cabinet. Sit down."</p>
+
+<p>"You wished to see me?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron rested his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand,
+looked at her with his never-varying smile, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you are to be congratulated, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>She changed colour slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you surprised that I know?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I be surprised?" she answered. "You know everything.
+Besides, this is published at the Capitol, and therefore common
+knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>His smiling face remained perfectly impassive.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I understand what you meant on Sunday. It is a fact that a wife
+cannot be called as a witness against her husband."</p>
+
+<p>She knew he was watching her face as if looking into the inmost recesses
+of her soul.</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't it a little courageous of you to think of marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why courageous?" she asked, but her eyes fell and the colour mounted to
+her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Why</i> courageous?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He allowed a short time to elapse, and then he said in a a low tone,
+"Considering the past, and all that has happened...."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyelids trembled and she rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"If this is all you wish to say to me...."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! Sit down, my child. I sent for you in order to show you that
+the marriage you contemplate may be difficult, perhaps impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"I am of age&mdash;there can be no impediment."</p>
+
+<p>"There may be the greatest of all impediments, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean ... But wait! You are not in a hurry? A number of gentlemen are
+waiting to see me, and if you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span> permit me to ring for my
+secretary.... Don't move. Colleagues merely! They will not object to
+<i>your</i> presence. My ward, you know&mdash;almost a member of my own household.
+Ah, here is the secretary. Who now?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Minister of War, the Prefect, Commendatore Angelelli, and one of
+his delegates," replied the secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring the Prefect first," said the Baron, and a severe-looking man of
+military bearing entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Senator. You know Donna Roma. Our business is urgent&mdash;she will
+allow us to go on. I am anxious to hear how things stand and what you
+are doing."</p>
+
+<p>The Prefect began on his report. Immediately the new law was promulgated
+by royal decree, he had sent out a circular to all the Mayors in his
+province, stating the powers it gave the police to dissolve associations
+and forbid public meetings.</p>
+
+<p>"But what can we expect in the provincial towns, your Excellency, while
+in the capital we are doing nothing? The chief of all subversive
+societies is in Rome, and the directing mind is at large among
+ourselves. Listen to this, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The Prefect took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; padding-bottom:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Romans</span>,&mdash;The new law is an attempt to deprive us of liberties which our
+fathers made revolutions to establish. It is, therefore, our duty to
+resist it, and to this end we must hold our meeting on the 1st of
+February according to our original intention. Only thus can we show the
+Government and the King what it is to oppose the public opinion of the
+world.... Meet in the Piazza del Popolo at sundown and walk to the
+Coliseum by way of the Corso. Be peaceful and orderly, and God put it
+into the hearts of your rulers to avert bloodshed."</p>
+
+<p>"That is from the <i>Sunrise</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, the last of many manifestoes. And what is the result? The
+people are flocking into Rome from every part of the province."</p>
+
+<p>"And how many political pilgrims are here already?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty thousand, sixty, perhaps a hundred thousand. It cannot be allowed
+to go on, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a <i>lev&eacute;e-en-masse</i> certainly. What do you advise?"</p>
+
+<p>"That the enemies of the Government and the State,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span> whose erroneous
+conceptions of liberty have led to this burst of anarchist feelings, be
+left to the operation of the police laws."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron glanced at Roma. Her face was flushed and her eyes were
+flashing.</p>
+
+<p>"That," he said, "may be difficult, considering the number of the
+discontented. What is the strength of your police?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven hundred in uniform, four hundred in plain clothes, and five
+hundred and fifty municipal guards. Besides these, sir, there are three
+thousand Carabineers and eight thousand regular troops."</p>
+
+<p>"Say twelve thousand five hundred armed men in all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely, and what is that against fifty, a hundred, perhaps a hundred
+and fifty thousand people?"</p>
+
+<p>"You want the army at call?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly! but above everything else we want the permission of the
+Government to deal with the greater delinquents, whether Deputies or
+not, according to the powers given us by the statute."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron rose and held out his hand. "Thanks, Senator! The Government
+will consider your suggestions immediately. Be good enough to send in my
+colleague, the Minister of War."</p>
+
+<p>When the Prefect left the room Roma rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot suppose this is very agreeable to me?" she said in an
+agitated voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! I shall not be long ... Ah, General Morra! Roma, you know the
+General, I think. Sit down, both of you.... Well, General, you hear of
+this <i>lev&eacute;e-en-masse</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"The Prefect is satisfied that the people are moved by a revolutionary
+organisation, and he is anxious to know what force we can put at his
+service to control it."</p>
+
+<p>The General detailed his resources. There were sixteen thousand men
+always under arms in Rome, and the War Office had called up the
+old-timers of two successive years&mdash;perhaps fifty thousand in all.</p>
+
+<p>"As a Minister of State and your colleague," said the General, "I am at
+one with you in your desire to safeguard the cause of order and protect
+public institutions, but as a man and a Roman I cannot but hope that you
+will not call upon me to act without the conditions required by law."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, no," said the Baron; "and in order to make sure that our
+instructions are carried out with wisdom and humanity, let these be the
+orders you issue to your staff: First, that in case of disturbance
+to-morrow night, whether at the Coliseum or elsewhere, the officers must
+wait for the proper signal from the delegate of police."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!"</p>
+
+<p>"Next, that on receiving the order to fire, the soldiers must be careful
+that their first volley goes over the heads of the people."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent!"</p>
+
+<p>"If that does not disperse the crowds, if they throw stones at the
+soldiers or otherwise resist, the second volley&mdash;I see no help for
+it&mdash;the second volley, I say, must be fired at the persons who are
+leading on the ignorant and deluded mob."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>The General hesitated, and Roma, whose breathing came quick and short,
+gave him a look of tenderness and gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>"You agree, General Morra?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I see no alternative. But if the blood of their leader only
+infuriates the people, is the third volley...."</p>
+
+<p>"That," said the Baron, "is a contingency too terrible to contemplate.
+My prediction would be that when their leader falls, the poor, misguided
+people will fly. But in all human enterprises the last word has to be
+left to destiny. Let us leave it to destiny in the present instance.
+Adieu, dear General! Be good enough to tell my secretary to send in the
+Chief of Police."</p>
+
+<p>The Minister of War left the room, and once more Roma rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot possibly imagine that a conversation like this...." she
+began, but the Baron only interrupted her again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go yet. I shall be finished presently. Angelelli cannot keep me
+more than a moment. Ah, here is the Commendatore."</p>
+
+<p>The Chief of Police came bowing and bobbing at every step, with the
+extravagant politeness which differentiates the vulgar man from the
+well-bred.</p>
+
+<p>"About this meeting at the Coliseum, Commendatore&mdash;has any authorisation
+been asked for it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"None whatever, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we may properly regard it as seditious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite properly, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen! You will put yourself into communication with the Minister of
+War immediately. He will place fifty thousand men at the disposition of
+your Prefect. Choose your delegates carefully. Instruct them well. At
+the first overt act of resistance, let them give the word to fire. After
+that, leave everything to the military."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful to keep yourself in touch with me until midnight to-morrow.
+It may be necessary to declare a state of siege, and in that event the
+royal decree will have to be obtained without delay. Prepare your own
+staff for a general order. Ask for the use of the cannon of St. Angelo
+as a signal, and let it be understood that if the gun is fired to-morrow
+night, every gate of the city is to be closed, every outward train is to
+be stopped, and every telegraph office is to be put under control. You
+understand me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"After the signal has been given let no one leave the city, and let no
+telegraphic message of any kind be despatched. In short, let Rome from
+that hour onward be entirely under the control of the Government."</p>
+
+<p>"Entirely, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"The military have already received their orders. After the call of the
+delegate of police, the first volley is to be fired over the heads of
+the people, and the second at the ringleaders. But if any of these
+should escape...."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron paused, and then repeated in a low tone with the utmost
+deliberation:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, <i>if</i> any of these should escape, Commendatore...."</p>
+
+<p>"They shall not escape, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt herself to be
+suffocating, and could scarcely restrain the cry that was rising in her
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she said, when the Chief of Police had backed and bowed
+himself out; but again the Baron pretended to misunderstand her.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one more visitor! I shall be finished in a few minutes," and then
+Charles Minghelli was shown into the room.</p>
+
+<p>The man's watchful eyes blinked perceptibly as he came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> face to face
+with Roma, but he recovered himself in a moment, and began to brush with
+his fingers the breast of his frockcoat.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Minghelli. You may speak freely before Donna Roma. You owe
+your position to her generous influence, you may remember, and she is
+abreast of all our business. You know all about this meeting at the
+Coliseum?"</p>
+
+<p>Minghelli bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"The delegates of police have received the strictest orders not to give
+the word to the military until an overt act of resistance has been
+committed. That is necessary as well for the safety of our poor deluded
+people as for our own credit in the eyes of the world. But an act of
+rebellion in such a case is a little thing, Mr. Minghelli."</p>
+
+<p>Again Minghelli bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"A blow, a shot, a shower of stones, and the peace is broken and the
+delegate is justified."</p>
+
+<p>A third time Minghelli bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, in the sorrowful circumstances in which the city is
+placed, an overt act of resistance is quite sure to be committed."</p>
+
+<p>Minghelli flecked a speck of dust from his spotless cuff and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>There was another moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt her
+heart beat violently.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, Mr. Minghelli. Tell my secretary as you pass out that I wish to
+dictate a letter."</p>
+
+<p>The letter was to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear colleague," dictated the Baron, "I entirely approve of the
+proposal you have made to the Governments of Europe and America to
+establish a basis on which anarchists should be suppressed by means of
+an international net, through which they can hardly escape. My
+suggestion would be the universal application of the Belgian clause in
+all existing extradition treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide
+may be dealt with as common murderers. In any case please say that the
+Government of Italy intends to do its duty to the civilised world, and
+will look to the Governments of other countries to allow it to follow up
+and arrest the criminals who are attempting to reconstruct society by
+burying it under ruins."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all her efforts to appear calm, Roma felt as if she must
+go out into the streets and scream. Now she knew why she had been sent
+for. It was in order that the Baron might talk to her in parables&mdash;in
+order that he might show her by means of an object lesson, as palpable
+as pitiless, what was the impediment which made her marriage with David
+Rossi impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The marriage could not be celebrated until after eleven days, but the
+meeting at the Coliseum must take place to-morrow, and as surely as it
+did so it must result in riot and David Rossi must be shot.</p>
+
+<p>The secretary gathered up his note-book and left the room, and then the
+Baron turned to Roma with beaming eyes and lips expanding to a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Finished at last! A thousand apologies, my dear! Twelve o'clock
+already! Let us go out and lunch somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go home," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>She was trembling violently, and as she rose to her feet she swayed a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child! you're not well. Take this glass of water."</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing. Let me go home."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron walked with her to the head of the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand you perfectly," she said in a choking voice, "but there is
+something you have not counted upon, and you are quite mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>And making a great call on her resolution, she threw up her head and
+walked firmly down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately on reaching home she wrote to David Rossi:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"I <span class="smcap">must</span> see you to-night. Where can it be? To-night! Mind, to-night.
+To-morrow will be too late.</p>
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno delivered the note by hand, and brought back an answer:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,&mdash;Come to the office at nine o'clock. Sorry I cannot go to you.
+It is impossible.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>D. R.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"P.S.&mdash;You have converted Bruno, and he would die for you. As for the
+'little Roman boy,' he is in the seventh heaven over your presents, and
+says he must go up to Trinit&agrave; de' Monti to begin work at once."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The office of the <i>Sunrise</i> at nine o'clock that night tingled with
+excitement. A supplement had already gone to press, and the machines in
+the basement were working rapidly. In the business office on the first
+floor people were constantly coming and going, and the footsteps on the
+stairs of the composing-room sounded through the walls like the
+irregular beat of a hammer.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the editor's room was frequently swinging open, as reporters
+with reports, messengers with telegrams, and boys with proofs came in
+and laid them on the desk at which the sub-editor sat at work.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi stood by his desk at the farther end of the room. This was
+the last night of his editorship of the <i>Sunrise</i>, and by various silent
+artifices the staff were showing their sympathy with the man who had
+made the paper and was forced to leave it.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement within the office of the <i>Sunrise</i> corresponded to the
+commotion outside. The city was in a ferment, and from time to time
+unknown persons, the spontaneous reporters of tumultuous days, were
+brought in from the outer office to give the editor the latest news of
+the night. Another trainful of people had arrived from Milan! Still
+another from Bologna and Carrara! The storm was growing! Soon would be
+heard the crash of war! Their faces were eager and their tone was one of
+triumph. They pitched their voices high, so as to be heard above the
+reverberation of the machines, whose deep thud in the rooms below made
+the walls vibrate like the side of a ship at sea.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi did not catch the contagion of their joy. At every fresh
+announcement his face clouded. The unofficial head of the surging and
+straining democracy, which was filling itself hourly with hopes and
+dreams, was unhappy and perplexed. He was trying to write his last
+message to his people, and he could not get it clear because his own
+mind was confused.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Romans</i>," he wrote first, "<i>your rulers are preparing to resist your
+right of meeting, and you will have nothing to oppose to the muskets and
+bayonets of their soldiers but the bare breasts of a brave but peaceful
+people. No matter. Fifty, a hundred, five hundred of you killed at the
+first volley,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span> and the day is won! The reactionary Government of
+Italy&mdash;all the reactionary Governments of Europe&mdash;will be borne down lay
+the righteous indignation of the world."</i></p>
+
+<p>It would not do! He had no right to lead the people to certain
+slaughter, and he tore up his manifesto and began again.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Romans</i>," he wrote the second time, "<i>when reforms cannot be effected
+without the spilling of blood, the time for them has not yet come, and
+it is the duty of a brave and peaceful people to wait for the silent
+operation of natural law and the mighty help of moral forces. Therefore
+at the eleventh hour I call upon you, in the names of your wives and
+children....</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible! The people would think he was afraid, and the
+opportune moment would be lost.</p>
+
+<p>One man in the office of the <i>Sunrise</i> was entirely outside the circle
+of its electric currents. This was the former day-editor, who had been
+appointed by the proprietors to take Rossi's place, and was now walking
+about with a silk hat on his head, taking note of everything and
+exercising a premature and gratuitous supervision.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi was tearing up the second of his manifestoes when this
+person came to say that a lady in the outer office was asking to see
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Show her into the private waiting-room," said Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"But may I suggest," said the man, "that considering who the lady is, it
+would perhaps be better to see her elsewhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Show her into the private room, sir," said Rossi, and the man shrugged
+his shoulders and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>As David Rossi opened the door of a small room at his right hand,
+something rustled lightly in the corridor outside, and a moment
+afterwards Roma glided into his arms. She was pale and nervous, and
+after a moment she began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear one," said Rossi, pressing her head against his breast, "what has
+happened? Tell me! Something has frightened you. You look anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder," she said, and then she told him of her summons to the
+Palazzo Braschi, and of the business she saw done there.</p>
+
+<p>There was to be a riot at the meeting at the Coliseum, because, if need
+be, the Government itself would provoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span> violence. The object was to
+kill <i>him</i>, not the people, and if he stayed in Rome until to-morrow
+night there would be no possibility of escape.</p>
+
+<p>"You must fly," she said. "You are the victim marked out by all these
+preparations&mdash;you, you, nobody but you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the best news I've heard for days," he said. "If I am the only
+one who runs a risk...."</p>
+
+<p>"Risk! My dearest, don't you understand? Your life is aimed at, and you
+must fly before it is quite impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"It is already impossible," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>He drew off one of her white gloves and kissed her finger-tips. "My dear
+one," he said, "if there were nothing else to think of, do you suppose I
+could go away and leave you behind me? That is just what somebody
+expected me to do when he permitted you to witness his preparations. But
+he was mistaken. I cannot and I will not leave you."</p>
+
+<p>Her pale face was suddenly overspread by a burning blush, and she threw
+both arms about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she said, "I will go with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Darling!" he cried, and he clasped her to his breast again. "But no!
+That is impossible also. Our marriage cannot take place for ten days."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter! I'll go without it."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, you don't know what you are saying. You are too good,
+too pure...."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Our marriage is nothing to anybody but ourselves, and if we
+choose to go without it...."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't hear you," she said. Loosening her hands from his neck, she had
+covered her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, I know what you are thinking of, but it must not be."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't hear a word you're saying," she said, beating her hands over
+her ears. "I'm ready to go now, this very minute&mdash;and if you don't take
+me, it is because you love other things better than you love me."</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, don't tempt me. If you only knew what it costs me ... but I
+would rather die...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you to die. That's just it! I want you to live, and I am
+willing to risk everything&mdash;everything...."</p>
+
+<p>Her warm and lovely form was quivering in his arms, and his heart was
+labouring wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest," he whispered over her head, "you are so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span> good, so pure, so
+noble, that you don't know how evil tongues can wag at a woman because
+she is brave and true. But I must remember my mother&mdash;and if your poor
+father is to rest in his grave...."</p>
+
+<p>His voice broke and he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"See how much I love you," he whispered again, "when I would rather lose
+you than see you lower yourself in your own esteem.... And then think of
+my people! my poor people who trust me and look up to me so much more
+than I deserve. I called them and they have come. They are here now,
+tens of thousands of them. And they will be here to-morrow wherever I
+may be. Shall I desert them in their hour of need, thinking of my own
+safety, my own happiness? No! You cannot wish it! You do not wish it! I
+know you too well!"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head from his breast. "You are right," she said. "You
+must stay."</p>
+
+<p>"My sweet girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ever forgive me for being frightened at the first note of
+danger and telling you to fly?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will always love you for it."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will never think the worse of me for offering to go with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will love you for that too."</p>
+
+<p>"I must be brave," she said, drawing herself up proudly, though her lips
+were trembling, her voice was breaking, and her eyes were wet. "Whether
+you are right or wrong in what you are doing it is not for me to decide,
+but if your heart tells you to do it you <i>must</i> do it, and I must be
+your soldier, ready and waiting for my captain's call."</p>
+
+<p>"My brave girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not for nothing that I am my father's daughter. <i>He</i> risked
+everything and so will I, and if they come to me to-morrow night and say
+that ... that you ... that you are...."</p>
+
+<p>The proud face had fallen on his breast again. But after a moment it was
+raised afresh, and then it was shining all over.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right! How beautiful your face is when it smiles, Roma! Roma, do
+you know what I'm going to do when this is all over? I'm going to spend
+my life in making you smile all the time."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a sudden kiss, and then broke out of his arms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I must be going. I've stayed too long. I may not see you before the
+meeting, but I won't say 'good-bye.' I've thought of something, and now
+I know what I'm going to do."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me."</p>
+
+<p>She opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to me to-morrow night&mdash;I shall expect you," she whispered, and
+waving her glove to him over her head she disappeared from the room.</p>
+
+<p>He stood a moment where she had left him, trying to think what she
+intended to do, and then he returned to his desk in the outer office.
+His successor was there, looking sour and stubborn.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rossi," he said, "this afternoon I was told at the Press Club that
+the authorities were watching for a plausible excuse for suppressing the
+paper; and considering the relations of this lady to the Minister of the
+Interior, and the danger of spies...."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to this carefully, sir," interrupted Rossi. "When you come into
+possession of the chair I occupy, you may do as you think well, but
+to-night it is mine, and I shall conduct the paper as I please."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, you will allow me to say...."</p>
+
+<p>"Not one word."</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me to protest...."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the room immediately."</p>
+
+<p>When the man was gone, David Rossi wrote a third and last version of his
+manifesto:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Romans.&mdash;Have no fear. Do not allow yourselves to be terrified by the
+military preparations of your Government. Believe a man who has never
+deceived you&mdash;the soldiers will not fire upon the people! Violate no
+law. Assail no enemy. Respect property. Above all, respect life. Do not
+allow yourself to be pushed into the doctrine of physical force. If any
+man tries to provoke violence, think him an agent of your enemies and
+pay no heed. Be brave, be strong, be patient, and to-morrow night you
+will send up such a cry as will ring throughout the world. Romans,
+remember your fathers and be great.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Rossi was handing his manuscript to the sub-editor, that it might be
+sent upstairs, when all at once the air seemed to become empty and the
+world to stand still. The machine in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span> the basement had ceased to work.
+There was a momentary pause, such as comes on a steamship at sea when
+the engines are suddenly stopped, and then a sound of frightened voices
+and the noise of hurrying feet. Somebody ran along the corridor outside
+and rapped sharply at the door.</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment the door opened and four men entered the room. One of
+them was an inspector, another was a delegate, and the others were
+policemen in plain clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"The journal is sequestered," said the inspector to David Rossi. And
+turning to one of his men, he said, "Go up to the composing-room and
+superintend the distribution of the type."</p>
+
+<p>"Allow no one to leave the building," said the delegate to the other
+policeman.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said the inspector, "we are charged to make a perquisition,
+and must ask you for the keys of your desks."</p>
+
+<p>"What is this?" said the delegate, taking the manifesto out of Rossi's
+fingers, and proceeding to read it.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the editor-elect came rushing into the room with a face
+like the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>"I demand to see a list of the things sequestered," he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall do so at the police-office," said the inspector.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that mean that we are all arrested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not all. The Honourable Rossi, being a Deputy, is at liberty to leave."</p>
+
+<p>"Thought as much," said the new editor, with a contemptuous snort. And
+turning to Rossi, and showing his teeth in a bitter smile, he said:
+"What did I say would happen? Has it followed quickly enough to satisfy
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>The inspector and the delegate opened the editors' desks and were
+rummaging among their papers when David Rossi put on his hat and went
+home.</p>
+
+<p>At the door of the lodge the old Garibaldian was waiting in obvious
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Old John has been here, sir," he said. "Something to tell you. Wouldn't
+tell me. But Bruno got it out of him at last. Must be something serious,
+for the big booby has been drinking ever since. Hear him in the caf&eacute;,
+sir. I'll send him up."</p>
+
+<p>Half-an-hour afterwards Bruno staggered into Rossi's room. He had a
+tearful look in his drink-deadened eyes, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span> was clearly struggling
+with a desire to put his arms about Rossi's neck and weep over him.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye know wha'?" he mumbled in a maudlin voice. "Ole Vampire is a
+villain! Ole John&mdash;'member ole John?&mdash;well, ole John heard his grandson,
+the d'ective, say that if you go to the Coliseum to-morrow night...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about it, Bruno. You may go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop a minute, sir," said Bruno, with a melancholy smile. "You don't
+unnerstand. They're going t' shoot you. See? Ole John&mdash;'member ole John?
+Well, ole John...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Bruno. But I'm going nevertheless."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno fought with the vapour in his brain, and said: "You don' mean t'
+say you inten' t' let yourself be a target...."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I do mean, Bruno."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno burst into a loud laugh. "Well, I'll be ... wha' the devil.... But
+you sha'n't go. I'll ... I'll see you damned first!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're drunk, Bruno. Go and put yourself to bed."</p>
+
+<p>The drink-deadened eyes flashed, and to grief succeeded rage. "Pu' mysel
+t' bed! D'ye know wha' I'd like t' do t' you for t' nex' twenty-four
+hours? I'd jus' like&mdash;yes, by Bacchus&mdash;I'd jus' like to punch you in t'
+belly and put <i>you</i> t' bed."</p>
+
+<p>And straightening himself up with drunken dignity, Bruno stalked out of
+the room.</p>
+
+<hr class='minor' />
+
+<p>The Baron Bonelli in the Piazza Leone was rising from his late and
+solitary dinner when Felice entered the shaded dining-room and handed
+him a letter from Roma. It ran:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; padding-bottom:.5em'>"This is to let you know that I intend to be present at the meeting in
+the Coliseum to-morrow night. Therefore, if any shots are to be fired by
+the soldiers at the crowd or their leader, you will know beforehand that
+they must also be fired at me."</p>
+
+<p>As the Baron held the letter under the red shade of the lamp, the usual
+immobility of his icy face gave way to a rapturous expression.</p>
+
+<p>"The woman is magnificent! And worth fighting for to the bitter end."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, turning to Felice, he told the man to ring up the Commendatore
+Angelelli and tell him to send for Minghelli without delay.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Next day began with heavy clouds lying low over the city, a cold wind
+coming down from the mountains, and the rumbling of distant thunder.
+Nevertheless the people who had come to Rome for the demonstration at
+the Coliseum seemed to be in the streets the whole day long. From early
+morning they gathered in the Piazza Navona, inquired for David Rossi,
+stood by the fountains, and looked up at his windows.</p>
+
+<p>As the day wore on the crowds increased.</p>
+
+<p>All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad,
+ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen
+began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the
+principal streets with a band that played the royal march.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable
+and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many
+and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows
+what might happen!</p>
+
+<p>Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out
+of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she
+did so it was only on indifferent subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was
+very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him.</p>
+
+<p>Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking
+for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the
+soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look.</p>
+
+<p>Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi
+spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters
+and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but
+he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and
+characters on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span> his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the
+flames.</p>
+
+<p>It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton
+handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him
+with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that
+Bruno had told his story.</p>
+
+<p>"Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your
+stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know."</p>
+
+<p>After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed
+little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted
+lip beginning to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for
+the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it
+is his birthday."</p>
+
+<p>"Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something
+in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were
+produced.</p>
+
+<p>"Joseph will promise not to go out to-day; won't you, Joseph?"</p>
+
+<p>And Joseph rolled his fists into his eyes and was understood to say
+"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock Bruno came home, looking grim and resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"I was pretty drunk last night, sir," he said, "but if there's shooting
+to be done this evening I'm going to be there."</p>
+
+<p>The time came for the two men to go, and everybody saw them to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!" said Rossi. "Thank you for all you've done for me, and may God
+bless you! Take care of my little Roman boy. Kiss me, Joseph! Again! For
+the last time! Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, God is a good old saint. He'll take care of you, my son," said the
+old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, Uncle David! Adieu, papa!" cried Joseph over the banisters, and
+the brave little voice, with its manly falsetto, was the last the men
+heard as they descended the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The Piazza del Popolo was densely crowded, and seemed to be twice as
+large as usual. Bruno elbowed a way through for himself and Rossi until
+they came to the obelisk in the centre of the great circle. On the steps
+of the obelisk a company<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span> of artillery was stationed with a piece of
+cannon which commanded the three principal thoroughfares of the city,
+the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babunio, which branch off from that
+centre like the ribs from the handle of a fan. Without taking notice of
+the soldiers, the people ranged themselves in order and prepared for
+their procession. At the ringing of Ave Maria the great crowd linked in
+files and turned their faces towards the Corso.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno walked first, carrying from his stalwart breast a standard, on
+which was inscribed, under the title of the "Republic of Man," the
+words, "Give us this day our daily bread." Rossi had meant to walk
+immediately behind Bruno, but he found himself encircled by a group of
+his followers. No sovereign was ever surrounded by more watchful guards.</p>
+
+<p>By the spontaneous consent of the public, traffic in the street was
+suspended, and crowds of the people of the city had turned out to look
+on. The four tiers of the Pincian Hill were packed with spectators, and
+every window and balcony in the Corso was filled with faces. All the
+shops were shut, and many of them were barricaded within and without. A
+regiment of infantry was ranged along the edge of the pavement, and the
+people passed between two lines of rifles.</p>
+
+<p>As the procession went on it was constantly augmented, and the column,
+which had been four abreast when it started from the Popolo, was eight
+abreast before it reached the end of the Corso. There were no bands of
+music, and there was no singing, but at intervals some one at the head
+of the procession would begin to clap, and then the clapping of hands
+would run down the street like the rattle of musketry.</p>
+
+<p>Going up the narrow streets beyond the Venezia, the people passed into
+the Forum&mdash;out of the living city of the present into the dead city of
+the past, with its desolation and its silence, its chaos of broken
+columns and cornices, of corbels and capitals, of wells and
+watercourses, lying in the waste where they had been left by the
+earthquake which had passed over them, the earthquake of the ages&mdash;and
+so on through the arch of Titus to the meeting-place in the Coliseum.</p>
+
+<p>All this time David Rossi's restless eyes had passed nervously from side
+to side. Coming down the Corso he had been dimly conscious of eyes
+looking at him from windows and balconies. He was struggling to be calm
+and firm, but he was in a furnace of dread, and beneath his breath he
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span> praying from time to time that God would prevent accident and avert
+bloodshed. He was also praying for strength of spirit and feeling like a
+guilty coward. His face was deadly pale, the fire within seemed to
+consume the grosser senses, and he walked along like a man in a dream.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Half-an-hour before Ave Maria, Roma had put on an inconspicuous cloak, a
+plain hat, and a dark veil, and walked down to the Coliseum. Soldiers
+were stationed on all the high ground about the circus, and large
+numbers of persons were already assembled inside. The people were poor
+and ill-clad, and they smelt of garlic and uncleanness. "<i>His</i> people,
+though," thought Roma, and so she conquered her repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Three tiers encircle the walls of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a
+great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of
+Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the
+soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement
+beneath their jesting was deep and strong.</p>
+
+<p>The low cloud which had hung over the city from early morning seemed to
+lie like a roof over the topmost circle of the amphitheatre, and as
+night came on the pit below grew dark and chill. Then torches were lit
+and put in prominent places&mdash;long pitch sticks covered with rags or
+brown paper. The people were patient and good-humoured, but to beguile
+the tedium of waiting they sang songs. They were songs of labour
+chiefly, but one man started the <i>Te Deum</i>, and the rest joined in with
+one voice. It was like the noise the sea makes on a heavy day when it
+breaks on a bank of sand.</p>
+
+<p>After a while there was a deep sound from outside. The procession was
+approaching. It came on like a great tidal wave and flowed into the vast
+place in the gathering darkness with the light of a hundred fresh
+torches.</p>
+
+<p>In less than half-an-hour the ruined amphitheatre was a moving mass of
+heads from the ground to its upmost storey. Long sinuous trails of blue
+smoke swept across the people's faces, and the great brown mass of
+circular stones was lit up in fitful gleams.</p>
+
+<p>Roma was lifted off her feet by the breaker of human beings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span> that surged
+around. At one moment she was conscious of some one behind who was
+pressing the people back and making room for her. At the next moment she
+was aware that through the multitudinous murmur of voices that rumbled
+as in a vault somebody near her was trying to speak.</p>
+
+<p>The speaking ceased and there was a sharp crackle of applause which had
+the effect of producing silence. In this silence another voice, a clear,
+loud, vibrating voice, said, "Romans and brothers," and then there was a
+prolonged shout of recognition from ten thousand throats.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment a dozen torches were handed up, and the speaker was in a
+circle of light and could be seen by all. It was Rossi. He was standing
+bareheaded on a stone, with a face of unusual paleness. He was wearing
+the loose cloak of the common people of Rome, thrown across his breast
+and shoulder. Bruno stood by his left side holding a standard above
+their heads. At his right hand were two other men who partly concealed
+him from the crowd. Roma found herself immediately below them, and
+within two or three paces.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment the shouting died down, and there was no sound in the
+vast place but a soft, quick, indrawn hiss that was like the palpitating
+breath of an immense flock of sheep. Then Rossi began again.</p>
+
+<p>"First and foremost," he said, "let me call on you to preserve the
+peace. One false step to-night and all is lost. Our enemies would like
+to fix on us the name of rebels. Rebels against whom? There is no
+rebellion except rebellion against the people. The people are the true
+sovereigns, and the only rebels are the classes who oppress them."</p>
+
+<p>A murmur of assent broke from the crowd. Rossi paused, and looked around
+at the soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>"Romans," he said, "do not let the armed rebels of the State provoke you
+to violence. It is to their interest to do so. Defeat them. You have
+come here in the face of their rifles and bayonets to show that you are
+not afraid of death. But I ask you to be afraid of doing an unrighteous
+thing. It is on my responsibility that you are here, and it would be an
+undying remorse to me if through any fault of yours one drop of blood
+were shed.</p>
+
+<p>"I call on you as earnestly as if my nearest and dearest were among you,
+liable to be shot down by the rifles of the military, not to give any
+excuse for violence."</p>
+
+<p>Roma turned to look at the soldiers. As far as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span> could see in the
+uncertain light, they were standing passively in their circle, with
+their rifles by their sides.</p>
+
+<p>"Romans," said Rossi again, "a month ago we protested against an
+iniquitous tax on the first necessary of life. The answer is sixty
+thousand men in arms around us. Therefore we are here to-night to appeal
+to the mightiest force on earth, mightier than any army, more powerful
+than any parliament, more absolute than any king&mdash;the force of moral
+sympathy and public opinion throughout the world."</p>
+
+<p>At this there were shouts of "Bravo!" and some clapping of hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Romans, if your bread is moistened by tears to-day, think of the power
+of suffering and be strong. Think of the history of these old walls.
+Think of the words of Christ, 'Which of the prophets have not your
+fathers stoned?' The prophets of humanity have all been martyrs, and God
+has marked you out to be the martyr nation of the world. Suffering is
+the sacred flame that sanctifies the human soul. Pray to God for
+strength to suffer, and He will bless you from the heights of Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>People were weeping on every hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers, you are hungry, and I say these things to you with a beating
+heart. Your children are starving, and I swear before God that from this
+day forward I will starve with them. If I have eaten two meals a day
+hitherto, for the future I will eat but one. But leave it to the powers
+that are over you to do their worst. If they imprison you for resisting
+their tyrannies, others will take your place. If they kill your leader,
+God will raise up another who will be stronger than he. Swear to me in
+this old Coliseum, sacred to the martyrs, that, come what may, you will
+not yield to injustice and wrong."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in Rossi's face at that last moment that seemed to
+transcend the natural man. He raised his right arm over his head and in
+a loud voice cried, "Swear!"</p>
+
+<p>The people took the oath with uplifted hands and a great shout. It was
+terrible.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi stepped down, and the excitement was overwhelming. The vast crowd
+seemed to toss to and fro under the smoking lights like a tumultuous
+sea. The simple-hearted Roman populace could not contain themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd began to break up, and the people went off singing. Rossi and
+his group of friends had disappeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span> when Roma turned to go. She found
+herself weeping and singing, too, but for another reason. The danger was
+passed, and all was over!</p>
+
+<p>Going out by one of the arches, she was conscious of somebody walking
+beside her. Presently a voice said:</p>
+
+<p>"You don't recognise me in the darkness, Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Charles Minghelli. He had been told to take care of her. Could he
+offer her his escort home?</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," she replied, and she was surprised at herself that she
+experienced no repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart was light, a great weight had been lifted away, and she felt a
+large and generous charity. At the top of the hill she found a cab, and
+as it dipped down the broad avenue that leads out of the circle of the
+dead centuries into the world of living men, she turned and looked back
+at the Coliseum. It was like a dream. The moving lights&mdash;the shadows of
+great heads on the grim old walls&mdash;the surging crowds&mdash;the cheers from
+hoarse throats. But the tinkle of the electric tram brought her back to
+reality, and then she noticed that it had begun to snow.</p>
+
+<hr class='minor' />
+
+<p>Bruno ploughed a way for David Rossi, and they reached home at last.</p>
+
+<p>Elena was standing at the door of David Rossi's rooms, with an agitated
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen anything of Joseph?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Joseph?"</p>
+
+<p>"I opened the window to look if you were coming, and in a moment he was
+gone. On a night like this, too, when it isn't too safe for anybody to
+be in the streets."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he still got the clothes on?" said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and the naughty boy has broken his promise and must be whipped."</p>
+
+<p>The men looked into each other's faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma?" said Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go and see," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have a rod, whatever you say. I really must!" said Elena.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>Roma reached home in a glow of joy. She told herself that Rossi would
+come to her in obedience to her command. He must dine with her to-night.
+Seven was now striking on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span> all the clocks outside, and to give him time
+to arrive she put back the dinner until eight. Her aunt would dine in
+her own room, so they would be quite alone. The conventions of life had
+fallen absolutely away, and she considered them no more.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime she must dress and perhaps take a bath. A certain sense of
+soiling which she could not conquer had followed her up from that
+glorious meeting. She felt a little ashamed of it, but it was there, and
+though she told herself "They were <i>his</i> people, poor things," she was
+glad to take off the clothes she had worn at the Coliseum.</p>
+
+<p>She combed out the curls of her glossy black hair, put herself into a
+loose tea gown and red slippers, took one backward glance at herself in
+the glass, and then going into the drawing-room, she stood by the window
+to dream and wait. The snow still fell in thin flakes, but the city was
+humming on, and the piazza down below was full of people.</p>
+
+<p>After a while the electric bell of the outer door was rung, and her
+heart beat against her breast. "It's he," she thought, and in the
+exquisite tumult of the moment she lifted her arms and turned to meet
+him.</p>
+
+<p>But when the door was opened it was the Baron Bonelli who was shown into
+the room. He was in evening dress, with black tie and studs which had a
+chilling effect, and his manner was as cold and calm as usual.</p>
+
+<p>"I regret," he said, "that we must enter on a painful interview."</p>
+
+<p>"As you please," she answered, and sitting on a stool by the fire she
+rested her elbows on her knees, and looked straight before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letter of last night, my dear, produced the result you desired. I
+sent for Commendatore Angelelli, invented some plausible excuses, and
+reversed my orders. I also sent for Minghelli and told him to take care
+of you on your reckless errand. The matter has thus far ended as you
+wished, and I trust you are satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head without turning round, and bore herself with a
+certain air of defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"But it is necessary that we should come to an understanding," he
+continued. "You have driven me hard, my child. With all the tenderness
+and sympathy possible, I am compelled to speak plainly. I wished to
+spare your feelings. You will not permit me to do so."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The incisiveness of his speech cut the air like ice dropping from a
+glacier, and Roma felt herself turning pale with a sense of something
+fearful whirling around her.</p>
+
+<p>"According to your own plans, Rossi is to marry you within a week,
+although a month ago he spoke of you in public as an unworthy woman.
+Will you be good enough to tell me how this miracle has come to pass?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and tried to carry herself bravely.</p>
+
+<p>"If it is a miracle, how can I explain it?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then permit me to do so. He is going to marry you because he no longer
+thinks as he thought a month ago; because he believes he was wrong in
+what he said, and would like to wipe it out entirely."</p>
+
+<p>"He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly;
+"that's why he is going to marry me."</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed
+before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her
+own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as
+from a tomb.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he
+could scarcely be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Told him what?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"The truth&mdash;the fact."</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, you are doing wrong. There is a secret between you already.
+That is a bad basis to begin life upon, and the love that is raised on
+it will be a house built on the sand."</p>
+
+<p>Her heart was beating violently, but she turned on him with a burning
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" she said, while the colour increased in her cheeks
+and forehead. "I am a good woman. You know I am."</p>
+
+<p>"To me, yes! The best woman in the world."</p>
+
+<p>She had risen to her feet, and was standing by the chimney-piece.</p>
+
+<p>"Understand me, my child," he said affectionately. "When I say you are
+doing wrong, it is only in keeping a secret from the man you intend to
+marry. Between you and me ... there is no secret."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with haggard eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"For me you are everything that is sweet and good, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> for another who
+knows? When a man is about to marry a woman, there is one thing he can
+never forgive. Need I say what that is?"</p>
+
+<p>The glow that had suffused her face changed to the pallor of marble, and
+she turned to the Baron and stood over him with the majesty of a statue.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you that tell me this?" she said. "You&mdash;you? Can a woman never be
+allowed to forget? Must the fault of another follow her all her life?
+Oh, it is cruel! It is merciless.... But no matter!" she said in another
+voice; and turning away from him she added, as if speaking to herself:
+"He believes everything I tell him. Why should I trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron followed her with a look that pierced to the depths of her
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have told him a falsehood?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed her lips together and made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"That was foolish. By-and-by somebody may come along who will tell him
+the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"What can any one tell him that he has not heard already? He has heard
+everything, and put it all behind his back."</p>
+
+<p>"Could nobody bring conviction to his mind? Nobody whatever? Not even
+one who had no interest in slandering you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? He has come between us. What could be more natural than that I
+should tell him so?"</p>
+
+<p>A look of dismay came over her face, and it was followed by an
+expression of terror.</p>
+
+<p>"But you wouldn't do that," she stammered. "You couldn't do it. It is
+impossible. You are only trying me."</p>
+
+<p>His face remained perfectly passive, and she seized him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Think! Only think! You would do no good for yourself. You might stop
+the marriage&mdash;yes! But you wouldn't carry out your political purpose.
+You couldn't! And while you would do no good for yourself, think of the
+harm you would do for me. He loves me, and you would hurt his beautiful
+faith in me, and I should die of grief and shame."</p>
+
+<p>"You are cruel, my child," said the Baron, speaking with dignity. "You
+think <i>I</i> am hard and unrelenting, but <i>you</i> are selfish and cruel. You
+are so concerned about your own feelings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span> that you don't even suspect
+that perhaps you are wounding mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, it is too bad," she said, dropping to her knees at his feet.
+"After all, you have been very good to me thus far, and it was partly my
+own fault if matters ended as they did. Yes, I confess it. I was vain
+and proud. I wanted all the world. And when you gave me everything,
+being so tied yourself, I thought I might forgive you.... But I was
+wrong&mdash;I was to blame&mdash;nothing in the world could excuse you&mdash;I saw that
+the moment afterwards. I really hadn't thought at all until then&mdash;but
+then my soul awoke. And then...."</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head aside that he might not see her face.</p>
+
+<p>"And then love came, and I was like a woman who had married a man thirty
+years older than herself&mdash;married without love&mdash;just for the sake of her
+pride and vanity. But love, real love, drove all that away. It is gone
+now; I only wish to lead a good life, however simple and humble it may
+be. Let me do so!... Do not take him away from me! Do not...."</p>
+
+<p>She stammered and stopped, with a sudden consciousness of what she was
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>"What a fool I am!" she said, leaping to her feet. "What fresh story can
+you tell him that he is likely to believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell him that, according to the law of nature and of reason, you
+belong to me," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! It will be your word against mine, will it not? Tell him,
+and he will fling your insult in your face."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron rose and began to walk about the room, and there were some
+moments in which nothing could be heard but the slight creaking of his
+patent-leather boots. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I should be compelled to challenge him."</p>
+
+<p>"Challenge him!" She repeated the words with scorn. "Is it likely? Do
+you forget that duelling is a crime, that you are a Minister, that you
+would have to resign, and expose yourself to penalties?"</p>
+
+<p>"If a man insults me grievously in my affections and my honour, I will
+challenge him," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"But he will not fight&mdash;it would be contrary to his principles," said
+Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"In that event he will never be able to lift his head in Italy again.
+But make no mistake on that point, my child.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span> The man who is told that
+the woman he is going to marry is secretly the wife of another must
+either believe it or he must not. If he believes it, he casts her off
+for ever. If he does not believe it, he fights for her name and his own
+honour. If he does neither, he is not a man."</p>
+
+<p>Roma had returned to the stool, and was resting her elbows on her knees
+and gazing into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you thought of that?" said the Baron. "If the man fights a duel,
+it will be in defence of what you have told him. In the blindness of his
+belief in your word he will be ready to risk his life for it. Are you
+going to stand by and see him fight for a lie?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma hid her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Say he is wounded&mdash;it will be for a lie! Say he wounds his
+adversary&mdash;that will be for a lie too! Say that David Rossi kills
+me&mdash;what then? He must fly from Italy, and his career is at an end. If
+he is alone, he is a miserable exile who has earned what he may not
+enjoy. If you are with him, you are both miserable, for a lie stands
+between you. Every hour of your life is poisoned by the secret you
+cannot share with him. You are afraid of blurting it out in your sleep.
+At last you go to him and confess everything. What then? The idol he
+worshipped has turned to clay. What he thought an act of retribution is
+a crime. The dead man had told the truth, and he committed murder on the
+word of a woman who was a deceiver&mdash;a drab."</p>
+
+<p>Roma raised her hands to her head as if to avert a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop! stop!" she cried in a choking voice, and lifting her face,
+distorted with suffering, tears rose in her eyes. To see Roma cry
+touched the only tenderness of which his iron nature was capable. He
+patted the beautiful head at his feet, and said in a caressing tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Why will you make me seem so hard, my child? There is really no need to
+talk of these things. They will not occur. How can I have any desire to
+degrade you since I must degrade myself at the same time? I have no wish
+to tell any one the secret which belongs only to you and me. In that
+matter you were not to blame either. It was all my doing. I was
+sweltering under the shameful law which tied me to a dead body, and I
+tried to attach you to me. And then your beauty&mdash;your loveliness...."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Felice announced Commendatore Angelelli. Roma walked over
+to the window and leaned her face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span> against the glass. Snow was still
+falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone
+here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and
+drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost hoped he would not.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>Behind her the Prime Minister, who had apologised for turning her house
+into a temporary Ministry of the Interior, was talking to his Chief of
+Police.</p>
+
+<p>"You were there yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was, Excellency. I went up into a high part and looked down. It was a
+strange and wild sight."</p>
+
+<p>"How many would there be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible to guess. Inside and outside, Romans, country people,
+perhaps a hundred thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"And Rossi's speech?"</p>
+
+<p>"The usual appeal to the passions of the people, Excellency. An
+extraordinary exhibition of the art of flying between wind and water. We
+couldn't have found a word that was distinctly seditious, even if we
+hadn't had your Excellency's order to let the man go on."</p>
+
+<p>"You have stopped the telegraph wires?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"When the meeting was over, Rossi went home?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"And the hundred thousand?"</p>
+
+<p>"In their excitement they began to sing and to march through the
+streets. They are still doing so. After going down to the Piazza Navona,
+they are coming up by the Piazza del Popolo and along the Babuino with
+banners and torches."</p>
+
+<p>"Men only?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men, women, and children."</p>
+
+<p>"You would say that their attitude is threatening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Distinctly threatening, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Let your delegates give the legal warning and say that the gathering of
+great mobs at this hour will be regarded as open rebellion. Allow three
+minutes' grace for the sake of the women and children, and then ... let
+the military do their duty."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so, your Excellency."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"After that you may carry out the instructions I gave you yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep in touch with all the leaders. Some of them will find that the air
+of Rome is a little dangerous to their health to-night, and may wish to
+fly to Switzerland or England, where it would be impossible to follow
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Roma heard behind her the thin cackle as of a hen over her nest, which
+always came when Angelelli laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Their meeting itself was illegal, and our license has been abused."</p>
+
+<p>"Grossly abused, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"The action of the Government was too conciliatory, and has rendered
+them audacious, but the new law is clear in prohibiting the carrying of
+seditious flags and emblems."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll deal with them according to Articles 134 and 252 of the Penal
+Code, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"You can go. But come back immediately if anything happens. I must
+remain here for the present, and in case of riot I may have to send you
+to the King."</p>
+
+<p>Angelelli's thin voice fell to a whisper of awe at the mention of
+Majesty, and after a moment he bowed and backed out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Roma did not turn round, and the Minister, who had touched the bell and
+called for pen and paper, spoke to her from behind.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay you thought I was hard and inhuman at the Palazzo Braschi
+yesterday, but I was really very merciful. In letting you see the
+preparations to enclose your friend as in a net, I merely wished you to
+warn him to fly from the country. He has not done so, and now he must
+take the consequences."</p>
+
+<p>Felice brought the writing materials, and the Baron sat down at the
+table. There was a long silence in which nothing could be heard but the
+scratching of the Minister's pen, the snoring of the poodle, and the
+deadened sound through the wall of the Countess's testy voice scolding
+Natalina.</p>
+
+<p>Roma stepped into the boudoir. The room was dark, and from its unlit
+windows she could see more plainly into the streets. Masses of shadow
+lay around, but the untrodden steps were white with thin snow, and the
+piazza were alive with black figures which moved on the damp ground like
+worms on an upturned sod.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was leaning her hot forehead against the glass and looking out with
+haggard eyes, when a deep rumble as of a great multitude came from
+below. The noise quickly increased to a loud uproar, with shouts, songs,
+whistles, and shrill sounds blown out of door-keys. Before she was aware
+of his presence the Baron was standing behind her, between the window
+and the pedestal with the plaster bust of Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to them," he said. "The proletariat indeed!... And this is the
+flock of bipeds to whom men in their senses would have us throw the
+treasures of civilisation and hand over the delicate machinery of
+government."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed bitterly, and drew back the curtain with an impatient hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Democracy! <i>Christian</i> Democracy! <i>Vox Populi vox Dei</i>! The sovereignty
+and infallibility of the people! Pshaw! I would as soon believe in the
+infallibility of the Pope!"</p>
+
+<p>The crowds increased in the piazza until the triangular space looked
+like the rapids of a swollen river, and the noise that came up from it
+was like the noise of falling cliffs and uprooted trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Fools! Rabble! Too ignorant to know what you really want, and at the
+mercy of every rascal who sows the wind and leaves you to reap the
+whirlwind."</p>
+
+<p>Roma crept away from the Baron with a sense of physical repulsion, and
+at the next moment, from the other window, she heard the blast of a
+trumpet. A dreadful silence followed the trumpet blast, and then a clear
+voice cried:</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the law I command you to disperse."</p>
+
+<p>It was the voice of a delegate of the police. Roma could see the man on
+the lowest stage of the steps with his tricoloured scarf of office about
+him. A second blast came from the trumpet, and again the delegate cried:</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the law I command you to disperse."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment somebody cried, "Long live the Republic of Man!" and
+there was great cheering. In the midst of the cheering the trumpet
+sounded a third time, and then a loud voice cried "Fire!"</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment a volley was fired from somewhere, a cloud of white
+smoke was coiling in front of the window at which Roma stood, and women
+and children in the vagueness below were uttering acute cries.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh! oh!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, my child. Nothing has happened yet. The police had
+orders to fire first over the people's heads."</p>
+
+<p>In her fear and agitation Roma ran back to the outer room, and a moment
+afterwards Angelelli opened the door and stood face to face with her.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"An unfortunate incident, Excellency," said Angelelli, as the Baron
+appeared. "After the warning of the delegate the mob laughed and threw
+stones, and the Carabineers fired. They were in the piazza and fired up
+the steps."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unluckily there were a few persons on the upper flights at the moment,
+and some of them are wounded, and a child is dead."</p>
+
+<p>Roma muttered a low moan and sank on to the stool.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose child is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We don't yet know, but the father is there, and he is raging like a
+madman, and unless he is arrested he will provoke the people to frenzy,
+and there will be riot and insurrection."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron took from the table a letter he had written and sealed.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this to the Quirinal instantly. Ask for an immediate audience with
+the King. When you receive his written reply, call up the Minister of
+War and say you have the royal decree to declare a state of siege."</p>
+
+<p>Angelelli was going out hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Send to the Piazza Navona and arrest Rossi. Be careful! You will
+arrest the Deputy under Articles 134 and 252 on a charge of using the
+great influence he has acquired over the people to urge the masses by
+speeches and writings to resist public authority and to change violently
+the form of government and the constitution of the State."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!"</p>
+
+<p>Angelelli disappeared, the acute cries outside died away, the scurrying
+of flying feet was no more heard, and Roma was still on the stool before
+the fire, moaning behind the hands that covered her face. The Baron came
+near to her and touched her with a caressing gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, my child, very sorry. Rossi is a dreamer, not a statesman,
+but he is none the less troublesome on that account No wonder he has
+fascinated you, as he has fascinated the people, but time will wipe away
+an impression like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span> that. The best thing that can happen for both of you
+is that he should be arrested to-night. It will save you so many ordeals
+and so much sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a cannon-shot boomed through the darkness outside, and
+its vibration rattled the windows and walls.</p>
+
+<p>"The signal from St. Angelo," said the Baron. "The gates are closed and
+the city is under siege."</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>When, in the commotion of the household caused by the near approach of
+the crowd which brought Rossi home from the Coliseum, little Joseph
+slipped down the stairs and made a dash for the street, he chuckled to
+himself as he thought how cleverly he had eluded his mother, who had
+been looking out of the bedroom window, and those two old watch-dogs,
+his grandfather and grandmother, who were nearly always at the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he was fairly plunged into the great sea of the city,
+and had begun to be a little dazed by more lights than he ever saw when
+he closed his eyes in bed, that he remembered that he had disobeyed
+orders and broken his promise not to go out. But even then, he told
+himself, he was not responsible. He was Donna Roma's porter now.
+Therefore, he couldn't be Joseph, could he?</p>
+
+<p>So, with his magic mace in hand, the serious man of seven marched on,
+and reconciled himself to his disobedience by thinking nothing more
+about it. People looked at him and smiled as he passed through the
+Piazza Madama, where the Senate House stands, and that made him lift his
+head and walk on proudly, but as he went through the Piazza of the
+Pantheon a boy who was coming out of a cookshop with a tray on his head
+cried, "Helloa, kiddy! playing Pulcinello?" and that dashed his
+worshipful dignity for several minutes.</p>
+
+<p>It began to snow, and the white flakes on his gold braid clouded his
+soul at first, but when he remembered that porters had to work in all
+weathers, he wagged his sturdy head and strode on. He was going to Donna
+Roma's according to her invitation, and he found his way by his
+recollection of what he had seen when he made the same journey on
+Sunday&mdash;here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span> a tramcar coming round a corner, there a line of posts
+across a narrow thoroughfare, and there a fat man with a gruff voice
+shouting something at the door of a trattoria.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of a lane there was a shop window full of knives and
+revolvers. He didn't care for knives&mdash;they cut people's fingers&mdash;but he
+liked guns, and when he grew up to be a man he would buy one and kill
+somebody.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to the Piazza Monte Citorio, he remembered the soldiers at the
+door of the House of Parliament, and the cellar full of long guns with
+knives (bayonets) stuck on the ends of their muzzles. One of the
+soldiers laughed, called him "Uncle," and asked him something about
+enlisting, but he only struck his mace firmly on the flags and marched
+on.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the Piazza Colonna he had to wait some time before he
+could cross the Corso, for the crowds were coming both ways and the
+traffic frightened him. He had made various little sorties and had been
+driven back, when a soft hand was slipped into his fat palm and he was
+piloted across in safety. Then he looked up at his helper. It was a girl
+with big white feathers in her hat, and her face painted pink and white
+like the face of the little Jesus in the cradle in church at Christmas.
+She asked him what his name was, and he told her; also where he was
+going, and he told her that too. It was dark by this time, and the great
+little man was beginning to be glad of company.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you tired of carrying that heavy stick?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't a stick, and he wasn't a bit tired of carrying it.</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't you tired <i>yourself</i>?" she said, and he admitted that
+perhaps it was so.</p>
+
+<p>So she picked him up, and carried him in her arms, while he carried the
+mace, and for some minutes both were satisfied. But presently some one
+in the Via Tritone cried out, "Helloa! here comes the Blessed Bambino,"
+whereupon his worshipful dignity was again wounded, and he wriggled to
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p>It began to thunder and there were some flashes of lightning, whereupon
+Joseph shuddered and crept closer to the girl's side.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you afraid of lightning, Joseph?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't. He often saw it at home when he went to bed. His mother held
+his hand and he covered up his head in the clothes, and then he liked
+it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girl took the wee, fat hand again, and the little feet toddled on.</p>
+
+<p>After vain efforts to snatch a kiss, which were defeated by a proper
+withdrawal of the manly head in the cocked hat, the girl with the
+feathers and the doll's face left him in the Via due Macelli under a
+bright electric lamp that hung over the door of a caf&eacute;-chantant.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph knew then that he was not far from Donna Roma's, and he began to
+think of what he would do when he got there. If the big porter at the
+door tried to stop him he would say, "I'm a little Roman boy," and the
+man would <i>have</i> to let him go up. Then he would take charge of the
+hall, and when he had not to open the door he would play with the dog,
+and sometimes with Donna Roma.</p>
+
+<p>With sound practical sense he thought of his wages. Would it be a penny
+a week or twopence? He thought it would be twopence. Men didn't work for
+nothing nowadays. He had heard his father say so.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered his mother, and his lip began to drop. But it rose
+again when he told himself that of course she would come every night to
+put him to bed as usual. "Good-night, mamma! See you in the morning," he
+would say, and when he opened his eyes it would be to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>He was feeling sleepy now, and do what he would he could hardly keep his
+eyes from closing. But he was in the Piazza di Spagna by this time, and
+his little feet in their top-boots began to patter up the snowy steps.</p>
+
+<p>There are three principal landings to the Spanish Steps, and the great
+little man of seven had reached the second of them when a noise in the
+streets below made him stop and turn his head.</p>
+
+<p>A great crowd, carrying hundreds of torches, was marching into the
+piazza. They were singing, shouting, and blowing whistles and trumpets.
+It was like <i>Befana</i> in the Piazza Navona, and when Joseph blinked his
+eyes he almost thought he was at home in bed.</p>
+
+<p>All at once silence&mdash;then soldiers&mdash;then a jump all over his body like
+that which came to him when he was falling asleep&mdash;then a sense of
+something warm&mdash;then a buzzing noise&mdash;then a boom like that of the gun
+of St. Angelo at dinner-time ... then a deep, familiar voice calling and
+calling to him, and his eyes opened for a moment and saw his father's
+face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, papa! So sleepy! See you in the morning!"</p>
+
+<p>And then nothing more.</p>
+
+<hr class='minor' />
+
+<p>While Elena waited for Bruno's return with little Joseph, she went up
+and downstairs between David Rossi's apartment and her own on all manner
+of invented errands. Meantime she tried to keep down her anxiety by
+keeping up her anger. Joseph was so worrisome. When he came home he
+would have to be whipped and sent to bed without his supper. It was true
+his <i>verdura</i> was already on the stove, but he must not be allowed to
+touch it. You really must be strict with children. They would like you
+all the better for it when they grew up to be men and women.</p>
+
+<p>But every moment broke down this brave severity, until the desire to
+punish Joseph for his disobedience was all gone. She stood at the head
+of the stairs and listened for his voice and his little pattering feet.
+If she had heard them, her anxious expression would have given way to a
+cross look and she would have scolded both father and son all the way up
+to bed. But they did not come, and she turned to the dining-room with a
+downcast face.</p>
+
+<p>"Where can the boy be? If I could only have him back! I will never let
+him out of my sight again. Never!"</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi, who was walking in the sitting-room to calm his nerves
+after a trying time, tried to comfort her. It would be all right. Depend
+upon it, Joseph had gone up to Donna Roma's. She was to remember what
+Bruno told them on Sunday. "The little Roman boy." Joseph had thought of
+nothing else for three days, and this being his birthday....</p>
+
+<p>"You think so? You really think...."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure of it. Bruno will be back presently, carrying Joseph on his
+back. Or perhaps Donna Roma will send the boy home in the carriage, and
+the great little man will come upstairs like the Mayor. Meantime she has
+kept him to play with, and...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that must be it," said Elena, with shining eyes. "The Signorina
+must have kept him to play with! He must be playing now with the
+Signorina!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment through the open door there came the sound of a heavy
+tread on the stairs, mingled with various voices. Elena's shining face
+suddenly clouded, and Rossi,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> who read her thought, went out on to the
+landing. Bruno was coming up the staircase with something in his arms,
+and behind him were the Garibaldian and his old wife and a line of
+strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi ran down two flights of stairs and met them. He saw everything as
+by a flash of lightning. The boy lay in his father's arms. He was white
+and cold, with his head fallen back, and his hair matted with flakes of
+snow. His gay coat was open, and his little stained shirt was torn out
+at the breast. A stranger behind was carrying the cocked hat and mace.</p>
+
+<p>Elena, who was at the head of the stairs by this time, was screaming.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep her away, sir," said Bruno. The poor fellow was trying to be brave
+and strong, but his voice was like a voice from the other side of an
+abyss.</p>
+
+<p>They took the boy into the dining-room, and laid him on a sofa. There
+was no keeping the mother back. She forced her way through and laid hold
+of the child.</p>
+
+<p>"Get away, he's mine," she cried fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>And then she dropped on her knees before the boy, threw her arms about
+him and called on him by his name.</p>
+
+<p>"Joseph! Speak to me! Open your eyes and speak!... What have you been
+doing with my child? He is ill. Why don't you send for a doctor? Don't
+stand there like fools. Go for a doctor, I tell you ... Joseph! Only a
+word!... Have you carried him home without his hat on? And it's snowing
+too! He'll get his death of cold ... what's this? Blood on his shirt?
+And a wound? Look at this red spot. Have they shot him? No, no, it's
+impossible! A child! Joseph! Joseph! Speak to me!... Yes, his heart is
+beating." She was pressing her ear to the boy's breast. "Or is it only
+the beating in my head? Oh, where is the doctor? Why don't you send for
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>They could not tell her that it was useless, that a doctor had seen the
+child already, and that all was over. All they could do was to stand
+round her with awe in their faces. She understood them without words.
+Her hair fell from its knot, and her eyes began to blaze like the eyes
+of a maniac.</p>
+
+<p>"They've killed my child!" she cried. "He's dead! My little boy is dead!
+Only seven, and it was his birthday! O God! My child! What had he done
+that they should kill him?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And then Bruno, who was standing by with a wild lustre in his eyes, said
+between his teeth, "Done? Done nothing but live under a Government of
+murderers and assassins."</p>
+
+<p>The room filled with people. Neighbours who had never before set foot in
+the rooms came in without fear, for death was among them. They stood
+silent for the most part, only handing round the table the little cocked
+hat and the mace, with sighs and deep breathing. But some one speaking
+to Rossi told him what had happened. It was at the Spanish Steps. The
+delegate gave the word, and the Carabineers fired over the people's
+heads. But they hit the child and made him cold. His little heart had
+burst.</p>
+
+<p>"And I was going to whip him," said Elena. "Not a minute before I was
+talking about the rod, and not giving him his supper. O God! I can never
+forgive myself."</p>
+
+<p>And then the blessed tears came and she wept bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi put his arms about her, and her head fell on his breast. All
+barriers were broken down, and she clung to him and cried.</p>
+
+<p>Just then cries came from the piazza&mdash;"Hurrah for the Revolution!" and
+"Down with the destroyers of the people!"&mdash;the woolly tones of voices
+shouting in the snow. Somebody on the stairs explained that a young man
+was going about waving a bloody handkerchief, and that the sight of it
+was exasperating the people to frenzy. Women were marching through the
+streets, and the entire city was on the point of insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>In the dining-room the stricken ones still stood around the couch.
+Presently there was a sound of singing outside. A great crowd was coming
+into the piazza, singing the Garibaldi Hymn. Bruno heard it, and the
+wild lustre in his eyes gave place to a look of savage joy. An awful
+oath burst from his lips, and he ran out of the house. At the next
+moment he was heard in the street, singing in a thundering voice:</p>
+
+<p style='margin-left: 2em;'>
+"The tombs are uncovered,<br />
+The dead arise,<br />
+The martyrs are rising<br />
+Before our eyes."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The old Garibaldian threw up his head like a warhorse at the call of
+battle, and his rickety limbs were going towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here, father," said Rossi, and the old man obeyed him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elena was quieter by this time. She was sitting by the child and
+stroking his little icy hand.</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi, who had hardly spoken, went into his bedroom. His lips were
+tightly pressed together, his eyes were bloodshot, and his breath was
+labouring hard in his heaving breast.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his dagger paper-knife, tried its point on his palm with two
+or three reckless thrusts and threw it back on the desk. Then he went
+down on his hands and knees and rummaged among the newspapers lying in
+heaps under the window. At last he found what he looked for. It was the
+six-chambered revolver which had been sent to him as a present. "I'll
+kill the man like a dog," he thought.</p>
+
+<p>He loaded the revolver, put it in his breast-pocket, went back to the
+sitting-room, and made ready to go out.</p>
+
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+<p>Ten was striking on the different clocks of the city. Felice had lit the
+stove in the boudoir and the wood was burning in fitful blue and red
+flames. There was no other light in the room, and Roma lay with her body
+on the floor, and her face buried in the couch.</p>
+
+<p>The world outside was full of fearful and unusual noises. Snow was still
+falling, and the voices heard through it had a peculiar sound of
+sobbing. The soft rolling of thunder came from a long way off, like the
+boom of a slow wave on a distant beach. At intervals there was the
+crackle of musketry, like the noise of rockets sent up in the night, and
+sometimes there were pitiful cries, smothered by the unreverberating
+snow, like the cries of a drowning man on a foundering ship at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Roma, face downward, heard these sounds in the lapses of a terrible
+memory. She was seeing, as in a nightmare, the incidents of a night that
+was hardly six weeks past. One by one the facts flashed back upon her
+with a burning sense of shame, and she felt herself to be a sinner and a
+criminal.</p>
+
+<p>It was the night of the royal ball at the Quirinal. The blaze of lights,
+the glitter of jewels, the brilliant throng of handsome men and lovely
+women, the clash of music, the whirl of dancing, and finally the smiles
+and compliments of the King. Then going home in the carriage in the
+early<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span> morning, swathed in furs over her thin white silk, with the
+Baron, in his decorations worn diagonally over his white breast, and
+through the glass the waning moon, the silent stars, the empty streets.</p>
+
+<p>Then this room, this couch, sinking down on it, very tired, with eyes
+smiling and half closed, and nearly gone already into the mists of
+sleep. And then the Baron at her feet, pressing his lips to her wrist
+where the pulse was beating, kissing her arms and shoulders.... "Oh,
+dear! You are mad! I must not listen to you." And then burning words of
+love and passion: "My wife! My wife that is to be!" And then the call of
+her aunt from the adjoining chamber, "Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>The sobbing sounds from outside broke in on Roma's nightmare, and when
+the chain of memory linked on again it was morning in her vision, and
+the Countess was comforting her in a whimpering voice:</p>
+
+<p>"After all, God is merciful, and things that happen to everybody can be
+atoned for by prayer and penance. Besides, the Baron is a man of honour,
+and the poor maniac cannot last much longer."</p>
+
+<p>The sobbing sounds in the snow, the cries far away, the crackle of the
+rifle-shots, the rumble of the thunder broke in again, and the elements
+outside seemed to whirl round her in the tempest of her trouble. For a
+moment she lifted her head and heard voices in the next room.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron was still there, and from time to time, as he wrote his
+despatches, messengers came to take them away, to bring replies, and to
+deliver the latest news of the night. The populace had risen in all
+parts of the city, and the soldiers had charged them. There had been
+several misadventures and many arrests. The large house of detention by
+St. Andrea delle Frate was already full, but the people continued to
+hold out. They had disconnected the gas at the gasometer and cut the
+electric wires, and the city was plunged in darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the electric light company to turn on the flashlight from Monte
+Mario," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>And when the voices ceased in the drawing-room there came the deadened
+sound of the Countess's frightened treble behind the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"O Holy Virgin, full of grace, save me! It would be a sin to let me die
+to-night! Holy Virgin, see! I have given<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span> thee two more candles. Art
+thou not satisfied? Save me from murder, Mother of God."</p>
+
+<p>Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face,
+which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto
+the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of
+her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was
+compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to
+confess.</p>
+
+<p>Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw
+herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the
+deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She
+had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was
+waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she
+had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and
+alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound
+of her voice, the Baron came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall
+never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear
+you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful
+eyes and be calm."</p>
+
+<p>She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with
+one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment
+for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps
+this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ...
+it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but
+there is no help for it."</p>
+
+<p>The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also.
+He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love
+for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him.
+Perhaps he is in prison by this time."</p>
+
+<p>Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron
+tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very
+natural and very womanly. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span> time was the great remedy for human ills.
+It would heal everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the
+only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you
+the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over
+and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...."</p>
+
+<p>"I can never forget and I don't want to be great. I only want to be
+good. Leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i> good. You have always been good. What happened was my fault
+alone, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I found you
+growing up to be a great woman, and passing out of my legal control,
+while I was bound down to a poor, helpless, living corpse. Some day you
+would meet a younger, freer man, and you would be lost to me for good.
+Wasn't it human to try to hold you to me until the time came when I
+could claim you altogether? And if meanwhile this man has
+interposed...."</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the bust on the pedestal. She looked up at it, and then
+dropped her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Put the man out of your mind, my dear, and all will be well. Probably
+he is in the hands of the authorities already. God grant it may be so!
+No trouble about his arrest this time! It cannot be complicated by the
+danger of scandal. Nobody else's name and character will be concerned in
+it. And if it serves to dispose of a dangerous man and a subversive
+politician, I am willing to let everything else sleep."</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment, and then added in his most incisive accents: "But if
+not, the law must take its course, and Roma Roselli must complete what
+Roma Volonna has begun."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Felice's dark form stood against the light in the open
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Commendatore Angelelli and Charles Minghelli, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>As the Baron went back to the drawing-room Roma returned to the window.
+Scales of snow adhered to the glass, and it was difficult to see
+anything outside. But the masses of shadow and sheets of light were
+gone, and the city lay in utter darkness. The sobbing sounds, the
+crackle of musketry and the rumble of thunder were all gone, and the air
+was empty and void.</p>
+
+<p>At one moment there was a soft patter as of a flock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> of sheep passing
+under the window in the darkness. It was a company of riflemen going at
+a quick march over the snow, with torches and lanterns.</p>
+
+<p>Voices came from the next room, and Roma found herself listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently the insurrection is suppressed, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you."</p>
+
+<p>"The soldiers are patrolling the streets, and all is quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!"</p>
+
+<p>"We have some hundreds of rioters in the house of detention, and the
+military courts will begin to sit to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent!"</p>
+
+<p>"The misadventures have been few and unimportant, the child I spoke of
+being the only one killed."</p>
+
+<p>"You have discovered whose child it was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Unluckily...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt dizzy. A thought had flashed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the child of Donna Roma's man, Bruno Rocco, and apparently...."</p>
+
+<p>A choking cry rang through the room. Was it herself who made it?</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Commendatore. Apparently...."</p>
+
+<p>"The child was dressed in some carnival costume, and apparently he was
+on his way to this house."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's dizziness increased, and to save herself from falling she caught
+at a side-table that stood under the bust.</p>
+
+<p>On this table were some sculptor's tools&mdash;a chisel and a small mallet,
+with which she had been working.</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval in which the voices were deadened and confused.
+Then they became clear and sharp as before.</p>
+
+<p>"But the most important fact you have not yet given me. I trust you are
+only saving it up for the last. The Deputy Rossi is arrested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately ... Excellency...."</p>
+
+<p>"No?"</p>
+
+<p>"He left home immediately after the outbreak and has not been seen
+since. Presently the flashlight will be turned on by a separate battery
+from Monte Mario, and every corner of the city shall be searched. But we
+fear he is gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps by the train that left just before the signal."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma felt a cry rising to her throat again, but she put up her hand to
+keep it down.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter! Commendatore, send telegrams after the train to all stations
+up to the frontier, with orders that nobody is to alight until every
+carriage has been overhauled. Minghelli, go to the Consulta immediately,
+and ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to despatch a portrait of Rossi
+to every foreign Government."</p>
+
+<p>"But no portrait exists, Excellency. It was a difficulty I found in
+England."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there is a portrait. Come this way."</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt the room going round as the Baron came into it and switched on
+the light.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>There</i> is the only portrait of the illustrious Deputy, and our hostess
+will lend it to be photographed."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" said Roma, and taking up the mallet she struck the bust a heavy
+blow, and it fell in fragments to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Half-an-hour afterwards Roma was sitting amid the wreck of her work when
+the Baron, wearing his fur-lined overcoat and pulling on his gloves,
+came into the boudoir.</p>
+
+<p>"I am compelled," he said, "to inflict my presence upon you for a moment
+longer in order to tell you what my attitude in the future is to be, and
+what feelings are to guide you. I shall continue to think of you as my
+wife according to the law of nature, and of the man who has come between
+us as your lover. I will not give you up to him, whatever happens; and
+if he tries to take you away, or if you try to go to him, you must be
+prepared to find that I offer every resistance. Two passions are now
+engaged against the man, and I will not shrink from any course that
+seems necessary to subdue either him or you, or both."</p>
+
+<p>A moment afterwards she heard the patrol challenging him on the piazza.
+Then "Pardon, Excellency," and the soft swish of carriage wheels in the
+snow.</p>
+
+<h3>XI</h3>
+
+<p>When Rossi left home he was like a raging madman. He made straight for
+the Palazzo Braschi at the other side of the piazza, and going up the
+marble staircase on limbs that could scarcely support him, his thoughts
+went back in a broken maze to the scene he had left behind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Our little boy dead! Dead in his mother's arms! O God! let me meet the
+man face to face!... Our innocent darling! The light of our eyes put out
+in a moment! Our sweet little Joseph!... Shall there be no retribution?
+God forbid! The man who has been the chief cause of this crime shall be
+the first to suffer punishment. No use wasting time on the hounds who
+executed his orders. They are only delegates of police, and over them is
+this Minister of the Interior. He alone is responsible, and he is here!"</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the green baize door to the hall, he stopped to wipe
+away the perspiration which stood on his forehead although his face was
+flecked with snow. The messengers looked scared when he stepped inside,
+and they answered his questions with obvious hesitation. The Minister
+was not in his cabinet. He had not been there that night. It was
+possible the Honourable might find his Excellency at home.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi turned on his heel instantly, and went hurriedly downstairs. He
+would go to the Palazzo Leone. There was no time to lose. Presently the
+man would hide himself in the darkness like a toad under a stone.</p>
+
+<p>As he left the Ministry of the Interior he heard the singing of the
+Garibaldi Hymn in the distance, and turning into the Corso Victor
+Emmanuel, he came upon crowds of people and some noisy and tumultuous
+scenes.</p>
+
+<p>One group had broken into a gun-shop and seized rifles and cartridges;
+another group had taken possession of two electric tram-cars, and
+tumbled them on their sides to make a barricade across the street; and a
+third group was tearing up the street itself to use the stones for
+missiles. "Our turn now," they were shouting, and there were screams of
+delirious laughter.</p>
+
+<p>As Rossi crossed the bridge of St. Angelo the cannon was fired from the
+Castle, and he knew that it was meant for a signal. "No matter!" he
+thought. "It will be too late when the soldiers arrive."</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the tumult in the city the Piazza of St. Peter's was
+silent and deserted. Not the sound of a footfall, not the rattle of a
+carriage-wheel; only the swish-swish of the fountains, whose waters were
+playing in the lamplight through the falling snow, and the echoing
+hammer of the clock of the Basilica.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The porter of the Palazzo Leone was asleep in his lodge, and Rossi
+passed upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring the man to justice now," he thought. "He imagined we were
+only tame cats and would submit to anything. He was wrong. We'll show
+him we know how to punish tyrants. Haven't we always done so, we Romans?
+He has a sharp tongue for the people, but I have a sharper one here for
+him."</p>
+
+<p>And he felt for the revolver in his breast-pocket to make certain it was
+there.</p>
+
+<p>The lackey in knee-breeches and yellow stockings who answered the inside
+bell was almost speechless at the sight of the white face which
+confronted him at the door. No, the Baron was not at home. He had not
+been there since early in the evening. Had he gone to the Prefettura?
+Possibly. Or the Consulta? Perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>"Which, man, which?" said Rossi, and to say something the lackey
+stammered "The Consulta," and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi set his face towards the Foreign Office. There was a light in the
+stained-glass windows of the Pope's private chapel&mdash;the Holy Father was
+at his prayers. A canvas-covered barrow containing a man who had been
+injured by the soldiers was being wheeled into the Hospital of Santo
+Spirito, and a woman and a child were walking and crying beside it.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were covered with broken tiles which had been thrown on to
+the heads of the cavalry as they galloped through the principal
+thoroughfares. Carabineers, with revolvers in hand, were dragging
+themselves on their stomachs along the roofs, trying to surprise the
+rioters who were hiding behind chimney-stacks. Some one shouted: "Cut
+the electric wires," and men were clambering up the tall posts and
+breaking the electric lamps.</p>
+
+<p>The Consulta, the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stands in
+the Piazza of the Quirinal, and when Rossi reached it the great square
+of the King was as silent as the great square of the Pope had been.</p>
+
+<p>Two sentries were in boxes on either side of the royal gate, and one
+Carabineer was in the doorway. The gardens down the long corridor lay
+dark in the shadows, but the fountain with sculptured horses, the
+splashing water, and the front of the building were white under the
+electric lamps as if from a dazzling moon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before turning into the silent courtyard of the Consulta, Rossi paused
+and listened to the noises that came from the city. Men were singing and
+women were screaming. The rattle of musketry mingled with the cries of
+children. And over all were the steady downfall of the snow and the dull
+rumble of distant thunder.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi held his head between his hands to prevent his senses from leaving
+him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble.
+Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the
+Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the
+Prime Minister might not be there.</p>
+
+<p>The porter was not sure. The Baron's carriage had just gone. Let him ask
+on the telephone.... No, there had been a messenger from the Minister of
+the Interior, but the Minister himself had not been there that night.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi took a long breath of relief and went away. He had returned to the
+bright side of the piazza when the lights seemed to be wiped out as
+though by an invisible wing, and the whole city was plunged in darkness.
+At the next moment a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the Quirinal,
+and the gates of the royal palace and of the Consulta were closed.</p>
+
+<p>Midnight struck.</p>
+
+<p>For two hours the soldiers had been charging the crowds by the light of
+lanterns and torches. They had arrested hundreds of persons. Chained
+together, two and two, the insurgents had been taken to the places of
+detention, amid the cries of their women and children. "Who knows
+whether we shall see each other again?" said the prisoners, as they
+passed into the "House of Pain." One old woman went on her knees to the
+soldiers and begged them to have pity on the people. "They are your
+brothers, my sons," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>One o'clock struck.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were still dark, but a searchlight from Monte Mario was
+sweeping over the city like a flash of a supernatural eye. With
+tottering limbs and his head on his breast, David Rossi was walking down
+the Via due Macelli towards the column of the Immaculate Conception,
+when a young girl spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Honourable," she said, "is it true that the little boy is dead?... It
+is? Oh, dear! I met him in the Corso, and brought him up as far as the
+Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s, and if I had only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span> taken him all the way.... Oh, I shall never
+forgive myself!"</p>
+
+<p>The city was quiet and all was hushed on every side when Rossi found
+himself on a flight of steps at the back of Roma's apartment. From these
+steps a door opened into the studio. One panel of the door was glazed,
+and a light was shining from within. Going cautiously forward, Rossi
+looked into the room. Roma was seated on a stool with her hands clasped
+in her lap and her hair hanging loose. She was very pale. Her face
+expressed unutterable sadness.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi listened for a moment, but there was not a sound to be heard
+except that of the different clocks chiming the quarter. Then he tapped
+lightly on the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!" he said in a low tone. "Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>She rose up and shrank back. Then coming to the door, and shielding her
+eyes from the light, she put her face close to the pane. At the next
+moment she threw the door open.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you?" she said in a tremulous voice, and taking his hand she drew
+him hurriedly into the house.</p>
+
+<h3>XII</h3>
+
+<p>After the Baron was gone, Roma had sat a long time in the dark among the
+ruins of the broken bust. When twelve o'clock struck she was feeling hot
+and feverish, and, in spite of the coldness of the night, she rose and
+opened the window. The snow had ceased to fall, the thunder was gone,
+and the city was quiet.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the revolving searchlight on Monte Mario passed over the
+room. The white flash lit up the broken fragments at her feet, and
+brought a new train of reflections. The bust she destroyed had been only
+the plaster cast; the piece-mould remained, and might be a cause of
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>She closed the window, took a candle, and went down to the studio to put
+the mould out of the way. She had done so, and was sitting to rest and
+to think when Rossi's knock came at the door. In a moment all her dreams
+were gone. She was clasped in his arms and had put up her mouth to be
+kissed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>It was not at first that she realised what was happening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> but after a
+moment she recovered from her bewilderment, and extinguished the candle
+lest Rossi should be seen from outside.</p>
+
+<p>They were in the dark, save at intervals when the revolving light in its
+circuit of the city swept across the studio, and lit up their faces as
+by a flash of lightning. He seemed to be dazed. His weary eyes looked as
+if their light were almost extinct.</p>
+
+<p>"You are safe? You are well?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"O God! what sights!" he said. "You have heard what has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! But you are not injured?"</p>
+
+<p>"The people were peaceful and meant no evil, but the soldiers were
+ordered to fire, and our little boy is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us speak of it.... The police were told to arrest you, but
+you have escaped thus far, and now...."</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno is taken, and hundreds of others are in prison."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are safe? You are well? You are uninjured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered between his teeth, and then he covered his face with
+his hands. "God knows I did my best to prevent this bloodshed&mdash;I would
+have laid down my life to prevent it."</p>
+
+<p>"God <i>does</i> know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Take this."</p>
+
+<p>He drew something from his breast-pocket and put it into her hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was the revolver.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot trust myself any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't used it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should have done so if I could have met the man face to face."</p>
+
+<p>"The Baron?"</p>
+
+<p>"I searched for him everywhere, and couldn't find him. God kept him out
+of my way to save me from sin and shame."</p>
+
+<p>With a frightened cry she put down the revolver and clasped her hands
+about his neck. He began to recover his dazed senses and to smooth the
+hair on her damp forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Roma! You didn't think we were to part like this?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her arms slackened, and she dropped her head on to his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night you told me to fly, and I wouldn't do so. There was no man
+in Rome I was afraid of then. But to-night there is some one I am afraid
+of. I am afraid of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You intend to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I shall feel like a captain who deserts his sinking ship. Would to
+God I could have gone down with her!... Yet no! She is not lost yet.
+Everything is in God's hands. Perhaps there is work for me abroad, now
+that the paths are closed to me at home. Let us wait and see."</p>
+
+<p>They were both silent for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's all over," she said, gulping down a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid! This black night in Rome is only the beginning of the end.
+It will be the dawn of the resurrection everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is all over between you and me."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, no. No, no! I cannot take you with me. That is impossible. I
+couldn't see you suffer hunger and thirst and the privations of exile,
+but...."</p>
+
+<p>"Our marriage cannot be celebrated now, and that being so...."</p>
+
+<p>"The banns are good for half a year, Roma, and before that time I shall
+be back. Have no fear! The immortality stirring beneath the ruins of
+this old city will give us victory all over Italy. I will return and we
+shall be very happy. How happy we shall be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," she brought out at intervals.</p>
+
+<p>"Be brave, my girl, be brave!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>The revolving searchlight flashed through the room at that moment, and
+she dropped her face again.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest," she said faintly, "if I should not be here when you come
+back...."</p>
+
+<p>He started and seized her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, you cannot intend to submit to the will of that man?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head as it rested on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"The man is a monster. He may put pressure upon you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He may even make you suffer for my sake."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor that either."</p>
+
+<p>"By-and-by he may require everybody to take an oath of allegiance to the
+King."</p>
+
+<p>"I have taken mine already&mdash;to <i>my</i> king."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, if you wish me to stay I will do so in spite of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you to go, dearest."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is it you fear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;only...."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are sad. Why is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A foreboding. I feel as if we were parting for ever."</p>
+
+<p>He passed his hands through her hair. "It may be so. Only God can tell."</p>
+
+<p>"It was too sweet dreaming. I was too happy for a little while."</p>
+
+<p>"If it must be, it must be. But let us be brave, dear! We, who take up a
+life like this, must learn renunciation.... Crying, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Oh, no! But renunciation! That's it&mdash;renunciation." She could feel
+the beating of her heart against his breast. "Love comes to every one,
+but to some it comes too late, and then it comes in vain." She was
+striving to keep down her sobs. "They have only to conquer it and
+renounce it, and to pray God to unite them to their loved ones in
+another life." She was choking, but she struggled on. "Sometimes I think
+it must be my lot to be like that. Other women may dream of love and
+home and children...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't unman me, Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, promise me that whatever happens you will think the best of
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me that whoever says anything to the contrary you will always
+believe I loved you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should we talk of what can never happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we are parting for ever ... if we are saying a long farewell to all
+earthly affections, promise me...."</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I promise!" he said. "And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I promise too&mdash;I promise that as long as I live, and wherever I am and
+whatever becomes of me, I will ... yes, because I cannot help it ... I
+will love you to the last."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Saying this in passionate tones, she drew down his head and he met her
+kiss with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"It is our marriage, David. Others are married in church and by the
+hand, and with a ring. We are married in our spirits and our souls."</p>
+
+<p>A long time passed, during which they did not speak. The searchlight
+flashed in on them again and again with its supernatural eye, and as
+often as it did so Rossi looked at her with strange looks of pity and of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, she cut a lock from her hair, tied it with a piece of ribbon,
+and put it in his pocket with his watch. Then she dried her eyes with
+her handkerchief and pushed it in his breast.</p>
+
+<p>The night went on, and nothing was to be heard but the chiming of clocks
+outside. At length through the silence there came a muffled rumble from
+the streets.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go now," she said, and when the next flash came round she
+looked up at him with a steadfast gaze, as if trying to gather into her
+eyes her last memories of his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"It is still dark, but the streets are patrolled and every gate is
+closed, and how are you to escape?"</p>
+
+<p>"If the soldiers had wished to take me they could have done so a hundred
+times."</p>
+
+<p>"But the city is stirring. Be careful for my sake. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," said Rossi, "if I do not take you with me it is partly because I
+want your help in Rome. Think of the poor people I leave behind me in
+poverty and in prison. Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning,
+alone with her terrible grief. Some one should be here to represent me
+for a time at all events&mdash;to take the messages I must send, the
+instructions I shall have to give. It will be a dangerous task, Roma, a
+task that can only be undertaken by some one who loves me, some one
+who...."</p>
+
+<p>"That is enough. Tell me what I can do," she said.</p>
+
+<p>They arranged a channel of correspondence, and then Roma began her
+farewells afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," said Rossi again, "since I must go away before our civil
+marriage can be celebrated, is it not best that our spiritual one should
+have the blessing of the Church?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma looked at him and trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"When I am gone God knows what may happen. The Baron may be a free man
+any day, and he may put pressure on you to marry him. In that case it
+will be strength and courage to you to know that in God's eyes you are
+married already. It will be happiness and comfort to me, too, when I am
+far away from you and alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so. A declaration before a parish priest is all that is necessary.
+'Father, this is my wife.' 'This is my husband.' That is enough. It will
+have no value in the eye of the law, but it will be a religious marriage
+for all that."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no time. You cannot wait...."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" The clocks were striking three. "At three o'clock there is mass
+at St. Andrea delle Frate. That is your parish church, Roma. The priest
+and his acolytes are the only witnesses we require."</p>
+
+<p>"If you think ... that is to say ... if it will make you happy, and be a
+strength to me also...."</p>
+
+<p>"Run for your cloak and hat, dearest&mdash;in ten minutes it will be done."</p>
+
+<p>"But think again." She was breathing audibly. "Who knows what may happen
+before you return? Will you never repent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never!"</p>
+
+<p>"But ... but there is something ... something I ought to tell
+you&mdash;something painful. It is about the past."</p>
+
+<p>"The past is past. Let us think of the future."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not wish to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is painful to you&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will nothing and nobody divide us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing and nobody in the world."</p>
+
+<p>She gulped down another choking sob and threw both arms about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me, then. I am your wife before God and man."</p>
+
+<h3>XIII</h3>
+
+<p>It was still dark overhead, and the streets with their thin covering of
+snow were as silent as a catacomb. Through the door of the church, when
+the leather covering was lifted, there came the yellow light of the
+candles burning on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span> altar. The priest in his gold vestments stood
+with his face to the glistening shrine, and his acolytes knelt beside
+him. There was only one worshipper, an old woman who was kneeling before
+a chair in the gloom of a side chapel. The tinkle of the acolytes' bell
+and the faint murmur of the priest's voice were the only sounds that
+broke the stillness.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass
+and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled
+and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice
+of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They
+parted at the church door.</p>
+
+<p>"You will write when you cross the frontier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu then, until we meet again!"</p>
+
+<p>"If I am long away from you, Roma...."</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always."</p>
+
+<p>She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a
+dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. "If the
+result of this night's work is that I am arrested and brought back and
+imprisoned...."</p>
+
+<p>"I can wait for you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"If I am banished for life...."</p>
+
+<p>"I can follow you."</p>
+
+<p>"If the worst comes to the worst, and one way or another death itself
+should be the fate that falls to me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I can follow you there, too."</p>
+
+<p>"If we meet again we can laugh at all this, Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we can laugh at all this," she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"If not ... Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>She disengaged her clinging arms with one last caress; there was an
+instant of unconsciousness, and when she recovered herself he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment there came through the darkness the measured tramp,
+tramp, tramp of the patrol. With a quivering heart Roma stood and
+listened. There was a slight movement among the soldiers, a scarcely
+perceptible pause, and then the tramp, tramp, tramp as before. Rossi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+looked back as he turned the corner, and saw Roma, in her light cloak,
+gliding across the silent street like a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Three or four hundred yards inside the gate of St. John Lateran in one
+of the half-finished tenement houses on the outskirts of Rome, there is
+a cellar used as a resting-place and eating-house by the carriers from
+the country who bring wine into the city. This cellar was the only place
+that seemed to be awake when Rossi walked towards the city walls. Some
+eight or nine men, in the rude dress of wine-carriers, lay dozing or
+talking on the floor. They had been kept in Rome overnight by the
+closing of the gate, and were waiting for it to be opened in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>Without a moment's hesitation David Rossi stepped down and spoke to the
+men.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said, "you know who I am. I am Rossi. The police have
+orders to arrest me. Will you help me to get out of Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" shouted a drowsy voice from the smoky shadows of the
+cellar.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Honourable Rossi," said a lad who had shambled up. "The
+oysters are after him, and will we help him to escape?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will we? It's not <i>will</i> we; it's <i>can</i> we, Honourable," said a
+thick-set man, who lifted his head from an upturned horse-saddle.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment the men were all on their feet, asking questions and
+discussing chances. The gate was to be opened at six, and the first
+train north was to go out at half-past nine. But the difficulty was that
+everybody in Rome knew Rossi. Even if he got through the gate he could
+not get on to the train within ten miles of the city without the
+certainty of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"I have it!" said the thick-set man with the drowsy voice. "There's
+young Carlo. He got a scratch in the leg last night from one of the wet
+nurses of the Government, and he'll have to lie upstairs for a week at
+least. Why can't he lend his clothes to the Honourable? And why can't
+the Honourable drive Carlo's cart back to Monte Rotondo, and then go
+where he likes when he gets there?"</p>
+
+<p>"That will do," said Rossi, and so it was settled.</p>
+
+<hr class='minor' />
+
+<p>When the train which left Rome for Florence and Milan at 9.30 in the
+morning arrived at the country station of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span> Monte Rotondo, eighteen miles
+out, a man in top-boots, blue trousers, a white waistband and a
+red-lined overcoat got into the people's compartment. The train was
+crowded with foreigners who were flying from the risks of insurrection,
+and even the third-class carriages were filled with well-dressed
+strangers. They were talking bitterly of their experiences the night
+before. Most of them had been compelled to barricade their bedroom doors
+at the hotels, and some had even passed the night at the railway
+station.</p>
+
+<p>"It all comes of letting men like this Rossi go at large," said a young
+Englishman with the voice of a pea-hen. "For my part, I would put all
+these anarchists on an uninhabited island and leave them to fight it out
+among themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Rossi isn't an anarchist," said a man with an American intonation.</p>
+
+<p>"What is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A dreamer of dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad dreams, then," said the voice of the pea-hen, and there was general
+laughter.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_SIX_THE_ROMAN_OF_ROME" id="PART_SIX_THE_ROMAN_OF_ROME"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+<h2>PART SIX&mdash;THE ROMAN OF ROME</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Roma awoke next morning with a feeling of joy. The dangers of last night
+were over and David Rossi had escaped. Where would he be by this time?
+She looked at her little round watch and reckoned the hours that had
+passed against the speed of the train.</p>
+
+<p>Natalina came with the tea and the morning newspaper. The maid's tongue
+went faster than her hands as she rattled on about the terrors of the
+night and the news of the morning. Meantime Roma glanced eagerly over
+the columns of the paper for its references to Rossi. He was gone. The
+authorities were unable to say what had become of him.</p>
+
+<p>With boundless relief Roma turned to the other items of intelligence.
+The journal was the organ of the Government, and it contained an extract
+from the Official Gazette and the text of a proclamation by the Prefect.
+The first announced that the riot was at an end and Rome was quiet; the
+second notified the public that by royal decree the city was declared to
+be in a state of siege, and that the King had nominated a Royal
+Commissioner with full powers.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this news there was a general account of the insurrection. The
+ringleaders were anarchists, socialists, and professed atheists,
+determined on the destruction of both throne and altar by any means,
+however horrible. Their victims had been drawn, without seeing where
+they were going, into a vortex of disorder, and the soldiers had
+defended society and the law. Happily the casualties were few. The only
+fatal incident had been the death of a child, seven years of age, the
+son of a workman. The people of Rome had to congratulate themselves on
+the promptness of a Government which had reinstated authority with so
+small a loss of blood.</p>
+
+<p>Roma remembered what Rossi had said about Elena&mdash;"Think of Elena when
+she awakes in the morning, alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> with her terrible grief"&mdash;and putting
+on a plain dark cloth dress she set off for the Piazza Navona.</p>
+
+<p>It was eleven o'clock, and the sun was shining on the melting snow. Rome
+was like a dead city. The breath of revolution had passed over it.
+Broken tiles lay on the pavement of the slushy streets, and here and
+there were the remains of abandoned barricades. The shops, which are the
+eyes of a city, were nearly all closed and asleep.</p>
+
+<p>At a flower-shop, which was opened to her knock, Roma bought a wreath of
+white chrysanthemums. A group of men and women stood at the door in the
+Piazza Navona, and she received their kisses on her hands. The
+Garibaldian followed her up the stairs, and his old wife, who stood at
+the top, called her "Little Sister," and then burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>The boy lay on the couch, just where Roma had first seen him, when David
+Rossi was lifting him up asleep. He might have been asleep now, so
+peaceful was his expression under the mysterious seal of death. The
+blinds were drawn, and the sun came through them with a yellow light.
+Four candles were burning on chairs at the head and two at the feet. The
+little body was still dressed in the gay clothes of the festival, and
+the cocked hat and gilt-headed mace lay beside it. But the chubby hands
+were clasped over a tiny crucifix, and the hair of the shock head was
+brushed smooth and flat.</p>
+
+<p>"There he is," said Elena, in a cracked voice, and she went down on her
+knees between the candles.</p>
+
+<p>Roma, who could not speak, put the wreath of chrysanthemums on the brave
+little breast, and knelt by the mother's side. At that they all broke
+down together.</p>
+
+<p>The old Garibaldian wiped his rheumy eyes and began to talk of David
+Rossi. He was as fond of Joseph as if the boy had been his own son. But
+what had become of the Honourable? Before daybreak the police had made a
+domiciliary perquisition in the apartment, carried off his papers and
+sealed up his rooms.</p>
+
+<p>"Have no fear for him," said Roma, and then she asked about Bruno. All
+they knew was that Bruno had been arrested and locked up in the prison
+called Regina C[oe]li.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Bruno! He'll be dying to know what is happening here," said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see him," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>It was well she had come early. In the stupefaction of their sorrow the
+three poor souls were like helpless children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span> and had done nothing. Roma
+sent the Garibaldian to the sanitary office for the doctor who was to
+verify the death, to the office of health to register it, and to the
+municipal office to arrange for the funeral. It was to be a funeral of
+the third category, with a funeral car of two horses and a coach with
+liveried coachmen. The grave was to be one of the little vaults, the
+Fornelli, set apart for children. The priest was to be instructed to buy
+many candles and order several Frati. The expense would be great, but
+Roma undertook to bear it, and when she left the house the old people
+kissed her hands again and loaded her with blessings.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The Roman prison with the extraordinary name, "The Queen of Heaven," is
+a vast yellow building on the Trastevere side of the river. Behind it
+rises the Janiculum, in front of it runs the Tiber, and on both sides of
+it are narrow lanes cut off by high walls.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after the insurrection a great many persons had gathered
+at the entrance of this prison. Old men, who were lame or sick or nearly
+blind, stood by a dead wall which divides the street from the Tiber, and
+looked on with dazed and vacant eyes. Younger men nearer the entrance
+read the proclamations posted up on the pilasters. One of these was the
+proclamation of the Prefect announcing the state of siege; another was
+the proclamation of the Royal Commissioner calling on citizens to
+consign all the arms in their possession to the Chief of Police under
+pain of imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>In the entrance-hall there was a crowd of women, each carrying a basket
+or a bundle in a handkerchief. They were young and old, dressed
+variously as if from different provinces, but nearly all poor, untidy,
+and unkempt.</p>
+
+<p>An iron gate was opened, and an officer, two soldiers, and a warder came
+out to take the food which the women had brought for their relatives
+imprisoned within. Then there was a terrible tumult. "Mr. Officer,
+please!" "Please, Mr. Officer!" "Be kind to Giuseppe, and the saints
+bless you!" "My turn next!" "No, mine!" "Don't push!" "You're pushing
+yourself!" "You're knocking the basket out of my hands!" "Getaway!" "You
+cat! You...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Silence! Silence! Silence!" cried the officer, shouting the women down,
+and meantime the men in the street outside curled their lips and tried
+to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Into this wild scene, full of the acrid exhalations of human breath, and
+the nauseating odour of unclean bodies, but moved, nevertheless, by the
+finger of God Himself, the cab which brought Roma to see Bruno
+discharged her at the prison door.</p>
+
+<p>The officer on the steps saw her over the heads of the women with their
+outstretched arms, and judging from her appearance that she came on
+other business, he called to a Carabineer to attend to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to see the Director," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Excellency," said the Carabineer, and with a salute he led
+the way by a side door to the offices on the floor above.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor of Regina C[oe]li was a middle-aged man with a kindly face,
+but under the new order he could do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything relating to the political prisoners is in the hands of the
+Royal Commissioner," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Where can I see him, Cavaliere?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is with the Minister of War to-day, arranging for the military
+tribunals, but perhaps to-morrow at his office in the Castle of St.
+Angelo...."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks! Meantime can I send a message into the prison?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And may I pay for a separate cell for a prisoner, with food and light,
+if necessary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly."</p>
+
+<p>Roma undertook the expense of these privileges and then scribbled a note
+to Bruno.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dear Friend</span>,&mdash;Don't lose heart! Your dear ones shall be cared for and
+comforted. He whom you love is safe and your darling is in heaven. Sleep
+well! These days will pass.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"R. V."</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>That night Roma wrote the first part of a letter to David Rossi:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"David&mdash;my David! It is early days to call you by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span> dearer name, but
+the sweet word is on the tip of my pen, and I can hardly help myself
+from scribbling it. You wished me to tell you what is happening in Rome,
+and here I am beginning to write already, though when and how and where
+this letter is to reach you, I must leave it to Fate and to yourself to
+determine. Fancy! Only eighteen hours since we parted! It seems
+inconceivable! I feel as if I had lived a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, I did not go to bed when you left me. I had so many things
+to think about. And, tired as I was, I slept little, and was up early.
+The morning dawned beautifully. It was perfectly tragic. So bright and
+sunny after that night of slaughter. No rattle of cars, no tinkle of
+trams, no calls of the water-carriers and of the pedlars in the streets.
+It was for all the world like that awful quiet of the sea the morning
+after a tempest, with the sun on its placid surface and not a hint of
+the wrecks beneath.</p>
+
+<p>"I remembered what you said about Elena, and went down to see her. The
+poor girl has just parted with her dead child. She did it with a brave
+heart, God pity her! taking comfort in the Blessed Virgin, as the mother
+in heaven who knows all our sorrows and asks God to heal them. Ah, what
+a sweet thing it must be to believe that! Do you believe it?"</p>
+
+<p>Here she wanted to say something about her great secret. She tried, but
+she could not do it.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't see Bruno to-day, but I hope to do so to-morrow, and
+meantime I have ordered food to be supplied to him. If I could only do
+something to some purpose! But five hundred of your friends are in
+Regina C&oelig;li, and my poor little efforts are a drop of water in a
+mighty ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"Rome is a deserted city to-day, and but for the soldiers, who are
+everywhere, it would look like a dead one! The steps of the Piazza di
+Spagna are empty, not a model is to be seen, not a flower is to be
+bought, and the fountain is bubbling in silence. After sunset a certain
+shiver passes over the world, and after an insurrection something of the
+same kind seems to pass over a city. The churches and the hospitals are
+the only places open, and the doctors and their messengers are the only
+people moving about.</p>
+
+<p>"Just one of the newspapers has been published to-day, and it is full of
+proclamations. Everybody is to be indoors by nine o'clock and the caf&eacute;s
+are to be closed at eight. Arms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span> are to be consigned at the Questura,
+and meetings of more than four persons are strictly forbidden. Rewards
+of pardon are offered to all rioters who will inform on the ringleaders
+of the insurrection, and of money to all citizens who will denounce the
+conspirators. The military tribunals are to sit to-morrow and
+domiciliary visitations are already being made. Your own apartments have
+been searched and sealed and the police have carried off papers.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"Such are the doings of this evil day, and yet&mdash;selfish woman that I
+am&mdash;I cannot for my life think it is all evil. Has it not given me you?
+And if it has taken you away from me as well, I can wait, I can be
+patient. Where are you now, I wonder? And are you thinking of me while I
+am thinking of you? Oh, how splendid! Think of it! Though the train may
+be carrying you away from me every hour and every minute, before long we
+shall be together. In the first dream of the first sleep I shall join
+you, and we shall be cheek to cheek and heart to heart. Good-night, my
+dear one!"</p>
+
+<p>Again she tried to say something about her secret. But no! "Not
+to-night," she thought, and after switching off the light and kissing
+her hand in the darkness to the stars that hung over the north, she
+laughed at her own foolishness and went to bed.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Roma awoke next day with a sense of pain. Thus far she had beaten the
+Baron&mdash;yes! But David Rossi? Had she sinned against God and against her
+husband? She must confess. There was no help for it. And there must be
+no hesitation and no delay.</p>
+
+<p>Natalina came into the bedroom and threw open the shutters. She was
+bringing a telegram, and Roma almost snatched it out of her hands. It
+was from Rossi and had been sent off from Chiasso. "Crossed frontier
+safe and well."</p>
+
+<p>Roma made a cry of joy and leapt out of bed. All day long that telegram
+was like wings under her heels and made her walk with an elastic step.</p>
+
+<p>While taking her coffee she remembered the responsibilities she had
+undertaken the day before&mdash;for the boy's funeral and Bruno's
+maintenance&mdash;and for the first time in her life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span> she began to consider
+ways and means. Her ready money was getting low, and it was necessary to
+do something.</p>
+
+<p>Then Felice came with a sheaf of papers. They were tradesmen's bills and
+required immediate payment. Some of the men were below and refused to go
+away without the cash.</p>
+
+<p>There was no help for it. She opened her purse, discharged her debts,
+swept her debtors out of the house, and sat down to count what remained.</p>
+
+<p>Very little remained. But what matter? The five words of that telegram
+were five bright stars which could light up a darker sky than had fallen
+on her yet.</p>
+
+<p>In this high mood she went down to the studio&mdash;silent now in the absence
+of the humorous voice that usually rang in it, and with Bruno's chisels
+and mallet lying idle, with his sack on a block of half-hewn marble.
+Uncovering her fountain, she looked at it again. It was good work; she
+knew it was good; she could be certain it was good. It should justify
+her yet, and some day the stupid people who were sheering away from her
+now would come cringing to her feet afresh.</p>
+
+<p>That suggested thoughts of the Mayor. She would write to him and get
+some money with which to meet the expenses of yesterday as well as the
+obligations which she might perhaps incur to-day or in the future.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Senator Palomba," she wrote, "no doubt you have often wondered why
+your much-valued commission has not been completed before. The fact is
+that it suffered a slight accident a few days ago, but a week or a
+fortnight ought to see it finished, and if you wish to make arrangements
+for its reception you may count on its delivery in that time. Meantime
+as I am pressed for funds at the moment, I shall be glad if you can
+instruct your treasurer at the Municipality to let me have something on
+account. The price mentioned, you remember, was 15,000 francs, and as I
+have not had anything hitherto, I trust it may not be unreasonable to
+ask for half now, leaving the remainder until the fountain is in its
+place."</p>
+
+<p>Having despatched this challenge by Felice, not only to the Mayor, but
+also to herself, her pride, her poverty, and to the great world
+generally, she put on her cloak and hat and drove down to the Castle of
+St. Angelo.</p>
+
+<p>When she returned, an hour afterwards, there was a dry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> glitter in her
+eyes, which increased to a look of fever when she opened the
+drawing-room door and saw who was waiting there. It was the Mayor
+himself. The little oily man in patent-leather boots, holding upright
+his glossy silk hat, was clearly nervous and confused. He complimented
+her on her appearance, looked out of the window, extolled the view, and
+finally, with his back to his hostess, began on his business.</p>
+
+<p>"It is about your letter, you know," he said awkwardly. "There seems to
+be a little misunderstanding on your part. About the fountain, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever, Senator. You ordered it. I have executed it. Surely the
+matter is quite simple."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible, my dear. I may have encouraged you to an experimental
+trial. We all do that. Rome is eager to discover genius. But a simple
+member of a corporate body cannot undertake ... that is to say, on his
+own responsibility, you know...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's breath began to come quickly. "Do you mean that you didn't
+commission my fountain?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I, my child? Such matters must go through a regular form. The
+proper committee must sanction and resolve...."</p>
+
+<p>"But everybody has known of this, and it has been generally understood
+from the first."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, understood! Possibly! Rumour and report perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"But I could bring witnesses&mdash;high witnesses&mdash;the very highest if needs
+be...."</p>
+
+<p>The little man smiled benevolently.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely there is no witness of any standing in the State who would go
+into a witness-box and say that, without a contract, and with only a few
+encouraging words...."</p>
+
+<p>The dry glitter in Roma's eyes shot into a look of anger. "Do you call
+your letters to me a few encouraging words only?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"My letters?" the glossy hat was getting ruffled.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters alluding to this matter, and enumerating the favours you
+wished me to ask of the Prime Minister."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," said the Mayor after a moment, "I'm sorry if I have led you
+to build up hopes, and though I have no authority ... if it will end
+matters amicably ... I think I can promise ... I might perhaps promise a
+little money for your loss of time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose I want charity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charity, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else would it be? If I have no right to everything I will have
+nothing. I will take none of your money. You can leave me."</p>
+
+<p>The little man shuffled his feet, and bowed himself out of the room,
+with many apologies and praises which Roma did not hear. For all her
+brave words her heart was breaking, and she was holding her breath to
+repress a sob. The great bulwark she had built up for herself lay
+wrecked at her feet. She had deceived herself into believing that she
+could be somebody for herself. Going down to the studio, she covered up
+the fountain. It had lost every quality which she had seen in it before.
+Art was gone from her. She was nobody. It was very, very cruel.</p>
+
+<p>But that glorious telegram rustled in her breast like a captive
+song-bird, and before going to bed she wrote to David Rossi again.</p>
+
+<p>"Your message arrived before I was up this morning, and not being
+entirely back from the world of dreams, I fancied that it was an angel's
+whisper. This is silly, but I wouldn't change it for the greatest
+wisdom, if, in order to be the most wise and wonderful among women, I
+had to love you less.</p>
+
+<p>"Business first and other things afterwards. Most of the newspapers have
+been published to-day, and some of them are blowing themselves out of
+breath in abuse of you, and howling louder than the wolves of the
+Capitol before rain. The military courts began this morning, and they
+have already polished off fifty victims. Rewards for denunciations have
+now deepened to threats of imprisonment for non-denunciation. General
+Morra, Minister of War, has sent in his resignation, and there is
+bracing weather in the neighbourhood of the Palazzo Braschi. An editor
+has been arrested, many journals and societies have been suppressed, and
+twenty thousand of the contadini who came to Rome for the meeting in the
+Coliseum have been despatched to their own communes. Finally, the Royal
+Commissioner has written to the Pope, calling on him to assist in the
+work of pacifying the people, and it is rumoured that the Holy Office is
+to be petitioned by certain of the Bishops to denounce the 'Republic of
+Man' as a secret society (like the Freemasons) coming within the ban of
+the Pontifical constitutions.</p>
+
+<p>"So much for general news, and now for more personal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span> intelligence. I
+went down to the Castle of St. Angelo this morning, and was permitted to
+speak to the Royal Commissioner. Recognised him instantly as a regular
+old-timer at the heels of the Baron, and tackled him on our ancient
+terms. The wretch&mdash;he squints, and he smoked a cigarette all through the
+interview&mdash;couldn't allow me to see Bruno during the private preparation
+of the case against him, and when I asked if the instruction would take
+long he said, 'Probably, as it is complicated by the case of some one
+else who is not yet in custody.' Then I asked if I might employ separate
+counsel for the defence, and he shuffled and said it was unnecessary.
+This decided me, and I walked straight to the office of the great lawyer
+Napoleon Fuselli, promised him five hundred francs by to-morrow morning,
+and told him to go ahead without delay.</p>
+
+<p>"But heigh-ho, nonny! Coming home I felt like the witches in 'Macbeth.'
+'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' It was
+Senator Tom-tit, the little fat Mayor of Rome. His great ambition is to
+wear the green ribbon of St. Maurice and Lazarus, as none know better
+than myself. Wanting money on my fountain, I had written to the old
+wretch, but the moment we met I could see what was coming, so I braved
+it out, bustled about and made a noise. It was a mistake! There had been
+no commission at all! But if a little money would repay me for a loss of
+time....</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't so much that I cared about the loss of the fees, badly as I
+needed them. It was mainly that I had allowed the summer flies who
+buzzed about me for the Baron's sake to flatter me into the notion that
+I was an artist, when I was really nobody for myself at all.</p>
+
+<p>"This humour lasted all afternoon, and spoiled my digestion for dinner,
+which was a pity, for there was some delicious wild asparagus. But then
+I thought of you and your work, and the future when you will come back
+with all Rome at your feet, and my vexation disappeared and I was
+content to be nothing and nobody except somebody whom you loved and who
+loved you, and that was to be everything and everybody in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care a rush about the matter now, but what do you think I've
+done? Sold my carriage and horses! Actually! The little job-master, with
+his tight trousers, close-cropped head, and chamois-leather waistcoat,
+has just gone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> off after cheating me abominably. No matter! What do I
+want with a grand carriage while you are going about as an exile and an
+outcast? I want nothing you have not got, and all I have I wish you to
+have too, including my heart and my soul and everything that is in
+them...."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. This was the place to reveal her great secret. But she
+could not find her way to begin. "To-morrow will do," she thought, and
+so laid down the pen.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Early next morning Roma received a visit from the lawyer who conducted
+the business of her landlord. He was a middle-aged man in
+pepper-and-salt tweeds, and his manner was brusque and aggressive.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to say, Excellency, that I've had a letter from Count Mario at
+Paris saying that he will require this apartment for his own use. He
+regrets to be compelled to disturb you, but having frequently apprised
+you of his intention to live here himself...."</p>
+
+<p>"When does he want to come?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"At Easter."</p>
+
+<p>"That will do. My aunt is ill, but if she is fit to be moved...."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks! And may I perhaps present...."</p>
+
+<p>A paper in the shape of a bill came from the breast-pocket of the
+pepper-and-salt tweeds. Roma took it, and, without looking at it,
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"You will receive your rent in a day or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks again. I trust I may rely on that. And meantime...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"As I am personally responsible to the Count for all moneys due to him,
+may I ask your Excellency to promise me that nothing shall be removed
+from this apartment until my arrears of rent have been paid?"</p>
+
+<p>"I promise that you shall receive what is due from me in two days. Is
+not that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>The pepper-and-salt tweeds bowed meekly before Roma's flashing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Excellency."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man was hardly out of the house when a woman was shown in. It was
+Madame Sella, the fashionable modiste.</p>
+
+<p>"So unlucky, my dear! I'm driven to my wits' end for money. The people I
+deal with in Paris are perfect demons, and are threatening all sorts of
+pains and penalties if I don't send them a great sum straight away. Of
+course if I could get my own money in, it wouldn't matter. But the dear
+ladies of society are so slow, and naturally I don't like to go to their
+gentlemen, although really I've waited so long for their debts that
+if...."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you wait one day longer for mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma! And we've always been such friends, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll excuse me this morning, won't you?" said Roma, rising.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. I'm busy, too. So good of you to see me. Trust I've not been
+<i>de trop</i>. And if it hadn't been for those stupid bills of mine...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma sat down and wrote a letter to one of the <i>strozzini</i> (stranglers),
+who lend money to ladies on the security of their jewels.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to sell my jewellery," she wrote, "and if you have any desire to
+buy it, I shall be glad if you can come to see me for this purpose at
+four o'clock to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!" cried a fretful voice.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting in the boudoir, and her aunt was calling to her from the
+adjoining room. The old lady, who had just finished her toilet, and was
+redolent of perfume and scented soap, was propped up on pillows between
+the mirror and her Madonna, with her cat purring on the cushion at the
+foot of her bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you do come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her
+embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the
+carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it
+unless you tell me so yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite true, Aunt Betsy. I wanted money for various purposes, and
+among others to pay my debts," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness! It's true! Give me my salts. There they are&mdash;on the
+card-table beside you.... So it's true! It's really true! You've done
+some extraordinary things already, miss, but this ... Mercy me! Selling
+her horses! And she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> isn't ashamed of it!... I suppose you'll sell your
+clothes next, or perhaps your jewels."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I want to do, Aunt Betsy."</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Virgin! What are you saying, girl? Have you lost all sense of
+decency? Sell your jewels! Goodness! Your ancestral jewels! You must
+have grown utterly heartless as well as indifferent to propriety, or you
+wouldn't dream of selling the treasures that have come down to you from
+your own mother's breast, as one might say."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother never set eyes on any of them, auntie, and if some of them
+belonged to my grandmother, she must have been a good woman because she
+was the mother of my father, and she would rather see me sell them all
+than live in debt and disgrace."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on! Go on with your English talk! Or perhaps it's American, is it?
+You want to kill me, that's what it is! You will, too, and sooner than
+you expect, and then you'll be sorry and ashamed ... Go away! Why do you
+come to worry me? Isn't it enough ... Natalina! Nat-a-<i>lina!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Late that night Roma resumed her letter to David Rossi:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,&mdash;You are always the last person I speak to before I go to bed,
+and if only my words could sail away over Monte Mario in the darkness
+while I sleep, they would reach you on the wings of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to know all that is happening, and here goes again. The
+tyrannies of military rule increase daily, and some of its enormities
+are past belief. Military court sat all day yesterday and polished off
+eighty-five poor victims. Ten of them got ten years, twenty got five
+years, and about fifty got periods of one month to twelve.</p>
+
+<p>"Lawyer Napoleon F. was here this afternoon to say that he had seen
+Bruno and begun work in his defence. Strangely enough he finds a
+difficulty in a quarter from which it might least be expected. Bruno
+himself is holding off in some unaccountable way which gives Napoleon F.
+an idea that the poor soul is being got at. Apparently&mdash;you will hardly
+credit it&mdash;he is talking doubtfully about you, and asking incredible
+questions about his wife. Lawyer Napoleon actually inquired if there was
+'anything in it,' and the thing struck me as so silly that I laughed out
+in his face. It was very wrong of me not to be jealous, wasn't it? Being
+a woman, I suppose I ought to have leapt at the idea, according to all
+the natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span> laws of love. I didn't, and my heart is still tranquil. But
+poor Bruno was more human, and Napoleon has an idea that something is
+going on inside the prison. He is to go there again to-morrow and to let
+me know.</p>
+
+<p>"Such doings at home too! I've been two years in debt to my landlord,
+and at the end of every quarter I've always prayed like a modest woman
+to be allowed to pass by unnoticed. Celebrity has fallen on me at last,
+though, and I'm to go at Easter. Madame de Trop, too, has put the screw
+on, and everybody else is following suit. Yesterday, for example, I had
+the honour of a call from every one in the world to whom I owed
+twopence. Remembering how hard it used to be to get a bill out of these
+people, I find their sudden business ardour humorous. They do not
+deceive me nevertheless. I see the die is cast, the fact is known. I
+have fallen from my high estate of general debtor to everybody and
+become merely an honest woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I suffer from these slings of fortune? Not an atom. When I was rich,
+or seemed to be so, I was often the most miserable woman in the world,
+and now I'm happy, happy, happy!</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one thing makes me a little unhappy. Shall I tell you
+what it is? Yes, I <i>will</i> tell you because your heart is so true, and
+like all brave men you are so tender to all women. It is a girl friend
+of mine&mdash;a very close and dear friend, and she is in trouble. A little
+while ago she was married to a good man, and they love each other dearer
+than life, and there ought to be nothing between them. But there is, and
+it is a very serious thing too, although nobody knows about it but
+herself and me. How shall I tell you? Dearest, you are to think my head
+is on your breast and you cannot see my face while I tell you my poor
+friend's secret. Long ago&mdash;it seems long&mdash;she was the victim of another
+man. That is really the only word for it, because she did not consent.
+But all the same she feels that she has sinned and that nothing on earth
+can wash away the stain. The worst fact is that her husband knows
+nothing about it. This fills her with measureless regret and undying
+remorse. She feels that she ought to have told him, and so her heart is
+full of tears, and she doesn't know what it is her duty to.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"I thought I would ask you to tell me, dearest. You are kind, but you
+mustn't spare her. I didn't. She wanted to draw a veil over her frailty,
+but I wouldn't let her. I think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span> she would like to confess to her
+husband, to pour out her heart to him, and begin again with a clean
+page, but she is afraid. Of course she hasn't really been faithless, and
+I could swear on my life she loves her husband only. And then her sorrow
+is so great, and she is beginning to look worn with lying awake at
+nights, though some people still think she is beautiful. I dare say you
+will say, serve her right for deceiving a good man. So do I sometimes,
+but I feel strangely inconsistent about my poor friend, and a woman has
+a right to be inconsistent, hasn't she? Tell me what I am to say to her,
+and please don't spare her because she is a friend of mine."</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>She lifted her pen from the paper. "He'll understand," she thought.
+"He'll remember our other letters and read between the lines. Well, so
+much the better, and God be good to me!"</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;padding-bottom:.5em'>"Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! I feel like a child&mdash;as if the
+years had gone back with me, or rather as if they had only just begun.
+You have awakened my soul and all the world is different. Nearly
+everything that seemed right to me before seems wrong to me now, and
+<i>vice versa</i>. Life? That wasn't life. It was only existence. I fancy it
+must have been some elder sister of mine who went through everything.
+Think of it! When you were twenty and I was only ten! I'm glad there
+isn't as much difference now. I'm catching up to you&mdash;metaphorically, I
+mean. If I could only do so physically! But what nonsense I'm talking!
+In spite of my poor friend's trouble I can't help talking nonsense
+to-night."</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Two days later Natalina, coming into Roma's bedroom, threw open the
+shutters and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Letter with a foreign postmark, Excellency&mdash;'Sister Angelica, care of
+the Porter.' It was delivered at the Convent, and the porter sent it
+over here."</p>
+
+<p>"Give it to me," said Roma eagerly. "It's quite right. I know whom it is
+for, and if any more letters come for the same person bring them to me
+immediately."</p>
+
+<p>Almost before the maid had left the room Roma had torn the letter open.
+It was dated from a street in Soho.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">My dear Wife</span>,&mdash;As you see, I have reached London, and now I am thinking
+of you always, wondering what sufferings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> are being inflicted upon you
+for my sake and how you meet and bear them. To think of you there, in
+the midst of our enemies, is a spur and an inspiration. Only wait! If my
+absence is cruel to you it is still more hard to me. I will see your
+lovely eyes again before long, and there will be an end of all our
+sadness. Meantime continue to love me, and that will work miracles. It
+will make all the slings and slurs of life seem to be a long way off and
+of no account. Only those who love can know this law of the human heart,
+but how true it is and how beautiful!</p>
+
+<p>"We reached London in the early morning, when the grey old city was
+beginning to stir after its sleepless rest. I had telegraphed the time
+of my arrival to the committee of our association, and early as it was
+some hundreds of our people were at Charing Cross to meet me. They must
+have been surprised to see a man step out of the train in the disguise
+of driver of a wine-cart on the Campagna, but perhaps that helped them
+to understand the position better, and they formed into procession and
+marched to Trafalgar Square as if they had forgotten they were in a
+foreign country.</p>
+
+<p>"To me it was a strange and moving spectacle. The mist like a shroud
+over the great city, some stars of leaden hue paling out overhead, the
+day dawning over the vast square, the wide silence with the far-off hum
+of awakening life, the English workmen stopping to look at us as they
+went by to their work, and our company of dark-bearded men, emigrants
+and exiles, sending their hearts out in sympathy to their brothers in
+the south. As I spoke from the base of the Gordon statue and turned
+towards St. Martin's Church, I could fancy I saw your white-haired
+father on the steps with his little daughter in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"I will write again in a day or two, telling you what we are doing.
+Meantime I enclose a Proclamation to the People, which I wish you to get
+printed and posted up. Take it to old Albert Pelegrino in the Stamperia
+by the Trevi. Tell him to mention the cost and the money shall follow.
+Call at the Piazza Navona and see what is happening to Elena. Poor girl!
+Poor Bruno! And my poor dear little darling!</p>
+
+<p>"Take care of yourself, my dear one. I am always thinking of you. It is
+a fearful thing to have taken up the burden of one who is branded as an
+outcast and an outlaw. I cannot help but reproach myself. There was a
+time when I saw my duty to you in another way, but love came like a
+hurricane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span> out of the skies and swept all sense of duty away. My wife!
+my Roma! You have hazarded everything for me, and some day I will give
+up everything for you.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>D. R."</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,&mdash;Your letter to Sister Angelica arrived safely, and worked
+more miracles in her cloistered heart than ever happened to the 'Blessed
+Bambino.' Before it came I was always thinking, 'Where is he now? Is he
+having his breakfast? Or is it dinner, according to the difference of
+time and longitude?' All I knew was that you had travelled north, and
+though the sun doesn't ordinarily set in that direction, the sky over
+Monte Mario used to glow for my special pleasure like the gates of the
+New Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters are so precious that I will ask you not to fill them with
+useless things. Don't tell me to love you. The idea! Didn't I say I
+should think of you always? I do! I think of you when I go to bed at
+night, and that is like opening a jewel-case in the moonlight. I think
+of you when I am asleep, and that is like an invisible bridge which
+unites us in our dreams; and I think of you when I wake in the morning,
+and that is like a cage of song-birds that sing in my breast the whole
+day long.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so your own
+special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off against those
+official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so my letter will look
+like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box. Let me bring my
+despatches up to date.</p>
+
+<p>"Military rule severer than ever, and poverty and misery on all sides.
+Families of reserve soldiers starving, and meetings of chief citizens to
+succour them. Donation from the King and from the 'Black' Charity Circle
+of St. Peter. Even the clergy are sending francs, so none can question
+their sincerity. Bureau of Labour besieged by men out of work, and
+offices occupied by Carabineers. People eating maize in polenta and
+granturco with the certainty of sickness to follow. Red Cross Society
+organised as in time of war, and many sick and wounded hidden in houses.</p>
+
+<p>"And now for more personal matters. The proclamation is in hand, and
+paid for, and will be posted first thing in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> morning. From the
+printer's I went on to the Piazza Navona and found a wilderness of woe.
+Elena has gone away, leaving an ambiguous letter behind her, saying that
+she wished her Madonna to be given to me, as she would have no need of
+it in the place she was going to. This led the old people to believe
+that for the loss of her son and husband she had become demented and had
+destroyed herself. I pretended to think differently, and warned them to
+say nothing of their daughter's disappearance, thinking that Bruno might
+hear of it, and find food for still further suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"Lawyer Napoleon F. has seen the poor soul again, and been here this
+evening to tell me the result. It will seem to you incredible. Bruno
+will do nothing to help in his own defence. Talks of 'treachery' and the
+'King's pardon.' Napoleon F. thinks the Camorra is at work with him, and
+tells how criminals in the prisons of Italy have a league of crime, with
+captains, corporals, and cadets. My own reading of the mystery is
+different. I think the Camorra in this case is the Council, and the only
+design is to entrap by treachery one of the 'greater delinquents not in
+custody.' I want to find out where Charles Minghelli is at present.
+Nobody seems to know.</p>
+
+<p>"As for me, what do you suppose is my last performance? I've sold my
+jewels! Yesterday I sent for one of the <i>strozzini</i>, and the old Shylock
+came this evening and cheated me unmercifully. No matter! What do I want
+with jewellery, or a fine house, and servants to follow me about as if I
+were a Cardinal? If <i>you</i> can do without them so can I. But you need not
+say you are anxious about what is happening to me. I'm as happy as the
+day is long. I am happy because I love you, and that is everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one thing troubles me&mdash;the grief of the poor girl I told you of.
+She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel as if I
+were possessed by her secret. In fact, I'm afraid I'll blab it out to
+somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her. She tries to persuade
+herself that because her soul did not consent she was really not to
+blame. That is the thing that women are always saying, isn't it? They
+draw this distinction when it is too late, and use it as a quibble to
+gloss over their fault. Oh, I gave it her! I told her she should have
+thought of that in time, and died rather than yield. It was all very
+fine to talk of a minute of weakness&mdash;mere weakness of bodily will, not
+of virtue, but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span> world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has
+fallen she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I felt she
+ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so sure that she
+should tell her husband, seeing that it would so shock and hurt him. She
+thinks that after one has done wrong the best thing to do next is to say
+nothing about it. There <i>is</i> something in that, isn't there?</p>
+
+<p>"One thing I must say for the poor girl&mdash;she has been a different woman
+since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking thing to
+say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in the convent,
+and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized and it was agreed
+with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to read in the Lives of the
+Saints that the darkest moments of 'the drunkenness of sin' were the
+instants of salvation. Who knows? Perhaps the very fact by which the
+world usually stamps a woman as bad is in this case the fact of her
+conversion. As for my friend, she used to be the vainest young thing in
+Rome, and now she cares nothing for the world and its vanities.</p>
+
+<p>"Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands&mdash;why can't I do so
+too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level, and prove
+that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite blind. I'm not so
+old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all events nobody could love you
+more. Good-night! I open my window to say my last good-night to the
+stars over Monte Mario, for that's where England is! How bright they are
+to-night! How beautiful! </p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her
+immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have a doctor," she said. "It's perfectly heartless to keep me
+without one all this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "you know quite well that but for your own
+express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along."</p>
+
+<p>"For mercy's sake, don't nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it
+be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now."</p>
+
+<p>Fedi was the Pope's physician, and therefore the most costly and
+fashionable doctor in Rome.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Fedi came with an assistant who carried a little case of
+instruments. He examined the Countess, her breast, her side, and the
+glands under her arms, shot out a solemn under-lip, put two fingers
+inside his collar, twisted his head from side to side, and announced
+that the patient must have a nurse immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear that, Roma? Doctor says that I must have a nurse. Of course
+I must have a nurse. I'll have one of the English nursing Sisters.
+Everybody has them now. They're foreigners, and if they talk they can't
+do much mischief."</p>
+
+<p>The Sister was sent for. She was a mild and gentle creature, in blue and
+white, but she talked perpetually of her Mother Superior, who had been
+bedridden for fifteen years, yet smiled sweetly all day long. That
+exasperated the Countess and fretted her. When the doctor came again the
+patient was worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Your aunt must have dainties to tempt her appetite and so keep up her
+strength."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have everything you wish for, auntie."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I wish for strawberries. Everybody eats them who is ill at this
+season."</p>
+
+<p>The strawberries were bought, but the Countess scarcely touched them,
+and they were finally consumed in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>When the doctor came a third time the patient was much emaciated and her
+skin had become sallow and earthy.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be right to conceal from you the gravity of your
+condition, Countess," he said. "In such a case we always think it best
+to tell a patient to make her peace with God."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say that, doctor," whimpered the poor withered creature on
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"But while there's life there's hope, you know; and meantime I'll send
+you an opiate to relieve the pain."</p>
+
+<p>When the doctor was gone, the Countess sent for Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"That Fedi is a fool," she said. "I don't know what people see in him. I
+should like to try the Bambino of Ara C&oelig;li. The Cardinal Vicar had
+it, and why shouldn't I? They say it has worked miracles. It may be
+dear, but if I die you will always reproach yourself. If you are short
+of money you can sign a bill at six months, and before that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span> poor
+maniac woman will be gone and you'll be the wife of the Baron."</p>
+
+<p>"If you really think the Bambino will...."</p>
+
+<p>"It will! I know it will."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I will send for it."</p>
+
+<p>Roma sent a letter to the Superior of the Franciscans at the Friary of
+Ara C&oelig;li asking that the little figure of the infant Christ, which is
+said to restore the sick, should be sent to her aunt, who was near to
+death.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli,
+requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little
+beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to see
+everything except Roma herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to sell up my furniture," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"All of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Except what is in my aunt's room and the room of her nurse, and such
+things in the kitchen, the servants' apartments, and my own bedroom as
+are absolutely necessary for present purposes."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right. When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Within a week if possible."</p>
+
+<p>The Bambino came in a carriage with two horses, and the people in the
+street went down on their knees as it passed. One of the friars in
+priest's surplice carried it in a box with the lid open, and two friars
+in brown habits walked before it with lifted candles. But as the painted
+image in its scarlet clothes and jewels entered the Countess's bedroom
+with its grim and ghostly procession, and was borne like a baby mummy to
+the foot of her bed, it terrified her, and she screamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it away!" she shrieked. "Do you want to frighten me out of my
+life? Take it away!"</p>
+
+<p>The grim and ghostly procession went out. Its visit had lasted thirty
+seconds and cost a hundred francs.</p>
+
+<p>When the doctor came again the outline of the Countess's writhing form
+had shrunk to the lines of a skeleton under the ruffled counterpane.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the Bambino you want&mdash;it's the priest," he said, and then the
+poor mortal who was still afraid of dying began to whimper.</p>
+
+<p>"And, Sister," said the doctor, "as the Countess suffers so much pain,
+you may increase the opiate from a dessert-spoonful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span> to a tablespoonful,
+and give it twice as frequently."</p>
+
+<p>That evening the Sister went home for a few hours' leave, and Roma took
+her place by the sick-bed. The patient was more selfish and exacting
+than ever, but Roma had begun to feel a softening towards the poor
+tortured being, and was trying her best to do her duty.</p>
+
+<p>It was dusk, and the Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the
+increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma
+brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's
+foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's
+toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by
+the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she
+began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with
+death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then
+the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils
+were pencilled with the rosy hues of health and youth.</p>
+
+<p>Roma had turned on the electric light, but the glare oppressed the
+patient, and she switched it off again. The night had now closed in, and
+the only light in the room came from the little red oil-lamp which
+burned before the shrine.</p>
+
+<p>The drug began to operate, and its first effect was to loosen the old
+lady's tongue. She began to talk of priests in a tone of contempt and
+braggadocio.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate priests," she said, "and I can't bear to have them about me. Why
+so? Because they are always about the dead. Their black cassocks make me
+think of funerals. The sight of a graveyard makes me faint. Besides,
+priests and confessions go together, and why should a woman confess if
+she can avoid it? When people confess they have to give up the thing
+they confess to, or they can't get absolution. Fedi's a fool. Give it up
+indeed! I might as well talk of giving up the bed that's under me."</p>
+
+<p>Roma sat on a stool by the bedside, listening intently, yet feeling she
+had no right to listen. The drug was rapidly intoxicating the Countess,
+who went on to talk as if some one else had been in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"A priest would be sure to ask questions about that girl. I would have
+to tell him why the Baron put me here to look after her, and then he
+would prate about the Sacraments and want me to give up everything."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Countess laughed a hard, evil laugh, and Roma felt an icy shudder
+pass over her.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm tied,' said the Baron. 'But you must see that she waits for me.
+Everything depends upon you, and if all comes out well....'"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman's tongue was thickening, and her eyes in the dull red
+light were glazed and stupid.</p>
+
+<p>Roma sat motionless and silent, watching with her own dilated eyes the
+grinning sinner, as she poured out the story of the plot for her capture
+and corruption. At that moment she hated her aunt, the unclean,
+malignant, unpitying thing who had poisoned her heart against her father
+and tried to break down every spiritual impulse of her soul.</p>
+
+<p>The diabolical horse-laughter came again, and then the devil who had
+loosened the tongue of the dying woman in the intoxication of the drug
+made her reveal the worst secret of her tortured conscience.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about
+the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband
+was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror."</p>
+
+<p>The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow
+with a roaring in her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the
+Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me."</p>
+
+<p>The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible.
+The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues,
+her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the
+innocence of sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with
+sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly
+rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her
+to the depths of abasement.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now
+different.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma! Is that you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You
+know that quite well."</p>
+
+<p>Roma turned on the lights.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma tried to prevaricate.</p>
+
+<p>"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug
+to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was
+all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a
+lie, I tell you...."</p>
+
+<p>The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did
+not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing
+so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table
+by her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one,
+some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother,
+and her tears had begun to fall.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the
+prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of
+death&mdash;Amen!"</p>
+
+<p>When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying
+and was comforted.</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps
+labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces
+of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were
+posted outside the street door announcing a sale of "Old and New Objects
+of Art" in the "Appartamento Volonna." Then came the "Grand
+Esposizione"&mdash;it was on Sunday morning&mdash;and the following day the
+auction.</p>
+
+<p>Roma built herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the
+apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room
+combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people
+assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing
+at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore
+Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of
+servility in his long face prevailed over the look of arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Donna Roma. May I perhaps...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come in."</p>
+
+<p>The lanky person settled himself comfortably and began on a confidential
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>"The Baron, sincerely sorry to hear of your distresses, sends me to say
+that you have only to make a request and this unseemly scene shall come
+to an end. In fact, I have authority to act on his behalf&mdash;as an unknown
+friend, you know&mdash;and stop these proceedings even at the eleventh hour.
+Only a word from you&mdash;one word&mdash;and everything shall be settled
+satisfactorily."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was silent for a moment, and the Commendatore concluded that his
+persuasions had prevailed. Somebody else knocked at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," said the Commendatore largely.</p>
+
+<p>This time it was the auctioneer. "Time to begin the sale, Signorina. Any
+commands?" He glanced from Roma to Angelelli with looks of
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"I think her Excellency has perhaps something to say," said Angelelli.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever. Go on," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>The auctioneer disappeared through the door, and Angelelli put on his
+hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have no answer for his Excellency?"</p>
+
+<p>"None."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bene</i>," said the Commendatore, and he went off whistling softly.</p>
+
+<p>The auction began. At a table on a platform where the piano used to
+stand sat the chief auctioneer with his ivory hammer. Beneath him at a
+similar table sat an assistant. As the men in red caps brought up the
+goods the two auctioneers took the bidding together, repeating each
+other in the manner of actor and prompter at an Italian theatre.</p>
+
+<p>The English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her niece
+immediately. The invalid, now frightfully emaciated and no longer able
+to sit up, was lying back on her lace-edged pillows. She was plucking
+with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma
+entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath. But the
+sound that came from her throat was like a voice shouted on a windy
+headland, and hardly louder than the muffled voices of the auctioneers
+as they found their way through the walls.</p>
+
+<p>Roma sat down on the stool by the bedside, stroked the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span> cat with the
+gold cross suspended from its neck, and listened to the words within the
+room and without as they fell on her ear alternately.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma, you are treating me shamefully. While I am lying here helpless
+you are having an auction&mdash;actually an auction&mdash;at the door of my very
+room."</p>
+
+<p>"Camera da letto della Signorina! Bed in <i>noce</i>, richly ornamented with
+fruit and flowers." "Shall I say fifty?" "Thank you, fifty." "Fifty."
+"Fifty-five." "Fifty-five." "No advance on fifty-five?" "Gentlemen,
+gentlemen! The beautiful bed of a beautiful lady, and only fifty-five
+offered for it!..."</p>
+
+<p>"If you wanted money you had only to ask the Baron, and if you didn't
+wish to do that, you had only to sign a bill at six months, as I told
+you before. But no! You wanted to humble and degrade me. That's all it
+is. You've done it, too, and I'm dying in disgrace...."</p>
+
+<p>"Secretaire in walnut! Think, ladies, of the secrets this writing-desk
+might whisper if it would! How much shall I say?" "Sixty lire." "Sixty."
+"Sixty-five." "Sixty-five." "Writing-desk in walnut with the love
+letters hardly out of it, and only sixty-five lire offered!..."</p>
+
+<p>"This is what comes of a girl going her own way. Society is not so very
+exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the
+respectabilities. And quite right, too! Pity they could not be the only
+ones to suffer, but they can't. Their friends and relations are the real
+sufferers; and as for me...."</p>
+
+<p>The Countess's voice broke down into a maudlin whimper. Without a word
+Roma rose up to go. As she did so she met Natalina coming into the room
+with the usual morning plate of forced strawberries. They had cost four
+francs the pound.</p>
+
+<p>Some time afterwards, from her writing-table in the boudoir-bedroom,
+Roma heard a shuffling of feet on the circular iron stairs. The people
+were going down to the studio. Presently the auctioneer's voice came up
+as from a vault.</p>
+
+<p>"And now what am I offered for this large and important work of modern
+art?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a ripple of derisive laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"A fountain worthy, when finished, to rank with the masterpieces of
+ancient Rome."</p>
+
+<p>More derisive laughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now is the time for anti-clericals. Gentlemen, don't all speak at once.
+Every day is not a festa. How much? Nothing at all? Not even a soldo?
+Too bad. Art is its own reward."</p>
+
+<p>Still more laughter, followed by the shuffling of feet coming up the
+iron stairs, and a familiar voice on the landing&mdash;it was the Princess
+Bellini's&mdash;"Madonna mia! what a fright it is, to be sure!"</p>
+
+<p>Then another voice&mdash;it was Madame Bella's&mdash;"I thought so the day of the
+private view, when she behaved so shockingly to the dear Baron."</p>
+
+<p>Then a third voice&mdash;it was the voice of Olga the journalist&mdash;"I said the
+Baron would pay her out, and he has. Before the day is over she'll not
+have a stick left or a roof to cover her."</p>
+
+<p>Roma dropped her head on to the table. Try as she might to keep a brave
+front, the waves of shame and humiliation were surging over her.</p>
+
+<p>Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Natalina with a telegram:
+"Letter received; my apartment is paid for to end of June; why not take
+possession of it?"</p>
+
+<p>From that moment onward nothing else mattered. The tumultuous noises in
+the drawing-room died down, and there was no sound but the voices of the
+auctioneer and his clerk, which rumbled like a drum in the empty
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>It was four o'clock. Opening the window, Roma heard the music of a band.
+At that a spirit of defiance took possession of her, and she put on her
+hat and cloak. As she passed through the empty drawing-room, the
+auctioneer, who was counting his notes with the dry rustle of a
+winnowing machine, looked up with his beady eyes and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It has come out fairly well, Madame&mdash;better than we might have
+expected."</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the piazza she hailed a cab. "The Pincio!" she cried, and
+settled in her seat. When she returned an hour afterwards she wrote her
+usual letter to David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"High doings to-day! Have had a business on my own account, and done a
+roaring trade! Disposed of everything in the shop except what I wanted
+for myself. It isn't every trades-woman who can say that much, and I'm
+only a beginner to boot!</p>
+
+<p>"Soberly, I've sold up. Being under notice to leave this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span> apartment, I
+didn't want all this useless furniture, so I thought I might as well get
+done with it in good time. Besides, what right had I to soft beds and
+fine linen while you were an exile, sleeping Heaven knows where? And
+then my aunt, who is very ill and wants all sorts of luxuries, is rather
+expensive. So for the past week my drawing-room has been as full of
+fluting as a frog-pond at sunset, and on Sunday morning people were
+banging away at my poor piano as if it had been a hurdy-gurdy at an
+osteria.</p>
+
+<p>"But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I was
+selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have laughed to
+hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was so silly that I
+could have cried, but just at the moment when I felt a wee bit badly,
+down came your telegram like an angel from Heaven&mdash;and what do you think
+I did? The old Adam, or say the new Eve, took possession of me, and the
+minute the people were gone I hired a cab&mdash;a common garden cab, Roman
+variety, with a horse on its last legs and a driver in ragged
+tweeds&mdash;and drove off to the Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk
+that I <i>wasn't</i> done, and I did! They were all there, my dear friends
+and former flatterers&mdash;every one of them who has haunted my house for
+years, asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of
+sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all together for
+my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and between
+them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and I might have
+been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the consciousness they betrayed of
+my presence. Was I humiliated? Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was
+proud. I knew the day would come, the day was near, when they must try
+to forget all this and to persuade themselves it had never been, when
+for my own sake, even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they
+would come back humble, so humble and afraid.</p>
+
+<p>"So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them. And
+when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band stopped, and
+we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy and unashamed. Oh,
+David Rossi! If you could have been there!</p>
+
+<p>"I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news. Lawyer
+Napoleon, who continues to go to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span> Regina C&oelig;li to see the bewildering
+Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes! If the God who
+settles the question of sex had only remembered to make your wife the
+procurator-general, think how different the history of the world would
+have been! The worst of it is he mightn't have remembered to make you a
+woman; and in any case, things being so nicely settled as they are, I
+don't think I want to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the
+wind. It's ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm."</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"P.S.&mdash;My poor friend is still in trouble. Although not a religious
+woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night on going to
+bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would commit suicide, so
+frightful are the visions that enter her head sometimes. I've told her
+how wrong it would be to do away with herself, if only for the sake of
+her husband, who is away. Didn't I tell you he was away at present? It
+would hurt you dreadfully if <i>I</i> were to die before <i>you</i> return,
+wouldn't it? But I'm dying already to hear what you think of her. Write!
+Write! Write!"</p>
+
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+<p>When the King of Terrors could no longer be beaten back the Countess
+sent for the priest. Before he arrived she insisted on making her toilet
+and receiving him in the dressing-gown which she used to wear when
+people made ante-camera to her in the days of her gaiety and strength.</p>
+
+<p>During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room
+with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something
+personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the
+indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a
+sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs.</p>
+
+<p>The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of
+the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said,
+"she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the
+Apostolic Blessing."</p>
+
+<p>He went away to prepare for these offices, and the English Sister came
+to see Roma. "The Countess is like another woman already," she said, but
+Roma did not go into the sickroom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The priest returned in half-an-hour. He had now two assistants, one
+carrying the cross and banner, the other a vessel of holy water and the
+volume of the Roman ritual. The Sister and Felice met them at the door
+with lighted candles.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace be to this house!" said the priest.</p>
+
+<p>And the assistants said, "And to all dwelling in it."</p>
+
+<p>Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice
+and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The
+little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as
+an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table,
+her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with
+various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two
+o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were
+drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned
+like stars.</p>
+
+<p>The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the
+house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the
+perfumed couch.</p>
+
+<p>Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English
+Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that
+she had.</p>
+
+<p>Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of
+joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I
+have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to
+God."</p>
+
+<p>Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a
+high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner.</p>
+
+<p>"You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner,
+but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am
+sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate
+your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your
+soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain."</p>
+
+<p>But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her
+worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little,
+certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for
+the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me
+on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church
+floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the
+best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo."</p>
+
+<p>Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart
+felt sore.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured
+body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more
+and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular
+face was snapping all round.</p>
+
+<p>The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset,
+but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A
+band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with
+the petitions of the "breathing forth."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was
+on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.</p>
+
+<p>The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it
+fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Ges&ugrave;,
+Ges&ugrave;, Ges&ugrave;!"</p>
+
+<p>The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and
+the priest was praying fast and loud:</p>
+
+<p>"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into
+the bosom of Abraham."</p>
+
+<p>At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her
+diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the
+counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her
+head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in
+her chest. At last she became delirious.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill
+it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to
+his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the
+soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may
+live to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span> Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life
+she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe
+out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."</p>
+
+<p>The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped.
+A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted,
+and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the
+room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an
+end.</p>
+
+<p>Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.</p>
+
+<p>The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down
+behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last.
+How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the
+deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor,
+unhappy fellow-sinner.</p>
+
+<p>"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was
+pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death
+made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy
+in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets
+off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self
+forgiven!...</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for
+you next time, great and serious news."</p>
+
+<h3>XI</h3>
+
+<p>Roma fulfilled her promise. The funeral pomps, if the Countess could
+have seen them, would have satisfied her vain little mind. On going to
+the parish church the procession covered the entire length of the
+street. First the banner with skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass, then a
+confraternity of lay people, then twenty paid mourners in evening dress,
+then fifty Capuchins at two francs a head with yellow candles at three
+francs each, then the cross, then the secular clergy two and two, then
+the parish priest in surplice and black stole with servitors and
+acolytes, then a stately funeral car<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span> with four horses richly harnessed,
+and finally four coaches with coachmen and footmen in gala livery. The
+bier was loaded with flowers and streamers, and the cost of the cort&egrave;ge
+was nearly a thousand francs.</p>
+
+<p>As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her.
+It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black
+band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features
+hard as iron, made a painful impression.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo," he said, and then he added
+something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving
+your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person
+whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I
+would earnestly counsel you not to commit it."</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped
+her to enter it, and then said: "Remember, my attitude is the same as
+ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of
+need."</p>
+
+<p>When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the
+cort&egrave;ge was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages.
+Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The
+parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes
+so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins
+for to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church
+of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches
+discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of
+the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess's friends, like
+herself, disliked the sight of churchyards.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Deposit, a low-roofed chamber under a chapel, contained
+tressels for every kind and condition of the dead. One place was
+labelled "Reserved for distinguished corpses." The coffin of the
+Countess was put to rest there until the buriers should come to bury it
+in the morning, the wreaths and flowers and streamers were laid over it,
+the priest sprinkled it again with holy water, and then the funeral was
+at an end.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not go back yet," said Roma, and thereupon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span> priest and his
+assistants stepped into the carriages. The drivers lit cigarettes and
+started off at a brisk trot.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a gorgeous funeral, and the soul of the Countess would have
+been satisfied. But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the
+time, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."</p>
+
+<p>Roma bought a wreath of wild flowers at a stall outside the cemetery
+gates, and by help of a paper given to her in the office she found the
+grave of little Joseph. It was in a shelf of vaults like ovens, each
+with its marble door, and a photograph on the front. They were all
+photographs of children, sweet smiling faces, a choir of little angels,
+now singing round the throne in heaven. The sun was shining on them, and
+the tall cypress trees were singing softly in the light wind overhead.
+Here and there a mother was trimming an oil-lamp that hung before her
+baby's face, and listening to the little voice that was not dead but
+speaking to her soul's soul.</p>
+
+<p>Roma hung her wreath on Joseph's vault and turned away. Going out of the
+gates she met a great concourse of people. At their head was a Capuchin
+carrying a black wooden cross with sponge, spear, hammer and nails
+attached. Two boys in blue and white carried candles by his side. The
+crowd behind were of the poorest, chiefly women and girls with shawls
+and handkerchiefs on their heads. It was Friday, and they were going to
+the Church of San Lorenzo to make the procession of the Stations of the
+Cross. Scarcely knowing why she did so, Roma followed them.</p>
+
+<p>The people filled the Basilica. Their devotion was deep and touching. As
+they followed the friar from station to station they sang in monotonous
+tones the strophes of the <i>Stabat Mater</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mother, fountain of love, make me feel the strength of sorrow that
+I may mourn with thee."</p>
+
+<p>Their prayer seemed hardly needful. They were the starving wives and
+daughters of men in prison, men in hospital, and reserve soldiers. Poor
+wrecks on life's shore, thrown up by the tide, they had turned to
+religion for consolation, and were sending up their cry to God.</p>
+
+<p>When they had finished their course and ended their canticles of grief
+they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was
+a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross
+and a rosary hung<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span> from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their
+lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through,
+and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the
+silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their
+sufferings upon them for their sins, that they must confess their sins,
+in order that their holy mother, the Church, might save them from their
+sins, there was a deep hum in the air like the reverberation in a great
+shell.</p>
+
+<p>A line of confessional boxes stood in each of the church aisles, and as
+the preacher described the sorrows of the man-God, His passion, His
+agony, His blood, the women and girls, weeping audibly, got up one by
+one and went over to confess. No sooner had one of them arisen than
+another took her place, and each as she rose to her feet looked calm and
+comforted.</p>
+
+<p>The emotion of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she
+could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the
+trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes
+had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it
+she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face.
+She had seen it before somewhere&mdash;perhaps in the Pope's procession.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a poor girl with a handkerchief on her head, who had
+knelt down crying, was getting up with shining eyes. Roma was shaken by
+violent tremors. An overpowering desire had come upon her to confess.
+For a moment she held on to a chair, lest she should fall to the floor.
+Then by a sudden impulse, in a kind of delirium, scarcely knowing what
+she was doing until it was done, she flung herself in the place the girl
+had risen from, and with a palpitating heart said in a tremulous voice
+through the little brass grating:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, I am a great sinner&mdash;hear me, hear me!"</p>
+
+<p>The measured breathing inside the confessional was arrested, and the
+peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic cheeks and blazing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, my daughter, do not agitate yourself. Say the Confiteor."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to speak, but her words were hardly audible or coherent.</p>
+
+<p>"I confess ... I confess ... I cannot, Father."</p>
+
+<p>A pinch of snuff dropped from the old man's fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not a Christian?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have not been baptized, but I was educated in a convent, and...."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I cannot hear your confession. Baptism is the door of the Church,
+and without it...."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am in great trouble. For Our Lady's sake, listen to me. Oh,
+listen to me, Father, only listen to me."</p>
+
+<p>Although accustomed to the sufferings of the human heart, a measureless
+pity came over the old priest, and he said in a kind and tender voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, my daughter. I cannot give you absolution, for you are not a
+child of the Church; but I am an old man, and if I can help your poor
+soul to bear its burden, God forbid that I should turn you away."</p>
+
+<p>In a torrent of hot words Roma poured out her trouble, hiding nothing,
+extenuating nothing, and naming and blaming no one. At length the
+throbbing breath and quivering voice died down, and there was a moment's
+silence, in which the dull rumble in the church seemed to come from far
+away. Then the voice behind the grating said in tender tones:</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, you have committed no sin in this case and have nothing to
+repent of. That you should be troubled by scruples shows that your soul
+is pure and that you are living in communion with God. Your bodily
+health is reduced by nervousness and anxiety, and it is natural that you
+should imagine that you have sinned where you have not sinned. That is
+the sweet grace of most women, but how few men! What sin there has been
+is not yours; therefore go home, and God comfort you."</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear Father ... it is so good of you, but have you forgotten...."</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband? No! Whether you should tell him it is beyond my power to
+say. In itself I should be against it, for why should you disturb his
+conscience and endanger the peace of a family? Your scruples about
+Nature coming to convict you, being without grounds of reason, are
+temptations of the devil and should be put behind your back. But that
+your marriage was a religious one only, that the other person (you did
+right not to name him, my child) may use that circumstance to separate
+you, and that your confession to your husband, if it came too late,
+would come prejudiced and worse than in vain, these are facts that make
+it difficult to advise you for your safety and peace of mind. Let me
+consult some one wiser than myself. Let me, perhaps, take your secret to
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> high place, a kindly ear, a saintly heart, a venerable and holy head.
+Come again, or leave me your name if you will, and if that holy person
+has anything to say you shall hear of it. Meantime go home in peace and
+content, my daughter, and may God bring you into His true fold at last."</p>
+
+<p>When Roma got up from the grating of the confessional she felt like one
+who had passed through a great sickness and was now better. Her whole
+being was going through a miraculous convalescence. A great weight had
+been lifted off; she was renewed as with a new soul and her very body
+felt light as air.</p>
+
+<p>The preacher was still preaching in his tremulous tones, and the women
+and girls were still crying, as Roma passed out of the church, but now
+she heard all as in a dream. It was not until she reached the portico,
+and a blind beggar rattled his can in her face, that the spell was
+broken, so sudden and mysterious was the transition when she came back
+from heaven to earth.</p>
+
+<h3>XII</h3>
+
+<p>By the first post next morning "Sister Angelica" received a letter from
+David Rossi.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"Dearest,&mdash;Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and
+perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when I
+think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read between
+the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some of your
+happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from rushing back to
+you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some day, my dear one. I
+shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in the
+Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are still young and we shall live.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done
+amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees, correspondence
+early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest, and you shall hear all
+about it presently. I am proud that I judged rightly of the moral
+grandeur of your nature, and that it is possible to tell you everything.</p>
+
+<p>"We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our organisation.
+Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united action. Europe
+seems to be ready for a complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span> change, but the first great act must
+be done in Rome. I find encouragement everywhere. The brotherly union of
+the peoples is going on. A power stronger than brute force is sweeping
+through the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put upon him
+to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am troubled. It would be
+a lasting grief to me if his mind were poisoned. Charles Minghelli being
+in prison in the disguise of a prisoner means that anything may happen.
+When the man came to me after his dismissal in London, it was to ask
+help to assassinate the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the
+other side. The secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public
+trial is a hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been
+abolished in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and
+jails of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which
+helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not a
+trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent to
+incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put upon
+treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from himself and
+the people whose only occupation in life is to secure convictions.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more
+guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast had
+broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself any longer.
+It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the only part of use
+that is subject to diseases, and you must save her from a disease of the
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>"As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one opinion.
+I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the sin, where it
+exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has been pardoned in
+secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in David. Christ pardoned
+it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the concealment, the lying and
+duplicity, these cannot be pardoned until they have been confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought of.
+There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your friend. If
+he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he may intimidate
+her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband. This would make her
+miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her will being broken, it might
+even make her yield. Or the man may really tell her husband<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span> in order to
+insult and outrage both of them. <i>If he does so, where is she? Is her
+husband to believe her story then?</i></p>
+
+<p>"To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her
+husband's love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will think,
+'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will love her more
+than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every man wishes to believe
+that the flower he plucks is flawless. But his higher nature will
+conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She loves me, I love her, she is
+innocent, and if any blow is to be struck at her it must go through me.'</p>
+
+<p>"My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it was
+very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of you to be
+severe with her too, and to make her go through purgatorial fires. That
+is what good women always do with the injured of their own sex. It is a
+kind of pledge and badge of their purity, and it is a safeguard and
+shield, whatever the unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to
+the poor soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your
+tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation of your
+soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of gold. Until
+we meet again, my darling,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>D. R."</p>
+
+<h3>XIII</h3>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">My Dear David Rossi</span>,&mdash;All day long I've been carrying your letter round
+like a reliquary, taking a peep at it in cabs, and even, when I dare, in
+omnibuses and the streets.</p>
+
+<p>"What you say about Bruno has put me in a fever, and I have written to
+the Director-General for permission to visit the prison. Even Lawyer
+Napoleon is of opinion that Bruno is being made a victim of that secret
+inquisition. No Holy Inquisition was ever more unscrupulous. Lawyer
+N. says the authorities in Italy have inherited the traditions of a bad
+r&eacute;gime. To do evil to prevent others from doing it is horrible. But in
+this case it is doing evil to prevent others from doing good. I am
+satisfied that Bruno is being tempted to betray you. If I could only
+take his place! <i>Would their plots have any effect upon me</i>? I should
+die first.</p>
+
+<p>"And now about my friend. I can hardly hold my pen when I write of her.
+What you say is so good, so noble. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span> might have known what you would
+think, and yet....</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, how can I go on? Can't you divine what I wish to tell you?
+Your letter compels me to confess. Come what may, I can hold off no
+longer. Didn't you guess who my poor friend was? I thought you would
+remember our former correspondence when you pretended to love somebody
+else. You haven't thought of it apparently, and that is only another
+proof&mdash;a bitter sweet one this time&mdash;of your love and trust. You put me
+so high that you never imagined that I could be speaking of myself. I
+was, and my poor friend is my poor self.</p>
+
+<p>"It has made me suffer all along to see what a pedestal of purity you
+placed me on. The letters you wrote before you told me you loved me,
+when you were holding off, made me ashamed because I knew I was not
+worthy. More than once when you spoke of me as so good, I couldn't look
+into your eyes. I felt an impulse to cry, 'No, no, no,' and to smirch
+the picture you were painting. Yet how could I do it? What woman who
+loves a man can break the idol in his heart? She can only struggle to
+lift herself up to it. That was what I tried to do, and it is not my
+fault that it is not done.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been much to blame. There were moments when duty should have
+made me speak. One such moment was before we married. Do you remember
+that I tried to tell you something? You were kind, and you would not
+listen. 'The past is past,' you said, and I was only too happy to gloss
+it over. You didn't know what I wished to say, or you would not have
+silenced me. I knew, and I have suffered ever since. I <i>had</i> to speak,
+and you see how I have spoken. And now I feel as if I had tricked you. I
+have got you to commit yourself to opinions and to a line of conduct.
+Forgive me! I will not hold you to anything. Take it all back, and I
+shall have no right to complain.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, there are features in my own case which I did not present to
+you in my friend's. One of them was the fear of being found out.
+Dearest, I must not shield myself behind the sweet excuse you find for
+me. I <i>did</i> think of the other man. It wasn't that I was afraid that he
+would intimidate me, and so corrupt my love. Not all the tyrannies of
+the world could do that now. But if from revenge or a desire to wrest me
+away from you by making you cast me off he told you his story before I
+had told you mine! That was a day-long and night-long terror, and now I
+confess it lest you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span> should think me better than I am.</p>
+
+<p>"Another thing you did not know. Dearest, I would give my life to spare
+you the explanation, but I must tell you everything. You know who the
+man is, and it is true before God that he alone was to blame. But my own
+fault came afterwards. Instead of cutting him off, I continued to be on
+good terms with him, to take the income he allowed me from my father's
+estate, and even to think of him as my future husband. And when your
+speech in the piazza seemed to endanger my prospects I set out to
+destroy you.</p>
+
+<p>"It is terrible. How can I tell you and not die of shame? Now you know
+how much I deceived you, and the infamy of my purpose makes me afraid to
+ask for pardon. To think that I was no better than a Delilah when I met
+you first! But Heaven stepped in and saved you. How you worked upon me!
+First, you re-created my father for me, and I saw him as he really was,
+and not as I had been taught to think of him. Then you gave me my soul,
+and I saw myself. Darling, do not hate me. Your great heart could not be
+capable of a cruelty like that if you knew what I suffered.</p>
+
+<p>"Last of all love came, and I wanted to hold on to it. Oh, how I wanted
+to hold on to it! That was how it came about that I went on and on
+without telling you. It was a sort of gambling, a kind of delirium.
+Everything that happened I took as a penance. Come poverty, shame,
+neglect, what matter? It was only wiping out a sinful past, and bringing
+me nearer to you. But when at last he who had injured me threatened to
+injure you <i>through me</i>, I was in despair. You could never imagine what
+mad notions came to me then. I even thought of killing myself, to end
+and cover up everything. But no, I could not break your heart like that.
+Besides, the very act would have told you something, and it was terrible
+to think that when I was dead you might find out all this pitiful story.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you know everything, dearest. I have kept nothing back. As you see,
+I am not only my poor friend, but some one worse&mdash;myself. Can you
+forgive me? I dare not ask it. But put me out of suspense. Write. Or
+better still, telegraph. One word&mdash;only one. It will be enough.</p>
+
+<p>"I would love to send you my love, but to-night I dare not. I have loved
+you from the first, and I can never do anything but love you, whatever
+happens. I think you would forgive me if you could realise that I am in
+the world only to love you, and that the worst of my offences comes of
+loving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span> you more than reason or honour itself. Whatever you do, I am
+yours, and I can only consecrate my life to you.</p>
+
+<p>"It is daybreak, and the cross of St. Peter's is hanging spectral white
+above the mists of morning. Is it a symbol of hope, I wonder? The dawn
+is coming up from the south-east. It would travel quicker to the
+north-west if it loved you as much as I do. I have been writing this
+letter over and over again all night long. Do you remember the letter
+you made me burn, the one containing all your secrets? Here is a letter
+containing mine&mdash;but how much meaner and more perilous! Your poor
+unhappy girl,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>XIV</h3>
+
+<p>Next day Roma removed into her new quarters. A few trunks containing her
+personal belongings, the picture of her father and Elena's Madonna, were
+all she took with her. A broker glanced at the rest of her goods and
+gave a price for the lot. Most of the plaster casts in the studio were
+broken up and carted away. The fountain, being of marble, had to be put
+in a dark cellar under the lodge of the old Garibaldian. Only one part
+of it was carried upstairs. This was the mould for the bust of Rossi and
+the block of stone for the head of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Except for her dog, Roma went alone to the Piazza Navona, Felice having
+returned to the Baron and Natalina being dismissed. The old woman was to
+clean and cook for her and Roma was to shop for herself. It didn't take
+the neighbours long to sum up the situation. She was Rossi's wife. They
+began to call her Signora.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to live in Rossi's home was a sweet experience. The room seemed
+to be full of his presence. The sitting-room with its piano, its
+phonograph, and its portraits brought back the very tones of his voice.
+The bedroom was at first a sanctuary, and she could not bring herself to
+occupy it until she had set upon the little Madonna. Then it became a
+bower, and to sleep in it brought a tingling sense which she had never
+felt before.</p>
+
+<p>Living in the midst of Rossi's surroundings, she felt as if she were
+discovering something new about him every minute. His squirrels on the
+roof made her think of him as a boy, and his birds, which were nesting,
+and therefore singing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span> from their little swelling throats the whole day
+long, made her thrill and think of both of them. His presents from other
+women were a source of almost feverish interest. Some came from England
+and America, and were sent by women who had never even seen his face.
+They made her happy, they made her proud, they made her jealous.</p>
+
+<p>It was Rossi, Rossi, always Rossi! Every night on going to bed in her
+poor quarters her last thought was a love-prayer in the darkness, very
+simple and foolish and childlike, that he would love her always,
+whatever she was, and whatever the world might say or evil men might do.</p>
+
+<p>This mood lasted for a week and then it began to break. At the back of
+her happiness there lay anxiety about her letter. She counted up the
+hours since she posted it, and reckoned the time it would take to
+receive a reply. If Rossi telegraphed she might hear from him in three
+days. She did not hear.</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks it better to write," she told herself. Of course he would
+write immediately, and in five days she would receive his reply. On the
+fifth day she called on the porter at the convent. He had nothing for
+"Sister Angelica."</p>
+
+<p>"There must be snow on the Alps, and therefore the mails are delayed,"
+she thought, and she went down to Piale's, where they post up telegrams.
+There <i>was</i> snow in Switzerland. It was just as she imagined, and her
+letter would be delivered in the morning. It was not delivered in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"How stupid of me! It would be Sunday when my letter reached London."
+She had not counted on the postal arrangements of the English Sabbath.
+One day more, only one, and she would hear from Rossi and be happy.</p>
+
+<p>But one day went by, then another and another, and still no letter came.
+Her big heart began to fail and the rainbow in the sky of her life to
+pale away. The singing of the birds on the roof pained her now. How
+could they crack their little throats like that? It was raining and the
+sky was dark.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Garibaldian and his old wife came upstairs with scared looks
+and with papers in their hands. They were summoned to give evidence at
+Bruno's trial. It was to take place in three days.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm deaf, praise the saints! and they can't make much of me,"
+said the old woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma put on her simple black straw hat with a quill through it and set
+off for the office of the lawyer, Napoleon Fuselli.</p>
+
+<p>"Just writing to you, dear lady," said the great man, dropping back in
+his chair. "Sorry to say my labour has been in vain. It is useless to go
+further. Our man has confessed."</p>
+
+<p>"Confessed?" Roma clutched at the lapel of her coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Confessed, and denounced his accomplices."</p>
+
+<p>"His accomplices?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rossi in particular, whom he has implicated in a serious conspiracy."</p>
+
+<p>"What conspiracy?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is not yet disclosed. We shall hear all about it the day after
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"But why? With what object?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon! Apparently they have promised the clemency of the court, and
+hence in one sense our object is achieved. It is hardly necessary to
+defend the man. The authorities will see to that for us."</p>
+
+<p>"What will be the result?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably a trial in contumacy. As soon as Parliament rises for Easter
+Rossi will be summoned to present himself within ten days. But you will
+be the first to know all about it, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"The summons will be posted upon the door of the house he lived in, and
+on the door of any other house he is known to have frequented."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he never hears of it, or if he takes no heed?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will be tried all the same, and when he is a condemned man his
+sentence will be printed in black and posted up in the same places."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then Rossi's life in Rome will be at an end. He will be interdicted
+from all public offices and expelled from Parliament."</p>
+
+<p>"And Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will be a free man the following morning."</p>
+
+<p>Roma went home dazed and dejected. A letter was waiting for her. It was
+from the Director of the Roman prisons. Although the regulations
+stipulated that only relations should visit prisoners, except under
+special conditions, the Director<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> had no objection to Bruno Rocco's
+former employer seeing him at the ordinary bi-monthly hour for visitors
+to-morrow, Sunday afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock next day Roma set off for Regina C&oelig;li.</p>
+
+<h3>XV</h3>
+
+<p>The visiting-room of Regina C&oelig;li is constructed on the principle of a
+rat-trap. It is an oblong room divided into three compartments
+longitudinally, the partition walls being composed of wire and
+resembling cages. The middle compartment is occupied by the armed warder
+in charge who walks up and down; the compartment on the prison side is
+divided into many narrow boxes each occupied by a prisoner, and the
+compartment on the world side is similarly divided into sections each
+occupied by a visitor.</p>
+
+<p>When Roma entered this room she was deafened by a roar of voices. Thirty
+prisoners and as many of their friends were trying to talk at the same
+time across the compartment in the middle, in which the warder was
+walking. Each batch of friends and prisoners had fifteen minutes for
+their interview, and everybody was shouting so as to be heard above the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of moral and physical nausea took possession of Roma when she
+was shown into this place. After some minutes of the hellish tumult she
+had asked to see the Director. The message was taken upstairs, and the
+Director came down to speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you expect me to speak to my friend in this place and under these
+conditions?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the usual place, and these are the usual conditions," he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are unable to allow me to speak to him in some other place under
+some other conditions, I must go to the Minister of the Interior."</p>
+
+<p>The Director bowed. "That will be unnecessary," he said. "There is a
+room reserved for special circumstances," and, calling a warder, he gave
+the necessary instructions. He was a good man in the toils of a vicious
+system.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes afterwards Roma was alone in a small bare room with Bruno,
+except for two warders who stood in the door. She was shocked at the
+change in him. His cheeks,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span> which used to be full and almost florid,
+were shrunken and pale; a short grizzly beard had grown over his chin,
+and his eyes, which had been frank and humorous, were fierce and
+evasive. Six weeks in prison had made a different man of him, and, like
+a dog which has been changed by sickness and neglect, he knew it and
+growled.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want with me?" he said angrily, as Roma looked at him
+without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>She flushed and begged his pardon, and at that his jaw trembled and he
+turned his head away.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you received the note I sent in to you, Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"When? What note?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the day after your arrest, saying your dear ones should be cared for
+and comforted."</p>
+
+<p>"And were they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Then you didn't receive it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was under punishment from the first."</p>
+
+<p>"I also paid for a separate cell with food and light. Did you get that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I was nearly all the time on bread and water."</p>
+
+<p>His sulkiness was breaking down and he was showing some agitation. She
+lifted her large dark eyes on him and said in a soft voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Bruno! No wonder they have made you say things."</p>
+
+<p>His jaw trembled more than ever. "No use talking of that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rossi will be the first to feel for you."</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head and looked at her with a look of pity. "She doesn't
+know," he thought. "Why should I tell her? After all, she's in the same
+case as myself. What hurts me will hurt her. She has been good to me.
+Why should I make her suffer?"</p>
+
+<p>"If they've told you falsehoods, Bruno, in order to play on your
+jealousy and inspire revenge...." "Where's Rossi?" he said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"In England."</p>
+
+<p>"And where's Elena?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>He wagged his poor head with a wag of wisdom, and for a moment his
+clouded and stupefied brain was proud of itself.</p>
+
+<p>"It was wrong of Elena to go away without saying where she was going to,
+and Mr. Rossi is in despair about her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You believe that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do."</p>
+
+<p>These words staggered him, and he felt mean and small compared to this
+woman. "If she can believe in them why can't I?" he thought. But after a
+moment he smiled a pitiful smile and said largely, "You don't know,
+Donna Roma. But <i>I</i> do, and they don't hoodwink me. A poor fellow
+here&mdash;a convict, he works on the Gazette and hears all the news&mdash;he told
+me everything."</p>
+
+<p>"What's his name?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Number 333, penal part. He used to occupy the next cell."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you never saw his face?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I heard his voice, and I could have sworn I knew it."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it the voice of Charles Minghelli?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charles Ming...."</p>
+
+<p>"Time's up," said one of the warders at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno," said Roma, rising, "I know that Charles Minghelli, who is now
+an agent of the police, has been in this prison in the disguise of a
+prisoner. I also know that after he was dismissed from the embassy in
+London he asked Mr. Rossi to assist him to assassinate the Prime
+Minister."</p>
+
+<p>"Right about," cried the warder, and with a bewildered expression the
+prisoner turned to go. Roma followed him through the open courtyard, and
+until he reached the iron gate he did not lift his head. Then he faced
+round with eyes full of tears, but full of fire as well, and raising one
+arm he cried in a resolute voice:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sister! Leave it to me, damn me! I'll see it through."</p>
+
+<p>The private visiting-room had one disadvantage. Every word that passed
+was repeated to the Director. Later the same day the Director wrote to
+the Royal Commissioner:</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to say the man Rocco has asked for an interview to retract his
+denunciation. I have refused it, and he has been violent with the chief
+warder. But inspired by a sentiment of justice I feel it my duty to warn
+you that I have been misled, that my instructions have been badly
+interpreted, and that I cannot hold myself responsible for the document
+I sent you."</p>
+
+<p>The Commissioner sent this letter on to the Minister of the Interior,
+who immediately called up the Chief of Police.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Commendatore," said the Baron, "what was the offence for which young
+Charles Minghelli was dismissed from the embassy in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was suspected of forgery, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"The warrant for his arrest was drawn out but never executed?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so, and we still hold it at the office...."</p>
+
+<p>"Commendatore!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Excellency?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let the papers that were taken at the domiciliary visitation in the
+apartments of Deputy Rossi and his man Bruno be gone through again&mdash;let
+Minghelli go through them. You follow me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Let your Delegate see if there is not a letter among them from Rossi to
+Bruno's wife&mdash;you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"If such a letter can be found let it be sent to the Under Prefect to
+add to his report for to-morrow's trial, and let the Public Prosecutor
+read it to the prisoner."</p>
+
+<p>"It shall be done, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<h3>XVI</h3>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock the next morning Roma was going into the courtyard of
+the Castle of St. Angelo when she met the carriage of the Prime Minister
+coming out. The coachman was stopped from inside, and the Baron himself
+alighted.</p>
+
+<p>"You look tired, my child," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> tired," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly more than a month, yet so many things have happened!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that! That's nothing&mdash;nothing whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you pass through these privations? Roma, if I allowed these
+misfortunes to befall you it was only to let you feel what others could
+do for you. But I am the same as ever, and you have only to stretch out
+your hand and I am here to lighten your lot."</p>
+
+<p>"All that is over now. It is no use speaking as you spoke before. You
+are talking to another woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange mystery of a woman's love! That she who set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span> out to destroy her
+slanderer should become his slave! If he were only worthy of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"He is worthy of it."</p>
+
+<p>"If you should hear that he is not worthy&mdash;that he has even been untrue
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it is a falsehood, a contemptible falsehood."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you had proof, substantial proof, the proof of his own pen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning! I must go."</p>
+
+<p>"My child, what have I always told you? You will give the man up at last
+and carry out your first intention."</p>
+
+<p>With a deep bow and a scarcely perceptible smile the Baron turned to the
+open door of his carriage. Roma flushed up angrily and went on, but the
+poisoned arrow had gone home.</p>
+
+<p>The military tribunal had begun its session. A ticket which Roma
+presented at the door admitted her to the well of the court where the
+advocates were sitting. The advocate Fuselli made a place for her by his
+side. It was a quiet moment and her entrance attracted attention. The
+judges in their red armchairs at the green-covered horse-shoe table
+looked up from their portfolios, and there was some whispering beyond
+the wooden bar where the public were huddled together. One other face
+had followed her, but at first she dared not look at that. It was the
+face of the prisoner in his prison clothes sitting between two
+Carabineers.</p>
+
+<p>The secretary read the indictment. Bruno was charged not only with
+participation in the riot of the 1st of February, but also with being a
+promoter of associations designed to change violently the constitution
+of the state. It was a long document, and the secretary read it slowly
+and not very distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>When the indictment came to an end the Public Prosecutor rose to expound
+the accusation, and to mention the clauses of the Code under which the
+prisoner's crime had to be considered. He was a young captain of
+cavalry, with restless eyes and a twirled-up moustache. His long cloak
+hung over his chair, his light gloves lay on the table by his side, and
+his sword clanked as he made graceful gestures. He was an elegant
+speaker, much preoccupied about beautiful phrases, and obviously anxious
+to conciliate the judges.</p>
+
+<p>"Illustrious gentlemen of the tribunal," he began, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span> then went on
+with a compliment to the King, a flourish to the name of the Prime
+Minister, a word of praise to the army, and finally a scathing satire on
+the subversive schemes which it was desired to set up in place of
+existing institutions. The most crushing denunciation of the delirious
+idea which had led to the unhappy insurrection was the crude explanation
+of its aims. A universal republic founded on the principles enunciated
+in the Lord's Prayer! Thrones, armies, navies, frontiers, national
+barriers, all to be abolished! So simple! So easy! So childlike! But
+alas, so absurd! So entirely oblivious of the great principles of
+political economy and international law, and of impulses and instincts
+profoundly sculptured in the heart of man!</p>
+
+<p>After various little sallies which made his fellow-officers laugh and
+the judges smile, the showy person wiped his big moustache with a silk
+handkerchief, and came to Bruno. This unhappy man was not one of the
+greater delinquents who, by their intelligence, had urged on the
+ignorant crowd. He was merely a silly and perhaps drunken person, who if
+taken away from the wine-shop and put into uniform would make a valiant
+soldier. The creature was one of the human dogs of our curious species.
+His political faith was inscribed with one word only&mdash;Rossi. He would
+not ask for severe punishment on such a deluded being, but he would
+request the court to consider the case as a means of obtaining proof
+against the dark if foolish minds (fit subjects for Lombroso) which are
+always putting the people into opposition with their King, their
+constitution, and the great heads of government.</p>
+
+<p>The sword clanked again as the young soldier sat down. Then for the
+first time Roma looked over at Bruno. His big rugged face was twisted
+into an expression of contempt, and somehow the "human dog of our
+curious species," sitting in his prison clothes between the soldiers,
+made the elegant officer look like a pet pug.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno Rocco, stand up," said the president. "You are a Roman, aren't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am&mdash;I'm a Roman of Rome," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>The witnesses were called. First a Carabineer to prove Bruno's violence.
+Then another Carabineer, and another, and another, with the same object.
+After each of the Carabineers had given his evidence the president asked
+the prisoner if he had any questions to ask the witnesses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"None whatever. What they say is true. I admit it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>At last he grew impatient and cried out, "I admit it, I tell you. What's
+the good of going on?"</p>
+
+<p>The next witness was the Chief of Police. Commendatore Angelelli was
+called to prove that the cause of the revolt was not the dearness of
+bread but the formation of subversive associations, of which the
+"Republic of Man" was undoubtedly the strongest and most virulent. The
+prisoner, however, was not one of the directing set, and the police knew
+him only as a sort of watch-dog for the Honourable Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"The man's a fool. Why don't you go on with the trial?" cried Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence," cried the usher of the court, but the prisoner only laughed
+out loud.</p>
+
+<p>Roma looked at Bruno again. There was something about the man which she
+had never seen before, something more than the mere spirit of defiance,
+something terrible and tremendous.</p>
+
+<p>"Francesca Maria Mariotti," cried the usher, and the old deaf mother of
+Bruno's wife was brought into court. She wore a coloured handkerchief on
+her head as usual, and two shawls over her shoulders. Being a relative
+of the prisoner, she was not sworn.</p>
+
+<p>"Your name and your father's name?" said the president.</p>
+
+<p>"Francesca Maria Mariotti," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I said your father's name."</p>
+
+<p>"Seventy-five, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you for your father's name."</p>
+
+<p>"None at all, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>A Carabineer explained that the woman was nearly stone deaf, whereupon
+the president, who was irritated by the laughter his questions had
+provoked, ordered the woman to be removed.</p>
+
+<p>"Tommaso Mariotti," said the president, after the preliminary
+interrogations, "you are porter at the Piazza Navona, and will be able
+to say if meetings of political associations were held there, if the
+prisoner took part in them, and who were the organising authorities. Now
+answer me, were meetings ever held in your house?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man turned his pork-pie hat in his hand, and made no answer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Answer me. We cannot sit here all day doing nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Eternal City, Excellency&mdash;we can take our time," said the old
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"Answer the president instantly," said the usher. "Don't you know he can
+punish you if you don't?"</p>
+
+<p>At that the Garibaldian's eyes became moist, and he looked at the
+judges. "Generals," he said, "I am only an old man, not much good to
+anybody, but I was a soldier myself once. I was one of the 'Thousand,'
+the 'Brave Thousand' they called us, and I shed my blood for my country.
+Now I am more than threescore years and ten, and the rest of my days are
+numbered. Do you want me for the sake of what is left of them to betray
+my comrades?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next witness," said the president, and at the same moment a thick,
+half-stifled voice came from the bench of the accused.</p>
+
+<p>"Why the &mdash;&mdash; don't you go on with the trial?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner," said the president, "if you continue to make these
+interruptions I shall stop the trial and order you to be flogged."</p>
+
+<p>Bruno answered with a peal of laughter. The president&mdash;he was a
+bald-headed man with the heavy jaw of a bloodhound&mdash;looked at him
+attentively for a moment, and then said to the men below:</p>
+
+<p>"Go on."</p>
+
+<p>The next witness was the Director of Regina C&oelig;li. He deposed that the
+prisoner had made a statement to him which he had taken down in writing.
+This statement amounted to a denunciation of the Deputy David Rossi as
+the real author of the crime of which he with others was charged.</p>
+
+<p>After the denunciation had been read the president asked the prisoner if
+he had any questions to put to the witness, and thereupon Bruno cried in
+a loud voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I have. It is exactly what I've been waiting for."</p>
+
+<p>He had risen to his feet, kicked over a chair which stood in front of
+him, and folded his arms across his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him," said Bruno, "if he sent for me late at night and promised my
+pardon if I would denounce David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not so," said the Director. "All I did was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span> advise him not to
+observe a useless silence which could only condemn him to further
+imprisonment if by speaking the truth he could save himself and serve
+the interests of justice."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him," said Bruno, "if the denunciation he speaks of was not
+dictated by himself."</p>
+
+<p>"The prisoner," said the Director, "made the denunciation voluntarily,
+and I rose from my bed to receive it at his urgent request."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him if I said one word to denounce David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>"The prisoner had made statements to a fellow-prisoner, and these were
+embodied in the document he signed."</p>
+
+<p>The advocate Fuselli interposed. "Then the Court is to understand that
+the Director who dictated this denunciation knew nothing from the
+prisoner himself?"</p>
+
+<p>The Director hesitated, stammered, and finally admitted that it was so.
+"I was inspired by a sentiment of justice," he said. "I acted from
+duty."</p>
+
+<p>"This man fed me on bread and water," cried Bruno. "He put me in the
+punishment cells and tortured me in the strait-waistcoat with pains and
+sufferings like Jesus Christ's, and when he had reduced my body and
+destroyed my soul he dictated a denunciation of my dearest friend and my
+unconscious fingers signed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shout so loud," said the president.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll shout as loud as I like," said Bruno, and everybody turned to look
+at him. It was useless to protest. Something seemed to say that no power
+on earth could touch a man in a mood like that.</p>
+
+<p>The next witness was the chief warder. He deposed that he was present at
+the denunciation, that it was made voluntarily, and that no pressure
+whatever was put upon the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him," cried Bruno, "if on Sunday afternoon, when I went into his
+cabinet to withdraw the denunciation, he refused to let me."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not true," said the witness.</p>
+
+<p>"You liar," cried Bruno, "you know it is true; and when I told you that
+you were making me drag an innocent man to the galleys I struck you, and
+the mark of my fist is on your forehead still. There it is, as red as a
+Cardinal, while the rest of your face is as white as a Pope."</p>
+
+<p>The president no longer tried to restrain Bruno. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span> was something in
+the man's face that was beyond reproof. It was the outraged spirit of
+Justice.</p>
+
+<p>The chief warder went on to say that at various times he had received
+reports that Rocco was communicating important facts to a
+fellow-prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is this fellow-prisoner? Is he at the disposition of the court?"
+said the president.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid he has since been set at liberty," said the witness,
+whereupon Bruno laughed uproariously, and pointing to some one in the
+well, he shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"There he is&mdash;there! The dandy in cuffs and collar. His name is
+Minghelli."</p>
+
+<p>"Call him," said the president, and Minghelli was sworn and examined.</p>
+
+<p>"Until recently you were a prisoner in Regina C&oelig;li, and have just
+been pardoned for public services?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie," cried Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>Minghelli leaned on the witness's chair, caressed his small moustache,
+and told his story. He had occupied the next cell to the prisoner, and
+talked with him in the usual language of prisoners. The prisoner had
+spoken of a certain great man and then of a certain great act, and that
+the great man had gone to England to prepare for it. He understood the
+great man to be the Deputy Rossi, and the great act to be the overthrow
+of the constitution and the assassination of the King.</p>
+
+<p>"You son of a priest," cried Bruno, "you lie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bruno Rocco," said the president, "do not agitate yourself. You are
+under the protection of the law. Be calm and tell us your own story."</p>
+
+<h3>XVII</h3>
+
+<p>"Your Excellency," said Bruno, "this man is a witness by profession, and
+he was put into the next cell to torture me and make me denounce my
+friends. I didn't see his face, and I didn't know who he was until
+afterwards, and so he tore me to pieces. He said he was a proof-reader
+on the Official Gazette and heard everything. When my heart was bleeding
+for the death of my poor little boy&mdash;only seven years of age, such a
+curly-headed little fellow, like a sunbeam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span> in a fog, killed in the
+riot, your Excellency&mdash;he poisoned my mind about my wife, and said she
+had run away with Rossi. It was a lie, but I was brought down by
+flogging and bread and water and I believed it, because I was mad and my
+soul was exhausted and dead. But when I found out who he was I tried to
+take back my denunciation, and they wouldn't let me. Your Excellency, I
+tell you the truth. Everybody should tell the truth here. I alone am
+guilty, and if I have accused anybody else I ask pardon of God. As for
+this man, he is an assassin and I can prove it. He used to be at the
+embassy in London, and when he was sacked he came to Mr. Rossi and
+proposed to assassinate the Prime Minister. Mr. Rossi flung him out of
+the house, and that was the beginning of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"This is not true," said Minghelli, red as the gills of a turkey.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it? Give me the cross, and let me swear the man a liar," cried
+Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>Roma was breathing hard and rising to her feet, but the advocate Fuselli
+restrained her and rose himself. In six sentences he summarised the
+treatment of Bruno in prison, and denounced it as worthy of the
+cruellest epochs of tyrannical domination, in which men otherwise
+honourable could become demons in order to save the dynasty and the
+institutions and to make their own careers.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. President," he cried, "I call on you in the name of humanity to say
+that justice in Italy has nothing to do with a barbarous system which
+aims at obtaining denunciations through jealousy and justice through
+revenge."</p>
+
+<p>The president was deeply moved. "I have made a solemn promise under the
+shadow of that venerable image"&mdash;he pointed to the effigy above him&mdash;"to
+administer justice in this case, and to the last I will do my duty."</p>
+
+<p>The Public Prosecutor rose again and obtained permission to interrogate
+the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"You say the witness Minghelli told you that your wife had fled with the
+Honourable Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did, and it was a lie, like all the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know it was a lie?"</p>
+
+<p>Bruno made no answer, and the young officer took up a letter from his
+portfolio.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know the Honourable Rossi's handwriting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I know my own ugly fist?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is that the Honourable Rossi's writing?" said the officer, handing the
+envelope to the usher to be shown to Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"It is," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>"You see it is a letter addressed to your wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see. But you needn't go on washing the donkey's head, Mister&mdash;I know
+what you are getting at."</p>
+
+<p>"You must not speak like that to him, Rocco," said the president.
+"Remember, he is the honourable representative of the law."</p>
+
+<p>"Mustn't I, Excellency? Then tell his honourableness that David Rossi
+and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of
+that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs."</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, Bruno flung the letter back on to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to read it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I! It's somebody else's correspondence, and I'm not an honourable
+representative of the law."</p>
+
+<p>"Then permit me to read it to you," said the Public Prosecutor, and
+taking the letter out of the envelope he began in a loud voice:</p>
+
+<p>"'Dearest Elena....'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's nothing," Bruno interrupted. "They're like brother and sister, I
+tell you."</p>
+
+<p>The Public Prosecutor went on reading:</p>
+
+<p>"'I continue to be overwhelmed with grief for the death of our poor
+little Joseph.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's right! That's David Rossi. He loved the boy the same as if he
+had been his own son. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"'... Our child&mdash;your child&mdash;my child, Elena.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing wrong there. Don't try to make mischief of that," cried Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>"'But now that the boy is gone, and Bruno is in prison, perhaps for
+years, the obstacles must be removed which have hitherto prevented you
+from joining your life to mine and living for me, as I have always lived
+for you. Come to me then, my dear one, my beloved....'"</p>
+
+<p>Here Bruno, who had been stepping forward at every word, snatched the
+letter out of the Public Prosecutor's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop that! Don't go reading out of the back of your head," he cried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No one protested, everybody felt that whatever he did this injured man
+must be left alone. Roma felt a roaring in her ears, and for some
+minutes she could scarcely command herself. In a vague way she was
+conscious of the same struggle in her own heart as was going on in the
+heart of Bruno. This, then, was what the Baron referred to when he spoke
+of Rossi being untrue to her, and of the proof of his disloyalty in his
+own handwriting.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno, who was running his eyes over the letter, read parts of it aloud
+in a low husky voice:</p>
+
+<p>"'And now that the boy is gone and Bruno is in prison ... perhaps for
+years ... the obstacles must be removed....'"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, looked up, and stared about him. His face had undergone an
+awful change. Then he returned to the letter, and in jerky sentences he
+read again:</p>
+
+<p>"'Come to me then ... my dear one ... my beloved....'"</p>
+
+<p>Until that moment an evil spirit in Roma had been saying to her, in
+spite of herself: "Can it be possible that while you have been going
+through all those privations for his sake he has been consoling himself
+with another woman?" Impossible! The letter was a manifest imposture.
+She wouldn't believe a word of it.</p>
+
+<p>But Bruno was still in the toils of his temptation. "Look here," he
+said, lifting a pitiful face. "What with the bread and water and the
+lashes I don't know that my head isn't light, and I'm fancying I see
+things...."</p>
+
+<p>The paper of the letter was crackling in his hand, and his husky voice
+was breaking. Save for these sounds and the tramp&mdash;tramp&mdash;tramp of the
+soldiers drilling outside, there was a dead silence in the court.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not fancying at all, Rocco," said the Public Prosecutor. "We
+are all sorry for you, and I am sure the illustrious gentlemen of the
+tribunal pity you. Your comrade, your master, the man you have followed
+and trusted, is false to you. He is a traitor to his friend, his
+country, and his King. The denunciation you made in prison is true in
+substance and in fact. I advise you to adhere to it, and to cast
+yourself on the clemency of the court."</p>
+
+<p>"Here&mdash;you&mdash;shut up your head and let a man think," said Bruno.</p>
+
+<p>Roma tried to rise. She could not. Then she tried to cry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> out something,
+but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Would Bruno break down at
+the last moment?</p>
+
+<p>Bruno, whose face was convulsed with agony, began to laugh in a
+delirious way. "So my friend is false to me, is he? Very well, I'll be
+revenged."</p>
+
+<p>He reeled a little and the letter dropped from his hand, floated a
+moment in the air, and fell to the ground a pace or two farther on.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, by God, I'll be revenged," he cried, and he laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, lifted one leg, seemed to pull at his boot, and again stood
+erect.</p>
+
+<p>"I always knew the hour would come when I should find myself in a tight
+place, and I've always kept something about me to help me to get out of
+it. Here it is now."</p>
+
+<p>In an instant, before any one could be aware of what he was doing, he
+had uncorked a small bottle which he held in his hand and swallowed the
+contents.</p>
+
+<p>"Long live David Rossi!" he cried, and he flung the empty bottle over
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was on his feet in a moment. It was too late. In thirty
+seconds the poison had begun its work, and Bruno was reeling in the arms
+of the Carabineers. Somebody called for a doctor. Somebody else called
+for a priest.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said Bruno. "God is a good old saint. He'll look
+after a poor devil like me." Then he began to sing:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='margin-left:2em'>
+"The tombs are uncovered,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The dead arise,</span><br />
+The martyrs are rising<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before our eyes."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Long live David Rossi!" he cried again, and at the next moment he was
+being carried out of court.</p>
+
+<p>In the tumult that ensued everybody was standing in the well of the
+judges' horse-shoe table. The deaf old woman, with her shawls slipping
+off her shoulders, was wringing her hands and crying. "God will think of
+this," she said. The Garibaldian was gazing vacantly out of his rheumy
+eyes and saying nothing. Roma, who had recovered control of herself, was
+looking at the letter, which she had picked up from the floor.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 487px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-003" id="illus-003"></a>
+<img src='images/eternal-294.png' alt='"GOD WILL LOOK AFTER A POOR DEVIL LIKE ME."' title='' width = '487' height = '300'/><br />
+<span class='caption'>"GOD WILL LOOK AFTER A POOR DEVIL LIKE ME."</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>"Mr. President," she cried over the heads of the others, "this letter is
+not in Mr. Rossi's handwriting. It is a forgery. I am ready to prove
+it."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment one of the Carabineers came back to tell the judges that
+all was over.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!" said one after another, more often with a motion of the mouth
+than with the voice.</p>
+
+<p>The president was deeply agitated. "This court stands adjourned," he
+said, "but I take the Almighty to witness that I intend to ascertain all
+responsibility in this case and to bring it home to the guilty ones,
+whosoever and whatsoever they may be."</p>
+
+<h3>XVIII</h3>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">My dear David</span> Rossi,&mdash;You will know all about it before this letter
+reaches you. It is one of those scandals of the law that are telegraphed
+to every part of the civilised world. Poor Bruno! Yet no, not
+poor&mdash;great, glorious, heroic Bruno! He ended like an old Roman, and
+killed himself rather than betray his friend. When they played upon his
+jealousy, and tempted him by a forged letter, he cried, 'Long live David
+Rossi!' and died. Oh, it was wonderful. The memory of that moment will
+be with me always like the protecting and strengthening hand of God. I
+never knew until to-day what human nature is capable of. It is divine.</p>
+
+<p>"But how mean and little I feel when I think of all I went through in
+the court this morning! I was really undergoing the same tortures as
+Bruno, the same doubt and the same agony. And even when I saw through
+the whole miserable machination of lying and duplicity I was actually in
+terror for Bruno lest he should betray you in the end. Betray you! His
+voice when he uttered that last cry rings in my ears still. It was a
+voice of triumph&mdash;triumph over deception, over temptation, over
+jealousy, and over self.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think, David Rossi, that Bruno died of a broken heart, and don't
+think he went out of the world believing that you were false. I feel
+sure he came to that court with the full intention of doing what he did.
+All through the trial there was something in his bearing which left the
+impression of a purpose unrevealed. Everybody felt it, and even the
+judges ceased to protest against his outbursts. The poor prisoner in
+convict clothes, with dishevelled hair and bare neck, made every one
+else look paltry and small. Behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> him was something mightier than
+himself. It was Death. Then remember his last cry, and ask yourself what
+he meant by it. He meant loyalty, love, faith, fidelity. He intended to
+say, 'You've beaten me, but no matter; I believe in him, and follow him
+to the last.'</p>
+
+<p>"As you see, I am here in your own quarters, but I keep in touch with
+'Sister Angelica,' and still have no answer to my letter. I invent all
+manner of excuses to account for your silence. You are busy, you are on
+a journey, you are waiting for the right moment to reply to me at
+length. If I could only continue to think so, how happy I should be! But
+I cannot deceive myself any longer.</p>
+
+<p>"It is perhaps natural that you should find it hard to forgive me, but
+you might at least write and put me out of suspense. I think you would
+do so if you knew how much I suffer. Your great soul cannot intend to
+torture me. To-night the burden of things is almost more than I can
+bear, and I am nearly heartbroken. It is my dark hour, dearest, and if
+you had to say you could never forgive me, I think I could easier
+reconcile myself to that. I have been so happy since I began to love
+you; I shall always love you even if I have to lose you, and I shall
+never, never be sorry for anything that has occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Not receiving any new letters from you, I am going back on the old
+ones, and there is a letter of only two months ago in which you speak of
+just such a case as mine. May I quote what you say?</p>
+
+<p>"'Yet even if she were not so (<i>i.e</i>. worthy of your love and
+friendship), even if there were, as you say, a fault in her, who am I
+that I should judge her harshly? ... I reject the monstrous theory that
+while a man may redeem the past a woman never can.... And if she has
+sinned as I have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I will pray
+for strength to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we stand or
+fall together.'</p>
+
+<p>"It is so beautiful that I am even happy while my pen copies the sweet,
+sweet words, and I feel as I did when the old priest spoke so tenderly
+on the day I confessed, telling me I had committed no sin and had
+nothing to repent of. Have I never told you about that? My confessor was
+a Capuchin, and perhaps I should have waited for his advice before going
+farther. He was to consult his General or his Bishop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span> or some one, and
+to send for me again.</p>
+
+<p>"But all that is over now, and everything depends upon you. In any case,
+be sure of one thing, whatever happens. Bruno has taught me a great
+lesson, and there is not anything your enemies can do to me that will
+touch me now. They have tried me already with humiliation, with poverty,
+with jealousy, and even with the shadow of shame itself. There is
+nothing left but death. <i>And death itself shall find me faithful to the
+last</i>. Good-bye! Your poor unforgiven girl,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<p>The morning after writing this letter Roma received a visit from one of
+the Noble Guard. It was the Count de Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sent by the Holy Father," he said, "to say that he wishes to see
+you."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_SEVEN_THE_POPE" id="PART_SEVEN_THE_POPE"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+<h2>PART SEVEN&mdash;THE POPE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>On the morning appointed for the visit to the Vatican, Roma dressed in
+the black gown and veil prescribed by etiquette for ladies going to an
+audience with the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>The young Noble Guard in civilian clothes was waiting for her in the
+sitting-room. When she came out of the bedroom he was standing with a
+solemn face before the bust of David Rossi, which she had lately cast
+afresh and was beginning to point in marble.</p>
+
+<p>"This is wonderful," he said. "Perfectly wonderful! A most astonishing
+study."</p>
+
+<p>Roma smiled and bowed to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Christ of course, and such reality, such feeling, such love! But shall
+I tell you what surprises me most of all?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"What surprises me most is the extraordinary resemblance between your
+Christ and the Pope."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed yes! Didn't you know it? No? It is almost incredible. Younger
+certainly, but the same features, the same expression, the same
+tenderness, the same strength! Even the same vertical lines over the
+nose which make the shako dither on one's head when something goes wrong
+and His Holiness is indignant."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's smile was dying off her face like the sun off a field of corn,
+and she was looking sideways out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Has the Pope any relations?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever, not a soul. The only son of an only son. You must have
+been thinking of the Holy Father himself, and asking yourself what he
+was like thirty years ago. Come now, confess it!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma laughed. The soldier laughed. "Shall we go?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>A carriage was waiting for them, and they drove by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span> Tor di Nona, a
+narrow lane which skirts the banks of the Tiber, across the bridge of
+St. Angelo, and up the Borgo.</p>
+
+<p>Roma was nervous and preoccupied. Why had she been sent for? What could
+the Pope have to say to her?</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it unusual," she asked, "for the Pope to send for any
+one&mdash;especially a woman, and a non-Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most unusual. But perhaps Father Pifferi...."</p>
+
+<p>"Father Pifferi?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is the Holy Father's confessor."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a Capuchin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The General at San Lorenzo."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, now I understand," said Roma. Light had dawned on her and her
+spirits began to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"The Pope is very tender and fatherly, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fatherly? He is a saint on earth, that's what he is! Impetuous,
+perhaps, but so sweet and generous and forgiving. Makes you shake in
+your shoes if you've done anything amiss, but when all is over and he
+puts his arm on your shoulder and tells you to think no more about it,
+you're ready to die for him even at the stake."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's spirits were rising every minute, and her nervousness was fading
+away. Since things had fallen out so, she could take advantage of her
+opportunities. She would tell the Pope everything, and he would advise
+with her and counsel her. She would speak about David Rossi, and the
+Pope would tell her what to do.</p>
+
+<p>The great clock of the Basilica was striking ten with a solemn boom as
+the carriage rattled over the stones of the Piazza of St. Peter's&mdash;wet
+with the play of the fountains and bright with the rainbows made by the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>They alighted at the bronze gate, ascended the grand staircase, crossed
+a courtyard, passed through many gorgeous chambers, and arrived finally
+at an apartment hung with tapestries and occupied by a Noble Guard, who
+wore a brass helmet and held a drawn sword. The next room was the throne
+room, and beyond it were the Pope's private apartments.</p>
+
+<p>A chaplain of the Pope's household came to say that by request of Father
+Pifferi the lady was to step into an anteroom; and Roma followed him
+into a small adjoining chamber, carpeted with cocoanut matting and
+furnished with a marble-topped table and two wooden chest-seats, bearing
+the papal arms. The little room opened on to a corridor overlooking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span> a
+courtyard, a secret way to the Pope's private rooms, and it had a door
+to the throne room also.</p>
+
+<p>"The Father will be here presently," said the chaplain, "and His
+Holiness will not be long."</p>
+
+<p>Roma, who was feeling some natural tremors, tried to reassure herself by
+asking questions about the Pope. The chaplain's face began to gleam. He
+was a little man, with round red cheeks and pale grey eyes, and the
+usual tone of his voice was a hushed and reverent whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Faint? Yes, ladies do faint sometimes&mdash;often, I may say&mdash;and they
+nearly always cry. But the Holy Father is so gentle, so sweet."</p>
+
+<p>The door to the throne room opened and there was a gleam of violet and
+an indistinct buzz of voices. The chaplain disappeared, and at the next
+moment a man in the dress of a waiter came from the corridor carrying a
+silver soup dish.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the lady the Holy Father sent for?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma smiled and assented.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Cortis&mdash;Gaetano Cortis&mdash;the Pope's valet, you know&mdash;and of course I
+hear everything."</p>
+
+<p>Roma smiled again and bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"I bring the Holy Father a plate of soup every morning at ten, but I'm
+afraid it is going to get cold this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Will he be angry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Angry? He's an angel, and couldn't be angry with any one."</p>
+
+<p>"He must indeed be good; everybody says so."</p>
+
+<p>"He is perfect. That's about the size of it. None of your locking up his
+bedroom when he goes into the garden and putting the key into the pocket
+of his cassock, same as in the old Pope's days. I go in whenever I like,
+and he lets me take whatever I please. At Christmas some rich Americans
+wanted a skull-cap to save a dying man, and I got it for the asking. Now
+an old English lady wants a stocking to cure her rheumatism, and I'll
+get that too. I've saved a little hair from the last cutting, and if you
+hear of anybody...."</p>
+
+<p>The valet's story of his perquisites was interrupted by the opening of
+the door of the throne room and the entrance of a friar in a brown
+habit. It was Father Pifferi.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't rise, my daughter," he said, and closing the door<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span> behind the
+valet, he gathered up the skirts of his habit and sat down on the
+chest-seat in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"When you came to me with your confidence, my child, and I found it
+difficult to advise with you for your peace of mind, I told you I wished
+to take your case to a wiser head than mine. I took it to the Pope
+himself. He was touched by your story, and asked to see you for
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Father...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, my daughter. Pius the Tenth as a Pope may be lofty to
+sternness, but as a man he is humble and simple and kind. Forget that he
+is a sovereign and a pontiff, and think of him as a tender and loving
+friend. Tell him everything. Hold nothing back. And if you must needs
+reveal the confidences of others, remember that he is the Vicar of Him
+who keeps all our secrets."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Father...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"He is so high, so holy, so far above the world and its temptations...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, my daughter. The Holy Father is a man like other men.
+Shall I tell you something of his life? The world knows it only by
+hearsay and report. You shall hear the truth, and when you have heard it
+you will go to him as a child goes to its father, and no longer be
+afraid."</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>"Thirty-five years ago," said Father Pifferi, "the Holy Father had not
+even dreamt of being Pope. He was the only child of a Roman banker,
+living in a palace on the opposite side of the piazza. The old Baron had
+visions, indeed, of making his son a great churchman by the power of
+wealth, but these were vain and foolish, and the young man did not share
+them. His own aims were simple but worldly. He desired to be a soldier,
+and to compromise with his father's disappointed ambitions he asked for
+a commission in the Pope's Noble Guard."</p>
+
+<p>The old friar put his hands into the vertical pockets in the breast of
+his habit, and looked up at the ceiling as he went on speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is no secret, but what follows is less known. The soldier, who
+had the charm of an engaging personality,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span> led the life of an ordinary
+young Roman of his day, frequenting caf&eacute;s, concerts, theatres, and
+balls. In this character he met a poor woman of the people, and came to
+love her. She was a good girl, with soft and gentle manners, but a heart
+of gold and a soul of fire. He was a good man and he meant to marry her.
+He did marry her. He married her according to the rites of the Church,
+which are all that religion requires and God calls for."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was leaning forward on her seat and breathing between
+tightly-closed lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappily, then as now, a godless legislature had separated a religious
+from a civil marriage, and the one without the other was useless. The
+old Baron heard of what had happened and tried to defeat it. A cardinal
+had just been created in Australia, and an officer of the Noble Guard
+had to be sent with the Ablegate to carry the biglietto and the
+skull-cap. At the request of the Baron his son was appointed to that
+mission and despatched in haste."</p>
+
+<p>Roma could scarcely control herself.</p>
+
+<p>"The young husband being gone, the father set himself to deal with the
+wife. He had not yet relinquished his hopes of seeing his son a
+churchman, and marriage was a fatal impediment. A rich man may have many
+instruments, and the Baron was able to use some that were evil. He
+played upon the conscience of the girl, who was pure and virtuous; told
+her she was not legally married, and that the laws of her country
+thought ill of her. Finally, he appealed to her love for her husband,
+and showed her that she was standing in his way. He was not a bad man,
+but he loved his son beyond truth and to the perversion of honour, and
+was ready to sacrifice the woman who stood between them. She allowed
+herself to be sacrificed. She wiped herself out that she might not be an
+obstacle to her husband. She drowned herself in the Tiber."</p>
+
+<p>Roma could not control herself any longer, and made a half-stifled
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the young husband returned. He had been travelling constantly, and
+no letters from his wife had reached him. But one letter was waiting for
+him at Rome, and it told him what she had done. It was then all over;
+there was no help for it, and he was overwhelmed with horror. He could
+not blame the poor dead girl, for all she had done had been done in
+love; he could not blame himself, for he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span> meant no wrong in making
+the religious marriage, and had hastened home to complete the civil one;
+and he could not reproach his father, for if the Baron's conduct had led
+to fearful consequences, it had been prompted by affection for himself.
+But the hand of God seemed to be over him, and his soul was shaken to
+its foundations. From that time forward he renounced society and all
+worldly pleasures. For eight days he went into retreat and prayed
+fervently. On the ninth day he joined a religious house, the Novitiate
+of the Capuchins at San Lorenzo. The young soldier, so gay, so handsome,
+so fond of social admiration, became a friar."</p>
+
+<p>The old Capuchin looked tenderly at Roma, whose wet eyes and burning
+cheeks seemed to tell of sympathy with his story.</p>
+
+<p>"In those days, my daughter, the nuns of Thecla served the Foundling of
+Santo Spirito."</p>
+
+<p>Roma began to look frightened and to feel faint.</p>
+
+<p>"It was usual for a member of our house to live in the hospital in order
+to baptize the children and to confess the sick and the dying. We took
+it in turns to do so, staying one year, two years, three years, and then
+going back to the monastery. I was myself at Santo Spirito for this
+purpose at the time I speak about, and it was not until three or four
+years afterwards that I became Superior of our House and returned to San
+Lorenzo. There I found the young Noble Guard, and, wisely or unwisely, I
+told him a new phase of his own story."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a child?" said Roma, in a strange voice.</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin bent his head. "That much he knew already by the letter his
+wife had left for him. She had intended that the child should die when
+she died, and he supposed that it had been so. But pity for the little
+one must have overtaken the poor mother at the last moment. She had put
+the babe in the rota of the hospital, and thus saved the child's life
+before carrying out her purpose upon her own."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin crossed his knees, and one of his bare feet in its sandal
+showed from under the edge of his habit.</p>
+
+<p>"We had baptized the boy by a name which the mother had written on a
+paper attached to his wrist, and the identity of that name with the name
+of the Noble Guard led to my revelation. Nature is a mighty thing, and
+on hearing what I told him the young brother became restless and
+unhappy. The instincts of the man began to fight with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span> feelings of
+the religious, and at last he left the friary in order to fulfil the
+duty which he thought he owed to his child."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not find him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was too late. According to custom, the boy had been put out to nurse
+on the Campagna, by means of the little dower that was all his
+inheritance from the State. His foster parents passed him over to other
+hands, and thus by the abuse of a good practice the child was already
+lost."</p>
+
+<p>Roma tried to speak, but she could not utter a word.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened then is a long story. The old Baron was now dead and the
+young friar had inherited his princely fortune. Dispensations got over
+canonical difficulties, and in due course he took holy orders. His first
+work was to establish in Rome an asylum for friendless orphans. He went
+out into the streets to look for them, and brought them in with his own
+hands. His fame for charity grew rapidly, and he knew well what he was
+doing. He was looking for the little fatherless one who owned his own
+blood and bore his name."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was now sitting with drooping head, and her tears were falling on
+her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Five years passed, and at length he came upon a trace of the boy and
+heard that he had been sent to England. The unhappy father obtained
+permission and removed to London. There he set up the same work as
+before and spent in the same way his great wealth. He passed five years
+more in a fruitless search, looking for his lost one day and night,
+winter and summer, in cold and heat, among the little foreign boys who
+play organs and accordions in the streets. Then he gave up hope and
+returned to Rome. His head was white and his heart was humble, but in
+spite of himself he rose from dignity to dignity until at length the old
+Baron's perverted ambitions were fulfilled. For his great and abounding
+charity, and still greater piety, he was promoted to be Bishop; seven
+years afterwards he was created Cardinal; and now he is Pope Pius the
+Tenth, the saint, the saviour of his people, once the storm-tossed,
+sorrowing, stricken man...."</p>
+
+<p>"David Leone?"</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin bowed. "That was the Holy Father's name. He committed no
+sin and has nothing to reproach himself with, but nevertheless he has
+known what it is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span> fall and to rise again, to suffer and be strong.
+Tell me, my daughter, is there anything you would be afraid to confide
+to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing! Nothing whatever!" said Roma, with tears choking her voice and
+streaming down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>The door to the throne room opened again and a line of Cardinals came
+out and passed down the secret corridor, talking together as they
+walked, old men in violet, most of them very feeble and looking very
+tired. At the next moment the chaplain came in for Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"The Holy Father will be ready to receive you presently," he said in a
+hushed and reverent whisper, and she rose to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Roma was at the door of the grand throne room. A
+chamberlain took charge of her there, and passed her to a secret
+chamberlain at the door of an anteroom adjoining. This secret
+chamberlain handed her on to a Monsignor in a violet cassock, and the
+Monsignor accompanied her to the door of the room in which the Pope was
+sitting.</p>
+
+<p>"As you approach," he said in a low tone, "you will make three
+genuflexions&mdash;one at the door, another midway across the floor, the
+third at the Holy Father's feet. You feel well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened, the Monsignor stepped one pace into the room, and
+then knelt and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was on her knees at the threshold; a soft, full, kindly voice,
+which she could have believed she had heard before, called on her to
+approach; she rose and stepped forward, the Monsignor stepped back, and
+the door behind her was closed.</p>
+
+<p>She was in the Presence.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The Pope, dressed wholly in white, was seated in a simple chair by a
+little table in a homely room, surrounded by bookcases and some busts of
+former pontiffs. There were little domesticities of intimate life about
+him, an empty soup-dish, a cruet-stand, a plate and a spoon. He had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+face of great sweetness and spirituality, and as Roma approached he bent
+his head and smiled a fatherly smile. She knelt and kissed his ring, and
+continued to kneel by his chair, putting one hand on the arm. He placed
+his own mittened hand over hers and patted it tenderly, while he looked
+into her face.</p>
+
+<p>The little nervous perturbation with which Roma had entered the room
+began to leave her, and in the awful wearer of the threefold crown she
+saw nothing but a simple, loving human being. A feminine sense crept
+over her, a sense of nursing, almost of motherhood, and at that first
+moment she felt as if she wanted to do something for the gentle old man.
+Then he began to speak. His voice had that tone which comes to the voice
+of a man who has the sense of sex strong in him, when a woman is with
+him and his accents soften perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter," he said, "Father Pifferi has spoken about you, and by
+your permission, as I understand it, he has repeated the story you told
+him. You have suffered, and you have my sympathy. And though you are not
+among the number of my children, I sent for you, that, as an old man to
+a young woman, by God's grace I might strengthen you and support you."</p>
+
+<p>She kissed his ring again and continued to kneel by the arm of his
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Long ago, my child, I knew one who was in something like the same
+position, and perhaps it is the memory of what befell that poor soul
+which impels me to speak to you.... But she is dead, her story is dead
+too; let time and nature cover them."</p>
+
+<p>His voice had a slight tremor. She looked up. There was a hush, a
+momentary thrill. Then he smiled again and patted her hand once more.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not let the world weaken you, my child, or cause you to doubt
+the validity of your marriage. Whether it is a good marriage, in effect
+as well as intention (one of you being still unbaptized), it is for the
+Church, not the world, to decide."</p>
+
+<p>Again Roma kissed the ring of the Pope, and again he patted the hand
+that lay under his.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, there is something I wish you to do, my daughter," he
+said, in the same low tones. "I wish you to tell your husband."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," said Roma, "I have already told him. I had done so before
+I spoke to Father Pifferi, but only under the disguise of another
+woman's story."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did your husband say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said what your Holiness says. He was very charitable and noble; so I
+took heart and told him everything."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he say then?"</p>
+
+<p>A cloud crossed her face. "Holy Father, he has not yet said anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Not anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is away; he has not replied to my letter."</p>
+
+<p>"Has there been time?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than time, your Holiness, but still I hear nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your conclusion?"</p>
+
+<p>"That my letter has awakened some pity, but now that he knows <i>I</i> am the
+wife I spoke about and <i>he</i> is the husband intended, he cannot forgive
+me as he said the husband would forgive, and his generous soul is in
+distress."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, could you wish me to speak to him?"</p>
+
+<p>The cloud fled from her face. "It is more than I deserve, far more, but
+if the Holy Father would do that...."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must know the names&mdash;you must tell me everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who is your father, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father died in banishment. He was a Liberal&mdash;he was Prince Prospero
+Volonna."</p>
+
+<p>"As I thought. Who was the other man?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was a distant kinsman of my father's, and I have lately discovered
+that he was the principal instrument in my father's deportation. He was
+my guardian, a Minister and a great man in Italy. It is the Baron
+Bonelli, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, just so!" said the Pope, tapping his foot in obvious heat.
+"But go on, my child. Who is your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"My husband is a different kind of man altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>"He has done everything for me, Holy Father&mdash;everything. Heaven knows
+what I should have been now without him."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless him! God bless both of you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I came to know him by the strangest accident. He is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span> Liberal too, and
+a Deputy, and thinking of the corruptions of the Government, he pointed
+to me as the mistress of the Minister. It was not true, but I was
+degraded, and ... and I set out to destroy him."</p>
+
+<p>"A terrible vengeance, my child. Only the Minister could have thought of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I found that my enemy was one of my father's friends, and a true
+and noble man. Holy Father, I had begun in hate, but I could not hate
+him. The darkness faded away from my soul, and something bright and
+beautiful came in its place. I loved him, and he loved me. With all our
+hearts we loved each other."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>he</i> came back to me. I knew all the secrets I had set out to
+learn, but I could not give them up, and when I refused he threatened
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I married my husband and withstood every temptation. It wasn't so very
+hard, for I cared nothing for wealth and luxury now. I only wanted to be
+good. God Himself should see how good I could be."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's eyes were moist. He was patting the young woman's trembling
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"My blessing rest on you, my daughter, and may the man you have married
+be worthy of your love and trust."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, indeed he is," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"He was your father's friend, you tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your Holiness, and although we met again so recently, I had known
+him in England when I was a child."</p>
+
+<p>"A Liberal, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"The enmity of the Minister was the fruit of political warfare?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but that at first, though now...."</p>
+
+<p>"I see, I see. And the secrets you speak of are only...."</p>
+
+<p>"Only the doings of twenty years ago, which are dead and done with."</p>
+
+<p>"Then your husband is older than you are?"</p>
+
+<p>The young woman broke into a sunny smile, which set the Pope smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Only ten years older, your Holiness. He is thirty-four."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he come from, and what was his father?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He was born in Rome, but he does not know who his father was."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he like to look upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is like ... I have never seen any one so like ... will your Holiness
+forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>The colour had mounted to her eyes, her two rows of pearly teeth seemed
+to be smiling, and the sunny old face of the Pope was smiling too.</p>
+
+<p>"Say what you please, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never seen any one so like the Holy Father," she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>Her head was held down and there was a little nervous tremor at her
+heart. The Pope patted her hand affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I asked you his name, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"His name is David Rossi."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope rose suddenly from his seat, and for the first time his face
+looked dark and troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"David Rossi?" he repeated in a husky voice.</p>
+
+<p>Roma began to tremble. "Yes," she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"David Rossi, the Revolutionary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed no, your Holiness, he is not that."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my child, my child, he is the founder of a revolutionary society
+which this very day the Holy Father has condemned."</p>
+
+<p>He walked across the room and she rose to her feet and looked after him.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the men who are conspiring against the peace of the
+Church&mdash;banded together to fight the Church and its head."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, your Holiness. He is religious, deeply religious, and
+far more an enemy of the Government and the King."</p>
+
+<p>She began to talk wildly, almost aimlessly, trying to defend Rossi at
+all costs.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," she said, "shall I tell you a secret? There is nobody
+else in the world to whom I could tell it, but I can tell it to you. My
+husband is now in England organising a great scheme among the exiles and
+refugees of Italy. What it is I don't know, but he has told me that it
+will lead to the conquest of the country and the downfall of the throne.
+Whether it is to be a conspiracy in the ordinary sense, or a
+constitutional plan of campaign, he has not said, but everything tells
+me that it is directed against the politics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span> of Rome, and not against
+its religion, and is intended to overthrow the King, and not the Pope."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope, who had been standing with his back to Roma, turned round to
+her with a look of fright. His eyebrows had met over the vertical lines
+on his forehead, and this further reminder of another face threw Roma
+into still greater confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"'When I come back, it will be with such a force behind me as will make
+the prisons open their doors and the thrones of tyrants tremble.' That's
+what he said, your Holiness. The movement will come soon, too, I am sure
+it will, and then your Holiness will see that, instead of being
+irreligious men, the leaders of the people...."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope held up his hand. "Stop!" he cried. "Say no more, my child. God
+knows what I must do with what you have said already."</p>
+
+<p>Then Roma saw what she had done in the wild gust of her emotion, and in
+her terror she tried to take it back.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, you must not think from what I say that David Rossi is for
+revolution and regicide...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak, my child. You cannot know what an earthquake you have
+opened at my feet. Let me think!"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment, and then Roma gulped down the great
+lumps in her throat and said: "I am only an ignorant woman, Holy Father,
+and perhaps I have said too much, and do not understand. But what I have
+told your Holiness was told me in love and confidence. And the Holy
+Father is wise and good, and whatever he does will be for the best."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope returned to his chair with a bewildered look, and did not seem
+to hear. Roma sank to her knees by his side and said in a low, pleading
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"My husband's faith in me is so beautiful, your Holiness. Oh, so
+beautiful. I am the only one in the world to whom he has told all his
+secrets, and if any of them should ever come back to him...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, my daughter. What you said in simple confidence shall
+be as sacred as if it had been spoken under the seal of the
+confessional."</p>
+
+<p>"If I could tell your Holiness more about him&mdash;who he is and where he
+comes from&mdash;a place so lowly and humble, your Holiness...."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me no more, my child. It is better I should not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span> know. Pity ought
+to have no place in what duty tells me to do. But I can love David Rossi
+for all that. I do love him. I love him as a lost and wayward son, whose
+hand is raised against his Father, though he knows it not."</p>
+
+<p>There was a bell button on the Pope's chair. He pressed it, and the
+Participante returned to the room without knocking. The Pope rose and
+took Roma's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in peace and with my blessing, my child. I bless you! May my
+fatherly blessing keep you pure in heart, may it strengthen you in all
+temptations, comfort you in all trials, avert from you every evil omen,
+and bring you into the fold of Christ's children at the last."</p>
+
+<p>The Participante stepped forward and signed to Roma to withdraw. She
+rose and left the presence chamber, stepping backward and too much moved
+to speak. Not until the door had been closed did she realise that she
+was crossing the throne room, and that the Bussolante was walking beside
+her.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>When the Pope walked in his garden that afternoon as usual, the old
+Capuchin was with him. From the door of the Vatican they drove in the
+Pope's landau with two of the Noble Guard riding beside the carriage,
+and one of the chamberlains walking behind it, through lanes enshrouded
+in laurel and ilex, until they reached the summer-house on the top of
+the hill. There the old men stepped down, the Pope in his white cassock,
+white overcoat and red hat, the Capuchin in his brown habit, skull-cap
+and sandals. The Pope's cat, a creature of reddish coat, which followed
+him into the garden as a dog follows his master, leapt out of the
+carriage after them.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope was more than usually grave and silent. Once or twice the
+Capuchin said, "And how did you find my young penitent this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bene, bene!</i>" the Pope replied.</p>
+
+<p>But at length the Pope, scraping the gravel at his feet with the ferrule
+of his walking-stick, began to speak on his own initiative.</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"The inscrutable decree of God which made me your Pontiff has not
+altered our relations to each other as men?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin took snuff and answered, "Your Holiness is always so good
+as to say so."</p>
+
+<p>"You are my master now just as you were thirty years ago, and there is
+something I wish to ask of you."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have been a confessor many years, Father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forty years, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"In that time you have had many difficult cases?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very many."</p>
+
+<p>"Father, has it ever happened that a penitent, has revealed to you a
+conspiracy to commit a crime?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than once it has happened."</p>
+
+<p>"And what have you done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Persuaded him to reveal it to the civil authorities, or else tell it to
+me outside the confessional."</p>
+
+<p>"Has the penitent ever refused to do so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"But if ... if the case were such as made it difficult for the penitent
+to reveal the conspiracy to the civil authorities, having regard to the
+penalties the revelation would bring with it ... if by reason of ties of
+blood and affection such revelation were humanly impossible, and it
+would even be cruel to ask for it, what would you do then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even if the crime to be committed were a serious one, and it
+touched you very nearly?"</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin shook out his coloured print handkerchief and said, "That
+could make no difference, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose you heard in confession that your brother is to be
+assassinated, what is your duty?"</p>
+
+<p>"My duty to the penitent who reveals his soul to me is to preserve his
+secret."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is your duty to God?"</p>
+
+<p>The handkerchief dropped from the Capuchin's hand.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope paused, scraped the gravel with the ferrule of his stick, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, I am in the position of the confessor who has guilty knowledge
+of a conspiracy against the life of his enemy."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin pushed his handkerchief into his sleeve and dropped back
+into his seat. After a moment the Pope told the story of what Roma had
+said of Rossi's plans abroad.</p>
+
+<p>"A conspiracy," he said, "plainly a conspiracy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And what do you understand the conspiracy to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can say? Perhaps a recurrence to the custom of the Middle Ages,
+when citizens who had been banished by their opponents used to apply
+themselves in exile to attempt the reconquest of their country by
+stirring up the factions at home."</p>
+
+<p>"You think that is Rossi's object?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin shifted uneasily the skull-cap on his crown and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, I trust your Holiness will leave the matter alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?"</p>
+
+<p>"In reading history I do not find that such enterprises have usually
+been successful. I see, rather, how commonly they have failed. And if it
+was so in the Middle Ages when the arts of war were primitive, how much
+less likely are the conspiracies of secret societies, the partial and
+superficial risings of refugees, to be serious now in the days of
+standing armies."</p>
+
+<p>"True. But is that a good reason for doing nothing in this instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Holy Father, think. You cannot disclose the secrets this poor lady
+has revealed to you. Her confession was only a confidence, but your
+Holiness knows well that there is such a thing as a natural secret which
+it would be a great fault to reveal. Facts which of their own nature are
+confidential belong to this order. They are assimilated to the
+confessional, and as such they should be respected."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed they should."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is not possible for your Holiness to reveal what you heard this
+morning without bringing trouble to the penitent and wronging her in
+relation to her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid that I should do so, whatever happens. But is a priest
+forbidden to speak of a sin heard in confession if he can do so in such
+a way that the identity of the penitent cannot be discovered?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness intends to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Holy Father knows best. For my own part, your Holiness, I think it
+a danger to tamper with the secrets of a soul, whatever the good end in
+view or the evil to be prevented."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin looked round to where the horses were pawing the path and
+the Guards stood by the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty-five years ago we had a terrible lesson in such dangers, your
+Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope dropped his head and continued to scrape the gravel.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness remembers the poor young woman who told her confessor she
+was about to marry a rich young man. The confessor thought it his duty
+to tell the young man's father in general terms that such a marriage was
+to be contracted. What was the result? The marriage took place in secret
+and ended in grief and death."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope rose uneasily. "We will not speak of that. It was a case of a
+father's pride and perverted ambition. This is a different case
+altogether. A man who is a prey to diabolical illusions, an enemy of the
+Church and of social order, is hatching a plot which can only end in
+mischief and bloodshed. The Holy Father knows it. Shall he keep this
+guilty knowledge locked in his own bosom? God forbid!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you intend to warn the civil authorities?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must. It is my duty. How could I lay my head on my pillow and not do
+it? But I will do it discreetly. I will commit no one, and this poor
+lady shall remain unknown."</p>
+
+<p>The venerable old men, each leaning on his stick, walked down a path
+lined by clipped yews, shaded by cypresses, and almost overgrown with
+crocus, anemone, and violet. Suddenly from the bushes there came a
+flutter of wings, followed by the scream of a bird, and in a moment the
+Pope's cat had leapt on to a marble which stood in the midst of the
+jungle. It was an ancient sarcophagus, placed there as a fountain, but
+the spring that had fed it was dry, and in its moss-grown mouth a bird
+had made its nest. The cat was about to pounce down on the eggs when the
+Pope laid hold of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Meesh, Meesh," he said, "what an anarchist you are, to be sure!...
+Monsignor!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your Holiness," said the chamberlain, coming up behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this <i>gatto rosso</i> back to the carriage, and keep him in
+<i>domicilio coatto</i> until we come."</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor laughed and carried off the cat, and the Pope put his
+mittened hand gently on the little speckled eggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor things! they're warm. Listen! That's the mother bird screaming in
+the tree. Hark! She's watching us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span> and waiting for us to go. How snugly
+she thought she kept her secret."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin drew a long breath. "Yes, nature has the same cry for fear
+in all her offspring."</p>
+
+<p>"True," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes me think of that poor girl this morning."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope walked back to the carriage without saying a word. As he
+returned to the Vatican, the Angelus was ringing from all the church
+bells of Rome, the city was bathed in crimson light, the sun was sinking
+behind Monte Mario, and the stone pines on the crest of the hill,
+standing out against the reddening sky, were like the roofless columns
+of a ruined temple.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Next day Francesca came up with a letter. The porter from Trinit&agrave; de'
+Monti had brought it and he was waiting below for a present. In a kind
+of momentary delirium Roma snatched at the envelope and emptied her
+purse into the old woman's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Santo Dio!" cried Francesca, "all this for a letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, godmother," said Roma. "Give the money to the good man and
+let him go."</p>
+
+<p>"It's from Mr. Rossi, isn't it? Yes? I thought it was. You've only to
+say three Ave Marias when you wake in the morning and you get anything
+you want. I knew the Signora was dying for a letter, so...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, but the poor man is waiting, and I must get on with my work,
+and...."</p>
+
+<p>"Work? Ah, Signora, in paradise you won't have to waste your time
+working. A lady like you will have violins and celestial bread and...."</p>
+
+<p>"The man will be gone, godmother," said Roma, hustling the deaf old
+woman out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>But even when Roma was alone she could not at first find courage to open
+the envelope. There was a certain physical thrill in handling it, in
+turning it over, and in looking at the stamps and the postmark. The
+stamps were French and the postmark was of Paris. That fact brought a
+vague gleam of joy. Rossi had been travelling, and perhaps he had not
+yet received her letter.</p>
+
+<p>With a trembling kiss and a little choking prayer she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span> broke the seal at
+last, and as the letter came rustling out of the envelope she glanced at
+the closing lines:</p>
+
+<p>"Your Faithful Husband."</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath and waited a moment, tingling all over. Then she
+unfolded the paper and read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,&mdash;A telegram from Rome, published in the Paris newspapers this
+morning, reports the trial and death of Bruno. To say that I am shocked
+is to say little. I am shaken to my foundations. My heart is bursting
+and my hand can with difficulty hold the pen.</p>
+
+<p>"The news first reached me last evening, when I was in a restaurant with
+a group of journalists. We were at dinner, but I was compelled to rise
+and return to my lodgings. I must have been almost in delirium the whole
+night long. More than once I started from my sleep with the certainty
+that I heard Bruno's voice calling to me. Once I went to the window and
+looked out into the silent street. And yet I knew all the time that my
+poor friend lay dead in prison.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Bruno! I do not hold with suicide under any circumstances. A man's
+life does not belong to himself. Each of us is a soldier, and no
+sentinel ought to kill himself at his post. Who knows what the next turn
+of the battle will be? It is our duty to the General to see the fight
+out. But when the sentinel dies rather than pass a false watchword,
+suicide is sacrifice, death is victory, and God takes His martyr under
+the wings of His mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor fellow died believing I had been false to him! I knew him for
+eight years, and during that time he was more faithful to me than my
+shadow. He was the bravest, staunchest friend man ever had. And now he
+has left me, thinking I have wronged him at the last. Oh, my brother, do
+you not know the truth at last? In the world to which you are gone, does
+no heavenly voice tell you? Does not death reveal everything? Can you
+not look down and see all, tearing away the veil that clouded your
+vision here below? Is it only vouchsafed to him who remains on earth to
+know that he was true to the love you bore him? God forbid it! It
+cannot, cannot be.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"Dearest, I came to Paris unexpectedly ten days ago...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma lifted her swimming eyes. "Then he hasn't received it," she
+thought.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"Called in haste, not only to organise our Italian people for the new
+crusade, but to compose by a general principle the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span> many groups of
+Frenchmen who, under different names, have the same
+aspirations&mdash;Marxists, Possibilists, Boulangists, Guesdists, and Central
+Revolutionists, with their varying propaganda, co-operative,
+trade-unionist, anti-semite, national, and I know not what&mdash;I had almost
+despaired of any union of interests so pitifully subdivided when the
+news of Bruno's death came like a trumpet-blast, and the walls of the
+social Jericho fell before it. Everybody feels that the moment of action
+has arrived, and what I thought would be an Italian movement is likely
+to become an international one. A great outrage on the spirit of Justice
+breaks down all barriers of race and nationality.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em'>"God guide us now. What did our Master say? 'The dagger of the
+conspirator is never so terrible as when sharpened on the tombstone of a
+martyr.' With all the heat of my own blood I tremble when I think what
+may be the effect of these tyrannies. Of course the ruling classes at
+home will wash their hands of this affair. When a Minister wants to play
+Macbeth he has no lack of grooms to dabble with Duncan's blood. But the
+people will make no nice distinctions. I wouldn't give two straws for
+the life of the King when this crime has touched the conscience of the
+people. He didn't do it? No, he does nothing, but he stands for all.
+Anarchists did not invent regicide. It has been used in all ages by
+people who think the spirit of Justice violated. And the names of some
+who practised it are written on marble monuments in letters of gold."</p>
+
+<p>Roma began to tremble. Had the Pope been right after all? Was it really
+revolution and regicide which Rossi contemplated?</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"Dearest, don't think that because I am so moved by all this that other
+and dearer things are not with me always. Never a day or an hour passes
+but my heart speaks to you as if you could answer. I have been anxious
+at not hearing from you for ten days, although I left my Paris address
+in London for your letters to be sent on. Sometimes I think my enemies
+may be tormenting you, and then I blame myself for not bringing you with
+me, in spite of every disadvantage. Sometimes I think you may be ill,
+and then I have an impulse to take the first train and fly back to Rome.
+I know I cannot be with you always, but this absence is cruel. Happily
+it will soon be over, and we shall see an end of all sadness. Don't
+suffer for me. Don't let my cares distress you. Whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span> happens,
+nothing can divide us, because love has united our hearts for ever.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why I'm sure of you, Roma, sure of your love and sure of your
+loyalty. Otherwise how could I stay an hour longer after this awful
+event, tortured by the fear of a double martyrdom&mdash;the martyrdom of
+myself and of the one who is dearest to me in the world?</p>
+
+<p>"The spring is coming to take me home to you, darling. Don't you smell
+the violets? Adieu!</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">Your Faithful Husband</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Roma slept little that night. Joy, relief, disappointment, but, above
+all, fear for Rossi, apprehension about his plans, and overpowering
+dread of the consequences kept her awake for hours. Early next day a man
+in a blue uniform brought a letter from the Braschi Palace. It ran:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"<span class="smcap">Dear Roma</span>,&mdash;I must ask you to come across to my office this morning,
+and as soon as convenient. You will not hesitate to do so when I tell
+you that by this friendly message I am saving you the humiliation of a
+summons from the police. Yours, as always, affectionately,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Bonelli</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>The Minister of the Interior sat in his cabinet before a table covered
+with blue-books and the square sheets of his "projects of law," and the
+Commendatore Angelelli, with his usual extravagant politeness, was
+standing and bowing by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is this about proclamations issued by Rossi?" said the Baron,
+fixing his eye-glasses and looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"We have traced the printer who published them," said Angelelli. "After
+he was arrested he gave the name of the person who paid him and provided
+the copy."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron bowed without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a certain lady, Excellency," said Angelelli in his thin voice,
+"so we thought it well to wait for your instructions."</p>
+
+<p>"You did right, Commendatore. Leave that part of the matter to me. And
+Rossi himself&mdash;he is still in England?"</p>
+
+<p>"In France, your Excellency, but we have letters from both London and
+Paris detailing all his movements."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good."</p>
+
+<p>"The Chief Commissioner writes that during his stay in London Rossi
+lodged in Soho, and received visits from nearly all the representatives
+of revolutionary parties. Apparently he united many conflicting forces,
+and not only the Democratic Federations and the Socialist and Labour
+Leagues, but also the Radical organisations and various religious guilds
+and unions gathered about him."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron made a gesture of impatience. "It's a case of birds of a
+feather. London has always been the central home of anarchy under
+various big surnames. What does the Commissioner understand to be
+Rossi's plan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rossi's plan, the Commissioner thinks, is to send back the Italian
+exiles, and to disperse them, with money and literature gathered abroad,
+among the excited millions at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful!" said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>Angelelli laughed his thin laugh, like a hen cackling over its nest.
+Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"But the Prefect of Paris has formed a more serious opinion, your
+Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That Rossi is conspiring to assassinate the King."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron blinked the glasses from his nose and sat upright.</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently he was having less success in Paris, where the moral plea
+has been overdone, when reports of the Rocco incident...."</p>
+
+<p>"A most unlucky affair, Commendatore."</p>
+
+<p>"Meeting at caf&eacute;s in order to avoid the control of the police ... In
+short, although he has no exact information, the Prefect warns us to
+keep double guard over the person of his Majesty."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron rose and perambulated the hearthrug. "A pretty century, truly,
+for fools who pass for wise men, and for weaklings who threaten when the
+distance is great enough!... Commendatore, have you mentioned this
+matter to anybody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"To nobody whatever, Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>"Then think no more about it. It's nothing. The public mind must not be
+alarmed. Tighten the cord about our man in Paris. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's next visitor was the Prefect of the Province, who looked
+more solemn and soldierly than ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Senator," said the Baron, "I sent for you to say that the Council has
+determined to put an end to the state of siege."</p>
+
+<p>The Prefect bowed again severely.</p>
+
+<p>"The insurrection has been suppressed, the city is quiet, and the
+severities of military rule begin to oppress the people."</p>
+
+<p>The Prefect bowed again and assented.</p>
+
+<p>"The Council has also resolved, dear Senator, that the country shall
+celebrate the anniversary of the King's accession with general
+rejoicings."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent idea, sir," said the Prefect. "To wipe out the depression of
+the late unhappy times by a public festival is excellent policy. But the
+time is short."</p>
+
+<p>"Very short. The anniversary falls on Easter Monday. That is to say, a
+week from to-day. You will therefore take the matter in hand immediately
+and push it on without further delay. The details we will discuss later,
+and arrange all programmes of presentations and processions. Meantime I
+have written a proclamation announcing the event. Here it is. You can
+take it with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!"</p>
+
+<p>"The King will also sign a decree of amnesty to all the authors and
+accomplices of the late acts and attempts at rebellion who were not the
+organising and directing minds. That is also written. Here it is. But
+his Majesty has not yet signed it."</p>
+
+<p>The Prefect took a second paper from the Baron's hand, glanced his eyes
+over it, and read certain passages. "'Seeing that on a day of public
+rejoicing we could not restrain an emotion of grief ... turning a
+pitying eye upon the inexperienced youths drawn into a vortex of
+political disorder ... we therefore decree and command the following
+acts of sovereign clemency....' May I expect to receive this in the
+course of the day, your Excellency?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And now for your own part of the enterprise, dear Senator. You
+will order all mayors of towns to assemble in Rome to complete the
+preparations. You will arrange a procession to the Quirinal, when the
+people will call the King on to the balcony and sing the National Hymn.
+You will order banners to be made bearing suitable watchwords, such as
+'Long live the King,' 'May he govern as well as reign,' 'Long live the
+Crown,' the 'Flag,' and (perhaps) the 'Army.' You will oppose these
+generating ideas to 'Atheism' and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span> 'Anarchy.' The essential point is
+that the people must be caused by festivals, songs, bands of music, and
+processions to think of the throne as their bulwark and the King as
+their saviour, and to take advantage of every opportunity to attest
+their gratitude to both. You follow me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly."</p>
+
+<p>"Then lose no time, Senator.... One moment."</p>
+
+<p>The Prefect had risen and reached the door.</p>
+
+<p>"If you can double the King's guard and change the company every day
+until the festival is over...."</p>
+
+<p>"Easily, your Excellency. But wait; the Vatican Chief of Police has
+asked for help on Holy Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>"Give it him. Let the timid old man of the Sacred College have no excuse
+for saying we take more care of the King than of the Pope."</p>
+
+<p>The Minister of Justice was the next of the Baron's visitors. He was a
+short man with a smiling and rubicund face, and he wore yellow kid
+gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"All goes well and wisdom is justified of her children," said the Baron,
+rising again and promenading the hearthrug. "The national sentiment,
+dear colleague, is a sword, and either we must use it on behalf of the
+Government and the King, or stand by and see it used by the hostile
+factions."</p>
+
+<p>"Men like Rossi are not slow to use it, sir," said the little Minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! It's not Rossi I'm thinking of now. It's the Church, the clergy,
+rich in money and in the faith of the populace. That's why I wanted to
+do something as set-off against those mourning demonstrations which the
+Pope has appointed."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the old gentleman of the Vatican knows the instincts and cravings
+of our people, doesn't he, sir? He knows they like a show, and the
+seasoning of their pleasures with a little religion."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the rustiest old weapon in the Pope's arsenal, dear colleague, but
+it may serve unless we do something. If the people can be persuaded that
+the Pope is their one friend in adversity, there couldn't be a better
+feather in the Papal cap. Happily our people love to sing and to dance
+as well as to weep and to pray. So we needn't throw up the sponge yet."</p>
+
+<p>Both laughed, and the little Minister said, "Besides, it is so easy to
+change religious processions into political ones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span> And then the Vatican
+is always intriguing with the powers of rebellion and preaching
+obedience to the Pope alone."</p>
+
+<p>The creaking of the Baron's patent-leather boots stopped, and he drew up
+before his colleague.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch that sharply," he said, "and if you see any sign on the part of
+the Vatican of intriguing with men like Rossi, any complicity with
+conspiracy, or any knowledge of plots pointing to revolution and
+regicide, let the Council hear of it immediately."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's face had suddenly whitened with passion, and his little
+colleague looked at him in alarm. A secretary entered the room and
+handed the Baron a card. The Baron fixed his eye-glasses and read:
+"<span class="smcap">Monsignor Mario</span>, Cameriere Segreto Partecipante di Sua Santit&agrave; Pio X.
+Vaticano."</p>
+
+<p>"St. Anthony! Talk of the angels...." muttered the little Minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you perhaps...."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said the Minister, and he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Show the Monsignor in," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>The Monsignor was young, tall, slight, almost fragile, and had thin
+black hair and large spiritual eyes. As he entered in the long black
+overcoat, which covered his cassock, he bowed and looked slowly round
+the room. His subdued expression was that of a sheep going through a
+gate where the dogs may be, and his manner suggested that he would fly
+at the first alarm.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron looked over his eye-glasses and measured his man in a moment.
+"Pray sit," he said, and at the next moment the young Monsignor and the
+Baron were seated at opposite sides of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sent to you by a venerable and illustrious personage...."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us say the Pope," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>The young Monsignor bowed and continued, "to offer on his behalf a word
+of counsel and of warning."</p>
+
+<p>"It is an unusual and distinguished honour," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"I am instructed to inform you that the Holy Father has reason to
+believe a further and more serious insurrection is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span> preparing, and to
+warn you to take the necessary steps to secure public order and to
+prevent bloodshed."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron did not move a muscle. "If the Holy Father has special
+knowledge of a plot that is impending...."</p>
+
+<p>"Not special, only general, but sufficient to enable him to tell you to
+hold yourself in readiness."</p>
+
+<p>"How long has the Holy Father been aware of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not long. In fact, only since yesterday morning," said the Monsignor,
+and fearing he had said too much he added, "I only mention this to show
+you that the Holy Father has lost no time."</p>
+
+<p>"But if the Holy Father knows that a conspiracy is afoot, he can no
+doubt help us to further information."</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that he will not do so?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I, then, to understand that the information with which his Holiness
+honours me came to him secretly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, secretly, and it is, therefore, not open to further
+explanation."</p>
+
+<p>"So it reached him by the medium of the confessional?"</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor rose from his seat. "Your Excellency cannot be in
+earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that it did not reach him by the medium of the confessional?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he is able to tell me everything, if he will?"</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor became agitated. "The Holy Father's information came
+through a channel that is assimilated to the confessional, and is almost
+as sacred and inviolate."</p>
+
+<p>"But obedience to the Pope obliterates from all other responsibility.
+His Holiness has only to say 'Speak,' and his faithful child must obey."</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor became confused. "His informant is not even a Catholic,
+and he has, therefore, no right to command her."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is a woman," said the Baron, and the young ecclesiastic dropped
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a woman and a non-Catholic, and she visited the Holy Father at
+the Vatican yesterday morning; is that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not assert it, sir, and I do not deny it."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron did not speak for a moment, but he looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span> steadily over his
+eye-glasses at the flushed young face before him. Then he said in a
+quiet tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsignor, the relations of the Pope and the Government are delicate,
+and if anything occurred to carry the disagreement further it might
+result in a serious fratricidal struggle."</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor was trying to regain his self-possession, and he remained
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"But whatever those relations, it cannot be the wish of the Holy Father
+to cover with his mantle the upsetters of order who are cutting at the
+roots of the Church as well as the State."</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore I am here now, sir, thus early and thus openly," said the
+Monsignor.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsignor," said the Baron, "if anything should occur to&mdash;for
+example&mdash;the person of the King, it cannot be the wish of his Holiness
+that anybody&mdash;myself, for instance&mdash;should be in a position to say to
+Parliament and to the Governments of Europe, 'The Pope knew everything
+beforehand, and therefore, not having revealed the particulars of the
+plot, the venerable Father of the Vatican is an accomplice of
+murderers.'"</p>
+
+<p>The young ecclesiastic lost himself utterly. "The Pope," he said, "knows
+nothing more than I have told you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsignor, the Pope knows one thing more. He knows who was his
+informant and authority. It is necessary that the Government should know
+that also, in order that it may judge for itself of the nature of the
+conspiracy and the source from which it may be expected."</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor was quivering like a limed bird. "I have delivered my
+message, and have only to add that in sending me here his Holiness
+desired to prevent crime, not to help you to apprehend criminals."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's eye-glasses dropped from his nose, and he spoke sharply and
+incisively. "The Government must at least know who the lady was who
+visited his Holiness at the Vatican yesterday morning, and led him to
+believe that a serious insurrection was impending."</p>
+
+<p>"That your Excellency never will, or can, or shall know."</p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor was bowing himself out of the room when the Baron's
+secretary opened the door and announced another visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, your Excellency."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Monsignor betrayed fresh agitation, and tried to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her in," said the Baron. "One moment, Monsignor."</p>
+
+<p>"I have said all I am authorised to say, sir, and I feel warned that I
+must say no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, Monsignor.... Ah, Donna Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma, who had entered the room, replied with reserve and dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me, Donna Roma, to present Monsignor Mario of the Vatican," said
+the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"It is unnecessary," said Roma. "I met the Monsignor yesterday morning."</p>
+
+<p>The young ecclesiastic was overwhelmed with confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"My respectful reverence to his Holiness," said the Baron, smiling, "and
+pray tell him that the Government will do its duty to the country and to
+the civilised world, and count on the support of the Pope."</p>
+
+<p>Monsignor Mario left the room without a word.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>The Baron pushed out an easy-chair for Roma and twisted his own to face
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"One lives," said Roma, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, my dear? You are ill and unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>She eluded the question and said, "You sent for me&mdash;what do you wish to
+say?"</p>
+
+<p>He told her the printer of certain seditious proclamations had been
+arrested, and in the judicial inquiry preparatory to his trial he had
+mentioned the name of the person who had employed and paid him.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot but be aware, my dear, that you have rendered yourself
+liable to prosecution, and that nothing&mdash;nothing whatever&mdash;could have
+saved you from public exposure but the good offices of a powerful
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>Roma drew her lips tightly together and made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"But what a situation for a Minister! To find himself ruled by his
+feelings for a friend, and thus weakened in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span> eyes of his servants,
+who ought to have no possible hold on him."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's gloomy face began to be compressed with scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"You have perhaps not realised the full measure of the indignity that
+might have befallen you. For instance&mdash;a cruel necessity&mdash;the police
+would have been making a domiciliary visitation in your apartment at
+this moment."</p>
+
+<p>Roma made a faint, involuntary cry, and half rose from her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters and most secret papers would by this time be exposed to
+the eyes of the police.... No, no, my child; calm yourself, be seated;
+thanks to my intervention, this will not occur."</p>
+
+<p>Roma looked at him, and found him more repulsive to her at that moment
+than he had ever been before. Even his daintiness repelled her&mdash;the
+modified perfume about his clothes, his waxed moustache, his rounded
+finger-nails, and all the other refinements of the man who loves himself
+and sets out to please the senses of women.</p>
+
+<p>"You will allow, my dear, that I have had sufficient to humiliate me
+without this further experience. A ward who persistently disregards the
+laws of propriety and exposes herself to criticism in the most ordinary
+acts of life was surely a sufficient trial. But that was not enough.
+Almost as soon as you have passed out of my legal control you join with
+those who are talking and conspiring against me."</p>
+
+<p>Roma continued to sit with a gloomy and defiant face.</p>
+
+<p>"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations you put upon me in
+your own mind? You give me no chance to defend myself. I cannot know
+what others have told you. I know no more than you repeat to me, and
+that is nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was biting her compressed lips and breathing audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations I suffer in the
+minds of the public? There is only one way, and that is to allow it to
+be believed that, in spite of all appearances, you are still playing a
+part, that you are going to all lengths to punish the enemy who traduced
+you and publicly degraded you."</p>
+
+<p>Roma tried to laugh, but the laugh was broken in her throat by a rising
+sob.</p>
+
+<p>"I have only to whisper that, dear friend, and society, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span> all events,
+will credit it. Already it knows the very minute details of your life,
+and it will believe that when you threw away every shred of propriety
+and went to live in that man's apartment, it was only in order to play
+the old part&mdash;shall I say the Scriptural part?&mdash;of possessing yourself
+of <i>the inmost secrets of his soul</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The clear, sharp whisper in which the Baron spoke his last words cut
+Roma like a knife. She threw up her head with scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Let it believe what it likes," she said. "If society cares to think
+that I have allowed my life to be turned upside down for the sake of
+hatred, let it do so."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's secretary interrupted by opening the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Nazzareno, Excellency," said the secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Let him come in," said the Baron. "You remember Nazzareno, Roma? My
+steward at Albano?"</p>
+
+<p>An elderly man with a bronzed face and shaggy eyebrows, bringing an
+odour of the fields and the farmyard, was ushered into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Nazzareno! You've not forgotten Donna Roma? You planted a
+rosebush on her first Roman birthday, you remember. It's a great tree by
+this time, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, Excellency," said the steward, bowing and smiling, "and nearly
+as full of bloom as the Signorina herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what news from Albano?"</p>
+
+<p>The steward told a long story of operations on the estates&mdash;planting
+birch in the top fields, and eucalyptus in the low meadow, fencing,
+draining, and sowing.</p>
+
+<p>"And ... and the Baroness?" said the Baron, turning over some papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! her Excellency is worse," said the old man. "The nurse and the
+doctor thought you had better be told exactly, and that is the object of
+my errand."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" The papers rustled in the Baron's fingers as he shuffled and
+sorted them.</p>
+
+<p>The steward told another long story. Her Excellency was weaker, or she
+would be quite ungovernable. And so changed! When he was called in
+yesterday she was so much altered that he would not have known her. It
+was a question of days, and all the servants were saying prayers to Mary
+Magdalene.</p>
+
+<p>"Have some dinner downstairs before you return, Nazzareno," said the
+Baron. "And when you see the doctor this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span> evening, say I'll come out
+some time this week if I can. Good-morning!"</p>
+
+<p>The repulsion the Baron had inspired in Roma deepened to loathing when
+he began to speak affectionately the moment the door had closed on the
+steward.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at this, dearest. It's from his Majesty."</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at the letter he put before her, so he told her what it
+contained. It offered him the Collar of the Annunziata, the highest
+order in Italy, making him a cousin to the King.</p>
+
+<p>She could not contain herself any longer. "I want to tell you
+something," she said, "so that you may know once for all that it is
+useless to waste further thought on me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with an indulgent smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I am married to Mr. Rossi," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But that is impossible. There was no time."</p>
+
+<p>"We were married religiously, in the parish church, on the morning he
+left Rome."</p>
+
+<p>The indulgent smile gave way to a sarcastic one.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why did he leave you behind? If he thought <i>that</i> was a good
+marriage, why didn't he take you with him? But perhaps he had his own
+reason, and the denunciation of the poor man in prison was not so far
+amiss."</p>
+
+<p>"That was an official lie, a cowardly lie," said Roma, and her eyes
+burned with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it? Perhaps it was. But I have just heard something else about Mr.
+Rossi that is undoubtedly true. I have heard from the Prefect of Paris
+that he is organising a conspiracy for the assassination of the King."</p>
+
+<p>A look of fear which she could not restrain crossed Roma's face.</p>
+
+<p>"More than that, and stranger than that, I have just heard also that the
+Pope has some knowledge of the plot."</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt terror seizing her, and she said in a constrained voice, "Why?
+What has the Pope told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that an insurrection is impending. It seems that his informant is
+a woman.... Who can she be, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron was fixing his eyes on her and she tried to elude his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever she is she must know more," he said in a severe voice, "and
+whatever it is she must reveal it."</p>
+
+<p>Roma got up, looking very pale, and feeling very feeble.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span> When she
+reached the door the Baron was smiling and holding out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not shake hands with me?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use?" she answered. "When people shake hands it means that
+they wish each other well. You do not wish me well. You are trying to
+force me to betray my husband.... <i>But I'll die first</i>," she said, and
+then turned and fled.</p>
+
+<p>When Roma was gone the Baron wrote a letter to the Pope:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Your Holiness</span>,&mdash;Providential accident, as your chamberlain would tell
+you, has enabled his Majesty's Government to judge for itself of that
+source of your Holiness's information which your Holiness very properly
+refused to reveal. At the same time official channels have disclosed to
+his Majesty's Government the nature of the conspiracy of which your
+Holiness so patriotically forewarned them. This conspiracy appears to be
+no less serious than an attempt to assassinate the King, but as detailed
+knowledge of so vile a plot is necessary in order to save the life of
+our august sovereign, his Majesty's Government asks you to grant the
+Prime Minister the honour of an audience with your Holiness in the cause
+of order and public security. Hoping to hear of your Holiness's
+convenience, and trusting that your Holiness will not disappoint the
+hopes of those who are dreaming even yet of a reconciliation of Church
+and State, I am, with all reverence, your Holiness's faithful son and
+servant,</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'><span class="smcap">Bonelli</span>."</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>Roma went home full of uncertainty, and wrote in a nervous and
+straggling hand a hasty letter to Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest," she said, "your letter reached me safely last evening, and
+though I cannot answer it properly at the present moment, I must send a
+brief reply by mid-day's mail, because there are two or three things it
+is imperative I should say immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"The first is that I wrote you a very important letter to London twelve
+days ago, and it is clear that you have not yet received it. The
+contents were of the greatest seriousness and also of the greatest
+secrecy, and I should die if any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span> other eye than yours were to read
+them; therefore do not lose a moment until you ask for the letter to be
+sent after you to Paris. Write to London by the first post, and when the
+letter has come to your hand, do telegraph to me saying so. 'Received,'
+that will be sufficient, but if you can add one other little word
+expressing your feeling on reading what I wrote&mdash;'Forgiven,' for
+instance&mdash;my feeling will not be happiness, it will be delirium.</p>
+
+<p>"The next thing I have to say, dearest, is about your letters. You know
+they are more precious to me than my heart's blood, and there is not a
+word or a line of them I would sacrifice for a queen's crown. But they
+are so full of perilous opinions and of hints of programmes for
+dangerous enterprises, that for your sake I am afraid. It is so good of
+you to tell me what you are thinking and doing, and I am so proud to be
+the woman who has the confidence as well as the love of the
+most-talked-of man in Europe, that it cuts at my heart to ask you to
+tell me no more about your political plans. Nevertheless, I must. Think
+what would happen if the police took it into their heads to make a
+domiciliary visitation in this house. And then think of what a fearful
+weapon it puts into the hands of your enemies, if, hearing that I know
+so much, they put pressure upon me that I cannot withstand! Of course,
+that is impossible. I would die first. But still....</p>
+
+<p>"My last point, dearest...."</p>
+
+<p>Her pen stopped. How was she to put what she wished to say next? David
+Rossi was in danger&mdash;a double danger&mdash;danger from within as well as
+danger from without. His last letter showed plainly that he was engaged
+in an enterprise which his adversaries would call a plot. Roma
+remembered her father, doomed to a life-long exile and a lonely death,
+and asked herself if it was not always the case that the reformer partly
+reformed his age, and was partly corrupted by it.</p>
+
+<p>If she could only draw David Rossi away from associations that were
+always reeking of revolution, if she could bring him back to Rome before
+he was too far involved in plots and with plotters! But how could she do
+it? To tell him the plain truth that he was going headlong to <i>domicilio
+coatto</i> was useless. She must resort to artifice. A light shot through
+her brain, her eyes gleamed, and she began again:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My last point, dearest, is that I am growing jealous. Yes, indeed,
+jealous! I know you love me, but knowing it doesn't help me to forget
+that you are always meeting women who must admire and love you. I
+tremble to think you may be happy with them. I want you to be happy, yet
+I feel as if it would be treason for you to be happy without me. What an
+illogical thing love is! But where Love reigns jealousy is always the
+Prime Minister, and in order to banish my jealousy you must come back
+immediately...."</p>
+
+<p>Her pen stopped again. The artifice was too trivial, too palpable, and
+he would certainly see through it. She tore up the sheet and began
+afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"My last point, dearest, is that I fear you are forgetting me in your
+work. While thinking of the revolution you are making in Europe, you
+forget the revolution you have already made in this poor little heart.
+Of course I love your glory more than I love myself, yet I am afraid it
+is taking you away from me, and will end by leading you up, up, up, out
+of a woman's reach. Why didn't I give you my portrait to put in your
+watch-case when you went away? Don't let this folly disgust you,
+dearest. A woman is a foolish thing, isn't she? But if you don't want me
+to make a torment of everything you will hasten back in time to...."</p>
+
+<p>She threw down the pen and began to cry. Hadn't she promised him that,
+come what would, her love for him should never stand in his way? In the
+midst of her tears a little stab at her heart made her think of
+something else, and she took up the pen again.</p>
+
+<p>"My last point, dearest, is that I am ill, and very, very anxious to see
+you soon. My health has been failing ever since you left Rome. Perhaps
+the anxieties I have gone through have been partly the cause of this,
+but I am sure that your absence is chiefly responsible, and that no
+doctor and no medicine would be so good for me as one rush into your
+arms. Therefore come and give me back all my health and happiness. Come,
+I beg of you. Leave it to others to do your work abroad. Come at once
+<i>before things have gone too far</i>; come, come, come!"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, wanting to say, "Not that I am <i>very</i> ill...." And then,
+"You mustn't come if there is any risk to yourself...." And again, "I
+would never forgive myself if...." But she crushed down her qualms,
+sealed her letter, and sent the Garibaldian to post it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then she gathered up the entire body of David Rossi's letters, and
+putting some light firewood into the stove she sat on the ground to burn
+them. It was necessary to remove all evidence that could be used against
+him in the event of a domiciliary visitation. One by one as the letters,
+were passed into the fire she read parts of them, and some of the
+passages seemed to stand out afresh in the flames. "Your friend must be
+a true woman, and it was very sweet of you to be so tender with
+her." ... "There is always a little twinge when I read between the lines of
+your letters. Are you not dissimulating?... to keep up my
+spirits?" ... "You shall smile and recover all your girlish spirits....
+I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in
+the Campagna." ... "It shows how rightly I judged the moral elevation of
+your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and your heart of gold."</p>
+
+<p>While the letters were burning she felt herself to be under the
+influence of a kind of delirium. It was almost as though she were
+committing murder.</p>
+
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+<p>The Pope had begun the day with the long task of administering the
+sacrament to the lay members of his household, yet at eight o'clock he
+was back in his library in the midst of his morning receptions
+surrounded by a bevy of camerieri, monsignori, and messengers. First
+came a Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda to report the doings of his
+congregation; then an ambassador from Spain to tell of the suppression
+of religious orders; and finally the majordomo to recite the official
+programme for the public ceremonies which the Pope had ordered for Holy
+Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>It was now ten o'clock, and Cortis, the valet, brought the usual plate
+of soup. Then came a large man with bold features and dark complexion,
+wearing a purple robe edged with red and a red biretta. It was the
+Cardinal Secretary of State.</p>
+
+<p>"What news this morning, your Eminence?" said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"The Government," said the Cardinal Secretary, "has just published a
+proclamation announcing a jubilee in honour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span> of the King's accession. It
+is to begin on Monday next, and there are to be great feasts and
+rejoicings."</p>
+
+<p>"A jubilee at a time like this! What a wild mockery of the people's
+woes! How many poor women and children must go hungry before this royal
+orgy has been paid for! God be with us! Such injustice and tyranny in
+the Satanic guise of clemency and indulgence is almost enough to explain
+the homicidal theories of the demagogues and to justify men like
+Rossi.... Any further news of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He is at present in Paris, in close intercourse with the leaders
+of every abominable sect."</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen this man Rossi, your Eminence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once. I saw him on the morning of the jubilee of your Holiness, when he
+attempted to present a petition."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he like to look upon&mdash;the typical demagogue; no?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am bound to say no, your Holiness. And his conversation, though
+it is full of the jargon of modern Liberalism, has none of the
+obscenities of Voltaire."</p>
+
+<p>"Some one said ... who was it, I wonder?... some one said he resembled
+the Holy Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that you mention it, your Holiness, there is perhaps a remote
+resemblance."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! who knows what service for God and humanity even such a man might
+have done if in early life his lines had been cast in better places."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he never knew a father's care and guidance! Unhappy son! Unhappy
+father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Monsignor Mario," said the low voice of a chamberlain, and at the next
+moment the Pope's messenger to the Prime Minister was kneeling in the
+middle of the floor.</p>
+
+<p>In nervous tones and broken sentences the Monsignor told his story. The
+Pope listened intently, the vertical lines on his forehead deepening and
+darkening every moment, until at length he burst out impatiently:</p>
+
+<p>"But, my son, you do not say that you said all this in addition to your
+message?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was drawn into doing so in defence of your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"You told the Minister that my information came through the channel of a
+simple confidence?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He insinuated that the Holy Father was perhaps breaking the seal of the
+confessional...."</p>
+
+<p>"That my informant was a non-Catholic and a woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"He implied that your Holiness had only to command her to reveal the
+conspiracy to the civil authorities, and therefore...."</p>
+
+<p>"And you said she was here on Saturday morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"He hinted that the Holy Father was an accomplice of criminals if he had
+known this without revealing it before, and that was why...."</p>
+
+<p>"And she came in at that moment, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"At that very moment, your Holiness, and said she had met me on Saturday
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Man, man, what have you done?" cried the Pope, rising from his seat and
+pacing the room.</p>
+
+<p>The chamberlain continued to kneel in utter humility, until the Pope,
+recovering his composure, put both hands on his shoulders and raised him
+to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, my son. I was more to blame than you were. It was wrong to
+trust any one with a verbal message in the cabinet of a fox. The Holy
+Father should have no intercourse with such persons. But this is God's
+hand. Let us leave everything to the Holy Spirit."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the Papal Majordomo returned with a letter. It was the
+Baron's letter to the Pope. After the Pope had read it he stepped into a
+little adjoining room which contained nothing but a lounge and an
+easy-chair. There he lay on the lounge and turned his face to the wall.</p>
+
+<h3>XI</h3>
+
+<p>At four o'clock in the afternoon the Pope and Father Pifferi were again
+walking in the garden. The groves of Judas trees were shedding their
+crimson blossoms and the path had a covering of bloom; the atmosphere
+was full of the odour of honey-suckle and violet, and through the sunlit
+air the swallows were darting with shrill cries and the glitter of
+wings.</p>
+
+<p>"And what does your Holiness intend to do?" asked the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"Providence will direct us," said the Pope with a sigh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But your Holiness will refuse the request of the Government?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I do so without exposing myself to misunderstanding? Suppose
+the King is assassinated, what then? The Government will tell the world
+that the Pope knew all and did nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them. It will not be an incident without parallel in the history of
+the Church. And the world will only honour your Holiness the more for
+standing firm on your sanctity of the human soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if the confessional were in question. The world knows that the
+seal of the confessional is sacred, and must be observed at all costs.
+But this is not a case of the confessional."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't your Holiness say you would observe it as such?"</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall. But what about the public? Accident has told the
+Government that this is not a case of the confessional, and the
+Government will tell the world. What follows? If I refuse to do anything
+the enemies of the Church will give it out that the Holy Father is an
+accomplice of a regicide, ready and willing to intrigue with the agents
+of rebellion to regain the temporal power."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will receive the Prime Minister?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Or if so, only in the company of his superior."</p>
+
+<p>"The King?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin removed his skull-cap with an uneasy hand, and walked some
+paces without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Will he come, your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he thinks I hold the secret on which his life depends, assuredly he
+will come."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are sovereign as well as Pope&mdash;is it possible for you to
+receive him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will receive him as the King of Sardinia, the King of Italy, if you
+will, but not as the King of Rome."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin took his coloured handkerchief from his sleeve and rolled
+it in his palms, which were hot and perspiring.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Holy Father," he said, "what will be the good? Say that all
+difficulties of etiquette can be removed, and you can meet as man to
+man, as David Leone and Albert Charles&mdash;why will the King come? Only to
+ask you to put pressure upon your informant to give more information."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Pope drew himself up on the gravel path and smote his breast with
+indignation. "Never! It would be an insult to the Church," he said. "It
+is one thing to expect the Holy Father to do his duty as a Christian
+even to his enemy, it is another thing to ask him to invade the sanctity
+of a private confidence."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin did not reply, and the two old men walked on in silence. As
+the light softened the swallows increased their clamour, and song-birds
+began to call from neighbouring trees. Suddenly a startled cry burst
+from the foliage, and, turning quickly, the Pope lifted up the cat
+which, as usual, was picking its way at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Meesh, Meesh! I've got you safely this time.... It was the poor
+mother-bird again, I suppose. Where is her nest, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>They found it in the old sarcophagus, which was now almost lost in
+leaves. The eggs had been hatched, and the fledglings, with eyes not yet
+opened, stretched their featherless necks and opened their beaks when
+the Pope put down his hand to touch them.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsignor," said the Pope over his shoulder, "remind me to-morrow to
+ask the gardener for some worms."</p>
+
+<p>The cat, from his prison under the Pope's arm, was watching the
+squirming nest with hungry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Naughty Meesh! Naughty!" said the Pope, shaking one finger in the cat's
+face. "But Meesh is only following the ways of his kind, and perhaps I
+was wrong to let him see the quarry."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope and the Capuchin walked back to the Vatican for joy of the
+sweet spring evening with its scent of flowers and song of birds.</p>
+
+<p>"You are sad to-day, Father Pifferi," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still thinking of that poor lady," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>At the first hour of night the Pope attended the recitation of the
+rosary in his private chapel, and then returning to his private study, a
+room furnished with a table and two chairs, he took a light supper,
+served by Cortis in the evening dress of a civilian. His only other
+company was the cat, which sat on a chair on the opposite side of the
+table. After supper he wrote a letter. It ran:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Sire</span>,&mdash;Your Minister informs us that through official channels he has
+received warning of a plot against your life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span> and believing that we can
+give information that will help him to defeat so vile a conspiracy, he
+asks us for a special audience. It is not within our power to promise
+more assistance than we have already given; but this is to say that if
+your Majesty yourself should wish to see us, we shall be pleased to
+receive you, with or without your Minister, if you will come in private
+and otherwise unattended, at the hour of 21-1/2 on Holy Thursday, to the
+door of the Canons' House of St. Peter's, where the bearer of this
+message will be waiting to conduct you to the Sacristy.</p>
+
+<p>"Nil timendum nisi a Deo.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>Pius P.P.X."</p>
+
+<h3>XII</h3>
+
+<p>The ceremonies in St. Peter's on Maundy Thursday exceeded in pomp and
+magnificence anything that could be remembered in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great triumph for the Church. In the face of the anti-religious
+Governments of Europe she had proved that the mightiest sentiment of the
+people was the sentiment of religion.</p>
+
+<p>The Papal Court was proud of itself. Some of its members made no effort
+to conceal their delight at the blow they had struck at the ruling
+classes. But there was one man in Rome who felt no joy in his triumph.
+It was the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock at night he visited the "urn" called the "Sepulchre."
+Borne amid the light of torches on his <i>sedia</i> with his <i>flabelli</i>
+waving on either hand, under a white canopy upheld by prelates, he
+passed through the glittering rooms of his own palace, along the dark
+corridors of the Vatican and down the marble stairs, accompanied by his
+guards in helmets and preceded by the papal cross covered with a violet
+veil, into the great Basilica, lit only by large candles in iron stands,
+and looking plain and barn-like and full of shadows in the gloom and the
+smoky air. But after he had visited the Sepulchre, gorgeously
+illuminated, while the cantors sang the <i>Verbum Caro</i>, after he had
+knelt in silence and had risen, and the torches of his procession had
+been put out, and he had returned to his chair to be borne into the
+Sacristy, and the poor people, lifted to a height of emotion not often
+reached by the human soul, had broken again into a last delirious shout
+of affection, he dropped his head and wept.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At that moment the Sacristy was empty save for the custodian in black
+cassock and biretta, who was warming his hands over a large bronze
+scaldino; but in the Archpriest's room adjoining, with its gilt
+arm-chair and stools of red plush, Father Pifferi in his ordinary brown
+habit was waiting for the Pope. The bearers put down the chair, knelt
+and kissed the Pope's feet in spite of his protest, backed themselves
+out with deep obeisance, and left the two old men together.</p>
+
+<p>"Have they arrived?" asked the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, have you any faith in presentiments?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes, your Holiness. When they continue and are persistent..."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had a presentiment which has been with me all my life&mdash;all my
+life as Pope, at all events. The blessed God who abases and lifts up has
+thought fit to raise my lowliness to the most sublime dignity that
+exists on earth, but I have always lived in the fear that some day I
+should be torn down from it, and the Church would suffer."</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid, your Holiness!"</p>
+
+<p>"That was why I refused every place and every honour. You know how I
+refused them, Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but God knew better, your Holiness, and He preserved you to be a
+blessing and a comfort to His people."</p>
+
+<p>"His holy will be done! But the shadow which has been over me will not
+be lifted. Cause prayers to be said for me. Pray for me yourself,
+Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness is in low spirits. And to-day of all days! Ah, how happy
+is the Church which has seen the hand of God place in the chair of St.
+Peter a soul capable of comprehending the necessities of His children
+and a heart desirous of satisfying them!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know what is to come of this interview, Father, but I must
+leave myself in the hands of the Holy Spirit."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no help for it now, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I should not have gone so far but for this wave of anarchy
+which is sweeping over the world.... You believe the man Rossi is
+secretly an anarchist?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid he is, your Holiness, and one of the worst enemies of the
+Church and the Holy Father."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, and never knew father, or
+mother, or home."</p>
+
+<p>"Pitiful, very pitiful!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have heard that his public life is not without a certain perverted
+nobility, and that his private life is pure and good."</p>
+
+<p>"His relation to the lady would seem to say so, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Holy Father may be sorry for a wayward son, and yet be forced
+to condemn him for all that. He must cut himself off from all such men,
+lest his adversaries should say that, while preaching peace and the
+moral law, he is secretly encouraging the devilish agents of atheism,
+anarchy, and rebellion."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Father, do you think the care of temporal things is ever a danger and
+temptation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think it is, your Holiness, and that the Holy Father would
+be better without lands or fleshly armies."</p>
+
+<p>"How late they are!" said the Pope; but at the same moment the door
+opened, and a Noble Guard knelt on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"The personages you expect have come, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring them in," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<h3>XIII</h3>
+
+<p>The young King, who wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, with sword
+and long blue cloak, knelt to the Pope and kissed his ring, while the
+Prime Minister, who was in ordinary civilian costume, bowed deeply, but
+remained standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray sit," said the Pope, seating himself in the gilded arm-chair, with
+the Capuchin on his left.</p>
+
+<p>The King sat on one of the wooden stools in front of the Pope, but the
+Baron continued to stand by his side. Between the Pope and the King was
+a wooden table on which two large candles were burning. The young King
+was pale, and the expression of his twitching face was one of pain.</p>
+
+<p>"It was good of your Holiness to see us," he said, "and perhaps the
+gravity of our errand may excuse the informality of our visit."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope, who was leaning forward on the arms of his chair, only bent
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>"His Excellency," said the King, indicating the Baron,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span> "tells me he has
+gained proof of an organised conspiracy against my life, and he says
+that your Holiness holds the secret of the conspirators."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope, without responding, looked steadily into the face of the young
+King, who became nervous and embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I'm afraid," he said, "personally afraid. But naturally I must
+think of others&mdash;my family&mdash;my people&mdash;even of Italy&mdash;and if your
+Holiness...if your...your Holiness..."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron, who had been standing with one arm across his breast, and the
+other supporting his chin, intervened at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Majesty," he said, "with your Majesty's permission, and that of
+his Holiness," he bowed to both sovereigns, "it may be convenient if I
+state shortly the object of our visit."</p>
+
+<p>The young King drew a breath of relief, and the Pope, who was still
+silent, bent his head again.</p>
+
+<p>"Some days ago your Holiness was good enough to warn his Majesty's
+Government that from private sources of information you had reason to
+fear that an assault against the public peace was to be attempted."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope once more assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Since then the Government has received corroboration of the gracious
+message of your Holiness, coupled with very definite predictions of the
+nature of the revolt intended. In short, we have been told by our
+correspondents abroad that a conspiracy of European proportions,
+involving the subversive elements of England, France, and Germany, is to
+be directed against Rome as a centre of revolution, and that an attempt
+is to be made to assail constituted society by striking at our King."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness may have heard that it is the intention of the Government
+and the nation to honour the anniversary of his Majesty's accession by a
+festival. The anniversary falls on Monday next, and we have reason to
+fear that Monday is the day intended for the outbreak of this vile
+conspiracy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness may have differences with his Majesty, but you cannot
+desire that the cry of suffering should mingle with the strains of the
+royal march."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If your Government knows all this, it has its remedy&mdash;let it alter the
+King's plans."</p>
+
+<p>"The advice with which your Holiness honours us is scarcely practicable.
+For the Government to alter the King's plans would be to alarm the
+populace, demoralise the services, and to add to the unhappy excitement
+which it is the object of the festival allay."</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you come to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because, your Holiness, our information, although conclusive, is too
+indefinite for effective action, and we believe your Holiness can supply
+the means by which we may preserve public order, and"&mdash;with an apologetic
+gesture&mdash;"save the life of the King."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope was moving uneasily in his chair. "I will ask you to be good
+enough to speak more plainly," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's heavy moustache rose at one corner to a fleeting smile.
+"Your Holiness," he said, "is already aware that accident disclosed to
+us the source of your information. It was a lady. This knowledge enabled
+us to judge who was the subject of her communication. It was the lady's
+lover. Official channels give us proof that he is engaged abroad in
+plots against public order, and thus..."</p>
+
+<p>"If you know all this, sir, what do you want with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness may not be aware that the person in question is a Deputy,
+and that a Deputy cannot be arrested without the fulfilment of various
+conditions prescribed by law. One of those conditions is that some one
+should be in a position to denounce him."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope half rose from his chair. "You ask me to denounce him?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron bowed very low. "The Government does not presume so far," he
+said. "It only hopes that your Holiness will require your informant to
+do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you want me to outrage a confidence?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was not a confession, your Holiness, and even if it had been, as
+your Holiness knows better than we do, it would not be without precedent
+to reveal the facts which are necessary to be known in order to prevent
+crime."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin's sandals were scraping on the floor, but the Pope raised
+his left hand, and the friar fell back.</p>
+
+<p>"You are aware," said the Pope, "that the lady you speak of as my
+informant is married to the Deputy?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are aware that she thinks she is."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thinks?" said the indignant voice of the Capuchin, but the Pope's left
+hand was raised again.</p>
+
+<p>"In short, sir, you ask me to require the wife to sacrifice her
+husband."</p>
+
+<p>"If your Holiness calls it so,&mdash;to perform an act that will preserve the
+public peace...."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>do</i> call it so."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron bowed, the young King was restless, and there was a moment's
+silence. Then the Pope said:</p>
+
+<p>"Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood that the lady knows more than
+she has said, and we have already communicated, what possible inducement
+do you expect us to offer her that she should sacrifice her husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her husband's life," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"His life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness may not know that the Governments of Europe, having
+ascertained the existence of a widespread plot against civil society,
+have joined in measures of repression. One of these is the extension to
+all countries of what is called the Belgian clause in treaties, whereby
+persons guilty of regicide or of plots directed against the lives of
+sovereigns are made liable to extradition."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Deputy Rossi is now in Berlin. If he were denounced with the
+conditions required by law as conspiring against the life of the King,
+we might have him arrested to-night and brought back as a common
+murderer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness may not have heard that since the late unhappy riots the
+Parliament, in spite of the protests of his Majesty, has re-established
+capital punishment for all forms of high treason."</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore," said the Pope, "if the wife were to denounce her husband
+for participation in this conspiracy he would be sentenced to death."</p>
+
+<p>"For this conspiracy&mdash;yes," said the Baron. "But the present is not the
+only conspiracy the man Rossi has engaged in. Eighteen years ago he was
+condemned in contumacy for conspiracy against the life of the late King.
+He has not yet suffered for his crime, because of the difficulty of
+bringing it home. In that case, as in this, there is only one person
+known to the authorities who can fulfil the conditions required by law.
+That person is the informant of your Holiness."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"If your Holiness can prevail upon the lady to identify her lover as the
+man condemned for the former conspiracy, you will be helping her to save
+her husband's life from the penalty due for the present one."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"His Majesty is willing to promise your Holiness that, whatever the
+result of a new trial in assize to follow the old one in contumacy, he
+will grant a complete pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then the Deputy Rossi will be banished, the threatened conspiracy will
+be crushed, the public peace will be preserved, and the King's life will
+be saved."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope leaned forward on the arms of his chair, but he did not speak,
+and there was silence for some moments.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus your Holiness must see," said the Baron suavely, "that, in asking
+you to obtain the denunciation of the man Rossi, the Government is only
+looking to your Holiness to fulfil the mission of mercy to which your
+venerated position has destined you."</p>
+
+<p>"And if I refused to exercise this mission of mercy?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron bowed gravely. "Your Holiness will not refuse," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But if I do&mdash;what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then ... your Holiness.... I was about to say something."</p>
+
+<p>"I am listening."</p>
+
+<p>"The man we speak of is the bitterest enemy of the Church. Whatever his
+hypocrisies, he is at once an atheist and a freemason, sworn to allow no
+private interests or feelings, no bonds of patriotism or blood, to turn
+him aside from his purpose, which is to overthrow Society and the
+Church."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is also a bitter personal enemy of the Holy Father, and knows no
+object so dear as that of tearing him from his place and shaking the
+throne of St. Peter."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"The police and the army of the Government are the only forces by which
+the Holy Father can be protected, and without them the bad elements
+which lurk in every community would break out, the Holy Father would be
+driven from Rome, and his priests assaulted in the streets."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal
+soul in spite of all this danger?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the
+denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against
+public order?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister
+of his Majesty, will be in a position to say&mdash;and to call upon this
+friar to witness&mdash;that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the
+most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a
+supreme encouragement of regicide."</p>
+
+<p>"And then, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is
+now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the
+presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most
+highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent
+the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the
+Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by
+means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins."</p>
+
+<p>The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more
+the Pope put up his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of
+obtaining your end?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an
+unusual and painful ordeal."</p>
+
+<p>"The lady has resisted all other influences?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her
+by the proper authorities."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done
+to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man,
+and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried
+her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and
+the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which
+had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron, for the first time, looked confused.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your
+gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine
+and human law."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the
+halfpenny papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the
+penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in
+disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?"</p>
+
+<p>"These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I
+do not deny."</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or
+do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for
+the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another
+to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such
+persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong
+and enlightened Government."</p>
+
+<p>"Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian
+system which supports them! Allow that the man <i>was</i> a miserable
+malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor,
+degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do?
+They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his
+murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They
+crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the
+presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a
+majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale
+for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his
+arms and stiffened his legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever thought, sir, of the end of the unjust Minister? Think of
+his dying hour, tortured with the memory of young lives dissolved,
+mothers dead, widows desolate, and orphans in tears. Think of the day
+after his death, when he who has passed through the world like the
+scourge of God lies at its feet, and no one so mean but he may spurn the
+dishonoured carcass. You are aiming high, your Excellency, but beware,
+beware!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Pope sat, and the King rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Majesty," said the Pope, "the day will come when we must both
+present ourselves before God to render to Him an account of our deeds,
+and I, being far more advanced in years, will assuredly be the first.
+But I would not dare to meet the eye of my Judge if I did not this day
+warn you of the dangers in which you stand. Only God knows by what
+inscrutable decree of Providence one man is made a Pope or a King, while
+another man, his equal or superior, is made a beggar or a slave. But God
+who made Popes and Kings meant them to be the fathers, not the seducers
+of their subjects. A sovereign may be a man of good intentions, but if
+he is weak, and allows himself to fall into the hands of despotic
+Ministers, he is a worse affliction than the cruellest tyrant. Think
+well, your Majesty! A throne may be a quagmire, and a man may be buried
+in it, and buried alive."</p>
+
+<p>The young King began to falter some incoherent words, but without
+listening the Pope rose to end the audience.</p>
+
+<p>"You promise me," said the Pope, "that if&mdash;I say <i>if</i>&mdash;in order to avoid
+bloodshed and to prevent a crime, I obtain from this lady the
+identification of her husband as the person condemned for the former
+conspiracy, you will spare and pardon him whatever happens?"</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, I give you my solemn word for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then leave me! Let me think!... Wait! If she consents, where must she
+go to?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the Procura by the Ponte Ripetta, and, as time presses, at ten
+o'clock on Saturday morning," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me! Leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>The King knelt again and kissed the Pope's hand, but the Baron only
+bowed as he passed out behind his sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>The opening of the doors let in a wave of sound that was like the roll
+of a great wind in a cave. Tenebr&aelig; had been going on for some time in
+the Basilica, and the people were singing the Miserere.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to
+justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>The friar touched a bell, and the <i>palfrenieri</i> returned with the
+chair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>XIV</h3>
+
+<p>Next day, being Good Friday, was passed by the Pope in religious
+retreat, which was interrupted by indispensable business only. After
+Mass of the Presanctified he sat in his study with his confessor, while
+his chaplain in black passed through on tiptoe from the private chapel,
+and his chamberlains, tired out by the ceremonies of yesterday, dozed on
+their stools in the outer hall.</p>
+
+<p>The day was bright but the room was darkened, and the hearts of the two
+old men were heavy. Over the face of the Pope there was a cloud of
+trouble, and the countenance of the Capuchin was solemn to the point of
+sternness. The friar sat in the old-fashioned easy-chair with his bare
+feet showing from under the edge of his brown habit; the Pope lay on the
+lounge with both hands in the vertical pockets of his white woollen
+cassock.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness is not well this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very well, Father Pifferi."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness was disturbed by the interview in the Sacristy. But you
+should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed
+was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a
+wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than
+the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness could
+never consider it."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't your Holiness promise that whatever the nature of this poor
+lady's confidence you would hold it as sacred as the confessional?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is the confessional, your Holiness? It is a tribunal in which the
+priest is judge and the penitent a prisoner who pleads guilty. Is the
+priest to call witnesses to prove other crimes? He has no right and no
+power to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"But where the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of
+an accomplice, what then, Father Pifferi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Even then it is expressly forbidden to demand the names of others upon
+the plea of preventing evil. How can you hold this lady's confidence as
+sacred and yet ask her to denounce her husband?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope rose with a face full of pain, walked to the bookcase,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span> and
+took down a book. "Listen, Father," he said, and he began to read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>If the penitent was obliged under pain of mortal sin to reveal his
+accomplices to repair a common injury, I have maintained against other
+theologians that even then the confessor cannot oblige him to do so</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"There!" cried the Capuchin. "What did I say? Gaume is wise, and the
+other theologians, who are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Only</i>," continued the Pope, turning a page and holding up one finger,
+"<i>he can and must oblige him to make known his accomplices to other
+persons who can arrest the scandal</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin took a long breath. "Is that what the Holy Father intends
+to do in this instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>can</i> and <i>must</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin dropped his head, and there was a long pause, in which the
+Pope walked nervously about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "But perhaps her heart has been too
+much set on human love."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet who are we, whose hearts are closed to earthly affection, to
+prescribe a limit to human love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who indeed?" said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window.</p>
+
+<p>"The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry
+towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...."</p>
+
+<p>"The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said
+the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul,
+that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call
+themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of
+civilisation."</p>
+
+<p>"He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat
+down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of
+the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind
+the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span> ante-camera, and
+the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and the <i>palfrenieri</i>
+dotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs.</p>
+
+<p>But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no
+family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew
+no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his
+little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans.</p>
+
+<h3>XV</h3>
+
+<p>Good Friday's Ministerial paper announced in its official column that
+late the night before the King, attended by the Minister of the
+Interior, had paid a surprise visit to the Mint, which was in the Via
+Fondamenta, a lane approached by way of the silent passage which leads
+to the lodging of the Canons of St. Peter's. Roma was puzzling over the
+inexplicable announcement, when old John, one of Rossi's pensioners,
+knocked at her door. His face and his lips were white, and when Roma
+offered him money he put it aside impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't think a gold hammer can break the gate of heaven,
+Eccellenza," the old man said.</p>
+
+<p>Then he told his story. The King had seen the Pope in secret the night
+before, and there was something going on about the Honourable Rossi.
+John knew it because his grandson had left Rome that morning for
+Chiasso, and another member of the secret police had started for Modane.
+If Donna Roma knew where the Honourable was to be found, she had better
+tell him not to return to Italy.</p>
+
+<p>"Better be a wood-bird than a cage-bird, you know," the old man
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Roma thanked him for his news, and then warned him of the risk he ran,
+being dependent on his grandson and his grandson's wife.</p>
+
+<p>"That's nothing," he said, "nothing at all <i>now</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Last night he had dreamed a dream. He thought he was a strong man again,
+with his children about him, and beholden to no one. How happy he had
+been! But when he awoke, and found it was not true, and that he was old
+and feeble, he felt that he could hear it no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in the way and taking the food of the children, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span> it can't last
+long, Eccellenza," he said in a tremulous voice, smiling with his
+toothless mouth, and nodding slightly as he went away.</p>
+
+<p>In the uneasy depths of Roma's soul only one thing was now certain. Her
+husband was in danger, and he must not attempt to cross the frontier.
+Yet how was he to be prevented? The difficulty was enormous. If only
+Rossi had replied to her letter by telegram, as she had asked him to do,
+she might have found some means of communication. At length an idea
+occurred to her, and she sat down to write a letter.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"Dearest," she wrote, while her eyes shone with a kind of delirium and
+tears trickled down her cheeks, "I am very ill, and as you cannot come
+to me I must go to you. Don't think me too weak and womanish, after all
+my solemn promises to be so strong and brave. But I can only live by
+love, dearest, and your absence is more than I can bear. You will think
+I ought to be content with your letters, and certainly they have been
+very sweet and dear to me; but they are so few, and they come at such
+long intervals, and now they seem to have stopped altogether. Perhaps at
+the bottom of my selfish heart, too, I think your letters might be a wee
+bit more lover-like, but then men don't write real love letters, and
+nearly every woman would confess, if she told the truth, and she is a
+little disappointed in that regard.</p>
+
+<p>"I know my husband has other things to think about, great things, high
+and noble aims and objects, but I am only a woman in spite of my loud
+pretences, and I must be loved, or I shall die. Not that I am afraid of
+dying, because I know that if I die I shall be with you in a moment, and
+this cruel separation will be at an end. But I want to live, and I'm
+certain I shall begin to feel better after I have passed a few moments
+at your side. So I shall pack up immediately and start away on the wings
+of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be alarmed if you find me looking pale and thin and old and ugly.
+How could I be anything else when the particular world I live in has
+been sunless all these weeks? I know your work is very pressing,
+especially now when so many things are happening; but you will put it
+aside for a little while, won't you, and take me up into the Alps
+somewhere, and nurse me back to health and happiness? Fancy! We shall be
+boy and girl again, as in the days when you used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span> to catch butterflies
+for me, and then look sad when, like a naughty child, I scrunched them!</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Au revoir</i>, dearest. I shall fall into your hands nearly as soon as
+this letter. I tremble to think you may be angry with me for following
+you and interrupting your work. If you show it in your face I shall
+certainly expire. But you will be good to your poor pilgrim of love and
+comfort and strengthen her. All the time you have been away she has
+never forgotten you for a moment&mdash;no, not one waking moment. An ordinary
+woman who loved an ordinary man would not tell him this, but you are not
+ordinary, and if I am I don't care a pin to pretend.</p>
+
+<p>"Expect me, then, by the fastest train leaving Rome to-morrow morning,
+and don't budge from Paris until I arrive.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"<span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<p>The strain of this letter, with its conscious subterfuge and its
+unconscious truth, put Roma into a state of fever; and when she had
+finished it and sent it to the post, her head was light, and she was
+aware for the first time that she was really ill.</p>
+
+<p>The deaf old woman, who helped her to pack, talked without ceasing of
+Rossi and Bruno and Elena and little Joseph, and finally of the King and
+his intended jubilee.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't take no notice of Governments, Signora. It's the same as it
+used to be in the old days. One Pope died, and his soul went into the
+next. First an ugly Pope, then a handsome one, but the soul was the same
+in all. Wet soup or dry&mdash;that's all I trouble about now; and I don't
+care who gets the taxes so long as I can pay.... What do you say,
+Tommaso?"</p>
+
+<p>The Garibaldian had come upstairs smiling and winking, and holding out a
+letter. "From Trinit&agrave; de' Monti," he whispered. Flushing crimson and
+trembling visibly, Roma took the letter out of the old man's hands with
+as much apprehension as if he had tried to deal her a blow, and went off
+to her room.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I say, Francesca? I say it's a good thing to be a Christian in
+these days, and that's why I always carry a sharp knife and a rosary."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>XVI</h3>
+
+<p>The letter bore the Berlin postmark.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"My <span class="smcap">dear Wife</span>,&mdash;I left Paris rather unexpectedly three days ago and
+arrived here on Tuesday. The reason of this sudden flight was the
+announcement in the Paris papers of the festivities intended in Rome in
+honour of the King's accession. Such a shameless outrage on the people's
+sufferings in the hour of their greatest need seemed to call for
+immediate and effectual protest, and it was thought wise to push on the
+work of organisation with every possible despatch...."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a train north at 9.30," thought Roma. "I must leave to-night,
+not in the morning."</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"Oh, Roma, Roma, my dear Roma, I understand your father now, and can
+sympathise with him at last. He held that even regicide might become a
+necessary weapon in the warfare of humanity, and though I knew that some
+of the greatest spirits had recourse to it, I always thought this belief
+the defect of your father's quality as a prophet and the limit of his
+vision. But now I see that the only difference between us was that his
+heart was bigger than mine, and that in those cruel crises where the
+people are helpless and can do nothing by constitutional means,
+revolution, not evolution, may <i>seem</i> to be their only hope...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt hysterical. There could no longer be any doubt of Rossi's
+intention.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"I don't tell you anything definite about our plans, dearest, partly
+because of the danger of this letter going astray, and partly because I
+don't think it right to saddle my wife with the responsibility of
+knowing a programme that is weighted with issues of such immense
+importance to so many. I know there is not a drop of blood in her veins
+that isn't ready to flow for me, but that is no reason for exposing her
+to the danger of even the prick of her little finger.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-bottom:.5em;'>"Briefly our cry is 'Unite! Unite! Unite!' As soon as our scheme is
+complete, and associates all over Europe receive the word to commence
+concerted movement, the tyrants at the heads of the States will find the
+old edifices riddled and honeycombed, and ready to fall."</p>
+
+<p>Roma imagined she could see everything as it was intended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span> to be&mdash;the
+signal, the rising, the regicide. "There is a train at 2.30; I must
+catch that one," she thought.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em; padding-bottom:.5em;'>"Dearest, don't attempt to reply to this letter, for I may leave Berlin
+at any moment, but whether for Geneva or Z&uuml;rich I don't yet know. I can
+give you no address for letter or telegram, and perhaps it is best that
+at the critical moment I should cut myself off from all connection with
+Rome. Before many days I shall be with you; my absence will be over,
+and, God willing, I shall never leave your side again...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was growing dizzy. Rossi was rushing on his death, and there was no
+help for him. It was like the awful hand of the Almighty driving him
+blindly on.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em;'>"Adieu, my darling. Keep well. A friend writes that letters from Rome
+are following me from London. They must be yours, but before they
+overtake me I shall be holding you in my arms. How I long for it! I am
+more than ever full of love for you, and if I have filled my letter with
+business I have other things to say to you the very moment that we meet.
+Don't expect me until you see me in your room. Be brave! Now is the
+moment for all your courage. Remember you promised to be my soldier as
+well as my wife&mdash;'ready and waiting when her captain calls.'</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>D."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was standing with Rossi's letter in her hand&mdash;her face and lips
+white, and her head full of a roaring noise&mdash;when a knock came to the
+bedroom door. Before answering she thrust the letter into the stove and
+set a match to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma! Are you there, Signora?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait ... come in."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman's head, in its coloured handkerchief, appeared through the
+half-opened door.</p>
+
+<p>"A Frate in the sitting-room to see you, Signora."</p>
+
+<p>It was Father Pifferi. The old man's gentle face looked troubled. Roma
+gave him a rapid, penetrating, and fearful glance.</p>
+
+<p>"The Holy Father wishes to see you again," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Roma thought for a moment; then she said, "Very well, let us go," and
+she went back to her room to make ready. The last of the letter was
+burning in the stove.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>XVII</h3>
+
+<p>Roma returned to the Vatican with the Capuchin. There were the same
+gorgeous staircases and halls, the same soldiers, chamberlains,
+Bussolanti and Monsignori, the same atmosphere of the palace of an
+emperor. But in the little plain apartment which they entered, not as
+before by way of the throne room, but by a secret corridor with cocoanut
+matting and narrow frosted windows, the Pope stood waiting, like a
+simple priest, in a white woollen cassock.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled as Roma approached, a sad smile, and his weary eyes, when she
+looked timidly into his face, were full of the measureless pity that is
+in the eyes of the surgeon who is about to vivisect a dumb creature
+because it is necessary for the welfare of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>She knelt and kissed his ring. He raised her and put her to sit on the
+lounge, sitting in the arm-chair himself, and continuing to hold her
+hand. The Capuchin stood by the window, holding the curtain aside as if
+looking out on the piazza.</p>
+
+<p>"You believe the Holy Father would not send for you to injure you?" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure he would not, your Holiness," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"And though I disapprove of your husband's doings, you know I would not
+willingly do him any harm?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Holy Father would not do harm to any one; and my husband is so
+good, and his aims are so noble, that nobody who really knew him could
+ever try to injure him."</p>
+
+<p>He looked into her face; it shone with a frightened joy, and pity grew
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your devotion to your husband is very sweet and beautiful, my daughter,
+and it grieves the Holy Father's heart to trouble it. But it seems to be
+his duty to do so, and he must do his duty."</p>
+
+<p>Again she looked up timidly, and again the sense came to him of dumb
+eyes full of entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, your husband's motives may not be bad. They may even be
+good and noble. It is often so with men of his sympathies. They see the
+disparity of wealth and poverty, and their hearts are torn with anger
+and with pity. But, my child, they do not know that true and lasting
+reforms, such as affect the whole human family, can only be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span>
+accomplished by God and by the authority of His Holy Church and
+Pontificate, and that it must be the bell of St. Peter's which announces
+them to the world."</p>
+
+<p>As the Pope was speaking the colour ran up Roma's face like a flag of
+distress. She looked helplessly round at the Capuchin. The dumb eyes
+seemed to ask when the blow would fall.</p>
+
+<p>"As a consequence, what is he doing, my daughter? Ignoring the Church,
+which like a true mother is ever anxious to bear the burden of human
+weakness and suffering; he is setting up a new gospel, such as would
+reduce mankind to a worse barbarism than that from which Christ freed
+us. Is this conduct worthy of your devotion, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma fixed her timid eyes on the Pope's face and answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing to do with my husband's opinions, your Holiness. I have
+only to be true to the friendship he gives me and the love I bear him."</p>
+
+<p>"My child," said the Pope, "ask yourself what your husband is doing at
+this moment. Not content with sowing the seeds of discord in Parliament
+and by the press, he is wandering through Europe, gathering up the
+adventurers who work in darkness in every country, and hatching a
+conspiracy which would lead to a state of anarchy throughout the world."</p>
+
+<p>Roma withdrew her hand from the hand of the Pope and made an exclamation
+of dissent.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I know what you would say, my daughter. He did not set out to
+produce anarchy. Such men never do. They begin with evolution and end
+with revolution. They begin with peace and end with violence. And the
+only sequel to your husband's aims must be the destruction of civil
+society, of Government, and of the Church."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's fingers were clasped convulsively in her lap. She lifted her
+timid but passionate face and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing about that, your Holiness. I only know that whatever he
+is doing his heart laid it upon him as a duty, and his heart is pure and
+noble."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, your husband may be the greatest of patriots in spirit and
+intention, but nevertheless he is one of the criminal and visionary
+teachers of this unhappy time who are deluding the ignorant crowd with
+promises that can never be realised. Anarchy, chaos, the uprooting of
+religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span> and morality, of justice, human dignity, and the purity of
+domestic life&mdash;these are the only possible fruits of the seed he is
+sowing."</p>
+
+<p>The timid eyes began to flash. "I did not come here to hear this, your
+Holiness." The Pope put his hand tenderly on her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember, my child, what you said yourself on your former visit."</p>
+
+<p>Roma dropped her head.</p>
+
+<p>"The authorities know all about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Then ... then somebody must have told them."</p>
+
+<p>"I told them. The Holy Father revealed no more than was necessary to
+relieve his conscience and to prevent crime. It was your own tongue that
+told the rest, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>He recalled what had passed in the cabinet of the Prime Minister, and
+Roma felt as if something choked her. "No matter!" she said, with the
+same frightened but passionate face. "David Rossi is prepared for
+anything, and he will be prepared for this."</p>
+
+<p>"The authorities already knew more than I could tell them," said the
+Pope. "They knew where your husband was and what he was doing. They know
+where he is now, and they are preparing to arrest him."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's nerves grew more and more excited, the timid look gave place to a
+look of defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me that he is in Berlin at this moment. Is it true?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"They say their advices from official sources leave no doubt that he is
+engaged in conspiracy."</p>
+
+<p>Still Roma did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"They say confidently that the conspiracy points to rebellion, and is
+intended to include regicide. Is it so?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma bit her lip and remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you trust me, my child? Don't you know the Holy Father? Only give
+me some hope that these statements are untrue, and the Holy Father is
+ready to withstand all evil influences against you, and face the world
+in your defence."</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt as if something would snap within her brain. "I cannot say ...
+I do not know," she faltered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But have you any uncertainty, my daughter? If you have the least reason
+to believe that these statements are slanders of malicious imaginations,
+tell me so, and I will give your husband the benefit of the doubt."</p>
+
+<p>Roma rose to her feet, but she held on to the edge of the table that
+stood by her side, rigid, quivering, frail and silent. The Pope looked
+up at her with weary eyes, and continued in a caressing tone:</p>
+
+<p>"If unhappily you have no doubt that your husband is engaged in
+dangerous enterprises, can you not dissuade him from them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Roma, struggling with her tears, "that is impossible. Whether
+he is right or wrong, it is not for me to sit in judgment upon him.
+Besides, long ago, before we were married, I promised that I would never
+stand between him and his work, and I never can&mdash;never."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he loves you, my child, would he not wish for your sake to avoid
+the danger?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't ask him. I told him to go on without thinking of me, and I
+would take care of myself whatever happened."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were now shining with her tears. The Pope patted the hand on
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you not at least go to him and warn him, and thus leave him to
+judge for himself, my daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... no, that is impossible also."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I don't know where he is, and I shouldn't know where to find
+him. In his last letter he said it was better I should not know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he has cut himself off from you entirely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Entirely. I am to see him next in Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"And meantime, that he may not run the risk of being traced by his
+enemies, he has stopped all channels of communication with his friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's face whitened visibly, and an inward voice said to him, "This
+is God's hand. Death is waiting for the man in Rome, and he is walking
+blindly on to it."</p>
+
+<p>The weary eyes looked with compassion on Roma's quivering face. "There's
+no help for it," thought the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose, my child ... suppose it were within your power to hinder evil
+consequences, would you do it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am a woman, Holy Father. What can a woman do to hinder anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the history of nations it has sometimes happened that a woman has
+been able to save life and protect society by raising a little hand like
+this."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope lifted Roma's quivering fingers from the table.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is anything I can do, your Holiness, without breaking my
+promise or betraying my husband...."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a terrible ordeal, my child. For a wife, God knows how terrible."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter! If it will save my husband.... Tell me, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>He told her the proposal of the Prime Minister and the promise of the
+King. His voice vibrated. He was like a man who was wounding himself at
+every word. She looked at him until he had finished, without ability to
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"You ask me to <i>denounce</i> my husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the only way to save him, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>She looked round the room with helpless eyes, full of a dumb appeal for
+mercy or the chance of escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," she said in a choking voice, "that is what his enemies
+have been asking me to do all this time, and because I have refused they
+have persecuted me with poverty and shame. And now that I come to you
+for refuge and shelter, thinking your fatherly arms will protect me,
+you ... even you...."</p>
+
+<p>She broke off as by a sudden thought, and said: "But it is impossible.
+He is my husband, therefore I cannot witness against him."</p>
+
+<p>"My heart bleeds for you, my child, and I am ashamed to gainsay you. But
+an oath is not necessary to a denunciation, and if it were so the law of
+this unchristian country would not recognise you as Rossi's wife."</p>
+
+<p>"But he will know who has denounced him. I am the only one in the world
+to whom he has told his secrets, and he will hate me and part from me."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have saved his life, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to me to have saved his life if he is lost to me for ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you that say that, my child&mdash;you that have sacrificed so much
+already? Doesn't the highest love remember first the welfare of the
+loved one and think of itself the last?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; I didn't know what I was saying. But he will curse me for
+destroying his cause."</p>
+
+<p>"His cause will be destroyed in any case. It is doomed already. And when
+his visionary schemes are in the dust, and all is lost and vain, and
+your tears are powerless to bring back the past...."</p>
+
+<p>"But he will be banished, and I shall never see him again."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be the less of two evils, my child," said the Pope. And in the
+solemn, vibrating voice that rang in Roma's ears like the voice of
+Rossi, he added, "'Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be
+shed.'"</p>
+
+<p>Again Roma held on to the table, feeling at every moment as if she might
+fall with a crash.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what would come to your husband if he were arrested and
+condemned for a conspiracy to kill the King. And even if the humane
+spirit of the age snatched him from death&mdash;what then? A cell in a prison
+on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead,
+buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded,
+watched, tortured in body and soul&mdash;a figure of tremendous tragedy, the
+hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to
+the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him
+to escape into eternity and leave only his wasted body on the earth."</p>
+
+<p>Roma could bear the nervous tension no longer. "I'll do it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"My brave child!" said the Capuchin, turning from the window, with a
+face broken up by emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It is one thing to repeat a secret if it is to harm any one, and quite
+another thing if it is to do good, isn't it?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"He will never forgive me&mdash;I know that quite well. He will never imagine
+I would have died rather than do it. But I shall know I have done it for
+the best."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed you will."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's eyes were shining with fresh tears, and she was struggling to
+keep back her sobs. "When we parted on the night he went away he said
+perhaps we were parting for ever. I promised to be faithful to death
+itself, but I was thinking of my own death, not his, and I didn't
+imagine that to save his life I must betray his...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But at that moment she broke down utterly, and the Pope, who had
+returned to his seat, rose again to comfort her.</p>
+
+<p>"Calm yourself, my daughter," he said. "What you are going to do is an
+act of heroic self-sacrifice. Be brave and Heaven will reward you."</p>
+
+<p>She grew calmer after a while, and then Father Pifferi made arrangements
+for the visit to the Procura. He would call for her at ten in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" said Roma. A new light had come into her face&mdash;the light of a
+new idea.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, my daughter?" said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, there is something I had forgotten. But I must tell you
+before it is too late. It may alter your view of everything. When you
+hear it you may say, 'You must not speak a word. You shall not speak. It
+is impossible.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, my child."</p>
+
+<p>Roma hesitated and looked from the Capuchin to the Pope. "How can I tell
+you," she said. "It is so difficult. I hadn't meant to tell any one."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"My husband's name...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rossi is not really his name, your Holiness. It is the name he took on
+returning to Italy, because the one he had borne abroad had been
+involved in trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, David Rossi was a friendless orphan."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard so," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"He never knew his father&mdash;not even by name. His mother was a poor
+unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned
+herself in the Tiber."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor soul," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a
+straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope moved uneasily in his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your
+Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of
+velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was
+all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's
+child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your
+Holiness?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes
+were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that
+time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him
+to the public or even the police."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at
+Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have
+been a good man after all&mdash;one of those who have to suffer all their
+lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was
+walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and
+outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his
+name."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms
+of his chair and his wrinkled hands were tightly clasped.</p>
+
+<p>Roma stopped. There was a prolonged silence. The atmosphere of the room
+seemed to be whirling round with frightful rapidity to one terrific
+focus.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," said Roma at length, in a low tone, "if David Rossi were
+<i>your own son</i>, would you still ask me to denounce him?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope lifted a face full of suffering and said in his deep, vibrating
+voice, "Yes, yes! More than ever for that&mdash;a thousand times more than
+ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>I will do it</i>," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope rose up in great emotion, laid both hands on her shoulder, and
+said, "Go in peace, my daughter, and may God grant you at least a little
+repose."</p>
+
+<h3>XVIII</h3>
+
+<p>After recitation of the Rosary, the Pope, who had kept his religious
+retreat throughout the day, announced, to the astonishment of his
+chamberlains, his desire to walk in the garden at night. With Father
+Pifferi carrying a long Etruscan lamp he walked down the dark corridors
+with their surprised <i>palfrenieri</i>, and across the open courtyards with
+their startled sentinels, to where the arches of the Vatican opened upon
+the soft spring sky.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The night was warm and quiet, and the moon, which had just risen and was
+near the full, shone with steady brilliance.</p>
+
+<p>The venerable old men walked without speaking, and only the beating of
+their sticks on the gravel seemed to break the empty air. At length the
+Pope stopped and said:</p>
+
+<p>"How strange it all was, Father Pifferi!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very strange, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"Rossi is not his name, it seems."</p>
+
+<p>"'Not <i>really</i> his name' was what she said."</p>
+
+<p>"His mother was deceived by every one, and she drowned herself in the
+Tiber."</p>
+
+<p>"That was so, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"He was nursed in the Foundling, brought up in the Campagna, and then
+sold as a boy into England."</p>
+
+<p>"It is really extraordinary," said Father Pifferi.</p>
+
+<p>"Most extraordinary," repeated the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then walked on in
+silence. Little sparks of blue light pulsed and throbbed and floated
+before their faces, and the moon itself, like a greater firefly, came
+and went in the interstices of the thin-leaved trees. The Pope, who
+shuffled in his walking, stopped again.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can he be, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin drew a deep breath. "We shall know everything to-morrow
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Pope, "we shall know everything to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>Some dark phantom of the past was hovering about them, and they were
+afraid to challenge it.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the silence of the listening air was broken by a long
+clear call, which rang out through the night without any warning, and
+then stopped as suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"The nightingale," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>A mighty flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying
+strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every
+phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of
+unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed
+to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed
+around, the world seemed to have become void.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's feet shuffled on the gravel. "I shall never forget it," he
+said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was wonderful," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of that poor lady," said the Pope. "Her pleading voice
+will ring in my ears as long as I live."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, we could not have acted otherwise. Don't you think so,
+Father Pifferi? Considering everything, we could not possibly have acted
+otherwise."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we could not, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>They turned the bend of an avenue, where the path under their feet
+rustled with the thick blossom shed from the overhanging Judas trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely this is where the little mother bird used to be," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is," said the friar.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange, she has not sprung out as usual. Ah, Meesh is not here, and
+perhaps that's the reason." And feeling for the old sarcophagus, the
+Pope put his hand gently down into it. A moment afterwards he said in
+another tone: "Father, the young birds are gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Flown, no doubt," said the friar.</p>
+
+<p>"No. See," said the Pope, and he brought up a little nest filled with a
+ruin of fluff and feathers.</p>
+
+<p>"Meesh has been here indeed," said the friar.</p>
+
+<p>The venerable old men walked on in silence until they re-entered the
+vaulted courtyards of the Vatican. Then the Pope turned to the Capuchin
+and said in a breaking voice, "You'll go with the poor lady to the
+Procura in the morning, Father Pifferi. If the magistrates ask questions
+which they should not ask, you will protect her, and even forbid her to
+reply, and if she breaks down at the last moment you will support and
+comfort her. After that ... we must leave all to the Holy Spirit. God's
+hand is in this thing ... it is in everything. He will bring out all
+things well&mdash;well for us, well for the Church, well for the poor lady,
+and even for her husband, whoever he may be."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever he may be," repeated the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<h3>XIX</h3>
+
+<p>Early in the morning of Holy Saturday, Roma was summoned as a witness
+before the Penal Tribunal of Rome. The citation, which was signed by a
+magistrate, required that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span> she should present herself at the Procura at
+ten o'clock the same day, "to depose about facts on which she would then
+be interrogated," and she was warned that if she did not appear, "she
+would incur the punishment sanctioned by Article 176 of the Code of
+Penal Procedure."</p>
+
+<p>Roma found Father Pifferi waiting for her at the door of the Procura.
+The old Capuchin looked anxious. He glanced at her pale face and
+quivering lips and inquired if she had slept. She answered that she was
+well, and they turned to go upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>On the landing of the first floor Commendatore Angelelli, who was
+wearing a flower in his button-hole, approached them with smiles and
+quick bows to lead them to the office of the magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a form," said the Questore. "It will be nothing&mdash;nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>Commendatore Angelelli led the way into a silent room furnished in red,
+with carpet, couch, armchairs, table, a stove, and two large portraits
+of the King and Queen.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, please. Make yourselves comfortable," said the Chief of
+Police, and he passed into an adjoining room.</p>
+
+<p>A moment afterwards he returned with two other men. One of them was an
+elderly gentleman, who wore with his frockcoat a close-fitting velvet
+cap decorated with two bands of gold lace. This was the Procurator
+General, and the other, a younger man, carrying a portfolio, was his
+private secretary. A marshal of Carabineers came to the door for a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, my child. No harm shall come to you," whispered Father
+Pifferi. But the good Capuchin himself was trembling visibly.</p>
+
+<p>The Procurator General was gentle and polite, but he dismissed the Chief
+of Police, and would have dismissed the Capuchin also, but for vehement
+protests.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I see no objection; sit down again," he said.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange three-cornered interview. Father Pifferi, quaking with
+fear, thought he was there to protect Roma. The Procurator General,
+smiling and serene, thought she had come to complete a secret scheme of
+personal revenge. And Roma herself, sitting erect in her chair, in her
+black Eton coat and straw hat, and with her wonderful eyes turning
+slowly from face to face, thought only of Rossi, and was silent and
+calm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The secretary opened his portfolio on the table and prepared to write.
+The Procurator General sat in front of Roma and leaned slightly forward.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of the late Prince Prospero
+Volonna?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You were born in England and lived there as a child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Although you were young when you lost your father, you have a perfect
+recollection both of him and of his associates?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of some of his associates."</p>
+
+<p>"One of them was a young man who lived in his house as a kind of adopted
+son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You are aware that your father was unhappily involved in political
+troubles?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You know that he was arrested on a serious charge?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"You also know that, when condemned to death by a military tribunal for
+conspiring against the person of the late sovereign, his sentence was
+commuted by the King, but that one of his associates, condemned at the
+same time, and for the same crime, escaped all punishment because he was
+not then at the disposition of the law?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That was the young man who lived with him as his adopted son?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's pause during which nothing could be heard but the
+quick breathing of the Capuchin and the scratching of the secretary's
+pen.</p>
+
+<p>"During the past few months you have made the acquaintance in Rome of
+the Deputy David Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have."</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin moved in his seat. "Acquaintance! The lady is married to
+the Deputy."</p>
+
+<p>The Procurator General's eyes rose perceptibly. "Married!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is to say religiously married, which is all the Church thinks
+necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I see," said the Procurator General, suppressing a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">366</a></span> smile. "Still I
+must ask the lady to make her statement in her natal name."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, sir," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"Your intimacy with the Honourable Rossi has no doubt led him to speak
+freely on many subjects?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has."</p>
+
+<p>"He has perhaps told you that Rossi was not his father's name."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That it was his mother's name, and though strictly his legal name also,
+he has borne it only since his return to Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so."</p>
+
+<p>It was the Capuchin's turn to look surprised. His sandalled feet
+shuffled on the carpet, and he prepared to take snuff.</p>
+
+<p>"The Honourable Rossi has been some weeks abroad, and during his absence
+you have no doubt received letters from him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me if in any of these letters he has said anything of a
+certain revolutionary propaganda?"</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin, with his finger and thumb half raised, stopped and said,
+"I forbid the question, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Father General!"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that I counsel the lady not to answer it."</p>
+
+<p>The Procurator General suppressed another smile, directed this time at
+Roma, and said, "<i>Bene!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Be calm, my daughter," whispered the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"At least," said the Procurator General, "you can now be certain that
+you had seen the Honourable Rossi before you met him in Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can."</p>
+
+<p>"In fact you recognise in the illustrious Deputy the young man condemned
+in contumacy eighteen years ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps in his letters or conversations he has even admitted the
+identity?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has."</p>
+
+<p>"Only one more question, Donna Roma," said the Procurator General, with
+another smile. "Your father's name in England was Doctor Roselli, and
+the name of his young confederate&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">367</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Courage, my child," whispered the Capuchin, taking Roma's ice-cold hand
+in his own trembling one.</p>
+
+<p>"The name of his young confederate was&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"David Leone," said Roma, lifting her eyes to the face of Father
+Pifferi.</p>
+
+<p>"So David Leone and David Rossi are one and the same person?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Roma, and the Capuchin dropped back in his seat as if he had
+been dealt a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I need trouble you no more. My secretary will now prepare
+the <i>pr&eacute;cis</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Commendatore Angelelli returned with the Carabineer, and there was some
+talking in low tones. "Report for the Committee of the Chamber, sir?"
+"That is unnecessary at this moment, the House having risen for Easter."
+"Warrant for the arrest, then?" "Certainly. Here is the form. Fill it
+up, and I will sign."</p>
+
+<p>While the secretary wrote his <i>pr&eacute;cis</i> at one side of the table, the
+Chief of Police prepared his <i>mandato</i> at the other side, repeating the
+words to the Carabineer who stood behind his chair. "We ... considering
+the conclusions of the Public Minister ... according to Article 187 of
+the Code ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David
+Rossi ... imputed guilty of attempted regicide in the year ... and tried
+and condemned in contumacy for the crime contemplated in Article.... And
+to such effects we require the Corps of the Royal Carabineers to conduct
+him before us to be interrogated on the facts above stated, and call on
+all officials and agents of the public force to lend a strong hand for
+the execution of the present warrant. Age, 34 years. Height, 1.79
+metres. Forehead, lofty. Eyes, large and dark. Nose, Roman. Hair, black
+with short curls. Beard and moustache, clean shaven. <i>Corporatura</i>,
+distinguished."</p>
+
+<p>When the secretary had finished his <i>pr&eacute;cis</i> he read it aloud to Roma
+and his superior.</p>
+
+<p>"Good! Give the lady the pen. You will sign this paper, Donna Roma&mdash;and
+that will do."</p>
+
+<p>Roma and Father Pifferi had both risen. "Courage," the Capuchin tried to
+say, but his quivering lips emitted no sound. Roma stood a moment with
+the pen in her fingers, and her great eyes looked slowly round the room.
+Then she stooped and wrote her name rapidly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">368</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the same moment the Procurator General signed the warrant, whereupon
+the Chief of Police handed it to the Carabineer, saying, "Lose no
+time&mdash;Chiasso," and the soldier went out hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>Roma held the pen a moment longer, and then it dropped out of her
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said the Capuchin, and they left the room.</p>
+
+<p>There was a crowd on the embankment by the corner of the Ripetta bridge.
+The body of a beggar had been brought out of the river, and it was lying
+there for the formal inspection of the officials who report on cases of
+sudden death. Roma stopped to look at the dead man. It was Old John. He
+had committed suicide.</p>
+
+<h3>XX</h3>
+
+<p>It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The
+attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected
+to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment
+he heard him singing a hymn.</p>
+
+<p>To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures
+of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing
+out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone.</p>
+
+<p>First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them.
+The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own
+name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so
+that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name,
+another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an
+old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while."
+Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost
+unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ
+on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day
+to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of
+God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson
+vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of
+the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon
+ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings&mdash;the
+Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">369</a></span> having taken the name of Pius
+X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten
+thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the
+balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church
+tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His
+World.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the
+maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture&mdash;a picture which
+had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever
+since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was
+saluted as a god&mdash;came to him again that night. He called it his
+presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel,
+an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over
+him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:&mdash;"You, the Vicar of Jesus
+Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the
+living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most
+exalted dignity on earth&mdash;<i>remember you are but clay!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful
+thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a
+book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend
+of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the
+father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that
+they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his
+father without knowing who he was!</p>
+
+<p>One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the
+incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the
+Vatican&mdash;childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off
+from every human tie&mdash;began to think of things that were still farther
+back than the conclave and the proclamation&mdash;things of the dead past
+which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave
+with grass and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the
+world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame,
+unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank
+period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest
+place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great
+yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">370</a></span>
+dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands
+and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one
+who had been lost and was never found.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he
+sang and prayed.</p>
+
+<p>When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the
+morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the
+valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long."</p>
+
+<p>There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a
+procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection,
+but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with
+curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering
+the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of
+the Easter bells.</p>
+
+<p>The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father
+Pifferi entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all over," said the Capuchin.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very bravely, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, she was composed&mdash;perfectly composed and quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was most extraordinary. A woman denouncing her husband, and yet so
+calm, so terribly calm."</p>
+
+<p>"God helped her to bear her burden. God help all of us in our hour of
+need!"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope lifted the crucifix to his lips, and added, "And the man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rossi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"After she had signed the denunciation a warrant for his arrest was made
+out and given to the Carabineers."</p>
+
+<p>"It mentioned everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Who he is and all about him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope fingered his crucifix again, and said, "Who is he, Father
+Pifferi?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">371</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Capuchin did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Pifferi, I ask you who he is?"</p>
+
+<p>Still the Capuchin did not reply, and the Pope smiled a pitiful smile,
+touched the friar's arm with a caressing gesture, and said, "Don't be
+afraid for the Holy Father, carissimo. If that poor child, who would
+have died rather than sacrifice her husband, could be so calm and
+strong...."</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "when you asked the lady to denounce
+David Rossi you thought of him only as an enemy of the Church and of its
+head, trying to pull down both and destroy civil society&mdash;isn't that
+so?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, if ... if you had known that he was something more than
+that ... something nearer ... if, for example, you had been told
+that ... that he was the relative of a priest, would you have asked for his
+denunciation just the same?"</p>
+
+<p>The old Capuchin had stammered, but the Pope answered in a firm voice,
+"That would have made no difference, my son. The blessed Scriptures do
+not conceal the sin of Judas, and shall we conceal the offences of those
+who come within the circle of our own families?"</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "if you had been told that he was
+related to a prelate of your domestic household...."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, and the Pope answered in a voice that trembled slightly,
+"Still it would have made no difference. The enemies of the Almighty are
+watching day and night, and shall His holy Church be imperilled and
+abased by the weakness of His servant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, if ... if you had been told that ... that he was the
+kinsman of a Cardinal?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope was struggling to control himself. "Even then it would have
+made no difference. I am old and weak, but God would have supported me,
+and though I had been called upon to cut off my right hand, or give my
+body to be burned, still...."</p>
+
+<p>His voice quivered and died in his throat, and there was a moment's
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, turning his eyes away, "if you had
+been told that he was the nearest of kin to the Pope himself...."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope dropped the crucifix which was trembling in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">372</a></span> hand, and half
+rose from his chair. "Then ... even then ... it would have ... but the
+will of God be done," he said, and he could not utter another word.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the Easter bells began to ring. The deep-toned bells of
+St. Peter's came first with its joyful peal, and then the bells of the
+other churches of the city took up the rapturous melody. In the Basilica
+the veil before the altar had been rent with a loud crash, and the
+Gloria in Excelsis was being sung.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment a prelate vested in a white tunic entered the Pope's
+room, and kneeling in the middle of the floor, he said, "Holy Father, I
+announce to you a great joy. Hallelujah! The Lord is risen again."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope tried to rise from his seat, but could not do so. "Help me,
+Monsignor," he said faintly, and the prelate raised him to his feet.
+Then leaning on the prelate's arm, he walked to the door of his private
+chapel. On reaching it he looked back at Father Pifferi, who was going
+silently out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Addio, carissimo," he said, in a pitiful voice, but the Capuchin could
+not reply.</p>
+
+<p>Some moments afterwards the Pope was quite alone. The arched windows of
+the little chapel were covered with heavy red curtains, but the clanging
+of the brass tongues in the cupola, the deep throb of the organ, and the
+rolling waves of the voices of the people singing the grand Hallelujah,
+found their way into the darkened chamber. But above all other sounds in
+the ears of the Pope as he lay prostrate on the altar steps was the
+sound of a voice which said, "You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the
+rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of
+God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on
+earth&mdash;<i>remember you are but clay</i>."</p>
+
+<h3>XXI</h3>
+
+<p>"Acqua Acetosa!" "Roba Vecchia!" "Rannocchie!"</p>
+
+<p>The street cries were ringing through the Navona, the piazza was alive
+with people, and strangers were saluting each other as they passed on
+the pavement when Roma returned home. At the lodge the Garibaldian
+wished her a good Easter, and at the door of the apartment the curate of
+the parish,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">373</a></span> who in cotta and biretta was making his Easter call to
+sprinkle the rooms with holy water, gave her a smile and his blessing,
+while old Francesca, inside the house, laying the Easter sideboard of
+cakes, sausages, and eggs, put both hands behind her back, like a child
+playing a game, and cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what does the Signora think I've got for her?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a letter, and as the old woman produced it she was glowing with
+happiness at the joy she was bringing to Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"The porter from Trinit&agrave; de' Monti brought it," she said, "and he told
+me to tell you there's a lay sister called Sister Angelica at the
+convent now, and he is afraid that other letters may go astray....
+Aren't you glad you've got a letter, Signora? I thought Signora would
+die of delight, and I gave the man six soldi."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was turning the envelope over and over in her hands, thinking what
+a call to joy a letter of Rossi's used to be, and wondering if she ought
+to open this one.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that was the way with me too when Tommaso was at the wars. But
+this is Easter, Signora, and the Blessed Virgin wouldn't bring you bad
+news to-day. Listen! That's the Gloria. I can always hear the church
+bells on Holy Saturday. The first time after I was deaf Joseph was a
+baby, and I took the wrappings off his little feet while the bells were
+ringing, and he walked straight away! Ah, my poor darling!... But I'm
+making the Signora cry."</p>
+
+<p>The letter was dated from Z&uuml;rich. It ran:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">My dear Roma</span>,&mdash;Your letters and I seem to be running a race which shall
+return to you first. I was compelled to leave Berlin before my
+long-delayed correspondence could arrive from London, and now it seems
+probable that I must leave Z&uuml;rich before it can follow me from Berlin.
+As a consequence I have not heard from you for weeks&mdash;not since your
+letter about your friend, you remember&mdash;and I am in agonies of
+impatience to know what has happened to you in the interval.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to Switzerland the day before yesterday, pushed on by the
+urgency of affairs at home. Here we hold the last meeting of our
+international committee before I go back to Italy. This will be
+to-morrow (Friday) night, and according to present plans I set out for
+Rome on Saturday morning.</p>
+
+<p>"How different my return will be from my flight a few weeks ago! Then I
+was plunged in despair, now I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">374</a></span> buoyed up with hope; then my soul was
+furrowed by doubts, now it is braced up with certainties; then my idea
+was a dream, now it is a practical reality.</p>
+
+<p>"O Roma, my Roma, it is a good thing to live. After all, the world is no
+Gethsemane, and when a man has a beautiful life like yours belonging to
+him he may be forgiven if he forgets the voices which assail him with
+fears. They have come to me sometimes, dearest, in this long and cruel
+silence, and I have asked myself hideous questions. What is happening to
+my dear one in the midst of my enemies? What sufferings are being
+inflicted upon her for my sake? She is brave, and will bear anything,
+but did I do right to leave her behind? Bruno died rather than betray
+me, and she will do more&mdash;infinitely more in her eyes&mdash;she will see <i>me</i>
+die, rather than imperil a cause which is a thousand times more dear to
+me than my life.</p>
+
+<p>"Addio, carissima! Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon
+thine arm, for love is strong as death. If there were any possibility of
+our love increasing it <i>would</i> increase after going through dangers like
+these. Keep well, dearest. Preserve that sweet life which is so precious
+to me that I cannot live without it. Do you remember, it was the 2nd of
+February when we parted in the darkness at the church door, and now it
+is Easter, and the day after to-morrow we shall hear the Easter bells!
+Spring is here, and in the unchangeable changeableness of nature I see
+the resurrection of humanity and listen to the Gloria of God.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot answer this letter, dear, because I shall already be on the
+way to Rome before it reaches you, but you can send me a telegram to
+Chiasso. Do so. I shall look out for the telegraph boy the moment the
+train stops at the station. Say you are well and happy and waiting for
+me, and it will be like a smile from your lovely lips and eyes on the
+frontier of my native land.</p>
+
+<p>"My train is due to arrive on Sunday morning at seven o'clock. Meet me
+at the railway station, and let your face be the first I see when the
+train draws up in Rome. Then ... let me hear your voice, and let my
+heart become a King.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em;'>"D.R."</p>
+
+<p>Roma had grown paler and paler as she read this letter. The man's love
+and trust were crushing her. Tears filled her eyes and flooded her face.
+But her soul, which had been stunned and had fallen, recovered itself
+and arose.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_EIGHT_THE_KING" id="PART_EIGHT_THE_KING"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">375</a></span>
+<h2>PART EIGHT&mdash;THE KING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Early on the morning of Holy Saturday a little crowd of Italians stood
+on the open space in front of the platform at the Bahnhof of Z&uuml;rich.
+Most of them wore the blue smocks and peaked caps of porters and
+street-sweepers, but in the centre of the group was a tall man in a
+frockcoat and a soft felt hat.</p>
+
+<p>It was Rossi. He was noticeably changed since his flight from Rome. His
+bronzed face was paler, his cheeks thinner, his dark eyes looked larger,
+his figure stooped perceptibly, and he had the air of a man who was
+struggling to conceal a consuming nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang for the starting of a train and Rossi shook hands with
+everybody.</p>
+
+<p>"Going straight through, Honourable?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall sleep at Milan to-night and go on to Rome in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Addio, Onorevole!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Addio!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The moment the train started, Rossi gave himself up to thoughts of Roma.
+Where was she now? He closed his eyes and tried to picture her. She was
+reading his letter. He recalled particular passages, and saw the smile
+with which she read them. Peace be with her! The light pressure of her
+soft fingers was on his hands already, and through the <i>tran-tran</i> of
+the train he could hear her softest tones.</p>
+
+<p>Nature as well as humanity seemed to smile on Rossi that day. He thought
+the lakes had never looked so lovely. It was early when they ran along
+the shores of Lucerne, and the white mists, wrapping themselves up on
+the mountains, were gliding away like ghosts. One after another the
+great peaks looked over each other's shoulders, covered with pines as
+with vast armies crossing the Alps, thick at the bottom and with thinner
+files of daring spirits at the top. The sun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">376</a></span> danced on the waters of the
+lake like fairies on a floor of glass, and when the train stopped at
+Fluelen the sound of waterfalls mingled with the singing of birds and
+the ringing of the church bells. It was the Gloria. All the earth was
+singing its Gloria. "Glory to God in the highest."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi's happiness became almost boyish as the train approached Italy.
+When the great tunnel was passed through, the signs of a new race came
+thick and fast. Shrines of the Madonna, instead of shrines of the
+Christ; long lines of field-workers, each with his hoe, instead of
+little groups with the plough; grey oxen with great horns and slow step,
+instead of brisk horses with tinkling bells.</p>
+
+<p>Signs of doubtful augury for the most part, but Rossi was in no mood to
+think of that. He let down the carriage window that he might drink in
+the air of his own country. In spite of his opinions he could not help
+doing that. The mystic call that comes to a man's heart from the soil
+that gave him birth was coming to him also. He heard the voice of the
+vine-dresser in the vineyard singing of love&mdash;always of love. He saw the
+oranges and lemons, and the roses white and red. He caught a glimpse of
+the first of the little cities high up on the crags, with its walls and
+tower, and Campo Santo outside. His lips parted, his breast swelled. It
+was home! Home!</p>
+
+<p>The day waned, the sky darkened, and the passengers in the train, who
+had been talking incessantly, began to doze. Rossi returned to his seat,
+and thought more seriously about Roma. All his soul went out to the
+young wife who had shared his sufferings. In his mind's eye he was
+reading between the lines of her letters, and beginning to reproach
+himself in earnest. Why had he imposed his life's secret upon her,
+seeing the risk she ran, and the burden of her responsibility?</p>
+
+<p>The battle with his soul was short. If he had not trusted Roma, he would
+never have loved her. If he had not stripped his heart naked before her,
+he would never have known that she loved him. And if she had suffered in
+his absence he would make it all up to her on his return. He thought of
+their joyous day on the Campagna, and then of the unalloyed hours before
+them. What would she be doing now? She would be sending off the telegram
+he was to receive at Chiasso. God bless her! God bless everybody!</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Roma's telegram filled the whole of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">377</a></span> last hour before
+he reached the frontier. He imagined the words it would contain: "Well
+and waiting. Welcome home." But was she well? It was weeks since he had
+heard from her, and so many things might have happened. If he had
+managed his personal affairs with more thought for himself, he might
+have received her letters.</p>
+
+<p>Heavy clouds began to shut out the landscape. The temperature had fallen
+suddenly, and the wind must have risen, for the trees, as they flashed
+past, were being beaten about. Rossi stood in the corridor again,
+feeling feverish and impatient.</p>
+
+<p>At length the train slackened speed, the noise of the wheels and the
+engine abated, and there came a clap of thunder. After a moment there
+was a far-off sound of church bells which were being rung to avert the
+lightning, and then came a downpour of rain. It was raining in torrents
+when the train drew up at Chiasso, but the carriages were hardly under
+cover of the platform when Rossi was ready to step out.</p>
+
+<p>"All baggage ready!" "Hand baggage out!" "Chiasso!" "The Customs!"</p>
+
+<p>The station hands and porters were shouting by the stopping train, and
+Rossi's dark eyes with their long lashes were looking through the line
+of men for some one who carried a yellow letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Facchino!"</p>
+
+<p>"Signore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seen the telegraph boy about?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Signore."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi leapt down to the platform, and at the same moment three
+Carabineers, who had been working their heads from right to left to peer
+into the carriages as they passed, stepped up to him and offered a
+folded white paper.</p>
+
+<p>He took it without speaking, and for a moment he stood looking at the
+soldiers as if he had been stunned. Then he opened the paper and read:
+"<i>Mandate di Cattura....</i> We ... order the arrest of David Leone,
+commonly called David Rossi...."</p>
+
+<p>A cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead. Again he looked
+into the faces of the soldiers. And then he laughed. It was a fearful
+laugh&mdash;the laugh of a smitten soul.</p>
+
+<p>The scene had been observed by passengers trooping to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">378</a></span> the Customs, and
+a group of English and American tourists were making apposite comments
+on the event.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Rossi." "Rossi?" "The anarchist." "Travelled in our train?"
+"Sure." "My!"</p>
+
+<p>The marshal of Carabineers, a man with shrunken cheeks and the eyes of a
+hawk, dressed in his little brief authority, strode with a lofty look
+through the spectators to telegraph the arrest to Rome.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>When the train started again, Rossi was a prisoner sitting between two
+of the Carabineers with the marshal of Carabineers on the seat in front
+of him. His heart felt cold and his chin buried itself in his breast. He
+was asking himself how many persons knew of his identity with David
+Leone, and could connect him with the trial of eighteen years ago.
+<i>There was but one.</i></p>
+
+<p>Rossi leapt to his feet with a muttered oath on his lips. The thing that
+had flashed through his mind was impossible, and he was himself the
+traitor to think of it. But even when the imagined agony had passed
+away, a hard lump lay at his heart and he felt sick and ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal of Carabineers, who had mistaken Rossi's gesture, closed the
+carriage window and stood with his back to it until the train arrived at
+Milan. A police official was waiting for them there with the latest
+instructions from Rome. In order to avoid the possibility of a public
+disturbance in the capital on the day of the King's Jubilee, the
+prisoner was to be detained in Milan until further notice.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems you're to sleep here to-night, Honourable," said the soldier.
+Remembering that it had been his intention to do so when he left Z&uuml;rich,
+Rossi laughed bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>It was now dark. A prison van stood at the end of a line of hotel
+omnibuses, and Rossi was marched to it between the measured steps of the
+Carabineers. News of his arrest had already been published in Milan, and
+crowds of spectators were gathered in the open space outside the
+station. He tried to hold up his head when the people peered at him,
+telling himself that the arrest of an innocent man was not his but the
+law's disgrace; yet a sense of sickness surprised him again and he
+dropped his head as he buried himself in the van.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">379</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the dark drive to the prison in the Via Filangeri the Carabineers
+grumbled and swore at the hard fate which kept them out of Rome at a
+time of public rejoicing. There was to be a dinner on Monday night at
+the barracks on the Prati, and on Tuesday morning the King was to
+present medals.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi shut his eyes and said nothing. But half-an-hour later, when he
+had been put in the "paying" cell, and the marshal of Carabineers was
+leaving him, he could not forbear to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Officer," he said, fumbling his copy of the warrant, "would you mind
+telling me where you received this paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the Procura, of course," said the soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one had denounced me there&mdash;can you tell me who it was?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's no business of mine, Honourable. Still, as you wish to know...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"A lady was there when the warrant was made out, and if I had to guess
+who she was...."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi saw the name coming in the man's face, and he flung out at him in
+a roar of wrath.</p>
+
+<p>During the long hours of the night he tried to account for his arrest to
+the exclusion of Roma. He thought of every woman whom he had known
+intimately in England and America, and finally of Elena and old
+Francesca. It was useless. There was only one woman in the world who
+knew the secrets of his early life. He had revealed some of them
+himself, and the rest she knew of her own knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>No matter! There was no traitor so treacherous as circumstance. He would
+not believe the lie that fate was thrusting down his throat. Roma was
+faithful, she would die rather than betray him, and he was a
+contemptible hound to allow himself to think of her in that connection.
+He recalled her letters, her sacrifices, her brave and cheerful
+renunciation, and the hard lump that had settled at his heart rose up to
+his throat.</p>
+
+<p>Morning broke at last. As the grey dawn entered the cell the Easter
+bells were ringing. Rossi remembered in what other conditions he had
+expected to hear them, and again his heart grew bitter. A good-natured
+warder came with his breakfast of bread and water, and a smuggled copy
+of a morning journal called the <i>Perseveranza</i>. It contained an account
+of his arrest, and a leading article on his career as a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">380</a></span> closed
+and ruined. The public would learn with astonishment that a man who had
+attained to great prominence in Parliament and lived several years in
+the fierce light of the world's eye, had all the time masqueraded in a
+false character, being really a criminal convicted long ago for
+conspiring against the person of the late King.</p>
+
+<p>The sun shone, the sparrows chirped, the church bells rang the whole day
+long. Towards evening the warder came with another newspaper, the
+<i>Corriere della Sera</i>. It explained that the sensational arrest of the
+illustrious Deputy, which had fallen on the country like a thunderbolt,
+was not intended as punishment for an offence long past and forgotten,
+but as a means of preventing a political crime that was on the eve of
+being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of
+the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt
+whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined
+revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish
+imagination to break out on the festival of the King's Jubilee.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi slept as little on Sunday night as on the night before. The
+horrible doubts which he had driven away were sucking at his heart like
+a vampire. He tried to invent excuses for Roma. She was intimidated; she
+was a woman and she could not help herself. Useless, and worse than
+useless! "I thought the daughter of Joseph Roselli would have died
+first," he told himself.</p>
+
+<p>The good-natured warder brought him another newspaper in the morning,
+the <i>Secolo</i>, an organ of his own party. Its tone was the bitterest of
+all. "We have reason to believe that the unfortunate event, which cannot
+but have the effect of setting back the people's cause, is due to the
+betrayal of one of their leaders by a certain fashionable woman who is
+near to the person of the President of the Council. It is the old story
+over again, the story of man's weakness and woman's deception, with
+every familiar circumstance of humiliation, folly, and shame."</p>
+
+<p>There could be no doubt of it. It was Roma who had betrayed him.
+Whatever her reasons or excuse, the result was the same. She had given
+up the deepest secrets of his soul, and his life's work was in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal of Carabineers came to say that they were to go on to Rome,
+and at nine o'clock they were again in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">381</a></span> the train. People in holiday
+dress were promenading the platform and the station was hung with flags.
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat was about to step into the compartment
+with the Carabineers and their prisoner, when, recognising his
+travelling companions, he bowed and stepped back. It was the Sergeant of
+the Chamber, returning after the Easter vacation from his villa on one
+of the lakes. Rossi sent a ringing laugh after the man, and that brought
+him back.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry for you, Honourable, very sorry," he said. "You've deceived
+us all, but now you are seen in your true colours, and apparently
+throwing off all disguise."</p>
+
+<p>The Sergeant was so far right that Rossi was another man. Whatever had
+been tender and sweet in him was now hard and bitter. The train started
+for Rome, and the soldiers drew the straws out of their Tuscan cigars
+and smoked. Rossi coiled himself up in his corner and shut his eyes.
+Sometimes a sneer curled his lips, sometimes he laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>They were travelling by the coast route, and when the train ran into
+Genoa a military band at the foot of the monument to Mazzini was playing
+the royal hymn. But the festivities of the King's Jubilee were eclipsed
+in public interest by the arrest of Rossi and the collapse of the
+conspiracy which it was understood to imply. The marshal of the
+Carabineers bought the local papers, and one of them was full of details
+of "The Great Plot." An exact account was given from a semi-military
+standpoint of the plan of the supposed raid. It included the capture of
+the arsenal at Genoa and the assassination of the King at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The train ran through countless tunnels like the air through a flute,
+now rumbling in the darkness, now whistling in the light. Rossi closed
+his eyes and shut out the torment of passing scenes, and straightway he
+was seeing Roma. He could only see her as he had always seen her, with
+her golden complexion, her large violet eyes and long curved lashes, her
+mouth which had its own gift of smiling, and her glow of health and
+happiness. Whatever she had done he knew that he must always love her.
+This worked on him like madness, and once again he leapt to his feet and
+made for the corridor, whereupon the Carabineers, who had been sleeping,
+got up and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>Night fell, and the moon rose, large and blood-red as a setting sun.
+When the train shot on to the Roman Campagna, like a boat gliding into
+open sea, the great and solemn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">382</a></span> desolation seemed more than ever
+withdrawn from the sights and sounds of the living world. Rossi
+remembered the joy of joys with which he had expected to cross the
+familiar country. Then he looked across at the soldiers who were snoring
+in their seats.</p>
+
+<p>When the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, the Carabineers opened the
+door to the corridor that their prisoner might stretch his legs. Some
+evening papers from Rome were handed into the carriage. Rossi put out
+his hand to pay for them, and to his surprise it was seized with an
+eager grasp. The newsman, who was also carrying a tray of coffee, was a
+huge creature, with a white apron and a paper cap.</p>
+
+<p>"Caff&eacute;, sir? Caff&eacute;?" he called, and then in an undertone, "Don't you
+know me, old fellow? Caff&eacute;, sir? Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>It was one of Rossi's colleagues in the House of Deputies.</p>
+
+<p>"Milk, sir? With pleasure, sir. Venti centesimi, sir.... All right, old
+chap. Keep your eyes open at the station at Rome.... Change, sir?
+Certainly sir.... Coup&eacute;, waiting on the left side. Look alive. Addio!...
+Caff&eacute;! Caff&eacute;!"</p>
+
+<p>The lusty voice died away down the platform, and the train started
+again. Rossi felt giddy. He staggered back to his seat and tried to read
+his evening papers.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Sunrise</i>, the paper founded by Rossi himself, seemed to be full of
+the Prime Minister. He had that day put the crown on a career of the
+highest distinction; the King had conferred the Collar of the Annunziata
+upon him; and in view of the continued rumblings of unrest it was even
+probable that he would be made Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Avanti</i> seemed to Rossi to be full of himself. When the country
+recovered from the delirium of that day's ridiculous doings, it would
+know how to judge of the infamous methods of a Minister who had
+condescended to use the devices of a Delilah for the defeat and
+confusion of a political adversary.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi felt as if he were suffocating. He put a hand into a side-pocket,
+for his copy of the warrant crinkled there under his twitching fingers.
+If he could only meet with Roma for a moment and thrust the damning
+document in her face!</p>
+
+<p>When the train ran along the side of the Tiber, they could see a great
+framework of fireworks which had been erected on the Pincio. It
+represented a gigantic crown and was all ablaze. At length the train
+slowed down and entered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">383</a></span> the terminus at Rome. Rossi remembered how he
+had expected to enter it, and he choked with wounded pride.</p>
+
+<p>There were the thumpings and clankings and the blinding flashes of white
+light, and then the train stopped. The station was full of people. Rossi
+noticed Malatesta among them, the man whose life he had spared in the
+duel he had been compelled to fight.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, please!" said the marshal of Carabineers, and Rossi stepped
+down to the platform. A soldier marched on either side of him; the
+marshal walked in front. The people parted to let the four men pass, and
+then closed up and came after them. Not a word was spoken.</p>
+
+<p>With pale lips and a fixed gaze which seemed to look at nobody, Rossi
+walked to the end of the platform, and there the crush was greatest.</p>
+
+<p>"Room!" cried the marshal of Carabineers, making for the gate at which a
+porter was taking tickets. A black van stood outside.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the marshal was struck on the shoulder by a hand out of the
+crowd. He turned to defend himself, and was struck on the other side.
+Then he tried to draw a weapon, but before he could do so he was thrown
+to the ground. One of the two other Carabineers stooped to lift him up,
+and the third laid hold of Rossi. At the next instant Rossi felt the
+soldier's hand fall from his arm as by a sword cut, and somebody was
+crying in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Now's your time, sir. Leave this to me and fly."</p>
+
+<p>It was Malatesta. Before Rossi fully knew what he was doing, he crossed
+the lines to the opposite platform, passed through the barrier by means
+of his Deputy's medal permitting him to travel on the railways, and
+stepped into a coup&eacute; that stood waiting with an open door.</p>
+
+<p>"Where to, signore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Piazza Navona&mdash;<i>presto</i>."</p>
+
+<p>As the carriage rattled across the end of the Piazza Margherita a
+company of Carabineers was going at quick march towards the station.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock on Saturday night the screamers in the Piazza Navona were
+crying the arrest of Rossi. The telegrams from the frontier gave an ugly
+account of his capture.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">384</a></span> He was in disguise, and he made an effort to
+deny himself, but thanks to the astuteness of the Carabineer charged
+with the warrant the device was defeated, and he was now lodged in the
+prison at Milan, where it was probable that he would remain some days.</p>
+
+<p>Roma's feelings took a new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the
+degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an
+intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and
+triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past
+months and saw that the Baron was responsible for everything. He had
+intimidated her. His intimidation had worked upon her conscience and
+driven her to the confessional. The confessional had taken her to the
+Pope, and the Pope in love and loyalty and fatal good faith had led her
+to denounce her husband. It was a chain of damning circumstances, helped
+out by the demon of chance, but the first link had been forged by the
+Baron, and he was to blame for all.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday morning bands of music began to promenade the streets. Before
+breakfast the rejoicings of the day had begun. Towards mid-day drunken
+fellows in the piazza were embracing and crying, "Long live the King,"
+and then "Long live the Baron Bonelli."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing?
+There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It
+was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of
+clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had
+prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen,
+smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And
+meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse
+than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted.</p>
+
+<p>Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the <i>Sunrise</i>, and it
+contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on
+Saturday&mdash;there were three lines for that incident. The King had made
+him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata&mdash;there was half a column on the
+new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held
+at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President
+of the Council would be nominated Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>In another column of the <i>Sunrise</i> she found an interview<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">385</a></span> with the
+Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who
+conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the
+Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King
+would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date,
+and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public
+to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be
+encouraged.</p>
+
+<p>When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in
+a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make
+the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the
+blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There
+was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a
+thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore
+one course only was left&mdash;to send him to the bar of God!</p>
+
+<p>When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the
+moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive
+justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress
+of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them.</p>
+
+<p>One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She
+revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the
+Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but
+she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her
+high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone
+late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal.
+Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the
+shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as
+the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light&mdash;and do
+it.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawer of a bureau she had found a revolver which Rossi had left
+with her on the night he went away. His name had been inscribed on it by
+the persons who sent it as a present, but Roma gave no thought to that.
+Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely
+indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she
+would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of
+justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her
+only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to
+the supreme<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">386</a></span> tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the
+responsibility of fixing the moral weight of her motive in the scales of
+human justice.</p>
+
+<p>With these sublime feelings she began to examine the revolver. She
+remembered that when Rossi had given it to her she had recoiled from the
+touch of the deadly weapon, and it had fallen out of her fingers. No
+such fear came to her now, as she turned it over in her delicate hands
+and tried to understand its mechanism. There were six chambers, and to
+know if they were loaded she pulled the trigger. The vibration and the
+deafening noise shook but did not frighten her.</p>
+
+<p>The deaf old woman had heard the shot, and she came upstairs panting and
+with a pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, Signora! What's happened? The Blessed Virgin save us! A
+revolver!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma tried to speak with unconcern. It was Mr. Rossi's revolver. She had
+found it in the bureau. It must be loaded&mdash;it had gone off.</p>
+
+<p>The words were vague, but the tone quieted the old woman. "Thank the
+saints it's nothing worse. But why are you so pale, Signora? What is the
+matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma averted her eyes. "Wouldn't you be pale too if a thing like this
+had gone off in your hands?"</p>
+
+<p>By this time the Garibaldian had hobbled up behind his wife, and when
+all was explained the old people announced that they were going out to
+see the illuminations on the Pincio.</p>
+
+<p>"They begin at eleven o'clock and go on to twelve or one, Signora.
+Everybody in the house has gone already, or the shot would have made a
+fine sensation."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Tommaso! Good-night, Francesca!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Signora. We'll have to leave the street door open for the
+lodgers coming back, but you'll close your own door and be as safe as
+sardines."</p>
+
+<p>The Garibaldian raised his pork-pie hat and left the door ajar. It was
+half-past ten and the <i>piazza</i> was very quiet. Roma sat down to write a
+letter.</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"Dearest," she wrote, "I have read in the newspapers what took place on
+the frontier and I am overwhelmed with grief. What can I say of my own
+share in it except that I did it for the best? From my soul and before
+God, I tell you that if I betrayed you it was only to save your life.
+And though my heart is breaking and I shall never know another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">387</a></span> happy
+hour until God gives me release, if I had to go through it all again I
+should have to do as I have done....</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps your great heart will be able to forgive me some day, but I
+shall never forgive myself or the man who compelled me to do what I have
+done. Before this letter reaches you in Milan a great act will be done
+in Rome. But you must know nothing more about it until it is done.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, dearest. Try to forgive me as soon as you can. I shall know
+it if you do ... where I am going to&mdash;eventually ... and it will be so
+sweet and beautiful. Your loving, erring, broken-hearted</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<p>A noisy group of revellers were passing through the piazza singing a
+drinking song. When they were gone a church clock struck eleven. Roma
+put on a hat and a veil. Her impatience was now intense. Being ready to
+go out she took a last look round the rooms. They brought a throng of
+memories&mdash;of hopes and visions as well as realities and facts. The
+piano, the phonograph, the bust, the bed. It was all over. She knew she
+would never come back.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart was throbbing violently, and she was opening the bureau a
+second time when her ear caught the sound of a step on the stairs. She
+knew the step. It was the Baron's.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, with an indescribable sense of terror, and gazed at the
+door. It stood partly open as the Garibaldian had left it.</p>
+
+<p>Through the door the Baron was about to enter. He was coming up, up,
+up&mdash;to his death. Some supernatural power was sending him.</p>
+
+<p>She grew dizzy and quaked in every limb. Still the step outside came on.
+At length it reached the top, and there was a knock at the door. At
+first she could not answer, and the knock was repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Then the free use of her faculties came back to her. There was more of
+the Almighty in all this than of her own design. It <i>was</i> to be. God
+intended her to kill this guilty man.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in!" she cried.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>When the Baron awoke on Saturday he remembered Roma with a good deal of
+self-reproach, and everything that happened during the following days
+made him think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">388</a></span> of her with tenderness. During the morning an
+aide-de-camp brought him the casket containing the Collar of the
+Annunziata, and spoke a formal speech. He fingered the jewelled band and
+golden pendant as he made the answer prescribed by etiquette, but he was
+thinking of Roma and the joy she might have felt in hailing him cousin
+of the King.</p>
+
+<p>Towards noon he received the telegram which announced the death of his
+maniac wife, and he set off instantly for his castle in the Alban Hills.
+He remained long enough to see the body removed to the church, and then
+returned to Rome. Nazzareno carried to the station the little hand-bag
+full of despatches with which he had occupied the hour spent in the
+train. They passed by the tree which had been planted on the first of
+Roma's Roman birthdays. It was covered with white roses. The Baron
+plucked one of them, and wore it in his button-hole on the return
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>Before midnight he was back in the Piazza Leone, where the Commendatore
+Angelelli was waiting with news of the arrest of Rossi. He gave orders
+to have the editor of the <i>Sunrise</i> sent to him so that he might make a
+tentative suggestion. But in spite of himself his satisfaction at
+Rossi's complete collapse and possible extermination was disturbed by
+pity for Roma.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday was given up to the interview with the journalist, the last
+preparations for the Jubilee, and various secular duties. Monday's
+ceremonials began with the Mass. The Piazza of the Pantheon was lined
+with a splendid array of soldiers in glistening breastplates and
+helmets, a tall bodyguard through which the little King passed to his
+place amid the playing of the national hymn. In the old Pantheon itself,
+roofed with an awning of white silk which bore the royal arms, flares
+were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary
+altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the
+choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden
+cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet
+canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators,
+deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state
+functions, and the Mass was a magnificent political demonstration
+carried out on lines arranged by the Baron himself. He had forgotten
+God, but he had remembered the King, and he had thought of Roma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">389</a></span> also.
+She wept at all religious ceremonies, and would have shed tears if she
+had been present at this one.</p>
+
+<p>From the Pantheon they passed to the Capitol, amid the playing of bands
+of music which showered through the streets their hail of sound. The
+magnificent hall was crowded by a brilliant company in silk dresses and
+decorations. An address was read by the Mayor, reciting the early
+misfortunes of Italy, and closing with allusions to the prosperity of
+the nation under the reigning dynasty. In his reply the King extolled
+the army as the hope of peace and unity, and ended with a eulogy of the
+President of the Council, whose powerful policy had dispelled the
+vaporous dreams of unpractical politicians who were threatening the
+stability of the throne and the welfare of its loyal subjects.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron answered briefly that he had done no more than his duty to his
+King, who was almost a republican monarch, and to his country, which was
+the freest in the world. As for the visionaries and their visions, a few
+refugees in Z&uuml;rich, cheered on by the rabble abroad, might dream of
+constructing a universal republic out of the various nations and races,
+with Rome as their capital, but these were the delirious dreams of weak
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Dangerous!" said the Baron, with a smile. "To think of the eternal
+dreamer being dangerous!"</p>
+
+<p>The King laughed, the senators cheered, the ladies waved their
+handkerchiefs, and again the Baron remembered Roma.</p>
+
+<p>The procession to the Quirinal was a prolonged triumph. Every house was
+hung with flags, every window with red and yellow damask. The clubs in
+the Corso were crowded with princes, nobles, diplomats, and
+distinguished foreigners. Civil guards by hundreds in their purple
+plumes lined the streets, and the pavements were packed with loyal
+people. It was a glorious pageant, such as Roma loved.</p>
+
+<p>The mayors of the province, followed by citizens under their appointed
+leaders and flags, came up to the Quirinal as the Baron had appointed,
+and called the King on to the balcony. The King accepted the call and
+made a sign of thanks.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the house the King ordered that papers should be prepared
+immediately creating the Baron Bonelli by royal decree Dictator of Italy
+for a period of six months from that date. "If Roma were here now,"
+thought the Baron.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">390</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then night came, and the state dinner at the royal palace was a moving
+scene of enchantment. One princess came after another, apparently
+clothed in diamonds. The Baron wore the Collar of the Annunziata, and
+the foreign ambassadors, who as representatives of their sovereigns were
+entitled to precedence, gave place to him, and he sat on the right of
+the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner he led the Queen to an embroidered throne under a velvet
+baldachino in a gorgeous chamber which had been the chapel of the Popes.
+Then the ball began. What torrents of light! What a dazzling blaze of
+diamonds! What lovely faces and pure white skins! What soft bosoms and
+full round forms! What gleams of life and love in a hundred pairs of
+beautiful eyes! But there was a lovelier face and form in the mind of
+the Baron than any his eyes could see, and excusing himself to the King
+on the ground of Rossi's expected arrival, he left the palace.</p>
+
+<p>Fireflies in the dark garden of the Quirinal were emitting drops of
+light as the Baron passed through the echoing courts, and the big square
+in front, bright with electric light, was silent save for the footfall
+of the sentries at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron walked in the direction of the Piazza Navona. His
+self-reproach was becoming poignant. He remembered the threats he had
+made, and told himself he had never intended to carry them out. They
+were only meant to impress the imagination of the person played upon, as
+might happen in any ordinary affair of public life.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron's memory went back to the last state ball before this one, and
+he felt some pangs of shame. But the disaster of that night had not been
+due to the cold calculation to which he had attributed it. The cause was
+simpler and more human&mdash;love of a beautiful woman who was slipping away
+from him, the girding sense of being bound body and soul to a wife that
+was no wife, and the mad intoxication of a moment.</p>
+
+<p>No matter! Roma should not lose by what had happened. He would make it
+up to her. Considering her unconventional conduct, it was no little
+thing he intended to do, but he would do it, and she would see that
+others were capable of sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>The people were on the Pincio and the streets were quiet. When the Baron
+reached the Piazza Navona there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">391</a></span> hardly anybody about, and he had
+difficulty in finding the house. No one saw him enter, and he met with
+nobody on the stairs. So much the better. He was half ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>After he had knocked twice a voice which he did not recognise told him
+to come in. When he pushed the door open Roma, in hat and veil, stood
+before him, with her back to a bureau. He thought she looked frightened
+and ill.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>"My dear Roma," said the Baron, "I bring you good news. Everything has
+turned out well. Nothing could have been managed better, and I come to
+congratulate you."</p>
+
+<p>He was visibly excited, and spoke rapidly and even loudly.</p>
+
+<p>"The man was arrested on the frontier&mdash;you must have heard of that. He
+was coming by the night train on Saturday, and to prevent a possible
+disturbance they kept him in Milan until this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Roma continued to stand with her back to the bureau.</p>
+
+<p>"The news was in all the journals yesterday, my dear, and it had a
+splendid effect on the opening of the Jubilee. When the King went to
+Mass this morning the plot had received its death-blow, and our anxiety
+was at an end. To-night the man will arrive in Rome, and within an hour
+from now he will be safely locked up in prison."</p>
+
+<p>Every nerve in Roma's body was palpitating, but she did not attempt to
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all your doing, my child&mdash;yours, not mine. Your clever brain has
+brought it all to pass. 'Leave the man to me,' you said. I left him to
+you, and you have accomplished everything."</p>
+
+<p>Roma drew her lips together and tried to control herself.</p>
+
+<p>"But what things you have gone through in order to achieve your purpose!
+Slights, slurs, insults! No wonder the man was taken in by it. Society
+itself was taken in. And I&mdash;yes, I myself&mdash;was almost deceived."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall it be now?" thought Roma. The Baron was on the hearthrug
+directly facing her.</p>
+
+<p>"But you knew what you were doing, my dear. It was all a part of your
+scheme. You drew the man on. In due time he delivered himself up to you.
+He surrendered every secret of his soul. And when your great hour came
+you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">392</a></span> were ready. You met it as you had always intended. 'At the top of
+his hopes he shall fall,' you said."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds.</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>has</i> fallen. Thanks to you, this enemy of civil society, this
+slanderer of women, is down. Then the Pope too! And the confession to
+the Reverend Father! Who but a woman could have thought of a thing like
+that?&mdash;-making your denunciation so defensible, so pardonable, so
+plausible, so inevitable! What skill! What patience! What diplomacy! And
+what will and nerve too! Who shall say now that women are incapable of
+great things?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron had thrown open his overcoat, revealing the broad expanse of
+his shirt-front, crossed by the glittering collar of the Annunziata, and
+was promenading the hearthrug without a thought of his peril.</p>
+
+<p>"The journals of half Europe will have accounts of the failure of the
+'Great Plot.' There was another plot, my dear, which did not fail.
+Europe will hear of that also, and by to-morrow morning the world will
+know what a woman may do to punish the man who traduces and degrades
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't I do it?" thought Roma. She was fingering the revolver on the
+bureau behind her, and breathing fast and audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have everything back, my dear. Carriages, jewellery,
+apartments, exactly as you parted with them. I have kept all under my
+own control, and in a single day you can be reinstated."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's palpitating heart was hurting her.</p>
+
+<p>"But won't you sit down, my child? I have something to tell you. It is
+important news. The Baroness is dead. Yes, she died on Saturday, poor
+soul. Should I play the hypocrite and weep? Why should I? For fifteen
+years a cruel law, which I dare not attempt to repeal by divorce in a
+Catholic country, has tied me to a living corpse. Shall I pretend to
+mourn because my burden has fallen away?... Roma, sit down, my dear;
+don't continue to stand there.... Roma, I am free, and we can now carry
+out our marriage, as we always hoped and intended."</p>
+
+<p>"Now!" thought Roma, moving a little forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, don't be afraid of anything. I am not afraid, and you needn't be
+afraid either. Certainly rumour has coupled our names already. But what
+matter about that? No one shall insult you, whatever has occurred.
+Wherever I go you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">393</a></span> shall go too. If they cannot do without me they shall
+not do without you, and in spite of everything you shall be received
+everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you had to say?" said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Not all. There is something else, and I couldn't wait for the
+newspapers to tell you. The King has appointed me Dictator for six
+months. That means that you will be more courted than the Queen. What a
+revenge! The women who have been turning their backs upon you will bend
+their backs before you. You will break down every barrier. You will...."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron had been approaching her, and she lifted her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You expect me to acquiesce in this lie?"</p>
+
+<p>"What lie, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I denounced David Rossi in order to destroy him. It is true that I
+did denounce him&mdash;unhappy woman that I am&mdash;but you know perfectly why I
+did it. I did it because I was forced to do it. <i>You</i> forced me."</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of her own voice, her eyes had begun to fill.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you ask me to pretend that it was all done from an evil motive,
+and you offer me the rewards of guilt. Do you think I'm a murderer that
+you can offer me the price of blood? Have you any shame? You come here
+to ask me to marry you, knowing that I am married already&mdash;here of all
+places, in the house of my husband."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were blinded with tears, but her voice thickened with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"My child," said the Baron, "if I have asked you to acquiesce in the
+idea that what you did was from a certain motive it was only to spare
+you pain. I thought it would be easier for you to do so now, things
+being as they are. It was only going back to your original purpose,
+forgetting all that has intervened."</p>
+
+<p>His voice softened, and he said in a low tone: "If <i>I</i> am so much to
+blame for what has been done, perhaps it was because you were first of
+all at fault! At the beginning my one offence consisted in agreeing to
+your proposal. It was the <i>statesman</i> who committed that error, and the
+<i>man</i> has suffered for it ever since. You know nothing of jealousy, my
+child&mdash;how can you?&mdash;but its pains are as the pains of hell."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to approach her once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, dear, try to be yourself again. Forget this moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">394</a></span> of
+fascination, and rise afresh to your old strength and wisdom. I am
+willing to forget ... whatever has happened&mdash;I don't ask what. I am
+ready to wipe it all away, just as if it had never been."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his soft words and gentle tones, Roma was gazing at him with
+an aversion she had never felt before for any human being.</p>
+
+<p>"Have no qualms about your marriage, my child. I assure you it is no
+marriage at all. In the eye of the civil law it is frankly invalid, and
+the Church could annul it at any moment, being no sacrament, because you
+are unbaptized and therefore not in her sense a Christian."</p>
+
+<p>He took another step towards her and said:</p>
+
+<p>"But if you have lost one husband another is waiting for you&mdash;a more
+devoted and more faithful husband&mdash;one who can give you everything in
+the place of one who can give you nothing.... And then that man has gone
+out of your life for good. Whatever happens now, it is impossible that
+you and he can ever come together again. But I am here still.... Don't
+answer hastily, Roma. Isn't it something that I am ready to face the
+opprobrium that will surely come of marrying the most criticised woman
+in Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma felt herself to be suffocating with indignation and shame.</p>
+
+<p>"You see I am suing to you, Roma&mdash;I who have never sued to any human
+being. Even when I was a child I would not sue to my own mother. Since
+then I have done something in life&mdash;I have justified myself, I have
+given my country a place among the nations, I stand for it in the eye of
+the world&mdash;and yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet I despise you," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence, and then, recovering himself, the Baron
+tried to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"As you will. I must needs accept the only possible interpretation of
+your words. I thought my devotion in spite of every provocation might
+burn away your bitterness. But if...." (he was getting excited) "if you
+have no respect for the past, you may have some regard for the future."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with a new fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally, I have no desire to humiliate myself further by suing to a
+woman who despises me. It will be sufficient to punish the man who is
+responsible for my loss of esteem in the eyes of one who has so many
+reasons to respect me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">395</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You mean that you will persuade the King to break his promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"The King need not be persuaded after he has appointed his Dictator."</p>
+
+<p>"So the King's promise to pardon Mr. Rossi will be set aside by his
+successor?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I leave this room without a better answer ... yes."</p>
+
+<p>Roma drew from behind the revolver she had held in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will never leave this room," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron stood perfectly still, and there was a moment of deadly
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the rattle of carriage wheels on the stones of the piazza,
+followed immediately by a hurried footstep on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Roma heard it. She was trembling all over.</p>
+
+<p>A moment afterwards there was a knock at the door. Then another knock,
+and another. It was imperative, irregular knocking.</p>
+
+<p>Roma, who had forgotten all about the Baron, was rooted to the spot on
+which she stood. The Baron, who had understood everything, was also
+transfixed.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a thick, vibrating voice, "Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma made a faint cry, and dropped the revolver out of her graspless
+hand. The Baron picked it up instantly. He was the first to recover
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" he said in a whisper. "Let him come in. I will go into this
+room. I mean no harm to any one; but if he should follow me&mdash;if you
+should reveal my presence&mdash;remember what I said before about a
+challenge. And if I challenge him his shrift will have to be swift and
+sure."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron stepped into the bedroom. Then the voice came again, "Roma!
+Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma staggered to the door and opened it.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Flying from the railway station in the coup&eacute;, down the Via Nazionale and
+the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Rossi had seen by the electric light the
+remains of the day's festoons, triumphal arches, banners, embroideries,
+emblems, and flowers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">396</a></span> These things had passed before his eyes like a
+flash, yet they had deepened the bitterness of his desire to meet with
+Roma that he might thrust the evidence of her treachery into her face.</p>
+
+<p>But when he came to his own house and Roma opened the door to him, and
+he saw her, looking so ill, her cheeks so pale, her beautiful eyes so
+large and timid, and her whole face expressing such acute suffering, his
+anger began to ebb away, and he wanted to take her into his arms in
+spite of all.</p>
+
+<p>Roma knew she was opening the door to Rossi, whatever the strange chance
+which had brought him there, and when she saw him she made a faint cry
+and a helpless little run toward him, and then stopped and looked
+frightened. The momentary sensation of joy and relief had instantly died
+away. She looked at his world-worn face, so disfigured by pain and
+humiliation, and the arms she had outstretched to meet him she raised
+above her head as if to ward off a blow.</p>
+
+<p>He saw under the veil she wore the terror which had seized her at sight
+of him, and by that alone he knew the depths of the abyss between them.
+But this only increased the measureless pity he felt for her. And he
+could not look at her without feeling that whatever she had done he
+loved her, and must continue to love her to the last.</p>
+
+<p>Tears rose to his throat and choked him. He opened his mouth to speak,
+but at first he could not utter a word. At length he fumbled at his
+breast, tore at his shirt front, so that his loose neckerchief became
+untied, and finally drew from an inner pocket a crumpled paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" he said with a kind of gasp.</p>
+
+<p>She saw at a glance what the paper was, and dared not look at it a
+second time. It was the warrant. She dropped into a chair with bowed
+head and humble attitude, as if trying to sink out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me you know nothing about it, Roma."</p>
+
+<p>She covered her face with both hands and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>She had expected that he would flame out at her, but his voice was
+breaking. She lifted her head and tried to look at him. His eyes were
+fixed on her with an expression she had never seen before. She wanted to
+speak, and could not do so. Her lip trembled, and she hung her head and
+covered her face again, unable to say a word.</p>
+
+<p>By this time he knew full well that she was guilty, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">397</a></span> he tried to
+persuade himself that she was innocent, to make excuses for her, and to
+find her a way out.</p>
+
+<p>"The newspapers say that the warrant was made at your instruction,
+Roma&mdash;that you were the informer who denounced me. It cannot be true.
+Tell me it is not true."</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the name on it&mdash;David Leone. There was only one person in the
+world who knew me by that name&mdash;only one."</p>
+
+<p>She began to cry beneath her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you everything myself, Roma. It was in this very room, you
+remember, the night you came here first. You asked me if I wasn't afraid
+to tell you, and I answered no. You couldn't deceive the son of your own
+father. It wasn't natural. I was right, wasn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>She felt him take hold of her hand and draw it down from her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the ring on your hand, dear. And look at this one on mine. You
+are my wife, Roma. Does a man's wife betray him?"</p>
+
+<p>His voice cracked at every word.</p>
+
+<p>"When we parted you promised that as long as you lived, wherever you
+might be, and whatever the world might do with us, you would be faithful
+to me to the last. You have kept your promise, haven't you? It isn't
+true that you have denounced me to the police."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, but she did not reply, and he dropped her hand, and it fell
+like a lifeless thing to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it isn't true, dear, but I want to hear it from your own lips.
+One word&mdash;only one. Why shouldn't you speak? Say you know nothing of
+this warrant. Say that somebody else knew David Leone. It may be so&mdash;I
+cannot remember. Say ... say anything. Don't you see I will believe you
+whatever you say, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma could control herself no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I know quite well it is impossible for you to forgive me, David."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive!"</p>
+
+<p>"But if I could explain...."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain? What can there be to explain? Did you denounce me to the
+magistrate?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you could only know what happened...."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">398</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked with frightened eyes at the bedroom door, and then dropped to
+her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Have pity upon me."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>His pale face became ashen.</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's true," he said in a voice that hardly passed his throat.
+"What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me
+against you from the first, but I wouldn't believe them. I was a fool,
+and <i>this</i> is my reward."</p>
+
+<p>So saying he crushed the warrant in his hand and flung it at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Roma could bear no more. Making a great call on her resolution, she
+rose, turned towards the bedroom door, and, speaking in a loud voice in
+order that he who was within might hear, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"David, I don't want to excuse myself or to blame anybody else, whoever
+it may be, and however wickedly he may have acted. But, from my soul and
+before God, I tell you that if I denounced you I did it for the best."</p>
+
+<p>"The best!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed bitterly, but she forced herself to go on.</p>
+
+<p>"When you went away you warned me that your enemies could be merciless.
+They <i>have</i> been merciless. First, they tempted me with the fear of
+poverty. I had been accustomed to wealth, comfort, luxury. Look round
+you, David&mdash;they are gone. Did I ever regret them? Never! I was rich
+enough in your love, and I would not have sacrificed that for a queen's
+crown."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at his tortured face and saw that it was full of scorn,
+but still she struggled on.</p>
+
+<p>"Then they tempted me with jealousy. The forged letter which killed
+Bruno was intended to poison me. Did I believe it? No! I knew you loved
+me, and if you didn't, if you had deceived me, that made no difference.
+<i>I</i> loved <i>you</i>, and even if I lost you I should always love you,
+whatever happened."</p>
+
+<p>Again she looked up into his face with her glistening eyes. It was not
+anger she saw there now, but an expression of bewilderment and of pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Last of all, they tempted me with love itself. The treacherous tyrants
+deceived and intimidated the Pope&mdash;the good and saintly Pope&mdash;and
+through him they told me that your arrest was certain, your life in
+danger, and nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">399</a></span> could save you from your present peril but that I
+should denounce you for your past offences. The phantom of conspiracy
+rose up before me, and I remembered my father, doomed to life-long exile
+and a lonely death. It was my dark hour, dearest, and when they promised
+me&mdash;faithfully promised me&mdash;that your life should be spared...."</p>
+
+<p>A faint sound came from the bedroom. Roma heard it, but Rossi, in the
+tumult of his emotion, heard nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you will say, dear&mdash;that you would have given your life a
+hundred times rather than save it at the loss of all you hold so dear.
+But I am no heroine, David. I am only a woman who loves you, and I could
+not see you die."</p>
+
+<p>He felt his soul swell with love and forgiveness, and he wanted to sob
+like a child, but Roma went on, and without trying to keep back her
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all, dear. Now you know everything. It is not your fault that
+the love you have brought home to me is dead. I hoped that before you
+came home I might die too. I think my soul must be dead already. I do
+not hope for pardon, but if your great heart <i>could</i> pardon me...."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," said Rossi at last, while tears filled his eyes and choked his
+voice, "when I escaped from the police I came here to avenge myself; but
+if you say it was your love that led you to denounce me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I do say so."</p>
+
+<p>"Your love, and nothing but your love...."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing! Nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Though I am betrayed and fallen, and may be banished or condemned to
+death, yet...."</p>
+
+<p>Her heart swelled and throbbed. She held out her arms to him.</p>
+
+<p>"David!" she cried, and at the next moment she was clasped to his
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a faint sound from the adjoining room.</p>
+
+<p>"The woman lies," said a voice behind them.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron stood in the bedroom door.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>The Baron's impulse on going into the bedroom had been merely to escape
+from one who must be a runaway prisoner, and therefore little better
+than a madman, whose worst madness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">400</a></span> would be provoked by his own
+presence; but when he realised that Rossi was self-possessed, and even
+magnanimous in his hour of peril, the Baron felt ashamed of his
+hiding-place, and felt compelled to come out. In spite of his pride he
+had been forced to overhear the conversation, and he was humiliated by
+the generosity of the betrayed man, but what humbled him most was the
+clear note of the woman's love.</p>
+
+<p>Knight of the Annunziata! Cousin of the King! President of the Council!
+Dictator! These things had meant something to him an hour ago. What were
+they now?</p>
+
+<p>The agony of the Baron's jealousy was intolerable. For the first time in
+his life his ideas, usually so clear and exact, became confused. Roma
+was lost to him. He was going mad.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the revolver which he had snatched up when Roma let it
+fall, examined it, made sure it was loaded, cocked it, put it in the
+right-hand pocket of his overcoat, and then opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>The two in the other room did not at first see him. He spoke, and their
+arms slackened and they stood apart.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment of silence Rossi spoke. "Roma," he said, "what is this
+gentleman doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron laughed. "Wouldn't it be more reasonable to ask what you are
+doing here, sir?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Then trying to put into logical sequence the confused ideas which were
+besieging his tormented brain, he said, "I understand that this
+apartment belongs now to the lady; the lady belongs to me, and when she
+denounced you to the police it was merely in fulfilment of a plan we
+concocted together on the day you insulted both of us in your speech in
+the piazza."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi made a step forward with a threatening gesture, but Roma
+intervened. The Baron gripped firmly the revolver in his pocket, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, sir. If a man threatens me he must be prepared for the
+consequences. The lady knows what those consequences may be."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi, breathing heavily, was trying to retain the mastery of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"If you tell me that the lady...."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you that according to the law of nature and of reason the lady
+is my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">401</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And so I will."</p>
+
+<p>Roma saw the look of triumph with which Rossi turned to her. The
+terrible moment she had lived in fear of had come to pass. The letters
+she had written to Rossi had not yet reached him, and her enemy was
+telling his story before she had told hers.</p>
+
+<p>What was she to do? She would have said anything at that moment and
+believed herself justified before God. But even lying itself would be of
+no avail. She remembered the Baron's threat and trembled. If she told
+the truth her confession, coming at that moment, would be worse than
+vain. If she told a lie, Rossi would insult the Baron, the Baron would
+challenge Rossi, and they would fight with all the consequences the
+Baron had foretold.</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," said Rossi, "forgive me for putting the question, but a
+falsehood like this, affecting the character of a good woman, ought to
+be stopped in the slanderer's throat. Don't be afraid, dear. You know I
+will believe you before anybody in the world. What the man says is a
+lie, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma stood for a moment looking in a helpless way from Rossi to the
+Baron, and from the Baron back to Rossi. She made an effort to speak,
+but at first she could not do so. At length she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you trust me, David?"</p>
+
+<p>"Trust you? Answer me on this one point and I will trust you on all the
+rest. Say the man speaks falsely, and I will stake my life on your
+word."</p>
+
+<p>Roma did not reply, and the Baron tried to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"If the lady can deny what I say, let her do so. If she cannot, you must
+come to your own conclusions."</p>
+
+<p>"Deny it, Roma! Deny it, and I will fling the man's insult in his face."</p>
+
+<p>"David, if I could tell you everything...."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything! It's only one thing I want to know, Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had received my letters addressed to England...."</p>
+
+<p>"Letters? What matter about letters now. Don't you understand, dear?
+This gentleman says that before you married me you ... had already
+belonged to him. That's what he means, and it's false, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"My mouth is closed. If I could say anything one way or other...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes or no&mdash;that is all that is necessary."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">402</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma looked up at him with a pleading expression, but seeing nothing in
+his face except the magistrate who was interrogating her, she turned her
+back and hung her head, and cried like a helpless child.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi laid hold of her arm, twisted her about, and looked into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Crying, Roma? You don't mean to tell me that I am to believe what the
+man says? Deny it! For God's sake deny it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ... I cannot ... I cannot speak," she stammered, and then there was a
+dead silence.</p>
+
+<p>When Rossi spoke again his face was dark as a thundercloud, and his
+voice hoarse as a raven's.</p>
+
+<p>"If that is so, there is nothing more to say."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with a pathetic remonstrance, but he met her eyes
+with the gaze of a relentless judge who had tried and condemned her.</p>
+
+<p>"I was not to blame, David&mdash;I swear before God I was not."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you allowed me to go on believing that falsehood. The woman who
+could do a thing like that could do anything. She could pretend to be
+poor, pretend to be tempted, pretend...."</p>
+
+<p>"David, what are you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>Rossi broke into a peal of mad laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Saying? That you have deceived me from the beginning, when you
+undertook to betray me to your master and paramour."</p>
+
+<p>"David!"</p>
+
+<p>She tried to protest, but he bore her down with a laugh of scorn, and
+then wheeled round on the Baron, who had been standing in silence behind
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why you are here to-night, I suppose. You didn't expect to be
+disturbed, did you? You didn't expect to see me. You thought I was
+stowed away in a cell, and you could meet in safety.... Oh, my brain! my
+brain! I shall go mad!"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't true," cried Roma. And turning to the Baron with flame in her
+eyes she said, "Tell him it isn't true. You know it isn't true."</p>
+
+<p>"True?" Again the Baron tried to laugh. "Of course it's true. Every word
+the man has uttered is true. Don't ask me to lie to him as you have done
+from first to last."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">403</a></span> At that Rossi's mad laughter stopped suddenly, and
+he stepped up to the Baron with fury in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"You scoundrel!" he said. "You've succeeded, you've separated us, but I
+understand you perfectly. You have used this unhappy lady's shame to
+compel her to carry out your infamous designs, and now that she is done
+with, she must lose the man who played with her as well as the man she
+has played with."</p>
+
+<p>Roma saw that the Baron was feeling for something in the side pocket of
+his overcoat, and she called to Rossi to warn him.</p>
+
+<p>"One doesn't quarrel with an escaped criminal," said the Baron. "It is
+sufficient to call the police ... Police!" he cried, lifting his voice
+and taking a step forward.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi stood between the Baron and the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't stir," he said. "Don't utter a word, I warn you. I'm a hunted dog
+to-night, and a hunted dog is dangerous."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me pass," said the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, sir," said Rossi. "You have something to do before you go. You
+have to go down on your knees and beg the pardon of your victim...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma saw the Baron draw the revolver. She saw Rossi spring upon him, and
+seize him by the collar of the Annunziata which hung over his shirt
+front. She saw the men go struggling through the door of the
+sitting-room into the dining-room. She covered her ears with her hands
+to shut out the sounds from the outer chamber, but she heard Rossi's
+hoarse voice that was like the growl of a wild beast. Then came the
+deafening report of a pistol-shot, then the vibration of a heavy fall,
+and then dead silence.</p>
+
+<p>Roma was still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with
+terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the
+floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she
+turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down
+on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For
+one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and
+blistering words poured out of him in a torrent.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead. D'you hear me? He's dead. But it's as much your work as
+mine, and you will never think of yourself henceforward without remorse
+and horror. I curse you by the love you've wronged and the heart you've
+broken. I curse you by the hopes you wasted and the truth you've<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">404</a></span>
+outraged. I curse you by the memory of your father, the memory of a
+saint and martyr."</p>
+
+<p>Before his last words were spoken Roma had ceased to hear. With a feeble
+moan, interrupted by a faint cry, she had slowly retreated before him,
+and then fallen face downwards. Everything about her, Rossi, herself,
+the room, the lamp on the table and the shadows cast by it, had mingled
+and blended, and gone out in a complete obscurity.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>When Roma regained consciousness, there was not a sound in the
+apartment. Even the piazza outside was quiet. Somebody was playing a
+mandoline a long way off, and the thin notes were trembling through the
+still night. A dog was barking in the distance. Save for these sounds
+everything was still.</p>
+
+<p>Roma lay for some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was
+swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle
+the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and
+she wept bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>But when the first tenderness was over the one feeling which seized and
+held her was hatred of the Baron. Rossi had told her the man was dead,
+and she felt no pity. The Baron deserved his death, and if Rossi had
+killed him it was no crime.</p>
+
+<p>She was still lying where she had fallen when a noise as of some one
+moving came from the adjoining room. Then a voice called to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the Baron's voice, broken and feeble. A great terror took hold of
+her. Then came a sense of shame, and finally a feeling of relief. The
+Baron was not dead. Thank God! O thank God!</p>
+
+<p>She got up and went into the dining-room. The Baron was on his knees
+struggling to climb to the couch. His shirt front was partly dragged out
+of his breast, and the Order of the Annunziata was torn away. There was
+a streak of blood over his left eyebrow, and no other sign of injury.
+But his eyes themselves were glassy, and his face was pale as death.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">405</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm dying, Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll run for a doctor," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Don't do that. I don't want to be found here. Besides, it's
+useless. In five minutes a clot of blood will have covered the lacerated
+brain, and I shall lose consciousness again. Stupid, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me call for a priest," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do that either. You can do me more good yourself, Roma. Give me a
+drink."</p>
+
+<p>Roma was fighting with an almost unconquerable repugnance, but she
+brought the Baron a drink of water, and with shaking hands held the
+glass to his trembling lips.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you feel?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Worse," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>He looked into her eyes with evident contrition, and said, "I wonder if
+it would be fair to ask you to forgive me? Would it?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer, and he stretched himself and sighed. His breathing
+became laboured and stertorous, his skin hot, and his eyes dilated.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you feel now?" asked Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going," he replied, and he smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>The human soul was gleaming out of the wretched man at the last, and he
+was looking at her now with pleading eyes which plainly could not see.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you there, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Promise that you will not leave me."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not leave you now," she answered in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment he roused himself with an effort and said, "And this is
+the end! How absurd! They'll find me here in any case, and what a
+chatter there'll be! The Chamber&mdash;the journals&mdash;all the scribblers and
+speechifiers. What will Europe say? Another Boulanger, perhaps! But I'm
+sorry for Italy. Nobody can say I did not love my country. Where her
+interest lay I let nothing interfere. And just when everything seemed to
+triumph...."</p>
+
+<p>He attempted to laugh. Roma shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the star of the Annunziata that did it. The man threw it with
+such force. To think that it's been the aim of my life to win that Order
+and now it kills me! Ridiculous, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Again he attempted to laugh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">406</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's a side of justice in that, though, and I'm not going to whine.
+The Pope tried to paint an awful end, but his nightmare didn't frighten
+me. We must all bow our heads to the law of compensation&mdash;the Pope as
+well as everybody else. But to die stupidly like this..."</p>
+
+<p>He was speaking with difficulty, and dragging at his shirt front. Roma
+opened it at the neck, and something dropped on to the floor. It was a
+lock of glossy black hair tied with a red ribbon such as lawyers used to
+bind documents together. Dull as his sight was, he saw it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, Roma! You were ill with fever when you first came to Rome, you
+remember. The doctors cut off your beautiful hair. This was some of it.
+I've worn it ever since. Silly, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Tears began to shine in Roma's eyes. The cynical man who laughed at
+sentiment had carried the tenderest badge of it in his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to wear some of my mother's in the same place when I was
+younger. She was a good woman, too. When she put me to bed she used to
+repeat something: 'Hold Thou my hands,' I think.... May I hold your
+hands, Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma turned away her head, but she held out her hand, and the dying man
+kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>"What a beautiful hand it is! I think I should know it among all the
+hands in the world. How stupid! People have been afraid of me all my
+life, Roma; even my mother was afraid of me when I was a child; but to
+die without once having known what it was to have some one to love
+you.... I believe I'm beginning to rave."</p>
+
+<p>The mournful irony of the words was belied by the tremulous voice.</p>
+
+<p>"My little comedy is played out, I suppose, and when the curtain is down
+it is time to go home. Death is a solemn sort of homegoing, Roma, and if
+those we've injured cannot forgive us before we go...."</p>
+
+<p>But the battle of hate in Roma's heart was over. She had remembered
+Rossi and that had swept away all her bitterness. As the Baron stood to
+her, so she stood to her husband. They were two unforgiven ones, both
+guilty and ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, indeed I do forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven," she said,
+whereupon he laughed again, but with a different note altogether.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">407</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then he asked her to lift up his head. She placed a cushion under it,
+but still he called on her to lift his head higher.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you lift me in your arms, Roma?... Higher still. So!... Can you
+hold me there?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you feel now?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be long," he answered. His respirations came in whiffs.</p>
+
+<p>Roma began to repeat as much as she could remember of the prayers for
+the dying which she had heard at the deathbed of her aunt. The dying man
+smiled an indulgent smile into the young woman's beautiful and mournful
+face and allowed her to go on. As she prayed faster and faster, saying
+the same words over and over again, she felt his breathing grow more
+faint and irregular. At length it seemed to stop, and thinking it was
+gone altogether, she made the sign of the cross and said:</p>
+
+<p>"We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant Gabriel, that being
+dead to the world he may live to Thee, and those sins which through the
+frailty of human life he has committed, Thou by the indulgence of Thy
+most merciful loving-kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord.
+Amen."</p>
+
+<p>Then the glazed eyes opened wide and lighted up with a pitiful smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm dying in your arms, Roma."</p>
+
+<p>Then a long breath, and then:</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>He had tried to subdue all men to his will, and there was one man he had
+subdued above all others&mdash;himself. There is a greater man than the great
+man&mdash;the man who is too great to be great.</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>There had been no light in the dining-room except the reflection from
+the lamp in the sitting-room, and now it fell with awful shadows on the
+whitening face turned upward on the couch. The pains of death had given
+a distorted expression, and the eyes remained open. Roma wished to close
+them, but dared not try, and the image of inanimate objects standing in
+the light was mirrored in their dull and glassy surface. The dog in the
+distance was still barking, and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">408</a></span> company of tipsy revellers were
+passing through the piazza singing a drinking song with a laugh in it.
+When they were gone the clocks outside began to strike. It was one
+o'clock, and the hour seemed to dance over the city in single steps.</p>
+
+<p>Roma's terror became unbearable. Feeling herself to be a murderer, she
+acted on a murderer's impulse and prepared to fly. When she recalled the
+emotions with which she had determined to kill the Baron and then
+deliver herself up to justice, they seemed so remote that they might
+have existed only in a dream or belonged to another existence.</p>
+
+<p>Trembling from head to foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she
+fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last
+fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to
+the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something
+might touch her on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The door was open. No doubt Rossi had left it so, and she had not
+noticed the circumstance until now. She had got as far as the first
+landing when a poignant memory came to her&mdash;the memory of how she had
+first descended those stairs with Rossi, going side by side, and almost
+touching. The feeling that she had been fatal to the man since then
+nearly choked and blinded her, but it urged her on. If she remained
+until some one came, and the crime was discovered, what was she to say
+that would not incriminate her husband?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she became aware of sounds from below&mdash;the measured footsteps
+of soldiers. She knew who they were. They were the Carabineers, and they
+were coming for Rossi, who had escaped and was being pursued.</p>
+
+<p>Roma turned instantly, and with a noiseless step fled back to the door
+of the apartment, opened it with her latch-key, closed it silently, and
+bolted it on the inside. This was done before she knew what she was
+doing, and when she regained full possession of her faculties she was in
+the sitting-room, and the Carabineers were ringing at the electric bell.</p>
+
+<p>They rang repeatedly. Roma stood in the middle of the floor, listening
+and holding her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Deuce take it!" said a voice outside. "Why doesn't the woman open the
+door if she doesn't want to get herself into trouble? She's at home, at
+all events."</p>
+
+<p>"So is he, if I know anything," said a second voice. "He drove here
+anyway&mdash;not a doubt about that."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see the porter&mdash;he'll have another key."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">409</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The old fool is out at the illuminations. But listen...." (the door
+rattled as if some one was shaking it). "This door is fastened on the
+inside."</p>
+
+<p>There was a chuckling laugh, and then, "All right, boys! Down with it!"</p>
+
+<p>A moment afterwards the door was broken open and four Carabineers were
+in the dining-room. Roma awaited their irruption without a word. She
+continued to stand in the middle of the sitting-room looking straight
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy saints, what's this?" cried the voice she had heard first, and she
+knew that the Carabineers were bending over the body on the couch.</p>
+
+<p>"His Excellency!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord save us!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma's head was dizzy, and something more was said which she did not
+follow. At the next moment the Carabineers had entered the sitting-room;
+she was standing face to face with them, and they were questioning her.</p>
+
+<p>"The Honourable Rossi is here, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered in a timid voice.</p>
+
+<p>"But he has been here, hasn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered more boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say that the Honourable Rossi has not been here
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," she said, with exaggerated emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal of the Carabineers, who had been speaking, looked
+attentively at her for a moment, and then he called on his men to search
+the rooms.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this?" said the marshal, taking up a sealed letter from the
+bureau and reading the superscription: "L'on, Davide Rossi, Carceri
+Giudiziarie, di Milano."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a letter I wrote to my husband and haven't yet posted," said
+Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"But what's this?" cried a voice from the dining-room. "Presented to the
+Honourable David Rossi by the Italian colony in Z&uuml;rich."</p>
+
+<p>Roma sank into a seat. It was the revolver. She had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said the marshal, with the same chuckle as before.</p>
+
+<p>Dizzy and almost blind in her terror, Roma struggled to her feet. "The
+revolver belongs to me," she said. "Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">410</a></span> Rossi left it in my keeping
+when he went away two months ago, and since that time he has never
+touched it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who fired the shot that killed his Excellency, Signora?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> did," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively the man removed his hat.</p>
+
+<p>Within half-an-hour Roma had repeated her statement at the Regina
+C&oelig;li, and the Carabineers, to prevent a public scandal, had smuggled
+the body of the Baron, under the cover of night, to his office in the
+Palazzo Braschi, on the opposite side of the piazza.</p>
+
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+<p>One thought was supreme in David Rossi's mind when he left the Piazza
+Navona&mdash;that the world in which he had lived was shaken to its
+foundations and his life was at an end. The unhappy man wandered about
+the streets without asking himself where he was going or what was to
+become of him.</p>
+
+<p>Many feelings tore his heart, but the worst of them was anger. He had
+taken the life of the Baron. The man deserved his death, and he felt no
+pity for his victim and no remorse for his crime. But that he should
+have killed the Minister, he who had twice stood between him and death,
+he who had resisted the doctrine of violence and all his life preached
+the gospel of peace, this was a degradation too shameful and abject.</p>
+
+<p>The woman had been the beginning and end of everything. "How I hate
+her!" he thought. He was telling himself for the hundredth time that he
+had never hated anybody so much before, when he became aware that he had
+returned to the neighbourhood of the Piazza Navona. Without knowing what
+he was doing, he had been walking round and round it.</p>
+
+<p>He began to picture Roma as he had seen her that night. The beautiful,
+mournful, pleading face, which he had not really seen while his eyes
+looked on it, now rose before the eye of his mind. This caused a wave of
+tenderness to pass over him against his will, and his heart, so full of
+hatred, began to melt with love.</p>
+
+<p>All the cruel words he had spoken at parting returned to his memory, and
+he told himself that he had been too hasty. Instead of bearing her down
+he should have listened to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">411</a></span> explanation. Before the Baron entered
+the room she had been at the point of swearing that her love, and
+nothing but her love, had caused her to betray him.</p>
+
+<p>He told himself she had lied, but the thought was hell, and to escape
+from it he made for the bank of the river again. This time he crossed
+the bridge of St. Angelo, and passed up the Borgo to the piazza of St.
+Peter's. But the piazza itself awakened a crowd of memories. It was
+there in a balcony that he had first seen Roma, not plainly, but vaguely
+in a summer cloud of lace and sunshades.</p>
+
+<p>Then it occurred to him that it must have been on this spot that Roma
+was inspired with the plot which had ended with his betrayal. At that
+thought all the bitterness of his soul returned. He told himself she
+deserved every word he had said to her, and blamed himself for the
+humiliation he had gone through in his attempt to make excuses for what
+she had done. To the curse he had hurled at her at the last moment he
+added words of fiercer anger, and though they were spoken only in his
+brain, or to the dark night and the rolling river, they intensified his
+fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how I hate her!" he thought.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>piazza</i>, was quiet. There was a light in the Pope's windows, and a
+Swiss Guard was patrolling behind the open wicket of the bronze gate to
+the Vatican. A porter in gorgeous livery was yawning by the door of the
+Prime Minister's palace. The man was waiting for his master. He would
+<i>have</i> to wait.</p>
+
+<p>The clock of St. Peter's struck one, and the silent place began to be
+peopled with many shadows. The scene of the Pope's jubilee returned to
+Rossi's mind. He saw and heard everything over again. The crowd, the
+gorgeous procession, the Pope, and last of all his own speech. A
+sardonic smile crossed his face in the darkness as he thought of what he
+had said.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible that I can ever have believed those fables?"</p>
+
+<p>He was tramping down the Trastevere, picturing his trial for the murder
+of the Baron, with Roma in the witness-box and himself in the dock. The
+cold horror of it all was insupportable, and he told himself that there
+was only one place in which he could escape from despair.</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy man had begun to think of taking his own life. He had always
+condemned suicide. He had even condemned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">412</a></span> it in Bruno. But it was the
+death grip of a man utterly borne down, and there was nothing else to
+hold on to.</p>
+
+<p>The day began to break, and he turned back towards the piazza of St.
+Peter's, thinking of what he intended to do and where he would do it. By
+the end of the Hospital of Santo Spirito there was a little blind alley
+bounded by a low wall. Below was the quick turn of the Tiber, and no
+swimmer was strong enough to live long in the turbulent waters at that
+point. He would do it there.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were silent, and in the grey dawn, that mystic hour of
+parturition when the day is being born and things are seen in places
+where they do not exist, when ships sail in the sky and mountains rise
+around lowland cities, David Rossi became aware in a moment that a woman
+was walking on the pavement in front of him. He could almost have
+believed that it was Roma, the figure was so tall and full and upright.
+But the woman's dress was poorer, and she was carrying a bundle in her
+arms. When he looked again he saw that her bundle was a child, and that
+she was weeping over it.</p>
+
+<p>"Taking her little one to the hospital," he thought.</p>
+
+<p>But on turning into the little Borgo he saw that the woman went up to
+the Rota, knelt before it, kissed the child again and again, put it in
+the cradle, pulled the bell, and then, crying bitterly, hastened away.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi remembered his own mother, and a great tide of simple human
+tenderness swept over him. What he had seen the woman do was what his
+mother had done thirty-five years before. He saw it all as by a mystic
+flash of light, which looked back into the past.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly it occurred to him that the Rota had been long since closed,
+and therefore it was physically impossible that anybody could have put a
+child into the cradle. Then he remembered that he had not heard the
+bell, or the woman's footsteps, or the sound of her voice when she wept.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and looked back. The woman was returning in the direction of
+the piazza of St. Peter's. By an impulse which he could not resist he
+followed her, overtook her, and looked into her face.</p>
+
+<p>Again he thought he was looking at Roma. There was the same nobility in
+the beautiful features, the same sweetness in the tremulous mouth, the
+same grandeur in the great dark eyes. But he knew perfectly who it was.
+It was his mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">413</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It did not seem strange that his mother should be there. From her home
+in heaven she had come down to watch over her son on earth. She had
+always been watching over him. And now that he too was betrayed and
+lost, now that he too was broken-hearted and alone....</p>
+
+<p>He was utterly unmanned. "Mother! Mother! I am coming to you! Every door
+is closed against me, and I have nowhere to go to for refuge. I am
+coming!... I am coming!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the spirit paused, and pointing to the bronze gate of the Vatican,
+said, with infinite tenderness:</p>
+
+<p>"Go there!"</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="PART_NINE_THE_PEOPLE" id="PART_NINE_THE_PEOPLE"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">414</a></span>
+<h2>PART NINE&mdash;THE PEOPLE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>The Pope awoke next morning in the dreary hour of cock-crow, and rang
+for his valet while he was still in bed. When the valet came he was
+greatly agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"What's amiss, Gaetanino?" said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"A madman, your Holiness," said the valet. "They wanted me to awaken
+your Holiness, and I wouldn't do it. A madman is down at the bronze
+gate, and insists on seeing you."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the Maestro di Camera came into the room. He also was
+greatly agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this about some poor madman at the bronze gate?" asked the
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to tell your Holiness," said the master of the household.
+"The man declares he is pursued, and demands sanctuary."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says he will give his name to the Holy Father only; but his
+face...."</p>
+
+<p>"The man's mad," said the valet.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, Gaetanino."</p>
+
+<p>"His face," continued the Maestro di Camera, "is known to the Swiss
+Guard, and when they sent up word...."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope sat up and said, "Is it perhaps..."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has forced his way in as far as the Sala Clementina, and nothing but
+physical force...."</p>
+
+<p>Sounds of voices raised in dispute could be heard in a distant room. The
+Pope listened and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let the man come up immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here."</p>
+
+<p>The Maestro di Camera had hardly gone from the Pope's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">415</a></span> bedroom when the
+Secretary of State entered it with hasty steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness," he said, "you will not allow yourself to receive this
+person? It is sufficiently clear that he must have escaped from the
+police during the night, probably by the help of confederates, and to
+shelter him will be to come into collision with the civil authorities."</p>
+
+<p>"The young man demands sanctuary, your Eminence, and whatever the
+consequences we have no right to refuse it."</p>
+
+<p>"But sanctuary is obsolete, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can be obsolete that is of divine institution, your Eminence."</p>
+
+<p>"But, your Holiness, it can only exist by virtue of concession from the
+State, and the present relation of the Church to the State of Italy..."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Eminence, I will ask you to let the young man come in."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness, I beg, I pray, reflect..."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the young man come in, your Em..."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope had not finished when the words were struck out of his mouth by
+an apparition which appeared at his bedroom door. It was that of a young
+man, whose eyes were wild, whose nostrils were quivering, and whose
+clothes hung about him in rags as if they had been torn in a recent
+struggle. He had a look of despair and suffering, yet it was the same to
+the Pope at that moment as if he were looking at his own features in a
+glass.</p>
+
+<p>The young man was surrounded by Swiss Guards, and the Maestro di Camera
+pushed in ahead of him. Coming face to face with the Pope propped up in
+his bed, the loud tones on which he was protesting died in his throat,
+and he stood in silence on the threshold of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope was the first to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you wish to say to me, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man seemed to recover his self-possession, but without a
+genuflexion or even a bow of the head, and with a slightly defiant
+manner, he said, "My name is David Leone. They call me Rossi, because
+that was my mother's name, and they said I had no right to my father's.
+I am a Roman, and I have been two months abroad. For ten years I have
+worked for the people, and now I am denounced and betrayed to the
+police. Three days ago I was arrested on returning to Italy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">416</a></span> and
+to-night by the help of friends I have escaped from the Carabineers. But
+every gate is closed against me, and I cannot get out of Rome. This is
+the Vatican, and the Vatican is sanctuary. Will you take me in?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope looked at the Swiss Guard, and said in a tremulous voice,
+"Gentlemen, you will take this young man to your own quarters, and see
+that no Carabineer lays hand on him without my knowledge and consent."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness!" protested the Cardinal Secretary, but the Pope raised
+his hand and silenced him.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi's defiant manner left him. "Wait," he said. "Before you decide to
+take me in you must know more about me, and what I am charged with. I am
+the Deputy Rossi who is said to have instigated the late riots. The
+warrant for my arrest accuses me of treason and an attempt on the person
+of the late King. It is false, but you must look at it for yourself.
+Here it is."</p>
+
+<p>So saying he plunged into his pocket for the paper, and then said, "It
+is gone! I remember now&mdash;I flung it at the feet of my betrayer."</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said the Pope, still addressing the Swiss Guard, "if the
+civil authorities attempt to arrest this young man, you may tell them
+they can only do so by giving a written promise of safety for life and
+limb."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi's wild eyes began to melt. "You are very good," he said, "and I
+will not deceive you. Although I am innocent of the crime they charge me
+with, I have broken the law of God and of my country, and if you have
+any fear of the consequences you must turn me out while there is still
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said the Pope, "instead of taking this young man to your
+quarters, let him be lodged in the empty apartment below my own, which
+was formerly occupied by the Secretary of State."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi broke down utterly and fell to his knees. The Pope raised two
+fingers and blessed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to your room and rest, my son, and God grant you a little repose."</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>By an impulse he could not resist, Rossi had risen from his knees, taken
+two or three steps forward, knelt again by the side of the bed, and put
+his lips to the Pope's hand.</p>
+
+<p>With wet eyes that gleamed under his grey brows the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">417</a></span> Pope followed the
+young man out until, surrounded by the Swiss Guard, he had passed from
+the room. Then he rose and turned into his private chapel for his early
+Mass.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Less than half-an-hour afterwards a rumour swept through the Vatican
+like the gust of whistling wind that goes before a storm. The Pope met
+it as he was coming from Mass.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Gaetanino?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Something about an assassination, your Holiness," said the valet, and
+the Pope stood as if thunderstruck, for he thought of Rossi and the
+King.</p>
+
+<p>After a while the vague report became more definite. It was not the King
+but the Prime Minister who had been assassinated.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's private room began to fill with pallid faces. The Cardinal
+Secretary was there, the Maestro di Camera, and at length the little
+Majordomo. By this time a special message had reached the Vatican from
+one of its watchers outside, and they were able to discuss the
+circumstances. The Prime Minister had been found dead in his official
+palace in the Piazza Navona. He had dined at the Quirinal and remained
+there for the opening of the State Ball, therefore he could not have
+reached the Palazzo Braschi before eleven or twelve o'clock. Two shots
+had been heard about midnight, and the body had been discovered in the
+early morning.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope listened and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The Cardinal Secretary told another story. The Deputy Rossi, who had
+been brought to Rome by the train from Genoa, which arrived punctually
+at 11.45, had been rescued by a gang of ruffians at the station. The
+rescue had been prearranged, and the man had jumped into a coup&eacute; and
+driven off at a gallop. The coup&eacute; had gone down the Via Nazionale, and a
+few minutes before twelve o'clock it had been seen to turn into the
+Piazza Navona. It was by the accident that the Carabineers had followed
+in pursuit of the escaped prisoner that the murder had been discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Still the Pope said nothing. But his head was held down, and his soul
+was full of trouble.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">418</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The group of prelates looked into each other's faces with suspicion and
+terror. A storm was gathering round the Vatican, and who could say what
+would happen if the Pope persisted in the course he had just taken? At
+length the Cardinal Secretary approached his Holiness, and said, with a
+deep genuflexion:</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, I fear the tenderness of your fatherly heart has betrayed
+you into sheltering a criminal. It is not merely that the man Rossi is a
+revolutionary accused of an attempt to overthrow the Government of his
+country. There cannot be a question that he is a murderer also, and if
+you keep him here you will violate the law of every civilised State and
+expose yourself to the condemnation of the world."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope did not reply. Other words in another voice were drumming in
+his ears with a new and terrible meaning: "I have broken the law of God
+and of my country, and if you have any fear of the consequences you must
+turn me out while there is still time."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness will also remember," said the Cardinal Secretary, "that
+by the regulation of the civil authorities which guarantees to the Holy
+Father the rights of sovereignty, it is expressly stated that he holds
+no powers which are contrary to the laws of the State and of public
+order. Therefore to conceal and protect a criminal would be of itself to
+commit a crime, and God alone can say what the consequence might be to
+the Vatican and to the Church."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, silence! silence!" cried the Pope, lifting a face full of
+suffering. "Leave me! leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>The Cardinal Secretary and his colleagues bowed to the Pope and backed
+out of the room. A moment afterwards the young Monsignor entered. He was
+bringing a newspaper in his hand, for as Cameriere Participante he was
+one of the Pope's readers.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," he said in his nervous voice, "I bring you bad news."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, my son?" said the Pope, with a pitiful expression.</p>
+
+<p>"The assassin of the Prime Minister turns out to be some one..."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some one known to your Holiness."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">419</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid for the Holy Father.... Tell me, Monsignor."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a lady, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"A lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has been arrested and has confessed."</p>
+
+<p>"Confessed?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness. She shot the Prime Minister
+with a revolver, and her motive was revenge."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope lifted his head, and looked at the young Monsignor with an
+expression which no language can describe. Relief, joy, shame, and
+remorse were mingled in one flash on his broken and bankrupt face. He
+was silent for a moment, and then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Say nothing of this to the young man in the room below. If he is in
+sanctuary let him also be in peace. Whatever he is to hear of the world
+without must come through me alone. Give that as my order to everybody.
+And may God who has had mercy on His servant be good to us all!"</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>In penance for the joy he had felt on learning that Roma, not Rossi, had
+assassinated the Minister, the Pope became her advocate in his own mind,
+and watched for an opportunity to save her. Every day for a week
+Monsignor Mario read the newspapers to the Pope that he might be fully
+abreast of what occurred.</p>
+
+<p>The first morning the journals merely reported the crime. The headless
+one with the fearful hands had stalked over the city in the middle of
+night in the shape of incarnate murder, and the citizens of Rome would
+awake to hear the news with consternation, horror, and shame.</p>
+
+<p>The evening journals contained obituary articles and appreciations of
+the dead man's character. He was the Richelieu of Italy, the chivalrous
+and devoted servant of his country, and one of the noblest figures of
+the age.</p>
+
+<p>"Extras" were published giving descriptions of the city under the first
+effects of the terrible news. Rome was literally draped in mourning. It
+was a forest of flags at half-mast. All public buildings, embassies,
+caf&eacute;s, and places of public amusement were closed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">420</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Pope was puzzled, and calling a member of his Noble Guard (it was
+the Count de Raymond) he sent him out into the city to see.</p>
+
+<p>When the Count de Raymond returned he told another story. The people,
+while deploring the crime, were not surprised at it. Baron Bonelli had
+refused to understand the wants of the nation. He had treated the people
+as slaves and shed their blood in the streets. Where such opinions were
+not openly expressed there was a gloomy silence. Groups could be seen
+under the great lamps in the Corso reading the evening papers. Sometimes
+a man would mount a chair in front of the Caf&eacute; Aragno and read aloud
+from the latest "extra." The crowd would listen, stand a moment, and
+then disperse.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the journals were full of the assassin. Many things were
+incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the
+right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great
+coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin,
+she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous
+intrigue, and her last victim had been her first friend.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the Pope was puzzled, and he sent out his Noble Guard again.
+The Count de Raymond returned to say that in corners of the caf&eacute;s people
+spoke of the Baron as a dead dog, and said that if Donna Roma had killed
+him she did <i>a</i> good act, and God would reward her.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament opened after its Easter vacation, and the Count de Raymond
+was sent in plain clothes to its first sitting. The galleries and
+lobbies were filled, and there was suppressed but intense excitement.
+Rumour said the Government had resigned, and that the King, who was in
+despair, had been unable to form another ministry. A leader of the Right
+was heard to say that Donna Roma had done more for the people in a day
+than the Opposition could have accomplished in a hundred years. "If
+these agitators on the Left have any qualities of statesmen, now's their
+time to show it," he said. But what would Parliament say about the dead
+man? The President entered and took his chair. After the minutes had
+been read there was a moment's silence. Not a word was uttered, not a
+voice was raised. "Let us pass on to the next business," said the
+President.</p>
+
+<p>The assizes happened to be in session, and the opening of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">421</a></span> the trial was
+reported on the following day. When the prisoner was asked whether she
+pleaded guilty or not guilty, she answered guilty. The court, however,
+requested her to reconsider her plea, assigned her an advocate, and went
+through all the formalities of an ordinary case. A principal object of
+the prosecution had been to discover accomplices, but the prisoner
+continued to protest that she had none. She neither denied nor
+extenuated the crime, and she acknowledged it to have been premeditated.
+When asked to state her motive, she said it was hatred of the methods
+adopted by the dead man to wipe out political opponents, and a
+determination to send to the bar of the Almighty one who had placed
+himself above human law.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the next day's hearing of the trial,
+and when the Count de Raymond came back his eyes were red and swollen.
+The beautiful and melancholy face of the young prisoner sitting behind
+iron bars that were like the cage of a wild beast had made a pitiful
+impression. Her calmness, her total self-abandonment, the sublime
+feelings that even in the presence of a charge of murder expressed
+themselves in her sweet voice, had moved everybody to tears. Then the
+prosecution had been so debasing in its questions about her visits to
+the Vatican and in its efforts to implicate David Rossi by means of a
+letter addressed to the prison at Milan.</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>I</i> did it," the young prisoner had said again and again with
+steadfast fervour, only deepening to alarm when evidence concerning the
+revolver seemed to endanger the absent man.</p>
+
+<p>There had been some conflicting medical evidence as to whether the death
+could have been due to a pistol-shot, and certain astounding disclosures
+of police corruption and prison tyranny. A judge of the Military
+Tribunal had given startling proof of the Prime Minister's complicity in
+an infamous case, ending with the suicide of the prisoner's man-servant
+in open court, and an old Garibaldian among the people, packed away
+beyond the barrier, had cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"He was just a black-dyed villain, and God Almighty save us from such
+another."</p>
+
+<p>This laying bare of the machinery of statecraft had made a great
+sensation, and even the judge on the bench, being a just man, had
+lowered his eyes before the accused at the bar. As the prisoner was
+taken back to prison past the Castle of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">422</a></span> St. Angelo and the Military
+College, the crowds had cheered her again and again, and sitting in an
+open car with a Carabineer by her side, she had looked frightened at
+finding herself a heroine where she had expected to be a malefactor.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" said the Pope. "But who knows the hidden designs of
+Providence, whether manifest in the path of His justice or His mercy?"</p>
+
+<p>Next day, when the Noble Guard returned to the Vatican, he could
+scarcely speak to tell his story. The trial had ended and the prisoner
+was condemned. Reluctantly the judge had sentenced her to life-long
+imprisonment. She had preserved the same lofty demeanour to the last,
+thanked her advocate, and even the judge and jury, and said they had
+taken the only true view of her act. Her great violet eyes were
+extraordinarily dilated and dark, and her face was transparent as
+alabaster.</p>
+
+<p>"You have done right to condemn me," she said, "but God, who sees all,
+will weigh my conduct in the scale of His holy justice." The entire
+court was in tears.</p>
+
+<p>When the time came to remove the lady the crowd ran out to see the last
+of her. There was a van and a company of Carabineers, but the emotion of
+the people mastered them and they tried to rescue the prisoner. This was
+near the Castle of St. Angelo, and the gates being open, the military
+rushed her into the fortress for safety. She was there now.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the Castle of St. Angelo to inquire
+after the prisoner, and the young soldier brought back a pitiful tale.
+Donna Roma was ill and could not be removed at present. Her nervous
+system was completely exhausted and nobody could say what might not
+occur. Nevertheless, she was very brave, very sweet and very cheerful,
+and everybody was in love with her. The Castle was occupied by a brigade
+of Military Engineers, and the Major in command was a good Catholic and
+a faithful son of the Holy Father. He had lodged his prisoner in the
+bright apartments that used to be the Pope's, although the prison for
+persons committed by the Penal Tribunals was a dark cell in the middle
+of the Maschio. She had expressed a desire to be received into the
+Church, and had asked the Major to send for Father Pifferi.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back and tell the Major that I will go instead," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">423</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ask him if the secret passage between the Vatican and the Castle of St.
+Angelo can still be opened up."</p>
+
+<p>Count de Raymond returned to say that the Major would open it. In the
+present political crisis no one could tell what a day would bring forth,
+and in any case he would take the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>The Noble Guard held four unopened letters in his hand. They were
+addressed to the Honourable Rossi in a woman's writing, and had been
+re-addressed to the Chamber of Deputies from London, Paris, and Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>"An official from the post-office gave me these letters, and asked me if
+I could deliver them," said the young soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"My son, my son, didn't you see that it was a trap?" said the Pope. "But
+no matter! Give them to me. We must leave all to the Holy Spirit."</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>"The dress of a simple priest to-day, Gaetanino," said the Pope, when
+his valet came to his bedroom on the following morning.</p>
+
+<p>After Mass and the usual visit of the Cardinal Secretary, the Pope
+called for the young Count de Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go down to our guest first," he said, putting into the
+side-pocket of his cassock the letters which the Noble Guard had given
+him.</p>
+
+<p>They found Rossi sitting in a large, sparsely furnished room, by an
+almost untouched breakfast. He lifted his head when he heard steps, and
+rose as the Pope entered. His pale face was a picture of despair.
+"Something has died in him," thought the Pope, and an aching sadness,
+which had been gnawing at his heart for days, returned.</p>
+
+<p>"They make you comfortable in this old place, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have everything you wish for?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than I deserve, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"You have suffered, my son. But, in the providence of God, who knows
+what may happen yet? Don't lose heart. Take an old man's word for
+it&mdash;life is worth living. The Holy Father has found it so in spite of
+many sorrows."</p>
+
+<p>A kind of pitying smile passed over the young man's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">424</a></span> miserable face.
+"Mine is a sorrow your Holiness can know nothing about&mdash;I have lost my
+wife," he said.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence. Then the Pope said in a voice that shook
+slightly, "You don't mean that your wife <i>is</i> dead, but only...."</p>
+
+<p>"Only," said Rossi, with a curl of the lip, "that it was she who
+betrayed me."</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard, my son, very hard. But who knows what influences...."</p>
+
+<p>"Curse them! Curse the influences, whatever they were, which caused a
+wife to betray her husband."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope, who was sitting with both hands on the knob of his stick,
+quivered perceptibly. "My son," he said, "you have much to justify you,
+and it is not for me to gainsay you altogether. But God rules His world
+in righteousness, and if this had not happened, who knows but what worse
+might have befallen you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing worse <i>could</i> have befallen me, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>There was another moment of silence, and then the Pope said, "Yes, I
+understand what it is to build one's faith on a human foundation. The
+foundation fails, and then the heart sinks, the soul totters. But bad as
+this ... this betrayal is, you do very wrong if you refuse to see that
+it saved you from the consequences&mdash;the awful consequences before God
+and man&mdash;of your intended conduct."</p>
+
+<p>"What conduct, your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"The terrible conduct which formed the basis of your plans on returning
+to Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean ... what the newspapers talked about?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"A conspiracy to kill the King?"</p>
+
+<p>Again the Pope bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You believed that, your Holiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappily I was compelled to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"And she ... do you suppose she believed it?"</p>
+
+<p>"She believed you were engaged in conspiracies. There was nothing else
+she could believe in the light of what you had said and written."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment Rossi began to laugh. "And yet you say the world is ruled
+in righteousness!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's face was whitening. "Do you tell me it was a mistake?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do. The only conspiracies I was engaged in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">425</a></span> were conspiracies
+to found associations of freedom which had been forbidden by the
+tyrannical new decree. But what matter? If an error like that can lead
+to results like these, what's the good of trying?" And he laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope, who was deeply moved, looked up into the young man's tortured
+face, without knowing that his own tears were streaming. Old memories
+were astir within him, and he was carried back into the past of his own
+life. He was remembering the days when he too had reeled beneath the
+blow of a terrible fate, and all his hopes and beliefs had been mown
+down as by a scythe. But God had been good. His gracious hand had healed
+the wound and made all things well.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the letters from the pocket of his cassock, the Pope laid them on
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"These are for you, my son," he said, and then he turned away.</p>
+
+<p>Going down the narrow roofed-in passage to the Castle of St. Angelo,
+with shafts of morning sunshine slanting through its lancet windows, and
+the voices of children at play coming up from the street below, the Pope
+told himself that he must be severe with Roma. The only thing
+irremediable in all that had happened was the assassination, and though
+that, in God's hands, had teen turned to the good of the people, yet it
+raised a barrier between two unhappy souls that might never in this life
+be passed.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child! Poor flower broken by the storms of fate! But I must
+reprove her. Before I give her the Blessed Sacrament she must confess
+and show a full contrition."</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Roma was lying on a bed-chair in the frescoed room which had once been
+the Pope's salon. She was wearing a white dress, and it made her
+unruffled brow look like alabaster. Her large eyes, which were closed,
+had blue rings on the lids, and her mouth, once so rosy and so gay with
+laughter and light words, was colourless as marble.</p>
+
+<p>A lay Sister, in a black and white habit, moved softly about the room.
+It was Bruno's widow, Elena. She was the Sister Angelica who had entered
+the convent of the Sacred Heart. It was there she had buried her own
+trouble until, hearing of Roma's, she had begged to be allowed to nurse
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">426</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A door opened and an officer, in a mixed light and dark blue uniform,
+entered. It was the doctor of the regiment.</p>
+
+<p>"Sleeping, Sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor soul! Let her sleep as long as she can."</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment Roma opened her eyes, and held out her white hand.
+"Is it you, doctor?" she said with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"And how is my patient this morning? Better, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Much better. In fact, I feel no pain at all to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"She never does. She never feels anything if you believe her," said
+Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"Tired, Sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I be tired, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sitting up all night with me. Your big burden is very troublesome,
+doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! You mustn't talk like that."</p>
+
+<p>"If all jailors were as good to their prisoners as mine are to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if all prisoners were as good to their jailors.... But I forbid
+that subject. I absolutely forbid it.... Ah, here comes your breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>A soldier in uniform trousers and a linen jacket and cap had come in
+with a tray on which there was a smoking basin.</p>
+
+<p>"You are from Sicily, aren't you, cook?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, from Sicily, Signora."</p>
+
+<p>Roma leaned back to Elena and said in an undertone, "That's where <i>he</i>
+has gone to, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some people say so, but nobody knows where he is."</p>
+
+<p>"No news yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"Sicily must be a lovely place, cook?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is, Signora. It's the loveliest place in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Last night I had such a beautiful dream, doctor. Somebody who had been
+away came back, and all the church bells rang for him. I thought it was
+noon, I remember, for the big gun of the Castle had just been fired. But
+when I awoke it was quite dark, yet there was really something going on,
+for I could hear people singing in the city and bands of music playing."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that ... I'm afraid that was only ... only the sequel to the Prime
+Minister's funeral. Rome is not sorry that Baron Bonelli is dead, and
+last night a procession of men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">427</a></span> and women marched along the streets with
+songs and hymns, as on a night of carnival.... But I must be going.
+Sister, see she takes her medicine as usual, and lies quiet and does not
+excite herself. Good-morning!"</p>
+
+<p>When the cook also had gone Roma raised herself on her elbow. "Did you
+hear what the doctor said, Elena? The death of the Baron has altered
+everything. It was really no crime to kill that man, and by rights
+nobody should suffer for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! no, I didn't mean that. Yet why shouldn't I? And why shouldn't you?
+Didn't he kill Bruno and our poor dear little Joseph?..."</p>
+
+<p>Elena was crying. "I'm not thinking of myself," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not thinking of myself, either," said Roma, "and I'm not going to
+give in at the eleventh hour. But David Rossi will come back. I am sure
+he will, and then..."</p>
+
+<p>"And then... <i>you</i>, Donna Roma?"</p>
+
+<p>"I?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma fell back on her bed-chair. "No, <i>I</i> shall not be here, that's
+true. It's a pity, but after all it makes no difference. And if David
+Rossi has to come back... over... over my dead body, as you might say...
+who is to know... or care... except perhaps... some day... when he..."</p>
+
+<p>Roma struggled on, but Elena broke down utterly.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened again, and a sentry on guard outside announced the
+English Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Sir Evelyn, is it you?"</p>
+
+<p>The English gentleman held down his head. "Forgive me if I intrude upon
+your trouble, Donna Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit! Give his Excellency a chair, Sister.... Times have changed since I
+knew you first, Sir Evelyn. I was a thoughtless, happy woman in those
+days. But they are gone, and I do not regret them."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very brave, Donna Roma. Too brave. Only for that your trial
+must have gone differently."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all for the best, your Excellency. But was there anything you
+wished to say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The report of your condemnation has been received with deep
+emotion in my country, and as the evidence given in court showed that
+you were born in England, I feel that I am justified in intervening on
+your behalf."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">428</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want you to intervene, dear friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, it is still possible to appeal to the Court of Cassation."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no desire to appeal&mdash;there is nothing to appeal against."</p>
+
+<p>"There might be much if you could be brought to see that&mdash;that.... In
+fact so many pleas are possible, and all of them good ones. For
+instance...."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman dropped both eyes and voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, you were tried and condemned on a charge of going to the
+Prime Minister's cabinet with the intention of killing him, and of
+killing him there. But if it could be proved that <i>he</i> came to <i>your</i>
+house, and that, to shield <i>another person not now in the hands of
+justice</i>, you...."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying, your Excellency?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look!"</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman had drawn from his breast-pocket a crumpled sheet of
+white paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night I visited your deserted apartment in the Piazza Navona, and
+there, amid other signs that were clear and convincing&mdash;the marks of two
+pistol-shots&mdash;I found&mdash;this."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Give it to me," cried Roma. She almost snatched it out of
+his hand. It was the warrant which Rossi had rolled up and flung away.</p>
+
+<p>"How did that warrant come there, Donna Roma? Who brought it? What other
+person was with you in those rooms that night? What does he say to this
+evidence of his presence on the scene of the crime?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma did not speak immediately. She continued to look at the Englishman
+with her large mournful eyes until his own eyes fell, and there was no
+sound but the crinkling of the warrant in her hand. Then she said, very
+softly:</p>
+
+<p>"Excellency, you must please let me keep this paper. As you see, it is
+nothing in itself, and without my testimony you can make nothing of it.
+I shall never appeal against my sentence, and therefore it can be no
+good to me or to anybody. But it may prove to be a danger to somebody
+else&mdash;somebody whose name should be above reproach."</p>
+
+<p>She stretched out a sweet white hand and touched his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I done enough wrong to him already, and isn't this paper a
+proof of it? Must I go farther still, and bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">429</a></span> him to the galleys? You
+cannot wish it. Don't you see that the police would have to deny
+everything? And I&mdash;if you forced me to speak, I should deny everything
+also."</p>
+
+<p>A gentle, brave dauntlessness rang in her voice, and the Englishman
+could with difficulty keep back his tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellency, Sir Evelyn, friend ... tell me I may keep the paper."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman rose and turned his head away. "It is yours, Donna
+Roma&mdash;you must do as you please with it."</p>
+
+<p>She kissed the paper and put it in her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, dear friend."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to answer, "Good-bye! God bless you!" But the words would not
+come.</p>
+
+<p>"The Major!" said the voice of the sentry. The Commandant of the Castle
+came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Major!" cried Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor tells me you are better this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Much better."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my duty&mdash;my unhappy duty&mdash;to bring you a painful message. The
+authorities, thinking your presence in Rome a cause of excitement to the
+populace, have decided to send you to Viterbo."</p>
+
+<p>"When is it to be, Major?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow about mid-day."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be quite-ready. But have you sent for Father Pifferi?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came to speak about that also. Sister, return to your room for the
+present."</p>
+
+<p>Elena went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Donna Roma, a great personage has asked to see you in the place of the
+Father General. He will come in through that doorway. It leads by a
+passage long sealed up to the apartment of the Pope in the Vatican, and
+he who comes and goes by it must be unknown and unseen by any one except
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Major!"</p>
+
+<p>But the Major was going hurriedly out of the room. A moment afterwards
+the Pope entered in his black cassock as a priest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">430</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>"Rise, my child! God knows if the Holy Father ought to give you his
+blessing. Far be it from me to add bitterness to your remorse in finding
+yourself in this place and guilty of this sin, but.... Are we alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite alone, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down. The Holy Father will sit beside you."</p>
+
+<p>He was trying to be severe with her, but it was very difficult. His hand
+strayed down to hers, and at every hard word there was a tender
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p>"The Baron is dead. He was a cruel, heartless tyrant, without mercy or
+humanity. His death has altered everything, and the load that lay on
+Italy has been lifted away. But none the less you did wrong, very, very
+wrong, and by the mad act of a moment.... My child! My poor child! God
+help you! God help this little lost one!"</p>
+
+<p>He patted the hand that lay in his as if he had been quieting a crying
+child.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, I cannot save you from the consequences of your sin. You must
+go where I cannot follow you. But since the Holy Father induced you to
+make that cruel denunciation&mdash;but let us be calm&mdash;let us be calm!"</p>
+
+<p>Roma was perfectly calm, but the Pope could barely control himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I see now that we made a mistake. The conspiracies of David Rossi were
+not criminal, and his aims were not unrighteous. I have been instructed
+on this subject, and now I see everything in a different light. Yes, a
+great mistake, although a natural and excusable one, and if that was the
+cause and origin of this terrible event, the Holy Father who led you so
+far...."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, you must not expect too much. It is little I can do. But now that
+governments are falling and parliaments are being dissolved, David Rossi
+must come back...."</p>
+
+<p>Roma made a cry of joy, and the Pope raised a warning finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you must never think of that, my child&mdash;you must never think of it.
+It is a pity, a great pity, but, alas! it cannot be otherwise now. If
+your husband is to come back,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">431</a></span> his name must be kept clean and
+unblemished, and you can never rejoin him whatever happens."</p>
+
+<p>Dizzy with a sense of the Pope's awful error, Roma turned away her face.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you tell me that what you did was due to the compulsion that was
+put upon you to denounce David Rossi, he must come forward, whatever the
+consequences, to defend you and plead for you. He must say to the world
+and to your judges: 'It is true that this poor lady has committed a
+crime&mdash;an awful crime, such as shuts the guilty one out of the fold of
+the human family&mdash;but she was provoked to it by a falsehood. The dead
+man deceived her. He was her betrayer, her assassin, for he tried to
+slay her soul. Therefore you will have mercy upon her as you hope for
+mercy, you will forgive her as you hope for forgiveness, and in the
+peace and penance of some holy convent she will wipe out the past of her
+unhappy life as Mary wiped out her sins in the tears with which she
+washed her Master's feet.'"</p>
+
+<p>He had risen in the exaltation of his emotion, and raised one hand over
+his head, but Roma, in the toils of the terrible error, had dropped to
+her knees at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I cannot die with a lie on my lips. Holy Father, let me make my
+confession."</p>
+
+<p>A vague foreshadowing of the coming revelation seemed to light on the
+Pope, and he sat down again without a word. Mechanically he prepared to
+receive the penitent into the Church, questioning her, instructing her,
+calling on her to repeat the profession of faith, and finally baptizing
+her conditionally.</p>
+
+<p>"Baptism wipes out all your sins, my daughter," he said, "but if for
+your soul's comfort you wish to make a full confession before I give you
+the Blessed Sacrament...."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. I have wished it ever since the end of my trial, and that was why
+I asked for Father Pifferi."</p>
+
+<p>"Then take care&mdash;accuse nobody else, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court
+with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another."</p>
+
+<p>"My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of painful silence, and then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">432</a></span> Pope sat down again
+with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came
+to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her
+husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the
+incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out
+on her awful errand.</p>
+
+<p>"But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness,
+and then...."</p>
+
+<p>"In ... your own rooms?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody else came afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"A friend."</p>
+
+<p>"A ... friend?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for a moment, and then put her hand into her breast and
+drew out the warrant.</p>
+
+<p>"This one," she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope took the paper, and it rustled as he opened it. There was no
+other sound in the prison cell except the rasping noise of his rapid
+breathing.</p>
+
+<p>"David Leone! You don't mean to say&mdash;to imply...."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's eyes wandered vaguely around, but they came back to the face
+at his feet, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! You cannot mean that, my child. Tell me I have misunderstood
+you and come to a wrong conclusion."</p>
+
+<p>Roma did not reply. Her head sunk lower and lower, and seeing this, the
+Pope rose again, and standing over her he cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me! Tell me, I command you! You wish me to believe that it was he,
+not you, who committed the crime! Out on you! out on you!"</p>
+
+<p>But having said this in a hoarse and angry voice, he passed his arm over
+his eyes as if to brush away the clouds that had gathered there, and
+muttered in a broken and feeble way, "O God, Thou knowest my
+foolishness. I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God! Hide not
+Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">433</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roma was crying at the Pope's feet, and after a moment he became aware
+of it, and stooped to lift her up.</p>
+
+<p>"My child! My poor, poor child! You must bear with me. I am an old man
+now. Only a weak old man. My brain is confused. Things run together in
+it. But I understand. I think I understand."</p>
+
+<p>She rose and kissed his trembling hand. He was still holding the
+warrant.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did this paper come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"The English Ambassador brought it this morning. He had found it in our
+rooms in the Piazza Navona."</p>
+
+<p>"The place where the crime was committed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope straightened himself up, and said in a firm voice:</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, you must permit me to keep this warrant."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! If I said before that your husband should come out and defend
+you, I say now that he shall come out and accuse himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Your Holiness!"</p>
+
+<p>"He shall go to the courts and say: 'This lady is innocent. She
+sacrificed herself to save my life. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for
+justice. Liberate her and arrest me.'"</p>
+
+<p>Roma had knelt again, and was fingering the skirt of the Pope's cassock.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Holy Father," she said, "there is something I have not told you.
+He who killed the Minister did so in self-defence...."</p>
+
+<p>"In self-defence!"</p>
+
+<p>"His act was an accident, and if it had not happened the Minister would
+have killed him, whereas I...."</p>
+
+<p>"In self-defence, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am really guilty of the crime, because I intended to commit it."</p>
+
+<p>"But if it was done in self-defence it was no crime, and you must not
+and shall not suffer."</p>
+
+<p>Roma dropped the Pope's cassock and took hold of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father," she said, "how can I wish to live when he who loved me
+loves me no longer? I know quite well it is better that I should go, and
+that when he comes it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">434</a></span> should be all over. I dreamt of it last night,
+your Holiness. I thought my husband had come back and all the church
+bells were ringing. Only a dream, and perhaps you do not believe in such
+foolishness. But it was very sweet to think that if I could not live for
+my love I could die for him, and so wipe out everything."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's white head was bent very low.</p>
+
+<p>"And then I cannot suffer very much, your Holiness. I am ill, really
+ill, and my trouble will not last very long. And if God is using what
+has happened to bring out all things well, perhaps He intends that I
+shall give myself in the place of some one who is better and more
+necessary."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope could bear no more. His lip quivered and his voice shook, but
+his eyes were shining.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not for me to gainsay you, my daughter. I came here to see Mary
+Magdalene, and find the soul of the saints themselves. The world's
+judgment on a woman who has sinned is merciless and cruel, but if David
+Rossi is worthy of his mother and his name, he will come back to you on
+his knees."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me, your Holiness."</p>
+
+<p>"I bless you, my daughter. May He in whose hands are the issues of life
+and death cover your transgressions with the vast wings of His gracious
+pardon and bring you joy and peace."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope went out with a brightening face, and Roma staggered back to
+her couch.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>David Rossi sat all day in his room in the Vatican reading the letters
+the Pope had left with him. They were the letters which Roma had
+addressed to him in London, Paris, and Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>He read them again and again, and save for the tick of the clock there
+was no sound in the large gaunt room but his stifled moans. The most
+violently opposed feelings possessed him, and he hardly knew whether he
+was glad or sorry that thus late, and after a cruel fate had fallen,
+these messages of peace had reached him.</p>
+
+<p>A spirit seemed to emanate from the thin transparent sheets of paper,
+and it penetrated his whole being. As he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">435</a></span> read the words, now gay, now
+sad, now glowing with joy, now wailing with sorrow, a world of fond and
+tender emotions swelled up and blotted out all darker passions.</p>
+
+<p>He could see Roma herself, and his heart throbbed as of old under the
+influence of her sweet indescribable presence. Those dear features,
+those marvellous eyes, that voice, that smile&mdash;they swam up and tortured
+him with love and with remorse.</p>
+
+<p>How bravely she had withstood his enemies! To think of that young,
+ardent, brilliant, happy life sacrificed to his sufferings! And then her
+poor, pathetic secret&mdash;how sweet and honest she had been about it! Only
+a pure and courageous woman could have done as she did; while he, in his
+blundering passion and mad wrath, had behaved like a foul-minded tyrant
+and a coward. What loud protestations of heroic love he had made when he
+imagined the matter affected another man! And when he had learned that
+it concerned himself, how his vaunted constancy had failed him, and he
+had cursed the poor soul whose confidence he had invited!</p>
+
+<p>But above all the pangs of love and remorse, Rossi was conscious of an
+overpowering despair. It took the form of revolt against God, who had
+allowed such a blind and cruel sequence of events to wreck the lives of
+two of His innocent children. When he took refuge in the Vatican he must
+have been clinging to some waif and stray of hope. It was gone now, and
+there was no use struggling. The nothingness of man against the
+pitilessness of fate made all the world a blank.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi had rung the bell to ask for an audience with his Holiness when
+the door opened and the Pope himself entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, I wished to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"What about, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Myself. Now I see that I did wrong to ask for your protection. You
+thought I was innocent, and there was something I did not tell you. When
+I said I was guilty before God and man, you did not understand what I
+meant. Holy Father, I meant that I had committed murder."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope did not answer, and Rossi went on, his voice ringing with the
+baleful sentiments which possessed him.</p>
+
+<p>"To tell you the truth, Holy Father, I hardly thought of it myself. What
+I had done was partly in self-defence, and I did not consider it a
+crime. And then, he whose life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">436</a></span> I had taken was an evil man, with the
+devil's dues in him, and I felt no more remorse after killing him than
+if I had trodden on a poisonous adder. But now I see things differently.
+In coming here I exposed you to danger at the hands of the State. I ask
+your pardon, and I beg you to let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"Where will you go to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere&mdash;nowhere&mdash;I don't know yet."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope looked at the young face, cut deep with lines of despair, and
+his heart yearned over it.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, my son. Let us think. Though you did not tell me of the
+assassination, I soon knew all about it.... Partly in self-defence, you
+say?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so, but I do not urge it as an excuse. And if I did, who else
+knows anything about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is there nobody who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>"One, perhaps. But it is my wife, and she could have no interest in
+saving me now, even if I wished to be saved.... I have read her
+letters."</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to tell you it is not so, my son&mdash;that your wife is still
+ready to sacrifice herself for your safety...."</p>
+
+<p>"But that is impossible, your Holiness. There are so many things you do
+not know."</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to tell you that I have just seen her, and, notwithstanding
+your want of faith in her, she still has faith in you...."</p>
+
+<p>The deep lines of despair began to pass from Rossi's face, and he made a
+cry of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to say that she loves you, and would give her life for
+you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible? Do you tell me that? In spite of everything? And
+she&mdash;where is she? Let me go to her. Holy Father, if you only knew! I'll
+go and beg her pardon. I cursed her! Yes, it is true that in my blind,
+mad passion I.... But let me go back to her on my knees. The rest of my
+life spent at her feet will not be enough to wipe out my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay, my son. You shall see her presently."</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be possible that I shall see her? I thought I should never see
+her again; but I counted without God. Ah! God is good after all. And
+you, Holy Father, you are good too. I will beg her forgiveness, and she
+will forgive me. Then we'll fly away somewhere&mdash;we'll escape to Africa,
+India,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">437</a></span> anywhere. We'll snatch a few years of happiness, and what more
+has anybody a right to expect in this miserable world?"</p>
+
+<p>Exalted in the light of his imaginary future, he seemed to forget
+everything else&mdash;his crime, his work, his people.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she at home still?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is only a few paces from this place, my son."</p>
+
+<p>"Only a few paces! Oh, let me not lose a moment more. Where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the Castle of St. Angelo," said the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>A dark cloud crossed Rossi's beaming face and his mouth opened as if to
+emit a startling cry.</p>
+
+<p>"In ... in prison?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"The assassination of the Minister."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma?... But what a fool I was not to think of it as a thing that might
+happen! I left her with the dead man. Who was to believe her when she
+denied that she had killed him?"</p>
+
+<p>"She did not deny it. She avowed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Avowed it? She said that she had...."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope bowed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Then ... then it was ... was it to shield me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi's eyes grew moist. He was like another man.</p>
+
+<p>"But the court ... surely no court will believe her."</p>
+
+<p>"She has been tried and sentenced, my son."</p>
+
+<p>"Sentenced? Do you say sentenced? For a crime she did not commit? And to
+shield me? Holy Father, would you believe that the last words I spoke to
+that woman ... but she is an angel. The authorities must be mad, though.
+Did nobody think of me? Didn't it occur to any one that I had been there
+that night?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was only one piece of evidence connecting you with the scene of
+the crime, my son. It was this."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope drew from his breast the warrant he had taken from Roma.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i> had it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi's emotions whirled within him in a kind of hurricane. The despair
+which had clamoured so loud looked mean and contemptible in the presence
+of the mighty passion which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">438</a></span> had put it to shame. But after a while his
+swimming eyes began to shine, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Father, this paper belongs to me and you must permit me to keep
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you intend to do, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one thing to do now."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>To save her.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There was no need to ask how. The Pope understood, and his breast
+throbbed and swelled. But now that he had accomplished what he came for,
+now that he had awakened the sleeping soul and given it hope and faith
+and courage to face justice, and even death if need be, the Pope became
+suddenly conscious of a feeling in his own heart which he struggled in
+vain to suppress.</p>
+
+<p>"Far be it from me to excuse a crime, my son, but the merciful God who
+employs our poor passions to His own great purposes has used your acts
+to great ends. The world is trembling on the verge of unknown events and
+nobody knows what a day may bring forth. Let us wait a while."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true that a crime will be the same to-morrow as to-day, but the
+dead man was a tyrant, a ferocious tyrant, and if he forced you in
+self-defence..."</p>
+
+<p>Again Rossi shook his head, but still the Pope struggled on.</p>
+
+<p>"You have your own life to think about, my son, and who knows but in
+God's good service..."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"You intend to give yourself up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope could say no more. He rose to his feet. His saintly face was
+full of a dumb yearning love and pride, which his tongue might never
+tell. He thought of his years of dark searching, ending at length in
+this meeting and farewell, and an impulse came to him to clasp the young
+man to his swelling and throbbing breast. But after a moment, with
+something of his old courageous calm of voice, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am not surprised at your decision, my son. It is worthy of your blood
+and name. And now that we are parting for the last time, I could wish to
+tell you something."</p>
+
+<p>David Rossi did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew your mother, my son."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">439</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My mother?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope bowed and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"She was a great soul, too, and she suffered terribly. Such are the ways
+of God."</p>
+
+<p>Still Rossi did not speak. He was looking steadfastly into the Pope's
+quivering face and making an effort to control himself.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope's voice shook and his lip trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally, you think ill of your father, knowing how much your mother
+suffered. Isn't that so?"</p>
+
+<p>Rossi put one hand to his forehead as if to steady his reeling brain,
+and said, "Who am I to think ill of any one?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pope smiled again, a timid smile.</p>
+
+<p>"David...."</p>
+
+<p>Rossi caught his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"If, in the providence of God, you were to meet your father somewhere,
+and he held out his hand to you, would you ... wherever you met and
+whatever he might be ... would you <i>shake hands with him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Rossi; "if I were a King on his throne, and he were the
+lowest convict at the galleys."</p>
+
+<p>The Pope fetched a long breath, took a step forward, and silently held
+out his hand. At the next moment the young man and the old Pope were
+hand to hand and eye to eye.</p>
+
+<p>They tried to speak and could not.</p>
+
+<p>"Farewell!" said the Pope in a choking voice, and turning away he
+tottered out of the room.</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>The doctor of the Engineers, not entirely satisfied with his diagnosis
+of Roma's illness, prescribed a remedy of unfailing virtue&mdash;hope. It was
+a happy treatment. The past of her life seemed to have disappeared from
+her consciousness and she lived entirely in the future. It was always
+shining in her eyes like a beautiful sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>The sunrise Roma saw was beyond the veil of this life, but the good
+souls about her knew nothing of that. They brought every piece of
+worldly intelligence that was likely to be good news to her. By this
+time they imagined they knew where her heart lay, and such happiness was
+in her white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">440</a></span> face when as soldiers of the King they whispered treason
+that they thought themselves rewarded.</p>
+
+<p>They told her of an attempted attack on the Vatican, with all its
+results and consequences&mdash;army disorganised, the Borgo Barracks shut up,
+soldiers wearing cockades and marching arm in arm, the Government
+helpless and the Quirinal in despair.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry for the young King," she said, "but still...."</p>
+
+<p>It was the higher power working with blind instruments. Rossi would come
+back. His hopes, so nearly laid waste, would at length be realised. And
+if, as she had told Elena, he had to return over her own dead body, so
+to speak, there would be justice even in that. It would be pitiful, but
+it would be glorious also. There were mysteries in life and death, and
+this was one of them.</p>
+
+<p>She was as gentle and humble as ever, but every hour she grew more
+restless. This conveyed to her guards the idea that she was expecting
+something. Notwithstanding her plea of guilty, they thought perhaps she
+was looking for her liberty out of the prevailing turmoil.</p>
+
+<p>"I will be very good and do everything you wish, doctor. But don't
+forget to ask the Prefect to let me stay in Rome over to-morrow. And,
+Sister, do please remember to waken me early in the morning, because I'm
+certain that something is going to happen. I've dreamt of it three
+times, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"A pity!" thought the doctor. "Governments may fall and even dynasties
+may disappear, but judicial authorities remain the same as ever, and the
+judgment of the court must be carried out."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he would speak to the Prefect. He would say that in the
+prisoner's present condition the journey to Viterbo might have serious
+consequences. As he was setting out on this errand early the following
+morning, he met Elena in the anteroom, and heard that Roma was paying
+the most minute attention to the making of her toilet.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange! You would think she was expecting some one," said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>"She is, too," said the doctor. "And he is a visitor who will not keep
+her long."</p>
+
+<p>The soldier who brought Roma her breakfast that morning brought
+something else that she found infinitely more appetising. Rossi had
+returned to Rome! One of the men below had seen him in the street last
+night. He was going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">441</a></span> in the direction of the <i>Piazza</i> Navona, and nobody
+was attempting to arrest him.</p>
+
+<p>Roma's eyes flashed like stars, and she sent down a message to the
+Major, asking to be allowed to see the soldier who had seen Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>He was a big ungainly fellow, but in Roma's eyes who shall say how
+beautiful? She asked him a hundred questions. His dense head was utterly
+bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor came back with a smiling face. The Prefect had agreed to
+postpone indefinitely the transfer of their prisoner to the
+penitentiary. The good man thought she would be very grateful.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, indefinitely? I only wished to remain over to-day! After that I
+shall be quite ready."</p>
+
+<p>But the doctor brought another piece of news which threw her into the
+wildest excitement. Both Senate and Chamber of Deputies had been
+convoked late last night for an early hour this morning. Rumour said
+they were to receive an urgent message from the King. There was the
+greatest commotion in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament, and
+the public tribunes were densely crowded. The doctor himself had
+obtained a card for the Chamber, but he was unable to get beyond the
+corridors. Nevertheless, the doors being open owing to the heat and
+crush, he had heard something. Vaguely, for five minutes, he had heard
+one of their great speakers.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it ... was it, perhaps...."</p>
+
+<p>"It was."</p>
+
+<p>Again the big eyes flashed like stars.</p>
+
+<p>"You heard him speak?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard his voice at all events."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a wonderful voice, isn't it? And you really heard him? Can it be
+possible?"</p>
+
+<p>Elena, the sad figure in the background of these bright pathetic scenes,
+thought Roma was hoping for a reconciliation with Rossi. She hinted as
+much, and then the fierce joy in the white face faded away.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no! I'm not thinking of that, Elena."</p>
+
+<p>Her love was too large for personal thoughts. It had risen higher than
+any selfish expectations.</p>
+
+<p>They helped her on to the loggia. The day was warm, and the fresh air
+would do her good. She looked out over the city with a loving gaze,
+first towards the Piazza Navona,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">442</a></span> then towards the tower of Monte
+Citorio, and last of all towards Trinit&agrave; de' Monti and the House of the
+Four Winds. But she was seeing things as they would be when she was
+gone, not to Viterbo, but on a longer journey.</p>
+
+<p>"Elena?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he will ever learn the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"About the denunciation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think he is certain to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Why I did it, and what tempted me, and ... and everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he will think kindly of me then, and forgive me and be
+merciful?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure he will."</p>
+
+<p>A mysterious glow came into the pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>"Even if he never learns the truth here, he will learn it hereafter,
+won't he? Don't you believe in that, Elena&mdash;that the dead know all?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I didn't, how could I bear to think of Bruno?"</p>
+
+<p>"True. How selfish I am! I hadn't thought of that. We are in the same
+case in some things, Elena."</p>
+
+<p>The future was shining in the brilliant eyes with the radiance of an
+unseen sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Elena?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-s."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it will seem long to wait until he comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk like that, Donna Roma."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? It's only a little sooner or later, you know. Will it?"</p>
+
+<p>Elena had turned aside, and Roma answered herself.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> don't. I think it will pass like a dream&mdash;like going to bed at
+night and awaking in the morning. And then both together&mdash;there."</p>
+
+<p>She took a long deep breath of unutterable joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, "that I may sleep until he comes&mdash;knowing all, forgiving
+everything, loving me the same as before, and every cruel thought dead
+and gone and forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>She asked for pen and paper and wrote a letter to Rossi:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-top:.5em'>"<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,&mdash;I hear the good news, just as I am on the point of leaving
+Rome, that you have returned to it, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">443</a></span> write to ask you not to try
+to alter what has happened. Believe me, it is better so. The world wants
+you, dear, and it doesn't want me any longer. Therefore return to life,
+be brave and strong and great, and think of me no more until we meet
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"You will know by what I have done that what you thought was quite
+unfounded. Whatever people say of me, you must always believe that I
+loved you from the first, and that I have never loved anybody but you.</p>
+
+<p>"You were angry with me when we parted, but more than ever I love you
+now. Don't think our love has been wasted. ''Tis better to have loved
+and lost than never to have loved at all.' How beautiful!</p>
+<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:-1em; padding-bottom:.5em;'><span class="smcap">Roma</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Having written her letter, and put her lips to the enclosure, she
+addressed the envelope in a bold hand and with a brave flourish: "All'
+Illustrissimo Signor Davide Rossi, Camera dei Deputati."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll post this immediately I am gone, Sister," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Elena pretended to put the letter away for that purpose, but she really
+smuggled it down to the Major, who despatched it forthwith to the
+Chamber of Deputies.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I'll go to sleep," said Roma.</p>
+
+<p>She slept until mid-day with the sun's reflection from the white plaster
+of the groined ceiling of the loggia on her still whiter face. Then the
+twelve o'clock gun shook the walls of the Castle, and she awoke while
+the church bells were ringing.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was my dream coming true, Sister," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor came up at that moment in a high state of excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Great news, Donna Roma. The King...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Failing to form a Government to follow that of the Baron, appealed to
+Parliament to nominate a successor...."</p>
+
+<p>"So Parliament...."</p>
+
+<p>"Parliament has nominated the Honourable Rossi, the King has called for
+him, the warrant for his arrest has been cancelled, and all persons
+imprisoned for the recent insurrection have been set at liberty."</p>
+
+<p>Roma's trembling and exultant eyelids told a touching story.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">444</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only the flag on the Capitol."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me look at it."</p>
+
+<p>He helped her to rise. "Look! There it is on the clock tower."</p>
+
+<p>"I see it.... That will do. You can put me down now, doctor."</p>
+
+<p>An ineffable joy shone in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>was</i> my dream after all, Elena."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she said, "Doctor, tell the Prefect I am quite ready to
+go to Viterbo. In fact I wish to go. I should like to go immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell him," said the doctor, and he went out to hide his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The Major came to the open arch of the loggia. He stood there for a
+moment, and there was somebody behind him. Then the Major disappeared,
+but the other remained. It was David Rossi. He was standing like a man
+transfixed, looking in speechless dismay at Roma's pallid face with the
+light of heaven on it.</p>
+
+<p>Roma did not see Rossi, and Elena, who did, was too frightened to speak.
+Lying back in her bed-chair with a great happiness in her eyes, she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Sister, if he should come here when I am gone ... no, I don't mean
+that ... but if you should see him and he should ask about me, you will
+say that I went away quite cheerfully. Tell him I was always thinking
+about him. No, don't say that either. But he must never think I
+regretted what I did, or that I died broken-hearted. Say farewell for
+me, Elena. <i>Addio Carissima!</i> That's his word, you know. <i>Addio
+Carissimo!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Rossi, blinded with his tears, took a step into the loggia, and in a low
+voice, very soft and tremulous, as if trying not to startle her, he
+cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>She raised herself, turned, saw him, and rose to her feet. Without a
+word he opened his arms to her, and with a little frightened cry she
+fell into them and was folded to his breast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">445</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-004" id="illus-004"></a>
+<img src='images/eternal-444.png' alt='WITH A FRIGHTENED CRY, SHE WAS FOLDED TO HIS BREAST.' title='' width = '300' height = '490'/><br />
+<span class='caption'>WITH A FRIGHTENED CRY, SHE WAS FOLDED TO HIS BREAST.</span>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>It was ten days later. Rossi had surrendered to Parliament, but
+Parliament had declined to order his arrest. Then he had called for the
+liberation of Roma, but Roma had neither been liberated nor removed. "It
+will not be necessary," was the report of the doctor at the Castle to
+the officers of the Prefetura. The great liberator and remover was on
+his way.</p>
+
+<p>At Rossi's request Dr. Fedi had been called in, and he had diagnosed the
+case exactly. Roma was suffering from an internal disease, which was
+probably hereditary, but certainly incurable. Strain and anxiety had
+developed it earlier in life than usual, but in any case it must have
+come.</p>
+
+<p>At first Rossi rebelled with all his soul and strength. To go through
+this long and fierce fight with life, and to come out victorious, and
+then, when all seemed to promise peace and a kind of tempered happiness,
+to be met by Death&mdash;the unconquerable, the inevitable&mdash;it was terrible,
+it was awful!</p>
+
+<p>He called in specialists; talked of a change of air; even brought
+himself, when he was far enough away from Roma, to the length of
+suggesting an operation. The doctors shook their heads. At last he bowed
+his own head. His bride-wife must leave him. He must live on without
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Roma was cheerful, and at moments even gay. Her gaiety was
+heart-breaking. Blinding bouts of headache were her besetting trouble,
+but only by the moist red eyes did any one know anything about that.
+When people asked her how she felt, she told them whatever she thought
+they wished to hear. It brought a look of relief to their faces, and
+that made her very happy.</p>
+
+<p>With Rossi, during these ten days, she had carried on the fiction that
+she was getting better. This was to break the news to him, and he on his
+part, to break the news to her, had pretended to believe the story. They
+made Elena help the little artifice, and even engaged the doctors in
+their mutual deception.</p>
+
+<p>"And how is my darling to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid! There's really nothing to do with me. It's true I have
+suffered. That's why I look so pale. But I'm better now. Elena will tell
+you how well I slept last night. Didn't I sleep well, Elena? Elena....
+Poor Elena is going a little deaf and doesn't always speak when she is
+spoken to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">446</a></span> But I'm all right, David. In fact, I'll feel no pain at all
+before long, and then I shall be well."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, you'll feel no pain at all before long, and then you'll be
+well."</p>
+
+<p>It was pitiful. All their words seemed to be laden with double meanings.
+They could find none that were not.</p>
+
+<p>But the time had come when Roma resolved she must speak plainly. Rossi
+had lifted her into the loggia. He did so every day, carrying her, not
+on his arm as a woman carries a child, but against his breast, as a man
+carries his wife when he loves her. She always put her arms around his
+neck, pretending it was necessary for her safety, and when he had laid
+her gently in the bed-chair she pulled down his head and kissed him. The
+two little journeys were the delight of the day to Roma, but to Rossi
+they were a deepening trouble.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sweetest day of the sweet Roman spring, and Roma wore a light
+tea-gown with a coil of white silk about her head such as is seen in the
+portraits of Beatrice Cenci. The golden complexion was quite gone, there
+was a hard line along the cheek, a deep shadow under the chin, the
+nostrils were pinched and the mouth was drawn. But the large eyes,
+though heavy with pain, were full of joy. They did not weep any more,
+for all their tears were shed, and the light of another world was
+reflected in their depths.</p>
+
+<p>Rossi sat by her side, and she took one of his hands and held it on her
+lap between both her own. Sometimes she looked at him and then she
+smiled. She, who had lost him for a little while, had got him back at
+last. It was only just in time. A little break, and they would continue
+this&mdash;there. Ah, she was very happy!</p>
+
+<p>Rossi's free hand was supporting his head, and he was trying to look
+another way. Do what he would to conquer it, the spirit of rebellion was
+rising in his heart again. "O God, is this just? Is this right?"</p>
+
+<p>They were alone on the loggia. Above was the cloudless blue sky, below
+was the city, hardly seen or heard.</p>
+
+<p>"David," she began, in a faint voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been so happy in having you with me again that there is
+something I have forgotten to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me you will not be shocked or startled."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">447</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dearest?" he repeated, although he knew too well.</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing.... Yes, hold my hands tight. So!... Really it's nothing.
+And yet it is everything. It is ... it is death."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyelids trembled, but she tried to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear. True! Not immediately. Oh, no! not immediately. But signed
+and sealed, you know, and not to be put aside that anybody may be happy
+much longer."</p>
+
+<p>She was laughing almost gaily. But all the same she was watching him
+closely, and now that her word was spoken she suddenly became conscious
+of a secret desire which she had not suspected. She wanted him to
+contradict her, to tell her she was quite wrong, to convince and defeat
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little me! Pity, isn't it? It would have been so sweet to go on a
+little longer&mdash;especially after this reconciliation. And when one has
+kept one's heart under bolt and bar so long...."</p>
+
+<p>Her sad gaiety was breaking down. "But it's better so, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, it's better so when you come to think of it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's terrible!" said Rossi.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that. It's a thing of every day. Here, there, everywhere. God
+wouldn't allow it to go on if it were terrible."</p>
+
+<p>"It's bitterly cruel for all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so cruel as life. Not nearly. For instance, if I lived you would
+have to put me away, and that would be harder to bear than death&mdash;far
+harder."</p>
+
+<p>"My darling! What are you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's true, dear. You know it's true. God can forgive a woman even if
+she's a sinner, but the world can't if she's only a victim of sin. It's
+part of the cruelty of things, but there's no use repining."</p>
+
+<p>"Roma," said Rossi, "I take God to witness that if that were all that
+stood between us nothing and nobody should separate you and me. I should
+tell the world that you had every virtue and every heroism, and without
+you I could do nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes filled with a fresh joy.</p>
+
+<p>"You set me too high still, dear. Yet you know that I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">448</a></span> was far too small
+and weak for your great work. That was why I failed you at the end. It
+wasn't my fault that I betrayed you..."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak of my betrayal. I thank God for it, and see now that it was
+the best that could have happened."</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes. "Is it your own voice, dearest? Really yours? Hush!
+I shall wake and the dream will pass."</p>
+
+<p>A little jet from his heart of flame burst out in spite of his warning
+brain, and he was carried away for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor darling, you must get well for my sake. You must think of
+nothing but getting well. Then we'll go away somewhere&mdash;to Switzerland,
+as you said in your letter. Or perhaps to England, where you were born,
+and where your father lived his years of exile. Dear old England!
+Motherland of liberty! I'll show you all the places."</p>
+
+<p>She was dizzy with the beautiful vision.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if I could only go on like this for ever! But I mustn't listen to
+you, dearest. It's no use, you know. Now, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The spirit which had exalted him for a moment took flight, and his heart
+rose into his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, is it?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer, and she dropped back with a sigh. Ah, it was cruel
+fencing. Every word was a sword, and it was cutting a hundred ways.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a band of music passed down the street. Roma, who loved
+bands of music, asked Rossi to lift her up that she might look at it. A
+little drummer boy was marching at the head of a procession, gaily
+rolling his rataplan.</p>
+
+<p>"He reminds me of little Joseph," she said, and she laughed heartily.
+Strange mystery of life that robs death of all its terrors!</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm about her to support her as they stood by the parapet,
+and this brought a new tremor of affection, as well as a little of the
+old physical thrill and a world of fond and tender memories. She looked
+into his eyes, he looked into hers; they both looked across to Trinit&agrave;
+de' Monti, and in the eye-asking between them she said plainly, "Do you
+remember&mdash;over there?"</p>
+
+<p>Roma was assisted back to the bed-chair, and then, conversation being
+impossible, Rossi began to read. Every day he had read something. Roma
+had made the selections.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">449</a></span> They were always about the great
+lovers&mdash;Francesca and Paolo, Dante and Beatrice, even Alfred de Musset
+and poor John Keats, with the skull cap which burnt his brain. To-day it
+was Roma's favourite poem:</p>
+
+<p style='margin-left:2em'>
+"Teach me, only teach, Love!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As I ought</span><br />
+I will speak thy speech, Love,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Think thy thought...."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>His right hand held the book. His left was between Roma's hands, lying
+blue-veined in her lap. She was looking out on the sunlit city as if
+taking a last farewell of it. He stopped to stroke her glossy black hair
+and she reached up to his lips and kissed them. Then she closed her eyes
+to listen. His voice rose and swelled with the ocean of his love, and he
+felt as if he were pouring his life into her frail body.</p>
+
+<p style='margin-left:2em'>
+"Meet, if thou require it,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Both demands,</span><br />
+Laying flesh and spirit<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In thy hands."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Her blanched lips moved. She took a deep breath and made a faint cry. He
+rose softly, and bent over her with a trembling heart. Her breathing
+seemed to have ceased. Had sleep overtaken her? Or had the tender flame
+expired?</p>
+
+<p>"Roma!"</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, dear&mdash;soon," she said.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center; margin-top:2em; padding-bottom:3em;'>THE END</p>
+
+<p style='font-size:80%;'>The illustrations in this book are from scenes of the play as produced
+by Messrs. LIEBLER &amp; COMPANY, and photographed by Mr. BYRON.</p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:120%;'>A FEW OF GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:150%;'>Great Books at Little Prices</span></p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center'>NEW, CLEVER, ENTERTAINING.</p>
+
+<p>GRET: The Story of a Pagan. By Beatrice Mantle. Illustrated by C. M.
+Relyea.</p>
+
+<p>The wild free life of an Oregon lumber camp furnishes the setting for
+this strong original story. Gret is the daughter of the camp and is
+utterly content with the wild life&mdash;until love comes. A fine book,
+unmarred by convention.</p>
+
+<p>OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle.</p>
+
+<p>A vivid yet delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of
+all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine,
+healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the
+books that abide.</p>
+
+<p>THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY. By Josephine Daskam. Illustrated by F. Y. Cory.</p>
+
+<p>The dawning intelligence of the baby was grappled with by its great
+aunt, an elderly maiden, whose book knowledge of babies was something at
+which even the infant himself winked. A delicious bit of humor.</p>
+
+<p>REBECCA MARY. By Annie Hamilton Donnell. Illustrated by Elizabeth
+Shippen Green.</p>
+
+<p>The heart tragedies of this little girl with no one near to share them,
+are told with a delicate art, a keen appreciation of the needs of the
+childish heart and a humorous knowledge of the workings of the childish
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.</p>
+
+<p>Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>An Irish story of real power, perfect in development and showing a true
+conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the
+tragic as well as the tender phases of life.</p>
+
+<p>THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S. By George Barr McCutcheon.</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated by Harrison Fisher.</p>
+
+<p>An island in the South Sea is the setting for this entertaining tale,
+and an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most
+complicated plot. One of Mr. McCutcheon's best books.</p>
+
+<p>TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illustrated by A. B.
+Frost, J. M. Conde and Frank Verbeck.</p>
+
+<p>Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another
+little boy to that non-locatable land called "Brer Rabbit's Laughing
+Place," and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play
+their parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience.</p>
+
+<p>THE CLIMBER. By E. F. Benson. With frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman's soul&mdash;a woman who believed
+that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds instead
+the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away.</p>
+
+<p>LYNCH'S DAUGHTER. By Leonard Merrick. Illustrated by Geo. Brehm.</p>
+
+<p>A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful
+and simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings
+of her father, "Old Man Lynch" of Wall St. True to life, clever in
+treatment.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;font-size:80%;'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">st</span>., <span class="smcap">New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:120%;'>A FEW OF GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:150%;'>Great Books at Little Prices</span></p>
+
+<p>QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. A Picture of New England Home Life. With
+illustrations by C. W. Reed, and Scenes Reproduced from the Play.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best New England stories ever written. It is full of homely
+human interest * * * there is a wealth of New England village character,
+scenes and incidents * * * forcibly, vividly and truthfully drawn. Few
+books have enjoyed a greater sale and popularity. Dramatized, it made
+the greatest rural play of recent times.</p>
+
+<p>THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. By Charles Felton Pidgin.</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated by Henry Roth.</p>
+
+<p>All who love honest sentiment, quaint and sunny humor, and homespun
+philosophy will find these "Further Adventures" a book after their own
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>HALF A CHANCE. By Frederic S. Isham. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.</p>
+
+<p>The thrill of excitement will keep the reader in a state of suspense,
+and he will become personally concerned from the start, as to the
+central character, a very real man who suffers, dares&mdash;and achieves!</p>
+
+<p>VIRGINIA OF THE AIR LANES. By Herbert Quick. Illustrated by William R.
+Leigh.</p>
+
+<p>The author has seized the romantic moment for the airship novel, and
+created the pretty story of "a lover and his lass" contending with an
+elderly relative for the monopoly of the skies. An exciting tale of
+adventure in midair.</p>
+
+<p>THE GAME AND THE CANDLE. By Eleanor M. Ingram. Illustrated by P. D.
+Johnson.</p>
+
+<p>The hero is a young American, who, to save his family from poverty,
+deliberately commits a felony. Then follow his capture and imprisonment,
+and his rescue by a Russian Grand Duke. A stirring story, rich in
+sentiment.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;font-size:80%;'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St., New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:120%;'>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:150%;'>DRAMATIZED NOVELS</span></p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center'>A Few that are Making Theatrical History</p>
+
+<p>MARY JANE'S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes from the play.</p>
+
+<p>Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find
+himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he
+wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most
+humorous bits of recent fiction.</p>
+
+<p>CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford.</p>
+
+<p>"Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man, is brought in
+touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a
+merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more
+than ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the
+flock.</p>
+
+<p>A WOMAN'S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with scenes from the
+play.</p>
+
+<p>A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her
+husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently
+tragic situation into one of delicious comedy.</p>
+
+<p>THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks.</p>
+
+<p>With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little
+village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to
+train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets
+love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she
+works, how she studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.</p>
+
+<p>A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated by Edmund
+Magrath and W. W. Fawcett.</p>
+
+<p>A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the
+influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on,
+how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make
+a story of unflinching realism.</p>
+
+<p>THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin Milton Royle.
+Illustrated with scenes from the play.</p>
+
+<p>A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine
+courageous hero and a beautiful English heroine.</p>
+
+<p>THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated with scenes from the
+play.</p>
+
+<p>A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a
+venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities.</p>
+
+<p>THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated with scenes from
+the play.</p>
+
+<p>A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in
+dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring,
+mysterious as the hero.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;font-size:80%;'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St., New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:120%;'>A FEW OF GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:150%;'>Great Books at Little Prices</span></p>
+
+<p>BRUVVER JIM'S BABY. By Philip Verrill Mighels.</p>
+
+<p>An uproariously funny story of a tiny mining settlement in the West,
+which is shaken to the very roots by the sudden possession of a baby,
+found on the plains by one of its residents. The town is as disreputable
+a spot as the gold fever was ever responsible for, and the coming of
+that baby causes the upheaval of every rooted tradition of the place.
+Its christening, the problems of its toys and its illness supersede in
+the minds of the miners all thought of earthy treasure.</p>
+
+<p>THE FURNACE OF GOLD. By Philip Verrill Mighels, author of "Bruvver Jim's
+Baby." Illustrations by J. N. Marchand.</p>
+
+<p>An accurate and informing portrayal of scenes, types, and conditions of
+the mining districts in modern Nevada.</p>
+
+<p>The book is an out-door story, clean, exciting, exemplifying nobility
+and courage of character, and bravery, and heroism in the sort of men
+and women we all admire and wish to know.</p>
+
+<p>THE MESSAGE. By Louis Tracy. Illustrations by Joseph C. Chase.</p>
+
+<p>A breezy tale of how a bit of old parchment, concealed in a figurehead
+from a sunken vessel, comes into the possession of a pretty girl and an
+army man during regatta week in the Isle of Wight. This is the message
+and it enfolds a mystery, the development of which the reader will
+follow with breathless interest.</p>
+
+<p>THE SCARLET EMPIRE. By David M. Parry. Illustrations by Hermann C. Wall.</p>
+
+<p>A young socialist, weary of life, plunges into the sea and awakes in the
+lost island of Atlantis, known as the Scarlet Empire, where a social
+democracy is in full operation, granting every man a living but limiting
+food, conversation, education and marriage.</p>
+
+<p>The hero passes through an enthralling love affair and other adventures
+but finally returns to his own New York world.</p>
+
+<p>THE THIRD DEGREE. By Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow. Illustrations by
+Clarence Rowe.</p>
+
+<p>A novel which exposes the abuses in this country of the police system.</p>
+
+<p>The son of an aristocratic New York family marries a woman socially
+beneath him, but of strong, womanly qualities that, later on, save the
+man from the tragic consequences of a dissipated life.</p>
+
+<p>The wife believes in his innocence and her wit and good sense help her
+to win against the tremendous odds imposed by law.</p>
+
+<p>THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT. By Brand Whitlock.</p>
+
+<p>A realistic western story of love and politics and a searching study of
+their influence on character. The author shows with extraordinary
+vitality of treatment the tricks, the heat, the passion, the tumult of
+the political arena, the triumph and strength of love.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;font-size:80%;'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St., New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:120%;'>A FEW OF GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:150%;'>Great Books at Little Prices</span></p>
+
+<p>THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. Illustrated by John Rae.</p>
+
+<p>This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a German
+musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has well
+portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied experiences in
+endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained to an
+appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in the
+rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, now a
+beautiful young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit of
+fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The play in
+which David Warfield scored his highest success.</p>
+
+<p>DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE. By Margaret Deland.</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated by Lucius Hitchcock.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales that this
+volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lovable doctor is
+more ripened in this later book, and the simple comedies and tragedies
+of the old village are told with dramatic charm.</p>
+
+<p>OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle.</p>
+
+<p>Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint people in a
+sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable "preacher," is
+the connecting link between these dramatic stories from life.</p>
+
+<p>HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E. P. Roe.</p>
+
+<p>With frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>The hero is a farmer&mdash;a man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft
+of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of
+varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source,
+comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his
+respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance,
+revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties and
+survives the censure of friends as well as the bitterness of enemies.</p>
+
+<p>THE YOKE. By Elizabeth Miller.</p>
+
+<p>Against the historical background of the days when the children of
+Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has sketched
+a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great as any since
+"Ben Hur."</p>
+
+<p>SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by Andr&eacute; Castaigne.</p>
+
+<p>The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome and
+Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod Agrippa and the
+Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the mighty figures that move
+through the pages. Wonderful descriptions, and a love story of the
+purest and noblest type mark this most remarkable religious romance.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;font-size:80%;'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St</span>., <span class="smcap">New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:120%;'>A FEW OF GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:150%;'>Great Books at Little Prices</span></p>
+
+<p>HAPPY HAWKINS. By Robert Alexander Wason. Illustrated by Howard Giles.</p>
+
+<p>A ranch and cowboy novel. Happy Hawkins tells his own story with such a
+fine capacity for knowing how to do it and with so much humor that the
+reader's interest is held in surprise, then admiration and at last in
+positive affection.</p>
+
+<p>COMRADES. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Illustrated by C. D. Williams.</p>
+
+<p>The locale of this story is in California, where a few socialists
+establish a little community.</p>
+
+<p>The author leads the little band along the path of disillusionment, and
+gives some brilliant flashes of light on one side of an important
+question.</p>
+
+<p>TONO-BUNGAY. By Herbert George Wells.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of this novel is a young man who, through hard work, earns a
+scholarship and goes to London.</p>
+
+<p>Written with a frankness verging on Rousseau's, Mr. Wells still uses
+rare discrimination and the border line of propriety is never crossed.
+An entertaining book with both a story and a moral, and without a dull
+page&mdash;Mr. Wells's most notable achievement.</p>
+
+<p>A HUSBAND BY PROXY. By Jack Steele.</p>
+
+<p>A young criminologist, but recently arrived in New York city, is drawn
+into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his
+interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and
+again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling detective story.</p>
+
+<p>LIKE ANOTHER HELEN. By George Horton. Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Horton's powerful romance stands in a new field and brings an almost
+unknown world in reality before the reader&mdash;the world of conflict
+between Greek and Turk on the Island of Crete. The "Helen" of the story
+is a Greek, beautiful, desolate, defiant&mdash;pure as snow.</p>
+
+<p>There is a certain new force about the story, a kind of
+master-craftsmanship and mental dominance that holds the reader.</p>
+
+<p>THE MASTER OF APPLEBY. By Francis Lynde.</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup.</p>
+
+<p>A novel tale concerning itself in part with the great struggle in the
+two Carolinas, but chiefly with the adventures therein of two gentlemen
+who loved one and the same lady.</p>
+
+<p>A strong, masculine and persuasive story.</p>
+
+<p>A MODERN MADONNA. By Caroline Abbot Stanley.</p>
+
+<p>A story of American life, founded on facts as they existed some years
+ago in the District of Columbia. The theme is the maternal love and
+splendid courage of a woman.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:80%'><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St., New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:130%;'>THE NOVELS OF</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:140%;'>GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON</span></p>
+
+<p>GRAUSTARK.</p>
+
+<p>A story of love behind a throne, telling how a young American met a
+lovely girl and followed her to a new and strange country. A thrilling,
+dashing narrative.</p>
+
+<p>BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK.</p>
+
+<p>Beverly is a bewitching American girl who has gone to that stirring
+little principality&mdash;Graustark&mdash;to visit her friend the princess, and
+there has a romantic affair of her own.</p>
+
+<p>BREWSTER'S MILLIONS.</p>
+
+<p>A young man is required to spend <i>one</i> million dollars in one year in
+order to inherit <i>seven</i>. How he does it forms the basis of a lively
+story.</p>
+
+<p>CASTLE CRANEYCROW.</p>
+
+<p>The story revolves round the abduction of a young American woman, her
+imprisonment in an old castle and the adventures created through her
+rescue.</p>
+
+<p>COWARDICE COURT.</p>
+
+<p>An amusing social feud in the Adirondacks in which an English girl is
+tempted into being a traitor by a romantic young American, forms the
+plot.</p>
+
+<p>THE DAUGHTER OF ANDERSON CROW.</p>
+
+<p>The story centers about the adopted daughter of the town marshal in a
+western village. Her parentage is shrouded in mystery, and the story
+concerns the secret that deviously works to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S.</p>
+
+<p>The hero meets a princess in a far-away island among fanatically hostile
+Musselmen. Romantic love making amid amusing situations and exciting
+adventures.</p>
+
+<p>NEDRA.</p>
+
+<p>A young couple elope from Chicago to go to London traveling as brother
+and sister. They are shipwrecked and a strange mix-up occurs on account
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>THE SHERRODS.</p>
+
+<p>The scene is the Middle West and centers around a man who leads a double
+life. A most enthralling novel.</p>
+
+<p>TRUXTON KING.</p>
+
+<p>A handsome good natured young fellow ranges on the earth looking for
+romantic adventures and is finally enmeshed in most complicated
+intrigues in Graustark.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:80%'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St</span>., <span class="smcap">New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'><span style='font-size:140%;'>LOUIS TRACY'S</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:120%;'>CAPTIVATING AND EXHILARATING ROMANCES</span></p>
+
+<p>THE STOWAWAY GIRL. Illustrated by Nesbitt Benson.</p>
+
+<p>The story of a shipwreck, a lovely girl who shipped stowaway fashion, a
+rascally captain, a fascinating young officer and thrilling adventure
+enroute to South America.</p>
+
+<p>THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS.</p>
+
+<p>A story of love and the salt sea&mdash;of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians&mdash;of desperate fighting and a tender romance.
+A story of extraordinary freshness.</p>
+
+<p>THE MESSAGE. Illustrated by Joseph Cummings Chase.</p>
+
+<p>A bit of parchment many, many years old, telling of a priceless ruby
+secreted in ruins far in the interior of Africa is the "message" found
+in the figurehead of an old vessel. A mystery develops which the reader
+will follow with breathless interest.</p>
+
+<p>THE PILLAR OF LIGHT.</p>
+
+<p>The pillar thus designated was a lighthouse, and the author tells with
+exciting detail the terrible dilemma of its cutoff inhabitants and
+introduces the charming comedy of a man eloping with his own wife.</p>
+
+<p>THE RED YEAR: A Story of the Indian Mutiny.</p>
+
+<p>The never-to-be-forgotten events of 1857 form the background of this
+story. The hero who begins as lieutenant and ends as Major Malcolm, has
+as stirring a military career as the most jaded novel reader could wish.
+A powerful book.</p>
+
+<p>THE WHEEL O'FORTUNE. With illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg.</p>
+
+<p>The story deals with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars
+of the hiding of some of the treasures of the Queen of Sheba. The
+glamour of mystery added to the romance of the lovers, gives the novel
+an interest that makes it impossible to leave until the end is reached.</p>
+
+<p>THE WINGS OF THE MORNING.</p>
+
+<p>A sort of Robinson Crusoe <i>redivivus</i>, with modern settings and a very
+pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of
+a wreck, and have adventures on their desert island such as never could
+have happened except in a story.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:80%'><span class="smcap">Grosset</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Dunlap</span>, 526 <span class="smcap">West</span> 26th <span class="smcap">St</span>., <span class="smcap">New York</span></p>
+
+<hr class='full' />
+
+<div class='tnote'>
+<h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+<ol>
+  <li>Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.</li>
+  <li>The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber.</li>
+  <li>All illustrations in the text bear the credit line:<br />
+      "By courtesy of Liebler &amp; Co; from photographs by Byron."</li>
+  <li>Typographical errors corrected in original:
+    <ul>
+    <li>p. 139 "Fod" replaced with "God": "For God's sake let us bury it!"</li>
+    <li>p. 146 "use" repaced with "us": "what is best for both of us."</li>
+    <li>p. 377 "donwpour" replaced with "downpour": "downpour of rain"</li>
+    <li>p. 409 "sittting-room" replaced with "sitting-room"</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+</ol>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL CITY ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Eternal City
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2006 [EBook #19732]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL CITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                            THE ETERNAL CITY
+
+                             By Hall Caine
+
+                    Author of "The Christian," etc.
+
+                    "He looked for a city which hath
+                 foundations whose builder and maker is
+                                 God."
+
+                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+                         PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                          Copyright, 1901, 1902
+                              By HALL CAINE
+                             Popular Edition
+
+                         Published October, 1902
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                         PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
+
+
+Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, to
+condense it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, and
+otherwise so to change it that to all outward appearance it is
+practically a new book? I leave this point in literary ethics to the
+consideration of those whose business it is to discuss such questions,
+and content myself with telling the reader the history of the present
+story.
+
+About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwards
+abandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial struggle
+which culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities of
+that country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which I
+witnessed there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. The
+sights of the day often followed me through the night, and after a more
+than usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of a
+Jewish woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russian
+police under a promise that they would spare his life, which they said
+he had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The husband
+came to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his wife as his
+worst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his safety had been
+the only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her again. His cause was
+lost, his hopes were dead, his people were in despair, because the one
+being whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up to
+his enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in the
+morning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story of
+Samson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of a
+play with the incident of husband and wife as the central situation.
+
+How from this germ came the novel which was published last year under
+the title of "The Eternal City" would be a long story to tell, a story
+of many personal experiences, of reading, of travel, of meetings in
+various countries with statesmen, priests, diplomats, police
+authorities, labour leaders, nihilists and anarchists, and of the
+consequent growth of my own political and religious convictions; but it
+will not be difficult to see where and in what way time and thought had
+little by little overlaid the humanities of the early sketch with many
+extra interests. That these interests were of the essence, clothing, and
+not crushing the human motive, I trust I may continue to believe, and
+certainly I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception of my
+book at the hands of that wide circle of general readers who care less
+for a contribution to a great social propaganda than for a simple tale
+of love.
+
+But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale
+of love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of
+producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and requested to
+prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences at the
+theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics and
+religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests with
+which alone the drama is allowed to deal. This has not been an easy
+thing to do, and now that it is done I am by no means sure that I may
+not have alienated the friends whom the abstract problems won for me
+without conciliating the readers who called for the story only. But not
+to turn my back on the work of three laborious years, or to discredit
+that part of it which expressed, however imperfectly, my sympathy with
+the struggles of the poor, and my participation in the social problems
+with which the world is now astir, I have obtained the promise of my
+publisher that the original version of "The Eternal City" shall be kept
+in print as long as the public calls for it.
+
+In this form of my book, the aim has been to rely solely on the
+humanities and to go back to the simple story of the woman who denounced
+her husband in order to save his life. That was the theme of the draft
+which was the original basis of my novel, it is the central incident of
+the drama which is about to be produced in New York, and the present
+abbreviated version of the story is intended to follow the lines of the
+play in all essential particulars down to the end of the last chapter
+but one.                                                         H. C.
+
+Isle of Man, Sept. 1902.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            THE ETERNAL CITY
+
+                                PROLOGUE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or
+twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one
+shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a
+grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad
+had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his
+short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was going
+home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something fantastic
+in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he was
+dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the London
+boys and the attentions of policemen.
+
+Coming to the Italian quarter in Soho, he stopped at the door of a shop
+to see the time. It was eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before
+he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the
+window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the
+pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red
+glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy
+blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and
+brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence.
+Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not
+a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to count,
+but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic was not
+at fault.
+
+The air grew warmer, and it began to snow. At first it was a fine
+sprinkle that made a snow-mist, and adhered wherever it fell. The
+traffic speedily became less, and things looked big in the thick air.
+The boy was wandering aimlessly through the streets, waiting for nine
+o'clock. When he thought the hour was near, he realised that he had lost
+his way. He screwed up his eyes to see if he knew the houses and shops
+and signs, but everything seemed strange.
+
+The snow snowed on, and now it fell in large, corkscrew flakes. The boy
+brushed them from his face, but at the next moment they blinded him
+again. The few persons still in the streets loomed up on him out of the
+darkness, and passed in a moment like gigantic shadows. He tried to ask
+his way, but nobody would stand long enough to listen. One man who was
+putting up his shutters shouted some answer that was lost in the
+drumlike rumble of all voices in the falling snow.
+
+The boy came up to a big porch with four pillars, and stepped in to rest
+and reflect. The long tunnels of smoking lights which had receded down
+the streets were not to be seen from there, and so he knew that he was
+in a square. It would be Soho Square, but whether he was on the south or
+east of it he could not tell, and consequently he was at a loss to know
+which way to turn. A great silence had fallen over everything, and only
+the sobbing nostrils of the cab-horses seemed to be audible in the
+hollow air.
+
+He was very cold. The snow had got into his shoes, and through the rents
+in his cross-gartered stockings. His red waistcoat wanted buttons, and
+he could feel that his shirt was wet. He tried to shake the snow off by
+stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could
+scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light coming
+from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his squirrel.
+The little thing was trembling pitifully in its icy bed, and he took it
+out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The
+sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within
+the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour
+cast outward from the fanlight he could see nothing but the crystal
+snowflakes falling wearily.
+
+He grew dizzy, and sat down by one of the pillars. After a while a
+shiver passed along his spine, and then he became warm and felt sleepy.
+A church clock struck nine, and he started up with a guilty feeling, but
+his limbs were stiff and he sank back again, blew two or three breaths
+on to the squirrel inside his waistcoat, and fell into a doze. As he
+dropped off into unconsciousness he seemed to see the big, cheerless
+house, almost destitute of furniture, where he lived with thirty or
+forty other boys. They trooped in with their organs and accordions,
+counted out their coppers to a man with a clipped moustache, who was
+blowing whiffs of smoke from a long, black cigar, with a straw through
+it, and then sat down on forms to eat their plates of macaroni and
+cheese. The man was not in good temper to-night, and he was shouting at
+some who were coming in late and at others who were sharing their supper
+with the squirrels that nestled in their bosoms, or the monkeys, in red
+jacket and fez, that perched upon their shoulders. The boy was perfectly
+unconscious by this time, and the child within the house was singing
+away as if her little breast was a cage of song-birds.
+
+As the church clock struck nine a class of Italian lads in an upper room
+in Old Compton Street was breaking up for the night, and the teacher,
+looking out of the window, said:
+
+"While we have been telling the story of the great road to our country a
+snowstorm has come, and we shall have enough to do to find our road
+home."
+
+The lads laughed by way of answer, and cried: "Good-night, doctor."
+
+"Good-night, boys, and God bless you," said the teacher.
+
+He was an elderly man, with a noble forehead and a long beard. His face,
+a sad one, was lighted up by a feeble smile; his voice was soft, and his
+manner gentle. When the boys were gone he swung over his shoulders a
+black cloak with a red lining, and followed them into the street.
+
+He had not gone far into the snowy haze before he began to realise that
+his playful warning had not been amiss.
+
+"Well, well," he thought, "only a few steps, and yet so difficult to
+find."
+
+He found the right turnings at last, and coming to the porch of his
+house in Soho Square, he almost trod on a little black and white object
+lying huddled at the base of one of the pillars.
+
+"A boy," he thought, "sleeping out on a night like this! Come, come," he
+said severely, "this is wrong," and he shook the little fellow to waken
+him.
+
+The boy did not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone,
+"Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again.
+Ninepence, sir, and Jinny is so cold."
+
+The man paused a moment, then turned to the door rang the bell sharply.
+
+
+                                 II
+
+Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the
+doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a
+shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off
+and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and
+moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a
+saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and
+legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the
+eyelids and twitching of the mouth.
+
+"He is coming to, mother," said the doctor.
+
+"At last," said his wife.
+
+The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood,
+black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the
+lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch,
+and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape.
+
+"Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a
+little longer."
+
+The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he
+raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for
+something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on
+which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It
+was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it
+tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his
+cheeks.
+
+"Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and
+after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted.
+
+"Italiano--si?"
+
+"Si, Signore."
+
+"From which province?"
+
+"Campagna Romana, Signore."
+
+"Where does he say he comes from, doctor?"
+
+"From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at
+Maccari's in Greek Street--isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How long have you been in England--one year, two years?"
+
+"Two years and a half, sir."
+
+"And what is your name, my son?"
+
+"David Leone."
+
+"A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor,
+smoothing the curly hair.
+
+"A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?"
+
+"Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some
+institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that
+name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?"
+
+But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed
+upon, and he made no answer.
+
+"Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?"
+
+"I have no father," said the boy.
+
+"Carino! But your mother is alive--yes?"
+
+"I have no mother."
+
+"Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my
+son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the
+sun had shone on it.
+
+"Listen, father!"
+
+Two little feet were drumming on the floor above.
+
+"Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the
+boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently."
+
+"Let her come down now," said the doctor.
+
+The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a
+bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a
+little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy
+black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a
+train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and
+carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was
+coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit.
+
+But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up
+suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the
+doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at
+the stranger in silence and aloofness.
+
+"Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the
+mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a
+brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has
+brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this
+was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly
+child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly
+frozen to death in the snow?"
+
+But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in
+search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow
+there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second
+suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still
+holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to
+anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's
+side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for
+sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to
+proper overtures.
+
+"Oo a boy?"
+
+The boy smiled again and assented.
+
+"Oo me brodder?"
+
+The boy's smile paled perceptibly.
+
+"Oo lub me?"
+
+The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly.
+
+"Oo lub me eber and eber?"
+
+The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark
+curls again, said:
+
+"You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna
+Romana--yes?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Perhaps it's a brother?"
+
+"I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last
+word with a thud.
+
+"You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor
+softly.
+
+"Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face
+smote her instantly and she said no more.
+
+"Time for bed, baby."
+
+But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy,
+and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say.
+
+"Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat
+pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other,
+kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at
+intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little
+waif-and-stray hands together and said:
+
+"Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be
+done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and
+forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And
+lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and
+eber. Amen."
+
+The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the
+surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the
+fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and
+listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at
+length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat
+of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the
+little head on the pillow.
+
+Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which
+great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels--sweet,
+soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna
+Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death!
+
+The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a
+long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken
+bondage.
+
+"Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not
+some day ... God forbid!"
+
+The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like
+the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of
+painful reverie.
+
+"Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles."
+
+Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and
+the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the
+dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was
+praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless
+darling cast adrift upon the world!
+
+The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the
+doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had
+ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were
+casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the
+yellow light of a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed
+where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol.
+
+"While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground,
+The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around."
+
+Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his
+lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     PART ONE--THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+                           TWENTY YEARS LATER
+
+
+                                   I
+
+It was the last day of the century. In a Bull proclaiming a Jubilee the
+Pope had called his faithful children to Rome, and they had come from
+all quarters of the globe. To salute the coming century, and to dedicate
+it, in pomp and solemn ceremony, to the return of the world to the Holy
+Church, one and universal, the people had gathered in the great Piazza
+of St. Peter.
+
+Boys and women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a
+bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the
+obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who were listening
+to their cicerone.
+
+"Yes, that is the Vatican," said the guide, pointing to a square
+building at the back of the colonnade, "and the apartments of the Pope
+are those on the third floor, just on the level of the Loggia of
+Raphael. The Cardinal Secretary of State used to live in the rooms
+below, opening on the grand staircase that leads from the Court of
+Damasus. There's a private way up to the Pope's apartment, and a secret
+passage to the Castle of St. Angelo."
+
+"Say, has the Pope got that secret passage still?"
+
+"No, sir. When the Castle went over to the King the connection with the
+Vatican was cut off. Ah, everything is changed since those days! The
+Pope used to go to St. Peter's surrounded by his Cardinals and Bishops,
+to the roll of drums and the roar of cannon. All that is over now. The
+present Pope is trying to revive the old condition seemingly, but what
+can he do? Even the Bull proclaiming the Jubilee laments the loss of the
+temporal power which would have permitted him to renew the enchantments
+of the Holy City."
+
+"Tell him it's just lovely as it is," said the girl on the obelisk, "and
+when the illuminations begin...."
+
+"Say, friend," said her parent again, "Rome belonged to the Pope--yes?
+Then the Italians came in and took it and made it the capital of
+Italy--so?"
+
+"Just so, and ever since then the Holy Father has been a prisoner in the
+Vatican, going into it as a cardinal and coming out of it as a corpse,
+and to-day will be the first time a Pope has set foot in the streets of
+Rome!"
+
+"My! And shall we see him in his prison clothes?"
+
+"Lilian Martha! Don't you know enough for that? Perhaps you expect to
+see his chains and a straw of his bed in the cell? The Pope is a king
+and has a court--that's the way I am figuring it."
+
+"True, the Pope is a sovereign still, and he is surrounded by his
+officers of state--Cardinal Secretary, Majordomo, Master of Ceremonies,
+Steward, Chief of Police, Swiss Guards, Noble Guard and Palatine Guard,
+as well as the Papal Guard who live in the garden and patrol the
+precincts night and day."
+
+"Then where the nation ... prisoner, you say?"
+
+"Prisoner indeed! Not even able to look out of his windows on to this
+piazza on the 20th of September without the risk of insult and
+outrage--and Heaven knows what will happen when he ventures out to-day!"
+
+"Well! this goes clear ahead of me!"
+
+Beyond the outer cordon of troops many carriages were drawn up in
+positions likely to be favourable for a view of the procession. In one
+of these sat a Frenchman in a coat covered with medals, a florid,
+fiery-eyed old soldier with bristling white hair. Standing by his
+carriage door was a typical young Roman, fashionable, faultlessly
+dressed, pallid, with strong lower jaw, dark watchful eyes, twirled-up
+moustache and cropped black mane.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the old Frenchman. "Much water has run under the bridge
+since then, sir. Changed since I was here? Rome? You're right, sir.
+'When Rome falls, falls the world;' but it can alter for all that, and
+even this square has seen its transformations. Holy Office stands where
+it did, the yellow building behind there, but this palace, for
+instance--this one with the people in the balcony...."
+
+The Frenchman pointed to the travertine walls of a prison-like house on
+the farther side of the piazza.
+
+"Do you know whose palace that is?"
+
+"Baron Bonelli's, President of the Council and Minister of the
+Interior."
+
+"Precisely! But do you know whose palace it used to be?"
+
+"Belonged to the English Wolsey, didn't it, in the days when he wanted
+the Papacy?"
+
+"Belonged in my time to the father of the Pope, sir--old Baron Leone!"
+
+"Leone! That's the family name of the Pope, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and the old Baron was a banker and a cripple. One foot in the
+grave, and all his hopes centred in his son. 'My son,' he used to say,
+'will be the richest man in Rome some day--richer than all their Roman
+princes, and it will be his own fault if he doesn't make himself Pope.'"
+
+"He has, apparently."
+
+"Not that way, though. When his father died, he sold up everything, and
+having no relations looking to him, he gave away every penny to the
+poor. That's how the old banker's palace fell into the hands of the
+Prime Minister of Italy--an infidel, an Antichrist."
+
+"So the Pope is a good man, is he?"
+
+"Good man, sir? He's not a man at all, he's an angel! Only two aims in
+life--the glory of the Church and the welfare of the rising generation.
+Gave away half his inheritance founding homes all over the world for
+poor boys. Boys--that's the Pope's tender point, sir! Tell him anything
+tender about a boy and he breaks up like an old swordcut."
+
+The eyes of the young Roman were straying away from the Frenchman to a
+rather shabby single-horse hackney carriage which had just come into the
+square and taken up its position in the shadow of the grim old palace.
+It had one occupant only--a man in a soft black hat. He was quite
+without a sign of a decoration, but his arrival had created a general
+commotion, and all faces were turning toward him.
+
+"Do you happen to know who that is?" said the gay Roman. "That man in
+the cab under the balcony full of ladies? Can it be David Rossi?"
+
+"David Rossi, the anarchist?"
+
+"Some people call him so. Do you know him?"
+
+"I know nothing about the man except that he is an enemy of his
+Holiness."
+
+"He intends to present a petition to the Pope this morning,
+nevertheless."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Haven't you heard of it? These are his followers with the banners and
+badges."
+
+He pointed to the line of working-men who had ranged themselves about
+the cab, with banners inscribed variously, "Garibaldi Club," "Mazzini
+Club," "Republican Federation," and "Republic of Man."
+
+"Your friend Antichrist," tipping a finger over his shoulder in the
+direction of the palace, "has been taxing bread to build more
+battleships, and Rossi has risen against him. But failing in the press,
+in Parliament and at the Quirinal, he is coming to the Pope to pray of
+him to let the Church play its old part of intermediary between the poor
+and the oppressed."
+
+"Preposterous!"
+
+"So?"
+
+"To whom is the Pope to protest? To the King of Italy who robbed him of
+his Holy City? Pretty thing to go down on your knees to the brigand who
+has stripped you! And at whose bidding is he to protest? At the bidding
+of his bitterest enemy? Pshaw!"
+
+"You persist that David Rossi is an enemy of the Pope?"
+
+"The deadliest enemy the Pope has in the world."
+
+
+                                 II
+
+The subject of the Frenchman's denunciation looked harmless enough as he
+sat in his hackney carriage under the shadow of old Baron Leone's gloomy
+palace. A first glance showed a man of thirty-odd years, tall, slightly
+built, inclined to stoop, with a long, clean-shaven face, large dark
+eyes, and dark hair which covered the head in short curls of almost
+African profusion. But a second glance revealed all the characteristics
+that give the hand-to-hand touch with the common people, without which
+no man can hope to lead a great movement.
+
+From the moment of David Rossi's arrival there was a tingling movement
+in the air, and from time to time people approached and spoke to him,
+when the tired smile struggled through the jaded face and then slowly
+died away. After a while, as if to subdue the sense of personal
+observation, he took a pen and oblong notepaper and began to write on
+his knees.
+
+Meantime the quick-eyed facile crowd around him beguiled the tedium of
+waiting with good-humoured chaff. One great creature with a shaggy mane
+and a sanguinary voice came up, bottle in hand, saluted the downcast
+head with a mixture of deference and familiarity, then climbed to the
+box-seat beside the driver, and in deepest bass began the rarest
+mimicry. He was a true son of the people, and under an appearance of
+ferocity he hid the heart of a child. To look at him you could hardly
+help laughing, and the laughter of the crowd at his daring dashes showed
+that he was the privileged pet of everybody. Only at intervals the
+downcast head was raised from its writing, and a quiet voice of warning
+said:
+
+"Bruno!"
+
+Then the shaggy head on the box-seat slewed round and bobbed downward
+with an apologetic gesture, and ten seconds afterwards plunged into
+wilder excesses.
+
+"Pshaw!" mopping with one hand his forehead under his tipped-up
+billicock, and holding the bottle with the other. "It's hot! Dog of a
+Government, it's hot, I say! Never mind! here's to the exports of Italy,
+brother; and may the Government be the first of them."
+
+"Bruno!"
+
+"Excuse me, sir; the tongue breaks no bones, sir! All Governments are
+bad, and the worst Government is the best."
+
+A feeble old man was at that moment crushing his way up to the cab.
+Seeing him approach, David Rossi rose and held out his hand. The old man
+took it, but did not speak.
+
+"Did you wish to speak to me, father?"
+
+"I can't yet," said the old man, and his voice shook and his eyes were
+moist.
+
+David Rossi stepped out of the cab, and with gentle force, against many
+protests, put the old man in his place.
+
+"I come from Carrara, sir, and when I go home and tell them I've seen
+David Rossi, and spoken to him, they won't believe me. 'He sees the
+future clear,' they say, 'as an almanack made by God.'"
+
+Just then there was a commotion in the crowd, an imperious voice cried,
+"Clear out," and the next instant David Rossi, who was standing by the
+step of his cab, was all but run down by a magnificent equipage with two
+high-stepping horses and a fat English coachman in livery of scarlet
+and gold.
+
+His face darkened for a moment with some powerful emotion, then resumed
+its kindly aspect, and he turned back to the old man without looking at
+the occupant of the carriage.
+
+It was a lady. She was tall, with a bold sweep of fulness in figure,
+which was on a large scale of beauty. Her hair, which was abundant and
+worn full over the forehead, was raven black and glossy, and it threw
+off the sunshine that fell on her face. Her complexion had a golden
+tint, and her eyes, which were violet, had a slight recklessness of
+expression. Her carriage drew up at the entrance of the palace, and the
+porter, with the silver-headed staff, came running and bowing to receive
+her. She rose to her feet with a consciousness of many eyes upon her,
+and with an unabashed glance she looked around on the crowd.
+
+There was a sulky silence among the people, almost a sense of
+antagonism, and if anybody had cheered there might have been a counter
+demonstration. At the same time, there was a certain daring in that
+marked brow and steadfast smile which seemed to say that if anybody had
+hissed she would have stood her ground.
+
+She lifted from the blue silk cushions of the carriage a small
+half-clipped black poodle with a bow of blue ribbon on its forehead,
+tucked it under her arm, stepped down to the street, and passed into the
+courtyard, leaving an odour of ottar of roses behind her.
+
+Only then did the people speak.
+
+"Donna Roma!"
+
+The name seemed to pass over the crowd in a breathless whisper,
+soundless, supernatural, like the flight of a bat in the dark.
+
+
+                                III
+
+The Baron Bonelli had invited certain of his friends to witness the
+Pope's procession from the windows and balconies of his palace
+overlooking the piazza, and they had begun to arrive as early as
+half-past nine.
+
+In the green courtyard they were received by the porter in the cocked
+hat, on the dark stone staircase by lackeys in knee-breeches and yellow
+stockings, in the outer hall, intended for coats and hats, by more
+lackeys in powdered wigs, and in the first reception-room, gorgeously
+decorated in the yellow and gold of the middle ages, by Felice, in a
+dress coat, the Baron's solemn personal servant, who said, in sepulchral
+tones:
+
+"The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some
+of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia,
+Excellency?"
+
+"So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English
+Ambassador.
+
+"A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's
+doings, I guess, and is urgent and important."
+
+"A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true."
+
+"Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you
+regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is
+the greatest man in the country--greater than the King himself--and a
+statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who
+carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are
+bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn."
+
+"And the other view?"
+
+General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains,
+from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and
+then he said:
+
+"A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and
+cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant."
+
+"Which view do the people take?"
+
+"Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with
+which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up."
+
+"And the clergy, and the Court, and the aristocracy?"
+
+"The clergy fear him, the Court detests him, and the Roman aristocracy
+are rancorously hostile."
+
+"Yet he rules them all, nevertheless?"
+
+"Yes, sir, with a rod of iron--people, Court, princes, Parliament, King
+as well--and seems to have only one unsatisfied desire, to break up the
+last remaining rights of the Vatican and rule the old Pope himself."
+
+"And yet he invites us to sit in his Loggia and look at the Pope's
+procession."
+
+"Perhaps because he intends it shall be the last we may ever see of it."
+
+"The Princess Bellini and Don Camillo Murelli," said Felice's sepulchral
+voice from the door.
+
+An elderly aristocratic beauty wearing nodding white plumes came in with
+a pallid young Roman noble dressed in the English fashion.
+
+"_You_ come to church, Don Camillo?"
+
+"Heard it was a service which happened only once in a hundred years,
+dear General, and thought it mightn't be convenient to come next time,"
+said the young Roman.
+
+"And you, Princess! Come now, confess, is it the perfume of the incense
+which brings you to the Pope's procession, or the perfume of the
+promenaders?"
+
+"Nonsense, General!" said the little woman, tapping the American with
+the tip of her lorgnette. "Who comes to a ceremony like this to say her
+prayers? Nobody whatever, and if the Holy Father himself were to
+say...."
+
+"Oh! oh!"
+
+"Which reminds me," said the little lady, "where is Donna Roma?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, where is Donna Roma?" said the young Roman.
+
+"_Who_ is Donna Roma?" said the Englishman.
+
+"Santo Dio! the man doesn't know Donna Roma!"
+
+The white plumes bobbed up, the powdered face fell back, the little
+twinkling eyes closed, and the company laughed and seated themselves in
+the Loggia.
+
+"Donna Roma, dear sir," said the young Roman, "is a type of the fair
+lady who has appeared in the history of every nation since the days of
+Helen of Troy."
+
+"Has a woman of this type, then, identified herself with the story of
+Rome at a moment like the present?" said the Englishman.
+
+The young Roman smiled.
+
+"Why did the Prime Minister appoint so-and-so?--Donna Roma! Why did he
+dismiss such-and-such?--Donna Roma! What feminine influence imposed upon
+the nation this or that?--Donna Roma! Through whom come titles,
+decorations, honours?--Donna Roma! Who pacifies intractable politicians
+and makes them the devoted followers of the Ministers?--Donna Roma! Who
+organises the great charitable committees, collects funds and
+distributes them?--Donna Roma! Always, always Donna Roma!"
+
+"So the day of the petticoat politician is not over in Italy yet?"
+
+"Over? It will only end with the last trump. But dear Donna Roma is
+hardly that. With her light play of grace and a whole artillery of love
+in her lovely eyes, she only intoxicates a great capital and"--with a
+glance towards the curtained door--"takes captive a great Minister."
+
+"Just that," and the white plumes bobbed up and down.
+
+"Hence she defies conventions, and no one dares to question her actions
+on her scene of gallantry."
+
+"Drives a pair of thoroughbreds in the Corso every afternoon, and
+threatens to buy an automobile."
+
+"Has debts enough to sink a ship, but floats through life as if she had
+never known what it was to be poor."
+
+"And has she?"
+
+The voices from behind the curtained door were louder than usual at that
+moment, and the young Roman drew his chair closer.
+
+"Donna Roma, dear sir, was the only child of Prince Volonna. Nobody
+mentions him now, so speak of him in a whisper. The Volonnas were an old
+papal family, holding office in the Pope's household, but the young
+Prince of the house was a Liberal, and his youth was cast in the stormy
+days of the middle of the century. As a son of the revolution he was
+expelled from Rome for conspiracy against the papal Government, and when
+the Pope went out and the King came in, he was still a republican,
+conspiring against the reigning sovereign, and, as such, a rebel.
+Meanwhile he had wandered over Europe, going from Geneva to Berlin, from
+Berlin to Paris. Finally he took refuge in London, the home of all the
+homeless, and there he was lost and forgotten. Some say he practised as
+a doctor, passing under another name; others say that he spent his life
+as a poor man in your Italian quarter of Soho, nursing rebellion among
+the exiles from his own country. Only one thing is certain: late in life
+he came back to Italy as a conspirator--enticed back, his friends
+say--was arrested on a charge of attempted regicide, and deported to the
+island of Elba without a word of public report or trial."
+
+"Domicilio Coatto--a devilish and insane device," said the American
+Ambassador.
+
+"Was that the fate of Prince Volonna?"
+
+"Just so," said the Roman. "But ten or twelve years after he disappeared
+from the scene a beautiful girl was brought to Rome and presented as his
+daughter."
+
+"Donna Roma?"
+
+"Yes. It turned out that the Baron was a kinsman of the refugee, and
+going to London he discovered that the Prince had married an English
+wife during the period of his exile, and left a friendless daughter. Out
+of pity for a great name he undertook the guardianship of the girl, sent
+her to school in France, finally brought her to Rome, and established
+her in an apartment on the Trinita de' Monti, under the care of an old
+aunt, poor as herself, and once a great coquette, but now a faded rose
+which has long since seen its June."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then? Ah, who shall say what then, dear friend? We can only judge by
+what appears--Donna Roma's elegant figure, dressed in silk by the best
+milliners Paris can provide, queening it over half the women of Rome."
+
+"And now her aunt is conveniently bedridden," said the little Princess,
+"and she goes about alone like an Englishwoman; and to account for her
+extravagance, while everybody knows her father's estate was confiscated,
+she is by way of being a sculptor, and has set up a gorgeous studio,
+full of nymphs and cupids and limbs."
+
+"And all by virtue of--what?" said the Englishman.
+
+"By virtue of being--the good friend of the Baron Bonelli!"
+
+"Meaning by that?"
+
+"Nothing--and everything!" said the Princess with another trill of
+laughter.
+
+"In Rome, dear friend," said Don Camillo, "a woman can do anything she
+likes as long as she can keep people from talking about her."
+
+"Oh, you never do that apparently," said the Englishman. "But why
+doesn't the Baron make her a Baroness and have done with the danger?"
+
+"Because the Baron has a Baroness already."
+
+"A wife living?"
+
+"Living and yet dead--an imbecile, a maniac, twenty years a prisoner in
+his castle in the Alban hills."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+The curtain parted over the inner doorway, and three gentlemen came out.
+The first was a tall, spare man, about fifty years of age, with an
+intellectual head, features cut clear and hard like granite, glittering
+eyes under overhanging brows, black moustaches turned up at the ends,
+and iron-grey hair cropped very short over a high forehead. It was the
+Baron Bonelli.
+
+One of the two men with him had a face which looked as if it had been
+carved by a sword or an adze, good and honest but blunt and rugged; and
+the other had a long, narrow head, like the head of a hen--a lanky
+person with a certain mixture of arrogance and servility in his
+expression.
+
+The company rose from their places in the Loggia, and there were
+greetings and introductions.
+
+"Sir Evelyn Wise, gentlemen, the new British Ambassador--General Morra,
+our Minister of War; Commendatore Angelelli, our Chief of Police. A
+thousand apologies, ladies! A Minister of the Interior is one of the
+human atoms that live from minute to minute and are always at the mercy
+of events. You must excuse the Commendatore, gentlemen; he has urgent
+duties outside."
+
+The Prime Minister spoke with the lucidity and emphasis of a man
+accustomed to command, and when Angelelli had bowed all round he crossed
+with him to the door.
+
+"If there is any suspicion of commotion, arrest the ringleaders at once.
+Let there be no trifling with disorder, by whomsoever begun. The first
+to offend must be the first to be arrested, whether he wears cap or
+cassock."
+
+"Good, your Excellency," and the Chief of Police went out.
+
+"Commotion! Disorder! Madonna mia!" cried the little Princess.
+
+"Calm yourselves, ladies. It's nothing! Only it came to the knowledge of
+the Government that the Pope's procession this morning might be made the
+excuse for a disorderly demonstration, and of course order must not be
+disturbed even under the pretext of liberty and religion."
+
+"So that was the public business which deprived us of your society?"
+said the Princess.
+
+"And left my womanless house the duty of receiving you in my absence,"
+said the Baron.
+
+The Baron bowed his guests to their seats, stood with his back to a wide
+ingle, and began to sketch the Pope's career.
+
+"His father was a Roman banker--lived in this house, indeed--and the
+young Leone was brought up in the Jesuit schools and became a member of
+the Noble Guard: handsome, accomplished, fond of society and social
+admiration, a man of the world. This was a cause of disappointment to
+his father, who has intended him for a great career in the Church. They
+had their differences, and finally a mission was found for him and he
+lived a year abroad. The death of the old banker brought him back to
+Rome, and then, to the astonishment of society, he renounced the world
+and took holy orders. Why he gave up his life of gallantry did not
+appear...."
+
+"Some affair of the heart, dear Baron," said the little Princess, with a
+melting look.
+
+"No, there was no talk of that kind, Princess, and not a whisper of
+scandal. Some said the young soldier had married in England, and lost
+his wife there, but nobody knew for certain. There was less doubt about
+his religious vocation, and when by help of his princely inheritance he
+turned his mind to the difficult task of reforming vice and ministering
+to the lowest aspects of misery in the slums of Rome, society said he
+had turned Socialist. His popularity with the people was unbounded, but
+in the midst of it all he begged to be removed to London. There he set
+up the same enterprises, and tramped the streets in search of his waifs
+and outcasts, night and day, year in, year out, as if driven on by a
+consuming passion of pity for the lost and fallen. In the interests of
+his health he was called back to Rome--and returned here a white-haired
+man of forty."
+
+"Ah! what did I say, dear Baron? The apple falls near the tree, you
+know!"
+
+"By this time he had given away millions, and the Pope wished to make
+him President of his Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, but he begged to be
+excused. Then Apostolic Delegate to the United States, and he prayed
+off. Then Nuncio to Spain, and he went on his knees to remain in the
+Campagna Romana, and do the work of a simple priest among a simple
+people. At last, without consulting him they made him Bishop, and
+afterwards Cardinal, and, on the death of the Pope, he was Scrutator to
+the Conclave, and fainted when he read out his own name as that of
+Sovereign Pontiff of the Church."
+
+The little Princess was wiping her eyes.
+
+"Then--all the world was changed. The priest of the future disappeared
+in a Pope who was the incarnation of the past. Authority was now his
+watchword. What was the highest authority on earth? The Holy See!
+Therefore, the greatest thing for the world was the domination of the
+Pope. If anybody should say that the power conferred by Christ on his
+Vicar was only spiritual, let him be accursed! In Christ's name the Pope
+was sovereign--supreme sovereign over the bodies and souls of
+men--acknowledging no superior, holding the right to make and depose
+kings, and claiming to be supreme judge over the consciences and crimes
+of all--the peasant that tills the soil, and the prince that sits on the
+throne!"
+
+"Tre-men-jous!" said the American.
+
+"But, dear Baron," said the little Princess, "don't you think there was
+an affair of the heart after all?" and the little plumes bobbed
+sideways.
+
+The Baron laughed again. "The Pope seems to have half of humanity on his
+side already--he has the women apparently."
+
+All this time there had risen from the piazza into the room a humming
+noise like the swarming of bees, but now a shrill voice came up from the
+crowd with the sudden swish of a rocket.
+
+"Look out!"
+
+The young Roman, who had been looking over the balcony, turned his head
+back and said:
+
+"Donna Roma, Excellency."
+
+But the Baron had gone from the room.
+
+"He knew her carriage wheels apparently," said Don Camillo, and the lips
+of the little Princess closed tight as if from sudden pain.
+
+
+                                V
+
+The return of the Baron was announced by the faint rustle of a silk
+under-skirt and a light yet decided step keeping pace with his own. He
+came back with Donna Roma on his arm, and over his coolness and calm
+dignity he looked pleased and proud.
+
+The lady herself was brilliantly animated and happy. A certain swing in
+her graceful carriage gave an instant impression of perfect health, and
+there was physical health also in the brightness of her eyes and the
+gaiety of her expression. Her face was lighted up by a smile which
+seemed to pervade her whole person and make it radiant with overflowing
+joy. A vivacity which was at the same time dignified and spontaneous
+appeared in every movement of her harmonious figure, and as she came
+into the room there was a glow of health and happiness that filled the
+air like the glow of sunlight through a veil of soft red gauze.
+
+She saluted the Baron's guests with a smile that fascinated everybody.
+There was a modified air of freedom about her, as of one who has a right
+to make advances, a manner which captivates all women in a queen and all
+men in a lovely woman.
+
+"Ah, it is you, General Potter? And my dear General Morra? Camillo mio!"
+(The Italian had rushed upon her and kissed her hand.) "Sir Evelyn Wise,
+from England, isn't it? I'm half an Englishwoman myself, and I'm very
+proud of it."
+
+She had smiled frankly into Sir Evelyn's face, and he had smiled back
+without knowing it. There was something contagious about her smile. The
+rosy mouth with its pearly teeth seemed to smile of itself, and the
+lovely eyes had their separate art of smiling. Her lips parted of
+themselves, and then you felt your own lips parting.
+
+"You were to have been busy with your fountain to-day...." began the
+Baron.
+
+"So I expected," she said in a voice that was soft yet full, "and I did
+not think I should care to see any more spectacles in Rome, where the
+people are going in procession all the year through--but what do you
+think has brought me?"
+
+"The artist's instinct, of course," said Don Camillo.
+
+"No, just the woman's--to see a man!"
+
+"Lucky fellow, whoever he is!" said the American. "He'll see something
+better than you will, though," and then the golden complexion gleamed up
+at him under a smile like sunshine.
+
+"But who is he?" said the young Roman.
+
+"I'll tell you. Bruno--you remember Bruno?"
+
+"Bruno!" cried the Baron.
+
+"Oh! Bruno is all right," she said, and, turning to the others, "Bruno
+is my man in the studio--my marble pointer, you know. Bruno Rocco, and
+nobody was ever so rightly named. A big, shaggy, good-natured bear,
+always singing or growling or laughing, and as true as steel. A terrible
+Liberal, though; a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, and everything
+that's shocking."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, ever since I began my fountain ... I'm making a fountain for the
+Municipality--it is to be erected in the new part of the Piazza Colonna.
+I expect to finish it in a fortnight. You would like to see it? Yes?
+I'll send you cards--a little private view, you know."
+
+"But Bruno?"
+
+"Ah! yes, Bruno! Well, I've been at a loss for a model for one of my
+figures ... figures all round the dish, you know. They represent the
+Twelve Apostles, with Christ in the centre giving out the water of
+life."
+
+"But Bruno! Bruno! Bruno!"
+
+She laughed, and the merry ring of her laughter set them all laughing.
+
+"Well, Bruno has sung the praises of one of his friends until I'm
+crazy ... crazy, that's English, isn't it? I told you I was half an
+Englishwoman. American? Thanks, General! I'm 'just crazy' to get him
+in."
+
+"Simple enough--hire him to sit to you," said the Princess.
+
+"Oh," with a mock solemnity, "he is far too grand a person for that! A
+member of Parliament, a leader of the Left, a prophet, a person with a
+mission, and I daren't even dream of it. But this morning, Bruno tells
+me, his friend, his idol, is to stop the Pope's procession, and present
+a petition, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone--see my
+man and see the spectacle--and here I am to see them!"
+
+"And who is this paragon of yours, my dear?"
+
+"The great David Rossi!"
+
+"_That_ man!"
+
+The white plumes were going like a fan.
+
+"The man is a public nuisance and ought to be put down by the police,"
+said the little Princess, beating her foot on the floor.
+
+"He has a tongue like a sword and a pen like a dagger," said the young
+Roman.
+
+Donna Roma's eyes began to flash with a new expression.
+
+"Ah, yes, he is a journalist, isn't he, and libels people in his paper?"
+
+"The creature has ruined more reputations than anybody else in Europe,"
+said the little Princess.
+
+"I remember now. He made a terrible attack on our young old women and
+our old young men. Declared they were meddling with everything--called
+them a museum of mummies, and said they were symbolical of the ruin that
+was coming on the country. Shameful, wasn't it? Nobody likes to be
+talked about, especially in Rome, where it's the end of everything. But
+what matter? The young man has perhaps learned freedom of speech in some
+free country. We can afford to forgive him, can't we? And then he is so
+interesting and so handsome!"
+
+"An attempt to stop the Pope's procession might end in tumult," said the
+American General to the Italian General. "Was that the danger the Baron
+spoke about?"
+
+"Yes," said General Morra. "The Government have been compelled to tax
+bread, and of course that has been a signal for the enemies of the
+national spirit to say that we are starving the people. This David Rossi
+is the worst Roman in Rome. He opposed us in Parliament and lost.
+Petitioned the King and lost again. Now he intends to petition the
+Pope--with what hope, Heaven knows."
+
+"With the hope of playing on public opinion, of course," said the Baron
+cynically.
+
+"Public opinion is a great force, your Excellency," said the Englishman.
+
+"A great pestilence," said the Baron warmly.
+
+"What is David Rossi?"
+
+"An anarchist, a republican, a nihilist, anything as old as the hills,
+dear friend, only everything in a new way," said the young Roman.
+
+"David Rossi is the politician who proposes to govern the world by the
+precepts of the Lord's Prayer," said the American.
+
+"The Lord's Prayer!"
+
+The Baron paraded on the hearthrug. "David Rossi," he said
+compassionately, "is a creature of his age. A man of generous impulses
+and wide sympathies, moved to indignation at the extremes of poverty and
+wealth, and carried away by the promptings of the eternal religion in
+the human soul. A dreamer, of course, a dreamer like the Holy Father
+himself, only his dream is different, and neither could succeed without
+destroying the other. In the millennium Rossi looks for, not only are
+kings and princes to disappear, but popes and prelates as well."
+
+"And where does this unpractical politician come from?" said the
+Englishman.
+
+"We must ask you to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed
+to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country.
+As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows
+certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was.
+Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his
+mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never talks about himself,
+and cannot be got to lift the veil which surrounds his birth and early
+life. Came back to Rome eight years ago, and made a vast noise by
+propounding his platonic scheme of politics--was called up for his term
+of military service, refused to serve, got himself imprisoned for six
+months and came out a mighty hero--was returned to Parliament for no
+fewer than three constituencies, sat for Rome, took his place on the
+Extreme Left, and attacked every Minister and every measure which
+favoured the interest of the army--encouraged the workmen not to pay
+their taxes and the farmers not to pay their rents--and thus became the
+leader of a noisy faction, and is now surrounded by the degenerate class
+throughout Italy which dreams of reconstructing society by burying it
+under ruins."
+
+"Lived in England, you say?"
+
+"Apparently, and if his early life could be traced it would probably be
+found that he was brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracy--perhaps
+under the influence of some vile revolutionary living in London under
+the protection of your too liberal laws."
+
+Donna Roma sprang up with a movement full of grace and energy. "Anyhow,"
+she said, "he is young and good-looking and romantic and mysterious, and
+I'm head over ears in love with him already."
+
+"Well, every man is a world," said the American.
+
+"And what about woman?" said Roma.
+
+He threw up his hands, she smiled full into his face, and they laughed
+together.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+A fanfare of trumpets came from the piazza, and with a cry of delight
+Roma ran into the balcony, followed by all the women and most of the
+men.
+
+"Only the signal that the cortege has started," said Don Camillo.
+"They'll be some minutes still."
+
+"Santo Dio!" cried Roma. "What a sight! It dazzles me; it makes me
+dizzy!"
+
+Her face beamed, her eyes danced, and she was all aglow from head to
+foot. The American Ambassador stood behind her, and, as permitted by his
+greater age, he tossed back the shuttlecock of her playful talk with
+chaff and laughter.
+
+"How patient the people are! See the little groups on camp-stools
+munching biscuits and reading the journals. 'La Vera Roma!'" (mimicking
+the cry of the newspaper sellers). "Look at that pretty girl--the fair
+one with the young man in the Homburg hat! She has climbed up the
+obelisk, and is inviting him to sit on an inch and a half of corbel
+beside her."
+
+"Ah, those who love take up little room!"
+
+"Don't they? What a lovely world it is! I'll tell you what this makes me
+think about--a wedding! Glorious morning, beautiful sunshine, flowers,
+wreaths, bridesmaids ready; coachman all a posy, only waiting for the
+bride!"
+
+"A wedding is what you women are always dreaming about--you begin
+dreaming about it in your cradles--it's in a woman's bones, I do
+believe," said the American.
+
+"Must be the ones she got from Adam, then," said Roma.
+
+Meantime the Baron was still parading the hearthrug inside and listening
+to the warnings of his Minister of War.
+
+"You are resolved to arrest the man?"
+
+"If he gives us an opportunity--yes."
+
+"You do not forget that he is a Deputy?"
+
+"It is because I remember it that my resolution is fixed. In Parliament
+he is a privileged person; let him make half as much disorder outside
+and you shall see where he will be."
+
+"Anarchists!" said Roma. "That group below the balcony? Is David Rossi
+among them? Yes? Which of them? Which? Which? Which? The tall man in the
+black hat with his back to us? Oh! why doesn't he turn his face? Should
+I shout?"
+
+"Roma!" from the little Princess.
+
+"I know; I'll faint, and you'll catch me, and the Princess will cry
+'Madonna mia!' and then he'll turn round and look up."
+
+"My child!"
+
+"He'll see through you, though, and then where will you be?"
+
+"See through me, indeed!" and she laughed the laugh a man loves to hear,
+half-raillery, half-caress.
+
+"Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of a line of princes, making love to a
+nameless nobody!"
+
+"Shows what a heavenly character she is, then! See how good I am at
+throwing bouquets at myself?"
+
+"Well, what is love, anyway? A certain boy and a certain girl agree to
+go for a row in the same boat to the same place, and if they pull
+together, what does it matter where they come from?"
+
+"What, indeed?" she said, and a smile, partly serious, played about the
+parted mouth.
+
+"Could _you_ think like that?"
+
+"I could! I could! I could!"
+
+The clock struck eleven. Another fanfare of trumpets came from the
+direction of the Vatican, and then the confused noises in the square
+suddenly ceased and a broad "Ah!" passed over it, as of a vast living
+creature taking breath.
+
+"They're coming!" cried Roma. "Baron, the cortege is coming."
+
+"Presently," the Baron answered from within.
+
+Roma's dog, which had slept on a chair through the tumult, was awakened
+by the lull and began to bark. She picked it up, tucked it under her arm
+and ran back to the balcony, where she stood by the parapet, in full
+view of the people below, with the young Roman on one side, the American
+on the other, and the ladies seated around.
+
+By this time the procession had begun to appear, issuing from a bronze
+gate under the right arm of the colonnade, and passing down the channel
+which had been kept open by the cordon of infantry.
+
+Roma abandoned herself to the fascinations of the scene, and her gaiety
+infected everybody.
+
+"Camillo, you must tell me who they all are. There now--those men who
+come first in black and red?"
+
+"Laymen," said the young Roman. "They're called the Apostolic Cursori.
+When a Cardinal is nominated they take him the news, and get two or
+three thousand francs for their trouble."
+
+"And these little fat folk in white lace pinafores?"
+
+"Singers of the Sistine Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro
+Mustafa--used to be the greatest soprano of the century."
+
+"And this dear old friar with the mittens and rosary and the comfortable
+linsey-woolsey sort of face?"
+
+"That's Father Pifferi of San Lorenzo, confessor to the Pope. He knows
+all the Pope's sins."
+
+"Oh!" said Roma.
+
+At that moment her dog barked furiously, and the old friar looked up at
+her, whereupon she smiled down on him, and then a half-smile played
+about his good-natured face.
+
+"He is a Capuchin, and those Frati in different colours coming behind
+him...."
+
+"I know them; see if I don't," she cried, as there passed under the
+balcony a double file of friars and monks. "The brown ones--Capuchins
+and Franciscans! Brown and white--Carmelites! Black--Augustinians and
+Benedictines! Black with a white cross--Passionists! And the monks all
+white are Trappists. I know the Trappists best, because I drive out to
+Tre Fontane to buy eucalyptus and flirt with Father John."
+
+"Shocking!" said the American.
+
+"Why not? What are their vows of celibacy but conspiracies against us
+poor women? Nearly every man a woman wants is either mated or has sworn
+off in some way. Oh, how I should love to meet one of those anchorites
+in real life and make him fly!"
+
+"Well, I dare say the whisk of a petticoat would be more frightening
+than all his doctors of divinity."
+
+"Listen!"
+
+From a part of the procession which had passed the balcony there came
+the sound of harmonious voices.
+
+"The singers of the Sistine Chapel! They're singing a hymn."
+
+"I know it. '_Veni, Creator!_' How splendid! How glorious! I feel as if
+I wanted to cry!"
+
+All at once the singing stopped, the murmuring and speaking of the crowd
+ceased too, and there was a breathless moment, such as comes before the
+first blast of a storm. A nervous quiver, like the shudder that passes
+over the earth at sundown, swept across the piazza, and the people stood
+motionless, every neck stretched, and every eye turned in the direction
+of the bronze gate, as if God were about to reveal Himself from the Holy
+of Holies. Then in that grand silence there came the clear call of
+silver trumpets, and at the next instant the Presence itself.
+
+"The Pope! Baron, the Pope!"
+
+The atmosphere was charged with electricity. A great roar of cheering
+went up from below like the roaring of surf, and it was followed by a
+clapping of hands like the running of the sea off a shingly beach after
+the boom of a tremendous breaker.
+
+An old man, dressed wholly in white, carried shoulder-high on a chair
+glittering with purple and crimson, and having a canopy of silver and
+gold above him. He wore a triple crown, which glistened in the sunlight,
+and but for the delicate white hand which he upraised to bless the
+people, he might have been mistaken for an image.
+
+His face was beautiful, and had a ray of beatified light on it--a face
+of marvellous sweetness and great spirituality.
+
+It was a thrilling moment, and Roma's excitement was intense. "There he
+is! All in white! He's on a gilded chair under the silken canopy! The
+canopy is held up by prelates, and the chairmen are in knee-breeches and
+red velvet. Look at the great waving plumes on either side!"
+
+"Peacock's feathers!" said a voice behind her, but she paid no heed.
+
+"Look at the acolytes swinging incense, and the golden cross coming
+before! What thunders of applause--I can hardly hear myself speak. It's
+like standing on a cliff while the sea below is running mountains high.
+No, it's like no other sound on earth; it's human--fifty thousand
+unloosed throats of men! That's the clapping of ladies--listen to the
+weak applause of their white-gloved fingers. Now they're waving their
+handkerchiefs. Look! Like the wings of ten thousand butterflies
+fluttering up from a meadow."
+
+Roma's abandonment was by this time complete; she was waving her
+handkerchief and crying "_Viva il Papa Re!_"
+
+"They're bearing him slowly along. He's coming this way. Look at the
+Noble Guard in their helmets and jackboots. And there are the Swiss
+Guard in Joseph's coat of many colours! We can see him plainly now. Do
+you smell the incense? It's like the ribbon of Bruges. The pluviale?
+That gold vestment? It's studded on his breast with precious stones. How
+they blaze in the sunshine! He is blessing the people, and they are
+falling on their knees before him."
+
+"Like the grass before the scythe!"
+
+"How tired he looks! How white his face is! No, not white--ivory! No,
+marble--Carrara marble! He might be Lazarus who was dead and has come
+back from the tomb! No humanity left in him! A saint! An angel!"
+
+"The spiritual autocrat of the world!"
+
+"_Viva il Papa Re!_ He's going by! _Viva il Papa Re!_ He has
+gone.... Well!"
+
+She was rising from her knees and wiping her eyes, trying to cover up
+with laughter the confusion of her rapture.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+There was a sound of voices in the distance chanting dolorously.
+
+"The cantors intoning _Tu es Petrus_," said Don Camillo.
+
+"No, I mean the commotion down there. Somebody is pushing through the
+Guard."
+
+"It's David Rossi," said the American.
+
+"Is that David Rossi? Oh, dear me! I had forgotten all about him." She
+moved forward to see his face. "Why ... where have I ... I've seen him
+before somewhere."
+
+A strange physical sensation tingled all over her at that moment, and
+she shuddered as if with sudden cold.
+
+"What's amiss?"
+
+"Nothing! But I like him. Do you know, I really like him."
+
+"Women are funny things," said the American.
+
+"They're nice, though, aren't they?" And two rows of pearly teeth
+between parted lips gleamed up at him with gay raillery.
+
+Again she craned forward. "He is on his knees to the Pope! Now he'll
+present the petition. No ... yes ... the brutes! They're dragging him
+away! The procession is going on! Disgraceful!"
+
+"Long live the Workmen's Pope!" came up from the piazza, and under the
+shrill shouts of the pilgrims were heard the monotonous voices of the
+monks as they passed through the open doors of the Basilica intoning the
+praises of God.
+
+"They're lifting him on to a car," said the American.
+
+"David Rossi?"
+
+"Yes; he is going to speak."
+
+"How delightful! Shall we hear him? Good! How glad I am that I came! He
+is facing this way! Oh, yes; those are his own people with the banners!
+Baron, the Holy Father has gone on to St. Peter's, and David Rossi is
+going to speak."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+A quivering, vibrating voice came up from below, and in a moment there
+was a dead silence.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+"Brothers, when Christ Himself was on the earth going up to Jerusalem,
+He rode on the colt of an ass, and the blind and the lame and the sick
+came to Him, and He healed them. Humanity is sick and blind and lame
+to-day, brothers, but the Vicar of Christ goes on."
+
+At the words an audible murmur came from the crowd, such as goes before
+the clapping of hands in a Roman theatre, a great upheaval of the heart
+of the audience to the actor who has touched and stirred it.
+
+"Brothers, in a little Eastern village a long time ago, there arose
+among the poor and lowly a great Teacher, and the only prayer He taught
+His followers was the prayer 'Our Father who art in Heaven.' It was the
+expression of man's utmost need, the expression of man's utmost hope.
+And not only did the Teacher teach that prayer--He lived according to
+the light of it. All men were His brothers, all women His sisters; He
+was poor, He had no home, no purse, and no second coat; when He was
+smitten He did not smite back, and when He was unjustly accused He did
+not defend Himself. Nineteen hundred years have passed since then,
+brothers, and the Teacher who arose among the poor and lowly is now a
+great Prophet. All the world knows and honours Him, and civilised
+nations have built themselves upon the religion He founded. A great
+Church calls itself by His name, and a mighty kingdom, known as
+Christendom, owes allegiance to His faith. But what of His teaching? He
+said: 'Resist not evil,' yet all Christian nations maintain standing
+armies. He said: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' yet
+the wealthiest men are Christian men, and the richest organisation in
+the world is the Christian Church. He said: 'Our Father who art in
+Heaven,' yet men who ought to be brothers are divided into states, and
+hate each other as enemies. He said: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
+on earth as it is done in Heaven,' yet he who believes it ever will come
+is called a fanatic and a fool."
+
+Some murmurs of dissent were drowned in cries of "Go on!" "Speak!"
+"Silence!"
+
+"Foremost and grandest of the teachings of Christ are two inseparable
+truths--the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But in Italy,
+as elsewhere, the people are starved that king may contend with king,
+and when we appeal to the Pope to protest in the name of the Prince of
+Peace, he remembers his temporalities and passes on!"
+
+At these words the emotion of the crowd broke into loud shouts of
+approval, with which some groans were mingled.
+
+Roma had turned her face aside from the speaker, and her profile was
+changed--the gay, sprightly, airy, radiant look had given way to a
+serious, almost a melancholy expression.
+
+"We have two sovereigns in Rome, brothers, a great State and a great
+Church, with a perishing people. We have soldiers enough to kill us,
+priests enough to tell us how to die, but no one to show us how to
+live."
+
+"Corruption! Corruption!"
+
+"Corruption indeed, brothers; and who is there among us to whom the
+corruptions of our rulers are unknown? Who cannot point to the wars made
+that should not have been made? to the banks broken that should not have
+broken? And who in Rome cannot point to the Ministers who allow their
+mistresses to meddle in public affairs and enrich themselves by the ruin
+of all around?"
+
+The little Princess on the balcony was twisting about.
+
+"What! Are you deserting us, Roma?"
+
+And Roma answered from within the house, in a voice that sounded strange
+and muffled:
+
+"It was cold on the balcony, I think."
+
+The little Princess laughed a bitter laugh, and David Rossi heard it and
+misunderstood it, and his nostrils quivered like the nostrils of a
+horse, and when he spoke again his voice shook with passion.
+
+"Who has not seen the splendid equipages of these privileged ones of
+fortune--their gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold--emblems of the
+acid which is eating into the public organs? Has Providence raised this
+country from the dead only to be dizzied in a whirlpool of scandal,
+hypocrisy, and fraud--only to fall a prey to an infamous traffic without
+a name between high officials of low desires and women whose reputations
+are long since lost? It is men and women like these who destroy their
+country for their own selfish ends. Very well, let them destroy her; but
+before they do so, let them hear what one of her children says: The
+Government you are building up on the whitened bones of the people shall
+be overthrown--the King who countenances you, and the Pope who will not
+condemn you, shall be overthrown, and then--and not till then--will the
+nation be free."
+
+At this there was a terrific clamour. The square resounded with confused
+voices. "Bravo!" "Dog!" "Dog's murderer!" "Traitor!" "Long live David
+Rossi!" "Down with the Vampire!"
+
+The ladies had fled from the balcony back to the room with cries of
+alarm. "There will be a riot." "The man is inciting the people to
+rebellion!" "This house will be first to be attacked!"
+
+"Calm yourselves, ladies. No harm shall come to you," said the Baron,
+and he rang the bell.
+
+There came from below a babel of shouts and screams.
+
+"Madonna mia! What is that?" cried the Princess, wringing her hands; and
+the American Ambassador, who had remained on the balcony, said:
+
+"The Carabineers have charged the crowd and arrested David Rossi."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"They're going through the Borgo," said Don Camillo, "and kicking and
+cuffing and jostling and hustling all the way."
+
+"Don't be alarmed! There's the Hospital of Santo Spirito round the
+corner, and stations of the Red Cross Society everywhere," said the
+Baron, and then Felice answered the bell.
+
+"See our friends out by the street at the back, Felice. Good-bye,
+ladies! Have no fear! The Government does not mean to blunt the weapons
+it uses against the malefactors who insult the doctrines of the State."
+
+"Excellent Minister!" said the Princess. "Such canaglia are not fit to
+have their liberty, and I would lock them all up in prison."
+
+And then Don Camillo offered his arm to the little lady with the white
+plumes, and they came almost face to face with Roma, who was standing by
+the door hung with curtains, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and
+parting from the English Ambassador.
+
+"Donna Roma," he was saying, "if I can ever be of use to you, either now
+or in the future, I beg of you to command me."
+
+"Look at her!" whispered the Princess. "How agitated she is! A moment
+ago she was finding it cold in the Loggia! I'm so happy!"
+
+At the next instant she ran up to Roma and kissed her. "Poor child! How
+sorry I am! You have my sympathy, my dear! But didn't I tell you the man
+was a public nuisance, and ought to be put down by the police?"
+
+"Shameful, isn't it?" said Don Camillo. "Calumny is a little wind, but
+it raises such a terrible tempest."
+
+"Nobody likes to be talked about," said the Princess, "especially in
+Rome, where it is the end of everything."
+
+"But what matter? Perhaps the young man has learned freedom of speech in
+a free country!" said Don Camillo.
+
+"And then he is so interesting and so handsome," said the Princess.
+
+Roma made no answer. There was a slight drooping of the lovely eyes and
+a trembling of the lips and nostrils. For a moment she stood absolutely
+impassive, and then with a flash of disdain she flung round into the
+inner room.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Roma had taken refuge in the council-room. There had been much business
+that morning, and a copy of the constitutional statute lay open on a
+large table, which had a plate-glass top with photographs under the
+surface.
+
+In this passionless atmosphere, so little accustomed to such scenes,
+Roma sat in her wounded pride and humiliation, with her head down, and
+her beautiful white hands over her face.
+
+She heard measured footsteps approaching, and then a hand touched her on
+the shoulder. She looked up and drew back as if the touch stung her. Her
+lips closed sternly, and she got up and began to walk about the room,
+and then she burst into a torrent of anger.
+
+"Did you hear them? The cats! How they loved to claw me, and still purr
+and purr! Before the sun is set the story will be all over Rome! It has
+run off already on the hoofs of that woman's English horses. To-morrow
+morning it will be in every newspaper in the kingdom. Olga and Lena and
+every woman of them all who lives in a glass house will throw stones.
+'The new Pompadour! Who is she?' Oh, I could die of vexation and shame!"
+
+The Baron leaned against the table and listened, twisting the ends of
+his moustache.
+
+"The Court will turn its back on me now. They only wanted a good excuse
+to put their humiliations upon me. It's horrible! I can't bear it. I
+won't. I tell you, I won't!"
+
+But the lips, compressed with scorn, began to quiver visibly, and she
+threw herself into a chair, took out her handkerchief, and hid her face
+on the table.
+
+At that moment Felice came into the room to say that the Commendatore
+Angelelli had returned and wished to speak with his Excellency.
+
+"I will see him presently," said the Baron, with an impassive
+expression, and Felice went out silently, as one who had seen nothing.
+
+The Baron's calm dignity was wounded. "Be so good as to have some regard
+for me in the presence of my servants," he said. "I understand your
+feelings, but you are much too excited to see things in their proper
+light. You have been publicly insulted and degraded, but you must not
+talk to me as if it were my fault."
+
+"Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she
+said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an
+expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no
+reply, and his silence broke her answer.
+
+"No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and
+he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held
+it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her
+head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand.
+
+"I suppose it is all over," she said.
+
+"Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring
+forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander
+and justify you in the eyes of all."
+
+At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to look beyond the
+Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the
+table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and
+revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of
+the Baron's castle in the Alban hills.
+
+"Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno."
+
+"I will discharge him this very day--I will! I will! I will!"
+
+There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had
+said must have come of what her own servant told him--that Bruno had
+watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the
+two men had discussed her between them.
+
+"I could kill him," she said.
+
+"Bruno Rocco?"
+
+"No, David Rossi."
+
+"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.
+
+"How?"
+
+"He shall be put on his trial."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime
+Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow
+has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."
+
+"What good will that do?"
+
+"He will be silenced--and crushed."
+
+She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her
+heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.
+
+"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning
+him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly
+enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater
+in his prison than the King on his throne."
+
+The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache again.
+
+"Besides," she said, "what benefit will it be to me if you put him on
+trial for inciting the people to rebellion against the King? The public
+will say it was for insulting yourself, and everybody will think he was
+punished for telling the truth."
+
+The Baron continued to twist the ends of his moustache.
+
+"Benefit!" She laughed ironically. "It will be a double injury. The
+insult will be repeated in public again and again. First the advocate
+for the crown will read it aloud, then the advocate for the defence will
+quote it, and then it will be discussed and dissected and telegraphed
+until everybody in court knows it by heart and all Europe has heard of
+it."
+
+The Baron made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale,
+behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of
+vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with a spring.
+
+"I know!" she cried. "I know! I know! I know!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Give the man to me, and I will show you how to escape from this
+humiliating situation."
+
+"Roma?" said the Baron, but he had read her thought already.
+
+"If you punish him for this speech you will injure both of us and do no
+good to the King."
+
+"It's true."
+
+"Take him in a serious conspiracy, and you will be doing us no harm and
+the King some service."
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"You say there is a mystery about David Rossi, and you want to know who
+he is, who his father was, and where he spent the years he was away from
+Rome."
+
+"I would certainly give a good deal to know."
+
+"You want to know what vile refugee in London filled him with his
+fancies, what conspiracies he is hatching, what secret societies he
+belongs to, and, above all, what his plans and schemes are, and whether
+he is in league with the Vatican."
+
+She spoke so rapidly that the words sputtered out of her quivering lips.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I will find it all out for you."
+
+"My dear Roma!"
+
+"Leave him to me, and within a month you shall know"--she laughed, a
+little ashamed--"the inmost secrets of his soul."
+
+She was walking to and fro again, to prevent the Baron from looking into
+her face, which was now red over its white, like a rose moon in a stormy
+sky.
+
+The Baron thought. "She is going to humble the man by her charms--to
+draw him on and then fling him away, and thus pay him back for what he
+has done to-day. So much the better for me if I may stand by and do
+nothing. A strong Minister should be unmoved by personal attacks. He
+should appear to regard them with contempt."
+
+He looked at her, and the brilliancy of her eyes set his heart on fire.
+The terrible attraction of her face at that moment stirred in him the
+only love he had for her. At the same time it awakened the first spasm
+of jealousy.
+
+"I understand you, Roma," he said. "You are splendid! You are
+irresistible! But remember--the man is one of the incorruptible."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"No woman who has yet crossed his path seems to have touched him, and it
+is the pride of all such men that no woman ever can."
+
+"I've seen him," she said.
+
+"Take care! As you say, he is young and handsome."
+
+She tossed her head and laughed again.
+
+The Baron thought: "Certainly he has wounded her in a way no woman can
+forgive."
+
+"And what about Bruno?" he said.
+
+"He shall stay," she answered. "Such men are easy enough to manage."
+
+"You wish me to liberate David Rossi and leave you to deal with him?"
+
+"I do! Oh, for the day when I can turn the laugh against him as he has
+turned the laugh against me! At the top of his hopes, at the height of
+his ambitions, at the moment when he says to himself, 'It is done'--he
+shall fall."
+
+The Baron touched the bell. "Very well!" he said. "One can sometimes
+catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hogshead of
+vinegar. We shall see."
+
+A moment later the Chief of Police entered the room. "The Honourable
+Rossi is safely lodged in prison," he said.
+
+"Commendatore," said the Baron, pointing to the book lying open on the
+table, "I have been looking again at the statute, and now I am satisfied
+that a Deputy can be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament alone."
+
+"But, Excellency, if he is taken in the act, according to the
+forty-fifth article, the parliamentary immunity ceases."
+
+"Commendatore, I have given you my opinion, and now it is my wish that
+the Honourable David Rossi should be set at liberty."
+
+"Excellency!"
+
+"Be so good as to liberate him instantly, and let your officers see him
+safely through the streets to his home in the Piazza Navona."
+
+The little head like a hen's went down like a hatchet, and Commendatore
+Angelelli backed out of the room.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                        PART TWO--THE REPUBLIC OF MAN
+
+
+                                    I
+
+The Piazza Navona is the heart and soul of old Rome. In other quarters
+of the living city you feel tempted to ask: "Is this London?" or, "Is
+this Paris?" or, "Is this New York or Berlin?" but in the Piazza Navona
+you can only tell yourself, "This is Rome!"
+
+In an apartment-house of the Piazza Navona, David Rossi had lived during
+the seven years since he became Member of Parliament for Rome. The
+ground floor is a Trattoria, half eating-house and half wine-shop, with
+rude frescoes on its distempered walls, representing the Bay of Naples
+with Vesuvius in eruption. A passage running by the side of the
+Trattoria leads to the apartments overhead, and at the foot of the
+staircase there is a porter's lodge, a closet always lighted by a lamp,
+which burns down the dark passage day and night, like a bloodshot eye.
+
+In this lodge lived a veteran Garibaldian, in his red shirt and pork-pie
+hat, with his old wife, wrinkled like a turkey, and wearing a red
+handkerchief over her head, fastened by a silver pin. David Rossi's
+apartments consisted of three rooms on the fourth floor, two to the
+front, the third to the back, and a lead flat opening out of them on to
+the roof.
+
+In one of the front rooms on the afternoon of the Pope's Jubilee, a
+young woman sat knitting with an open book on her lap, while a boy of
+six knelt by her side, and pretended to learn his lesson. She was a
+comely but timid creature, with liquid eyes and a soft voice, and he was
+a shock-headed little giant, like the cub of a young lion.
+
+"Go on, Joseph," said the woman, pointing with her knitting-needle to
+the line on the page. "'And it came to pass....'"
+
+But Joseph's little eyes were peering first at the clock on the
+mantel-piece, and then out at the window and down the square.
+
+"Didn't you say they were to be here at two, mamma?"
+
+"Yes, dear. Mr. Rossi was to be set free immediately, and papa, who ran
+home with the good news, has gone back to fetch him."
+
+"Oh! 'And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the Valley
+of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came
+unto her, and said unto her, Entice him and see wherein his great
+strength lieth....' But, mamma...."
+
+"Go on with your lesson, Joseph. 'And she made him sleep....'"
+
+"'And she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man, and
+she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head....'"
+
+At that moment there came a knock at the door, whereupon the boy uttered
+a cry of delight, and with a radiant face went plunging and shouting out
+of the room.
+
+"Uncle David! It's Uncle David!"
+
+The tumultuous voice rolled like baby thunder through the apartment
+until it reached the door, and then it dropped to a dead silence.
+
+"Who is it, Joseph?"
+
+"A gentleman," said the boy.
+
+
+                                II
+
+It was the fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up
+moustache, who had stood by the old Frenchman's carriage in the Piazza
+of St. Peter.
+
+"I wish to speak with Mr. Rossi. I bring him an important message from
+abroad. He is coming along with the people, but to make sure of an
+interview I hurried ahead. May I wait?"
+
+"Certainly! Come in, sir! You say he is coming? Yes? Then he is free?"
+
+The woman's liquid eyes were glistening visibly, and the man's watchful
+ones seemed to notice everything.
+
+"Yes, madam, he is free. I saw him arrested, and I also saw him set at
+liberty."
+
+"Really? Then you can tell me all about it? That's good! I have heard so
+little of all that happened, and my boy and I have not been able to
+think of anything else. Sit down, sir!"
+
+"As the police were taking him to the station-house in the Borgo," said
+the stranger, "the people made an attempt to rescue him, and it seemed
+as if they must certainly have succeeded if it had not been for his own
+intervention."
+
+"He stopped them, didn't he? I'm sure he stopped them!"
+
+"He did. The delegate had given his three warnings, and the Brigadier
+was on the point of ordering his men to fire, when the prisoner threw up
+his hands before the crowd."
+
+"I knew it! Well?"
+
+"'Brothers,' he said, 'let no blood be shed for my sake. We are in God's
+hands. Go home!'"
+
+"How like him! And then, sir?"
+
+"Then the crowd broke up like a bubble, and the officer who was in
+charge of him uncovered his head. 'Room for the Honourable Rossi!' he
+cried, and the prisoner went into the prison."
+
+The liquid eyes were running over by this time, and the soft voice was
+trembling: "You say you saw him set at liberty?"
+
+"Yes! I was in the public service myself until lately, so they allowed
+me to enter the police station, and when the order for release came I
+was present and heard all. 'Deputy,' said the officer, 'I have the
+honour to inform you that you are free.' 'But before I go I must say
+something,' said the Deputy. 'My only orders are that you are to be set
+at liberty,' said the officer. 'Nevertheless, I must see the Minister,'
+said Mr. Rossi. But the crowd had pressed in and surrounded him, and in
+a moment the flood had carried him out into the street, with shouts and
+the waving of hats and a whirlwind of enthusiasm. And now he is being
+drawn by force through the city in a mad, glad, wild procession."
+
+"But he deserves it all, and more--far, far more!"
+
+The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not
+his wife--no?"
+
+"Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered.
+
+"But you live here?"
+
+"We live in the rooms on the roof."
+
+"Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?"
+
+"Yes--that is to say--yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi."
+
+At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by
+a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical
+noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.
+
+"It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was
+also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty
+canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a
+gigantic bird-cage.
+
+"Mr. Rossi's?"
+
+"Yes, and he is fond of animals also--dogs and cats and rabbits and
+squirrels, especially squirrels."
+
+"Squirrels?"
+
+"He has a grey one in a cage on the roof now. But he is not like some
+people who love animals--he loves children, too. He loves all children,
+and as for Joseph...."
+
+"The little boy who cried 'Uncle David' at the door?"
+
+"Yes, sir. One day my husband said 'Uncle David' to Mr. Rossi, and he
+has been Uncle David to my little Joseph ever since."
+
+"This is the dining-room, no doubt," said the stranger.
+
+"Unfortunately, yes, sir."
+
+"Why unfortunately?"
+
+"Because here is the hall, and here is the table, and there's not even a
+curtain between, and the moment the door is opened he is exposed to
+everybody. People know it, too, and they take advantage. He would give
+the chicken off his plate if he hadn't anything else. I have to scold
+him a little sometimes--I can't help it. And as for father, he says he
+has doubled his days in purgatory by the lies he tells, turning people
+away."
+
+"That will be his bedroom, I suppose," said the stranger, indicating a
+door which the boy had passed through.
+
+"No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in
+Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers
+and so forth. Come in, sir."
+
+The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth,
+Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been
+furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with
+incongruous furniture.
+
+"Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a
+porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father's fishing-rod, you
+see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his
+mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets
+presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but
+nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the
+bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this."
+
+"A phonograph?"
+
+"It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island
+of Elba."
+
+"Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?"
+
+"'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an
+instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very
+next day the carriers brought the phonograph."
+
+"And then he reproduced the message?"
+
+"I don't know--I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the
+boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you
+may come in."
+
+It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white
+counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass
+to keep it from the flies.
+
+"How sweet!" said the stranger.
+
+"It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the
+other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid
+heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from
+the herring net.
+
+"I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from
+the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on
+his finger-nail.
+
+"Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A
+six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he
+threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers."
+
+"And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture
+in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait
+of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.
+
+"Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think."
+
+"An English photograph, certainly, but the face seems to me Roman for
+all that."
+
+At that moment a thousand lusty voices burst on the air, as a great
+crowd came pouring out of the narrow lanes into the broad piazza. At
+the same instant the boy shouted from the adjoining room, and another
+voice that made the walls vibrate came from the direction of the door.
+
+"They're coming! It's my husband! Bruno!" said the woman, and the ripple
+of her dress told the stranger she had gone.
+
+
+                                III
+
+Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi's people had
+brought him home in triumph, and now they were crowding upon him to kiss
+his hand, the big-hearted, baby-headed, beloved children of Italy.
+
+The object of this aurora of worship stood with his back to the table in
+the dining-room, looking down and a little ashamed, while Bruno Rocco,
+six feet three in his stockings, hoisted the boy on to his shoulder, and
+shouted as from a tower to everybody as they entered by the door:
+
+"Come in, sonny, come in! Don't stand there like the Pope between the
+devil and the deep sea. Come in among the people," and Bruno's laughter
+rocked through the room to where the crowd stood thick on the staircase.
+
+"The Baron has had a lesson," said a man with a sheet of white paper in
+his hand. "He dreamed of getting the Collar of the Annunziata out of
+this."
+
+"The pig dreamed of acorns," said Bruno.
+
+"It's a lesson to the Church as well," said the man with the paper. "She
+wouldn't have anything to do with us. 'I alone strike the hour of the
+march,' says the Church."
+
+"And then she stands still!" said Bruno.
+
+"The mountains stand still, but men are made to walk," said the man with
+the paper, "and if the Pope doesn't advance with the people, the people
+must advance without the Pope."
+
+"The Pope's all right, sonny," said Bruno, "but what does he know about
+the people? Only what his black-gowned beetles tell him!"
+
+"The Pope has no wife and children," said the man with the paper.
+
+"Old Vampire could find him a few," said Bruno, and then there was
+general laughter.
+
+"Brothers," said David Rossi, "let us be temperate. There's nothing to
+be gained by playing battledore and shuttlecock with the name of an old
+man who has never done harm to any one. The Pope hasn't listened to us
+to-day, but he is a saint all the same, and his life has been a lesson
+in well-doing."
+
+"Anybody can sail with a fair wind, sir," said Bruno.
+
+"Let us be prudent. There's no need for violence, whether of the hand or
+of the tongue. You've found that out this morning. If you had rescued me
+from the police, I should have been in prison again by this time, and
+God knows what else might have happened. I'm proud of your patience and
+forbearance; and now go home, boys, and God bless you."
+
+"Stop a minute!" said the man with the paper. "Something to read before
+we go. While the Carabineers kept Mr. Rossi in the Borgo, the Committee
+of Direction met in a cafe and drew up a proclamation."
+
+"Read it, Luigi," said David Rossi, and the man opened his paper and
+read:
+
+"Having appealed in vain to Parliament and to the King against the
+tyrannical tax which the Government has imposed upon bread in order that
+the army and navy may be increased, and having appealed in vain to the
+Pope to intercede with the civil authorities, and call back Italy to its
+duty, it now behoves us, as a suffering and perishing people, to act on
+our own behalf. Unless annulled by royal decree, the tax will come into
+operation on the 1st of February. On that day let every Roman remain
+indoors until an hour after Ave Maria. Let nobody buy so much as one
+loaf of bread, and let no bread be eaten, except such as you give to
+your children. Then, at the first hour of night, let us meet in the
+Coliseum, tens of thousands of fasting people, of one mind and heart, to
+determine what it is our duty to do next, that our bread may be sure and
+our water may not fail."
+
+"Good!" "Beautiful!" "Splendid!"
+
+"Only wants the signature of the president," said the reader, and Bruno
+called for pen and ink.
+
+"Before I sign it," said Rossi, "let it be understood that none come
+armed. There is nothing our enemies would like better than to fix on us
+the names of rioters and rebels. We must defeat them. We must show the
+world that we alone are the people of law and order. Therefore I call on
+you to promise that none come armed."
+
+"We promise," cried several voices.
+
+"And now go home, boys, and God bless you."
+
+After a moment there was only one man left in the room. It was the
+fashionable young Roman with the watchful eyes and twirled-up moustache.
+
+"For you, sir!" said the young man, taking a letter from a pocket inside
+his waistcoat.
+
+David Rossi opened the letter and read: "The bearer of this, Charles
+Minghelli, is one of ourselves. He has determined upon the
+accomplishment of a great act, and wishes to see you with respect to
+it."
+
+"You come from London?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You wish to speak to me?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You may speak freely."
+
+The young man glanced in the direction of Bruno and of Bruno's wife, who
+stood beside him.
+
+"It is a delicate matter, sir," he said.
+
+"Come this way," said David Rossi, and he took the stranger into his
+bedroom.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+David Rossi took his seat at the desk between the windows, and made a
+sign to the man to take a chair that stood near.
+
+"Your name is Charles Minghelli?" said David Rossi.
+
+"Yes. I have come to propose a dangerous enterprise."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That somebody on behalf of the people should take the law into his own
+hands."
+
+The man had spoken with perfect calmness, and after a moment of silence
+David Rossi replied as calmly:
+
+"I will ask you to explain what you mean."
+
+The man smiled, made a deferential gesture, and answered, "You will
+permit me to speak plainly?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Thanks! I have read your Creed and Charter. I have even signed my name
+to it. It is beautiful as a theory--most beautiful! And the Republic of
+Man is beautiful too. Beautiful!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But more beautiful than practical, dear sir, and the ideal thread that
+runs through your plan will break the moment the rough world begins to
+tug at it."
+
+"I will ask you to be more precise," said David Rossi.
+
+"With pleasure. You have called a meeting in the Coliseum to protest
+against the bread-tax. What if the Government prohibits it? Your
+principle of passive resistance will not permit you to rebel, and
+without the right of public meeting your association is powerless. Then
+where are you?"
+
+David Rossi had taken up his paper-knife dagger and was drawing lines
+with the point of it on the letter of introduction which now lay open on
+the desk. The man saw the impression he had produced, and went on with
+more vigour.
+
+"If the Governments of the world deny you the right of meeting, where
+are your weapons of warfare? On the one side armies on armies of men
+marshalled and equipped with all the arts and engines of war; on the
+other side a helpless multitude with their hands in their pockets, or
+paying a penny a week subscription to the great association that is to
+overcome by passive suffering the power of the combined treasuries of
+the world!"
+
+David Rossi had risen from his seat, and was walking backward and
+forward with a step that was long and slow.
+
+"Well, and what do _you_ say we ought to do?" he said.
+
+A flash came from the man's eyes, and he said in a thick voice:
+
+"Remove the one man in Rome whose hand crushes the nation."
+
+"The Prime Minister?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was silence.
+
+"You expect me to do that?"
+
+"No! I will do it for you.... Why not? If violence is wrong, it is right
+to resist violence."
+
+David Rossi returned to his seat at the desk, touched the letter of
+introduction, and said:
+
+"That is the great act referred to in this letter from London?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why do you come to me?" he said.
+
+"Because you can help me to accomplish this act. You are a Member of
+Parliament, and can give me cards to the Chamber. You can show me the
+way to the Prime Minister's room in Monte Citorio, and tell me the
+moment when he is to be found alone."
+
+"I do not deny that the Prime Minister deserves death."
+
+"A thousand deaths, sir, and everybody would hail them with delight."
+
+"I do not deny that his death would be a relief to the people."
+
+"On the day he dies, sir, the people will live."
+
+"Or that crimes--great crimes--have been the means of bringing about
+great reforms."
+
+"You are right, sir--but it would be no crime."
+
+The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned
+over to the desk and took up the dagger.
+
+"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet
+of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the
+word--may I take it?"
+
+"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know
+himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."
+
+The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.
+
+"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done--to
+know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the
+things; the actors, not the parts."
+
+The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open,
+and balancing the dagger on one hand.
+
+"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by
+every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy
+of liberty--that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight
+otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."
+
+The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
+
+"I knew you talked like that to the people--statesmen do
+sometimes--that's all right--it's pretty, and it keeps the people
+quiet--but _we_...."
+
+David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said:
+
+"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."
+
+"So you dismiss me?"
+
+"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the
+progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of
+authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the
+destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as
+one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal
+quarrel against an enemy."
+
+The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
+
+"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime
+Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his
+mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who
+is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna
+at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and
+has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a
+liar and a cheat?"
+
+David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
+
+"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing
+that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."
+
+David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy
+in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police
+authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in
+Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy--she had been
+living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had
+turned out badly and run away."
+
+David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy
+stare.
+
+"I went with the Ambassador to Bow Street, and saw the girl in the
+magistrate's office. She pleaded that she had been ill-treated, but we
+didn't believe her story, and gave her back to her guardians. A month
+later we heard that she had run away once more and disappeared
+entirely."
+
+David Rossi was breathing audibly, and shrinking like an old man into
+his shoulders.
+
+"I never saw that girl again until a week ago, and where do you think I
+saw her?"
+
+David Rossi swallowed his saliva, and said:
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In Rome. I had trouble at the Embassy, and came back to appeal to the
+Prime Minister. Everybody said I must reach him through Donna Roma, and
+one of my relatives took me to her rooms. The moment I set eyes on her
+I knew who she was. Donna Roma Volonna is the girl Roma Roselli, who was
+lost in the streets of London."
+
+David Rossi seemed suddenly to grow taller.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he said, in a voice that was hollow and choked.
+
+The man staggered back and stammered:
+
+"Why ... what...."
+
+"I knew that girl. Until she was seven years of age she was my constant
+companion--she was the same as my sister--and her father was the same as
+my father--and if you tell me she is the mistress.... You infamous
+wretch! You calumniator! You villain! I could confound you with one
+word, but I won't. Out of my house this moment! And if ever you cross my
+path again I'll denounce you to the police as a cut-throat and an
+assassin."
+
+Stunned and stupefied, the man opened the door and fled.
+
+
+                                V
+
+David Rossi came out with his long slow step, looking pale but calm, and
+tearing a letter into small pieces, which he threw into the fire.
+
+"What was amiss, sir? They could hear you across the street," said
+Bruno.
+
+"A man whose room was better than his company, that's all."
+
+"What's his name?" said Bruno.
+
+"Charles Minghelli."
+
+"Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the
+Embassy in London, and got dismissed."
+
+"I thought as much!" said David Rossi. "No doubt the man attributed his
+dismissal to the Prime Minister, and wanted to use me for his private
+revenge."
+
+"That was his game, was it? Why didn't you let me know, sir? He would
+have gone downstairs like a falling star. Now that I remember, he's the
+nephew of old Polomba, the Mayor, and I've seen him at Donna Roma's."
+
+A waiter in a white smock, with a large tin box on his head, entered the
+hall, and behind him came the old woman from the porter's lodge, with
+the wrinkled face and the red cotton handkerchief.
+
+"Come in," cried Bruno. "I ordered the best dinner in the Trattoria,
+sir, and thought we might perhaps dine together for once."
+
+"Good," said David Rossi.
+
+"Here it is, a whole basketful of the grace of God, sir! Out with it,
+Riccardo," and while the women laid the table, Bruno took the dishes
+smoking hot from their temporary oven with its charcoal fire.
+
+"Artichokes--good. Chicken--good again. I must be a fox--I was dreaming
+of chicken all last night! _Gnocchi!_ (potatoes and flour baked).
+_Agradolce!_ (sour and sweet). _Fagioletti!_ (French beans boiled)
+and--a half-flask of Chianti! Who said the son of my mother couldn't
+order a dinner? All right, Riccardo; come back at Ave Maria."
+
+The waiter went off, and the company sat down to their meal, Bruno and
+his wife at either end of the table, and David Rossi on the sofa, with
+the boy on his right, and the cat curled up into his side on the left,
+while the old woman stood in front, serving the food and removing the
+plates.
+
+"Look at him!" said the old woman, who was deaf, pointing to David
+Rossi, with his two neighbours. "Now, why doesn't the Blessed Virgin
+give him a child of his own?"
+
+"She has, mother, and here he is," said David Rossi.
+
+"You'll let her give him a woman first, won't you?" said Bruno.
+
+"Ah! that will never be," said David Rossi.
+
+"What does he say?" said the old woman with her hand at her ear like a
+shell.
+
+"He says he won't have any of you," bawled Bruno.
+
+"What an idea! But I've heard men say that before, and they've been
+married sooner than you could say 'Hail Mary.'"
+
+"It isn't an incident altogether unknown in the history of this planet,
+is it, mother?" said Bruno.
+
+"A heart to share your sorrows and joys is something, and the man is not
+wise who wastes the chance of it," said the old woman. "Does he think
+parliaments will make up for it when he grows old and wants something to
+comfort him?"
+
+"Hush, mother!" said Elena, but Bruno made mouths at her to let the old
+woman go on.
+
+"As for me, I'll want somebody of my own about me to close my eyes when
+the time comes to put the sacred oil on them," said the old woman.
+
+"If a man has dedicated his life to work for humanity," said David
+Rossi, "he must give up many things--father, mother, wife, child."
+
+The corner of Elena's apron crept up to the corner of her eye, but the
+old woman, who thought the subject had changed, laughed and said:
+
+"That's just what I say to Tommaso. 'Tommaso,' I say, 'if a man is going
+to be a policeman he must have no father, or mother, or wife, or
+child--no, nor bowels neither,' I say. And Tommaso says, 'Francesca,' he
+says, 'the whole tribe of gentry they call statesmen are just policemen
+in plain clothes, and I do believe they've only liberated Mr. Rossi as a
+trap to catch him again when he has done something.'"
+
+"They won't catch _you_ though, will they, mother?" shouted Bruno.
+
+"That they won't! I'm deaf, praise the saints, and can't hear them."
+
+A knock came to the door, and seizing his mace the boy ran and opened
+it. An old man stood on the threshold. He was one of David Rossi's
+pensioners. Ninety years of age, his children all dead, he lived with
+his grandchildren, and was one of the poor human rats who stay indoors
+all day and come out with a lantern at night to scour the gutters of the
+city for the refuse of cigar-ends.
+
+"Come another night, John," said Bruno.
+
+But David Rossi would not send him away empty, and he was going off with
+the sparkling eyes of a boy, when he said:
+
+"I heard you in the piazza this morning, Excellency! Grand! Only sorry
+for one thing."
+
+"And what was that, sonny?" asked Bruno.
+
+"What his Excellency said about Donna Roma. She gave me a half-franc
+only yesterday--stopped the carriage to do it, sir."
+
+"So that's your only reason...." began Bruno.
+
+"Good reason, too. Good-night, John!" said David Rossi, and Joseph
+closed the door.
+
+"Oh, she has her virtues, like every other kind of spider," said Bruno.
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke of her," said David Rossi.
+
+"You needn't be, though. She deserved all she got. I haven't been two
+years in her studio without knowing what she is."
+
+"It was the man I was thinking of, and if I had remembered that the
+woman must suffer...."
+
+"Tut! She'll have to make her Easter confession a little earlier, that's
+all."
+
+"If she hadn't laughed when I was speaking...."
+
+"You're on the wrong track now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the
+little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and
+screeching like an old gandery goose."
+
+Dinner was now over, and the boy called for the phonograph. David Rossi
+went into the sitting-room to fetch it, and Elena went in at the same
+time to light the fire. She was kneeling with her back to him, blowing
+on to the wood, when she said in a trembling voice:
+
+"I'm a little sorry myself, sir, if I may say so. I can't believe what
+they say about the mistress, but even if it's true we don't know _her_
+story, do we?"
+
+Then the phonograph was turned on, and Joseph marched to the tune of
+"Swannee River" and the strains of Sousa's band.
+
+"Mr. Rossi," said Bruno, between a puff and a blow.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you tried the cylinder that came first?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"How's that, sir?"
+
+"The man who brought it said the friend who had spoken into it was
+dead." And then with a shiver, "It would be like a voice from the
+grave--I doubt if I dare hear it."
+
+"Like a ghost speaking to a man, certainly--especially if the friend was
+a close one."
+
+"He was the closest friend I ever had, Bruno--he was my father."
+
+"Father?"
+
+"Foster-father, anyway. For four years he clothed and fed and educated
+me, and I was the same as his own son."
+
+"Had he no children of his own?"
+
+"One little daughter, no bigger than Joseph when I saw her last--Roma."
+
+"Roma?"
+
+"Yes, her father was a Liberal, and her name was Roma."
+
+"What became of her?"
+
+"When the doctor came to Italy on the errand which ended in his
+imprisonment he gave her into the keeping of some Italian friends in
+London. I was too young to take charge of her then. Besides, I left
+England shortly afterward and went to America."
+
+"Where is she now?" said Elena.
+
+"When I returned to England ... she was dead."
+
+"Well, there's nothing new under the sun of Rome--Donna Roma came from
+London," said Bruno.
+
+David Rossi felt the muscles of his face quiver.
+
+"Her father was an exile in England, too, and when he came back on the
+errand that ended in Elba, he gave her away to some people who treated
+her badly--I've heard old Teapot, the Countess, say so when she's been
+nagging her poor niece."
+
+David Rossi breathed painfully.
+
+"Strange if it should be the same," said Bruno.
+
+"But Mr. Rossi's Roma is dead," said Elena.
+
+"Ah, of course, certainly! What a fool I am!" said Bruno.
+
+David Rossi had a sense of suffocation, and he went out on to the lead
+flat.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+The Ave Maria was ringing from many church towers, and the golden day
+was going down with the sun behind the dark outline of the dome of St.
+Peter's, while the blue night was rising over the snow-capped Apennines
+in a premature twilight with one twinkling star.
+
+David Rossi's ears buzzed as with the sound of a mighty wind rushing
+through trees at a distance. Bruno's last words on top of Charles
+Minghelli's had struck him like an alarum bell heard through the mists
+of sleep, and his head was stunned and his eyes were dizzy. He buttoned
+his coat about him, and walked quickly to and fro on the lead flat by
+the side of the cage, in which the birds were already bunched up and
+silent.
+
+Before he was aware of the passing of time, the church bells were
+tolling the first hour of night. Presently he became aware of flares
+burning in the Piazza of St. Peter, and of the shadows of giant heads
+cast up on the walls of the vast Basilica. It was the crowd gathering
+for the last ceremonial of the Pope's Jubilee, and at the sound of a
+double rocket, which went up as with the crackle of musketry, little
+Joseph came running on to the roof, followed by his mother and Bruno.
+
+David Rossi took the boy into his arms and tried to dispel the gloom of
+his own spirits in the child's joy at the illuminations.
+
+"Ever see 'luminations before, Uncle David?" said Joseph.
+
+"Once, dear, but that was long ago and far away. I was a boy myself in
+those days, and there was a little girl with me then who was no bigger
+than you are now. But it's growing cold, there's frost in the air,
+besides it's late, and little boys must go to bed."
+
+"Well, God is God, and the Pope is His Prophet," said Bruno, when Elena
+and Joseph had gone indoors. "It was like day! You could see the
+lightning conductor over the Pope's apartment! Pshew!" blowing puffs of
+smoke from his twisted cigar. "Won't keep the lightning off, though."
+
+"Bruno!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Donna Roma's father would be Prince Volonna?"
+
+"Yes, the last prince of the old papal name. When the Volonna estates
+were confiscated, the title really lapsed, but old Vampire got the
+lands."
+
+"Did you ever hear that he bore any other name during the time he was in
+exile?"
+
+"Sure to, but there was no trial and nothing was known. They all changed
+their names, though."
+
+"Why ... what...." said David Rossi in an unsteady voice.
+
+"Why?" said Bruno. "Because they were all condemned in Italy, and the
+foreign countries were told to turn them out. But what am I talking
+about? You know all that better than I do, sir. Didn't your old friend
+go under a false name?"
+
+"Very likely--I don't know," said David Rossi, in a voice that testified
+to jangled nerves.
+
+"Did he ever tell you, sir?"
+
+"I can't say that he ever.... Certainly the school of revolution has
+always had villains enough, and perhaps to prevent treachery...."
+
+"You may say so! The devil has the run of the world, even in England.
+But I'm surprised your old friend, being like a father to you, didn't
+tell you--at the end anyway...."
+
+"Perhaps he intended to--and then perhaps...."
+
+David Rossi put his hand to his brow as if in pain and perplexity, and
+began again to walk backward and forward.
+
+A screamer in the piazza below cried "_Trib-un-a!_" and Bruno said:
+
+"That's early! What's up, I wonder? I'll go down and get a paper."
+
+Darkness had by this time re-invaded the sky, and the stars looked down
+from their broad dome, clear, sweet, white, and serene, putting to shame
+by their immortal solemnity the poor little mimes, the paltry
+puppet-shows of the human jackstraws who had just been worshipping at
+their self-made shrine.
+
+As David Rossi returned to the house, Elena, who was undressing the boy,
+saw a haggard look in his eyes, but Bruno, who was reading his evening
+journal, saw nothing, and cried out:
+
+"Helloa! Listen to this, sir. It's Olga. She's got a pen, I can tell
+you. 'Madame de Pompadour. Hitherto we have had the pleasure of having
+Madame ----, whose pressure on the State and on Italy's wise counsellors
+was only incidental, but now that the fates have given us a Madame
+Pompadour....' Then there's a leading article on your speech in the
+piazza. Praises you up to the skies. Look! 'Thank God we have men like
+the Honourable Rossi, who at the risk of....'"
+
+But with a clouded brow David Rossi turned away from him and passed into
+the sitting-room, and Bruno looked around in blank bewilderment.
+
+"Shall you want the lamp, sir?" said Elena.
+
+"Not yet, thank you," he answered through the open door.
+
+The wood fire was glowing on the hearth, and in the acute state of his
+nerves he shuddered involuntarily as its reflection in the window
+opposite looked back at him like a fiery eye. He opened the case of the
+phonograph, which had been returned to its place on the piano, and then
+from a drawer in the bureau he took a small cardboard box. The wood in
+the fire flickered at that moment and started some ghastly shadows on
+the ceiling, but he drew a cylinder from the box and slid it on to the
+barrel of the phonograph. Then he stepped to the door, shut and locked
+it.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+"Well!" said Bruno. "If that isn't enough to make a man feel as small as
+a sardine!"
+
+There was only one thing to do, but to conceal the nature of it Bruno
+flourished the newspaper and said:
+
+"Elena, I must go down to the lodge and read these articles to your
+father. Poor Donna Roma, she'll have to fly, I'm afraid. Bye-bye,
+Garibaldi-Mazzini! Early to bed, early to rise, and time enough to grow
+old, you know!... As for Mr. Rossi, he might be a sinner and a criminal
+instead of the hero of the hour! It licks me to little bits." And Bruno
+carried his dark mystery down to the cafe to see if it might be
+dispelled by a litre of autumnal light from sunny vineyards.
+
+Meantime, Joseph, being very tired, was shooting out a pettish lip
+because he had to go to bed without saying good-night to Uncle David; and
+his mother, making terms with this pretence, consented to bring down his
+nightdress, thinking Rossi might be out of the sitting-room by that
+time, and the boy be pacified. But when she returned to the dining-room
+the sitting-room door was still closed, and Joseph was pleading to be
+allowed to lie on the sofa until Uncle David carried him to bed.
+
+"I'm not asleep, mamma," came in a drowsy voice from the sofa, but
+almost at the same moment the measured breath slowed down, the
+watch-lights blinked themselves out, and the little soul slid away into
+the darksome kingdom of unconsciousness.
+
+Suddenly, in the silence of the room, Elena was startled by a voice. It
+came from the sitting-room. Was it Mr. Rossi's voice? No! The voice was
+older and feebler than Mr. Rossi's, and less clear and distinct. Could
+it be possible that somebody was with him? If so, the visitor must have
+arrived while she was in the bedroom above. But why had she not heard
+the knock? How did it occur that Joseph had not told her? And then the
+lamp was still on the dining-room table, and save for the firelight the
+sitting-room must be dark.
+
+A chill began to run through her blood, and she tried to hear what was
+said, but the voice was muffled by its passage through the wall, and she
+could only catch a word or two. Presently the strange voice, without
+stopping, was broken in upon by a voice that was clear and familiar, but
+now faltering with the note of pain: "I swear to God I will!"
+
+That was Mr. Rossi's voice, and Elena's head began to go round. Whom was
+he speaking to? Who was speaking to him? He went into the room alone, he
+was sitting in the dark, and yet there were two voices.
+
+A light dawned on Elena, and she could have laughed. What had terrified
+her as a sort of supernatural thing was only the phonograph! But after a
+moment a fresh tremor struck upon her in the agony of the exclamations
+with which David Rossi broke in upon the voice that was being reproduced
+by the machine. She could hear his words distinctly, and he was in great
+trouble. Hardly knowing what she did, she crept up to the door and
+listened. Even then, she could only follow the strange voice in
+passages, which were broken and submerged by the whirring of the
+phonograph, like the flight of a sea-bird which dips at intervals and
+leaves nothing but the wash of the waves.
+
+"David," said the voice, "when this shall come to your hands ... in my
+great distress of mind ... do not trifle with my request ... but
+whatever you decide to do ... be gentle with the child ... remember
+that ... Adieu, my son ... the end is near ... if death does not
+annihilate ... those who remain on earth ... a helper and advocate in
+heaven ... Adieu!" And interrupting these broken words were half-smothered
+cries and sobs from David Rossi, repeating again and again: "I will!
+I swear to God I will!"
+
+Elena could bear the pain no longer, and mustering up her courage she
+tapped at the door. It was a gentle tap, and no answer was returned. She
+knocked louder, and then an angry voice said:
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"It's I--Elena," she answered timidly. "Is anything the matter? Aren't
+you well, sir?"
+
+"Ah, yes," came back in a calmer voice, and after a shuffling sound as
+of the closing of drawers, David Rossi opened the door and came out.
+
+As he crossed the threshold he cast a backward glance into the dark
+room, as if he feared that some invisible hand would touch him on the
+shoulder. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood on his
+forehead, but he smiled, and in a voice that was a little hoarse, yet
+fairly under control, he said:
+
+"I'm afraid I've frightened you, Elena."
+
+"You're not well, sir. Sit down, and let me run for some cognac."
+
+"No! It's nothing! Only...."
+
+"Take this glass of water, sir."
+
+"That's good! I'm better now, and I'm ashamed. Elena, you mustn't think
+any more of this, and whatever I may do in the future that seems to you
+to be strange, you must promise me never to mention it."
+
+"I needn't _promise_ you that, sir," said Elena.
+
+"Bruno is a brave, bright, loyal soul, Elena, but there are times...."
+
+"I know--and I'll never mention it to anybody. But you've taken a chill
+on the roof at sunset looking at the illuminations--that's all it is!
+The nights are frosty now, and I was to blame that I didn't send out
+your cloak."
+
+Then she tried to be cheerful, and turning to the sleeping boy, said:
+
+"Look! He was naughty again and wouldn't go to bed until you came out to
+carry him."
+
+"The dear little man!" said David Rossi. He stepped up to the couch, but
+his pale face was preoccupied, and he looked at Elena again and said:
+
+"Where does Donna Roma live?"
+
+"Trinita de' Monti--eighteen," said Elena.
+
+"Is it late?"
+
+"It must be half-past eight at least, sir."
+
+"We'll take Joseph to bed then."
+
+He was putting his arms about the boy to lift him when a
+slippery-sloppery step was heard on the stairs, followed by a hurried
+knock at the door.
+
+It was the old Garibaldian porter, breathless, bareheaded, and in his
+slippers.
+
+"Father!" cried Elena.
+
+"It's she. She's coming up."
+
+At the next moment a lady in evening dress was standing in the hall. It
+was Donna Roma. She had unclasped her ermine cloak, and her bosom was
+heaving with the exertion of the ascent.
+
+"May I speak to Mr. Rossi?" she began, and then looking beyond Elena and
+seeing him, where he stood above the sleeping child, a qualm of
+faintness seemed to seize her, and she closed her eyes for a moment.
+
+David Rossi's face flushed to the roots of his hair, but he stepped
+forward, bowed deeply, led the way to the sitting-room, and, with a
+certain incoherency in his speech, said:
+
+"Come in! Elena will bring the lamp. I shall be back presently."
+
+Then, lifting little Joseph in his arms, he carried him up to bed,
+tucked him in his cot, smoothed his pillow, made the sign of the cross
+over his forehead, and came back to the sitting-room with the air of a
+man walking in a dream.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Being left alone, Roma looked around, and at a glance she took in
+everything--the thin carpet, the plain chintz, the prints, the
+incongruous furniture. She saw the photograph on the piano, still
+standing open, with a cylinder exposed, and in the interval of waiting
+she felt almost tempted to touch the spring. She saw herself, too, in
+the mirror above the mantel-piece, with her glossy black hair rolled up
+like a tower, from which one curly lock escaped on to her forehead, and
+with the ermine cloak on her shoulders over the white silk muslin which
+clung to her full figure.
+
+Then she heard David Rossi's footsteps returning, and though she was now
+completely self-possessed she was conscious of a certain shiver of fear,
+such as an actress feels in her dressing-room at the tuning-up of the
+orchestra. Her back was to the door and she heard the whirl of her skirt
+as he entered, and then he was before her, and they were alone.
+
+He was looking at her out of large, pensive eyes, and she saw him pass
+his hand over them and then bow and motion her to a seat, and go to the
+mantel-piece and lean on it. She was tingling all over, and a certain
+glow was going up to her face, but when she spoke she was mistress of
+herself, and her voice was soft and natural.
+
+"I am doing a very unusual thing in coming to see you," she said, "but
+you have forced me to it, and I am quite helpless."
+
+A faint sound came from him, and she was aware that he was leaning
+forward to see her face, so she dropped her eyes, partly to let him look
+at her, and partly to avoid meeting his gaze.
+
+"I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to
+disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me."
+
+He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and
+continued in the same soft voice:
+
+"If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can
+only come to you and tell you that you are wrong."
+
+"Wrong?"
+
+"Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong."
+
+"You mean to tell me...."
+
+He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly:
+
+"I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was
+false."
+
+There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she
+knew that he was looking at her still.
+
+"If ... if...."--his voice was thick and indistinct--"if you tell me that
+I have done you an injury...."
+
+"You have--a terrible injury."
+
+She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should
+see something in her face.
+
+"Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to
+accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I
+believe you will accept it."
+
+"If ... if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said--what
+I implied--was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it
+is all a cruel and baseless calumny...."
+
+She raised her head, looked him full in the face.
+
+"I _do_ give it," she said.
+
+"Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I
+believe you."
+
+She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on
+her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed
+with other men.
+
+"I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have
+lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so,
+perhaps it has been partly the fault of the men about me. When is a
+woman anything but what the men around have made her?"
+
+She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first
+man who has not praised and flattered me."
+
+"I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and
+perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to
+struggle and starve."
+
+She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face.
+
+"I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a
+man like you my life might have been different. I used to hope for such
+things long ago--that a man of high aims and noble purposes would come
+to meet me at the gate of life. Perhaps you have felt like that--that
+some woman, strong and true, would stand beside you for good or for ill,
+in your hour of danger and your hour of joy?"
+
+Her voice was not quite steady--she hardly knew why.
+
+"A dream! We all have our dreams," he said.
+
+"A dream indeed! Men came--he was not among them. They pampered every
+wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was
+dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my
+pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in
+secret ... what you said in public this morning."
+
+He was looking at her constantly with his wistful eyes, the eyes of a
+child, and through all the joy of her success she was conscious of a
+spasm of pain at the expression of his sad face and the sound of his
+tremulous voice.
+
+"We men are much to blame," he said. "In the battle of man with man we
+deal out blows and think we are fighting fair, but we forget that behind
+our foe there is often a woman--a wife, a mother, a sister, a
+friend--and, God forgive us, we have struck her, too."
+
+The half-smile that had gleamed on Roma's face was wiped out of it by
+these words, and an emotion she did not understand began to surge in her
+throat.
+
+"You speak of poor women who struggle and starve," she said. "Would it
+surprise you to hear that _I_ know what it is to do that? Yes, and to be
+friendless and alone--quite, quite alone in a cruel and wicked city."
+
+She had lost herself for a moment, and the dry glitter in her eyes had
+given way to a moistness and a solemn expression. But at the next
+instant she had regained her self-control, and went on speaking to avoid
+a painful silence.
+
+"I have never spoken of this to any other man," she said. "I don't know
+why I should mention it to you--to you of all men."
+
+She had risen to her feet, and he stepped up to her, and looking
+straight into her eyes he said:
+
+"Have you ever seen me before?"
+
+"Never," she answered.
+
+"Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you."
+
+She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into
+her face.
+
+"You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you
+something of mine."
+
+She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be
+pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge
+from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands.
+Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his
+voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.
+
+She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust
+and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the
+edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a
+little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.
+
+"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the
+house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever
+sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who
+nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can
+you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be
+homeless, nameless, and alone?"
+
+She looked up--a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not
+seen there before.
+
+"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who
+has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I
+never knew my mother."
+
+The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her
+knees.
+
+"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied
+to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name,
+placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung
+herself into the Tiber."
+
+Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.
+
+"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."
+
+"_Your_ mother?"
+
+"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in
+the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope
+was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo
+Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a
+child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the
+white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered
+them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to
+foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was
+sent to London."
+
+Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.
+
+"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty
+foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the
+streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of
+white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and
+were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then
+the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little
+southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in
+the darkness and the snow."
+
+Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to
+flow.
+
+"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man,
+a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor,
+especially to the poor of his own people."
+
+Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.
+
+"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English
+courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less
+cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for
+light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs
+with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to
+them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but
+his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live."
+
+Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her
+throat was choking, but she said:
+
+"What was he?"
+
+"A doctor."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and
+answered:
+
+"They called him Joseph Roselli."
+
+Roma half rose from her seat, then sank back, and the lace handkerchief
+dropped from her hand.
+
+"But I heard afterwards--long afterwards--that he was a Roman noble, one
+of the fearless few who had taken up poverty and exile and an unknown
+name for the sake of liberty and justice."
+
+Roma's head had fallen into her bosom, which was heaving with an emotion
+she could not conceal.
+
+"One day a letter came from Italy, telling him that a thousand men were
+waiting for him to lead them in an insurrection that was to dethrone an
+unrighteous king. It was the trick of a scoundrel who has since been
+paid the price of a hero's blood. I heard of this only lately--only
+to-night."
+
+There was silence for a moment. David Rossi had put one arm over his
+eyes.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He was enticed back from England to Italy; an English minister violated
+his correspondence with a friend, and communicated its contents to the
+Italian Government; he was betrayed into the hands of the police, and
+deported without trial."
+
+"Was he never heard of again?"
+
+"Once--only once--by the friend I speak about."
+
+Roma felt dizzy, as if she were coming near to some deep places; but she
+could not stop--something compelled her to go on.
+
+"Who was the friend?" she asked.
+
+"One of his poor waifs--a boy who owed everything to him, and loved and
+revered him as a father--loves and reveres him still, and tries to
+follow in the path he trod."
+
+"What--what was his name?"
+
+"David Leone."
+
+She looked at him for a moment without being able to speak. Then she
+said:
+
+"What happened to him?"
+
+"The Italian courts condemned him to death, and the English police drove
+him from England."
+
+"Then he has never been able to return to his own country?"
+
+"He has never been able to visit his mother's grave except by secret and
+at night, and as one who was perpetrating a crime."
+
+"What became of him?"
+
+"He went to America."
+
+"Did he ever return?"
+
+"Yes! Love of home in him, as in all homeless ones, was a consuming
+passion, and he came back to Italy."
+
+"Where--where is he _now_?"
+
+David Rossi stepped up to her, and said:
+
+"In this room."
+
+She rose:
+
+"Then _you_ are David Leone!"
+
+He raised one hand:
+
+"_David Leone is dead!_"
+
+There was silence for a moment. She could hear the thumping of her
+heart. Then she said in an almost inaudible whisper:
+
+"I understand. David Leone is dead, but David Rossi is alive."
+
+He did not speak, but his head was held up and his face was shining.
+
+"Are you not afraid to tell me this?"
+
+"No."
+
+Her eyes glistened and her lips quivered.
+
+"You insulted and humiliated me in public this morning, yet you think I
+will keep your secret?"
+
+"I _know_ you will."
+
+She felt a sensation of swelling in her throbbing heart, and with a slow
+and nervous gesture she held out her hand.
+
+"May I ... may I shake hands with you?" she said.
+
+There was a moment of hesitation, and then their hands seemed to leap at
+each other and clasp with a clasp of fire.
+
+At the next instant he had lifted her hand to his lips and was kissing
+it again and again.
+
+A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and instantly died
+away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not
+what. But _David Leone is dead_ rang in her ears, and at the same moment
+she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that
+house.
+
+Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly
+away without uttering another word. _She_ could not speak, _he_ could
+not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence
+could they hold their heads.
+
+"Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head
+and trembling limbs she stepped to the door.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a
+voice still soft, but coming more from within:
+
+"I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are
+not the man I thought you were."
+
+"Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you."
+
+A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said:
+
+"Then you had never seen me before?"
+
+And he answered after a moment:
+
+"I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day."
+
+"Forgive me for coming to you," she said.
+
+"I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against
+you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to
+right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a
+mistake--let me ask your forgiveness."
+
+"You mean publicly?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you
+to do that."
+
+"Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once
+started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the
+man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do--tell
+me, tell me."
+
+Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy.
+
+"There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult."
+
+"No matter! Tell me what it is."
+
+[Illustration: THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON A PRECIPICE.]
+
+"I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter."
+
+"Tell me, I beg of you."
+
+He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze
+as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.
+
+"I thought if--if you would come to my house when my friends are there,
+your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have
+injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything.
+But...."
+
+"Is that _all_?" he said.
+
+"Then you are not afraid?"
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.
+
+"I have thought of something else," she said.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the
+Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it...."
+
+"It would be coals of fire on my head."
+
+"You would need to sit to me."
+
+"When shall it be?"
+
+"To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon."
+
+"It will be years on years till then," he said.
+
+She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming
+eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she
+turned her face away.
+
+"Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of
+opening the door.
+
+"I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he
+answered.
+
+"I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and
+bitterness."
+
+"If I ever had such a feeling it is gone."
+
+"Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go.
+
+One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her
+shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look
+seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the
+physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross
+the space that had divided them.
+
+"Let me see you to the door?" he said, and her eyes said openly, "Will
+you?"
+
+They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and
+almost touching.
+
+"I forgot to give you my address--eighteen Trinita de' Monti," she said.
+
+"Eighteen Trinita de' Monti," he repeated.
+
+They had reached the second storey. "I am trying to remember," she said.
+"After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere."
+
+"In a dream, perhaps," he answered.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Perhaps in the dream I spoke about."
+
+They had reached the street, and Roma's carriage, a hired _coupe_, stood
+waiting a few yards from the door.
+
+They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave
+him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light.
+
+"Until to-morrow then," she said.
+
+"To-morrow morning," he replied.
+
+"To-morrow morning," she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between
+them she seemed to say, "Come early, will you not?--there is still so
+much to say."
+
+He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came
+back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door.
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and
+bowed through the glass.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                        PART THREE--ROMA
+
+
+                                I
+
+The Piazza of Trinita de' Monti takes its name from a church and convent
+which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill.
+
+A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height,
+goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna,
+which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their
+stalls around a fountain.
+
+At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all
+winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it,
+the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music
+of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two
+floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and
+entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was
+as a private apartment.
+
+Donna Roma's home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor,
+opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in
+red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by
+lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet.
+Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird
+in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its
+embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which
+looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of
+wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a
+statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides
+her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to
+familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was
+connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round
+with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her
+marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi.
+
+On the morning after Donna Roma's visit to the Piazza Navona a letter
+came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. "The man
+is a treasure and sees nothing," he wrote. And he added in a footnote:
+"Don't look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them
+send to you say nothing."
+
+But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady
+journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in
+literature and love.
+
+"I'm 'Penelope,'" she said. "'Penelope' of the _Day_, you know. Come to
+see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi's speech
+yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if
+you would like to reply through me to Olga's shameful libels.... Haven't
+you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady
+could allow them to pass unnoticed."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Roma, "that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!"
+
+Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove
+up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with
+little twinkling eyes.
+
+"Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of
+the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It's in all the newspapers--I've brought
+them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See--'A
+lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the
+Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.' Most
+damaging, isn't it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny
+the statement. Ah, don't be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets.
+Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy
+your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and
+explain before publishing anything."
+
+Roma said nothing, and the great man backed himself out with the air of
+one who had conferred a favour, but before going he had a favour to ask
+in return.
+
+"It's rumoured this morning, my dear, that the Government is about to
+organise a system of secret police--and quite right, too. You remember
+my nephew, Charles Minghelli? I brought him here when he came from
+Paris. Well, Charles would like to be at the head of the new force. The
+very man! Finds out everything that happens, from the fall of a pin to
+an attempt at revolution, and if Donna Roma will only say a word for
+him.... Thanks!... What a beautiful bust! Yours, of course? A
+masterpiece! Fit to put beside the masterpieces of old Rome."
+
+The Mayor was not yet out of the drawing-room when a third visitor was
+in the hall. It was Madame Sella, a fashionable modiste, with social
+pretensions, who contrived to live on terms of quasi-intimacy with her
+aristocratic customers.
+
+"Trust I am not _de trop_! I knew you wouldn't mind my calling in the
+morning. What a scandalous speech of that agitator yesterday! Everybody
+is talking about it. In fact, people say you will go away. It isn't
+true, is it? No? So glad! So relieved!... By the way, my dear, don't
+trouble about those stupid bills of mine, but ... I'm giving a little
+reception next week, and if the Baron would only condescend ... you'll
+mention it? A thousand thanks! Good-morning!"
+
+"Count Mario," announced Felice, and an effeminate old dandy came
+tripping into the room. He was Roma's landlord and the Italian
+Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
+
+"So good of you to see me, Donna Roma. Such an uncanonical hour, too,
+but I _do_ hope the Baron will not be driven to resign office on account
+of these malicious slanders. You think not? So pleased!"
+
+Then stepping to the window, "What a lovely view! The finest in Rome,
+and that's the finest in Europe! I'm always saying if it wasn't Donna
+Roma I should certainly turn out my tenant and come to live here
+myself.... That reminds me of something. I'm ... well, I'm tired of
+Petersburg, and I've written to the Minister asking to be transferred to
+Paris, and if somebody will only whisper a word for me.... How sweet of
+you! Adieu!"
+
+Roma was sick of all this insincerity, and feeling bitter against the
+person who had provoked it, when an unseen hand opened the door of a
+room on the Pincio side of the drawing-room, and the testy voice of her
+aunt called to her from within.
+
+The old lady, who had just finished her morning toilet and was redolent
+of scented soap, reclined in a white robe on a bed-sofa with a gilded
+mirror on one side of her and a little shrine on the other. Her bony
+fingers were loaded with loose rings, and a rosary hung at her wrist. A
+cat was sitting at her feet, with a gold cross suspended from its
+ribbon.
+
+"Ah, is it you at last? You come to me sometimes. Thanks!" she said in a
+withering whimper. "I thought you might have looked in last night, and I
+lay awake until after midnight."
+
+"I had a headache and went to bed," said Roma.
+
+"I never have anything else, but nobody thinks of me," said the old
+lady, and Roma went over to the window.
+
+"I suppose you are as headstrong as ever, and still intend to invite
+that man in spite of all my protests?"
+
+"He is to sit to me this morning, and may be here at any time."
+
+"Just so! It's no use speaking. I don't know what girls are coming to.
+When I was young a man like that wouldn't have been allowed to cross the
+threshold of any decent house in Rome. He would have been locked up in
+prison instead of sitting for his bust to the ward of the Prime
+Minister."
+
+"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I want to ask you a question."
+
+"Be quick, then. My head is coming on as usual. Natalina! Where's
+Natalina?"
+
+"Was there any quarrel between my father and his family before he left
+home and became an exile?"
+
+"Certainly not! Who said there was? Quarrel indeed! His father was
+broken-hearted, and as for his mother, she closed the gate of the
+palace, and it was never opened again to the day of her death. Natalina,
+give me my smelling salts. And why haven't you brought the cushion for
+the cat?"
+
+"Still, a man has to live his own life, and if my father thought it
+right...."
+
+"Right? Do you call it right to break up a family, and, being an only
+son, to let a title be lost and estates go to the dogs?"
+
+"I thought they went to the Baron, auntie."
+
+"Roma, aren't you ashamed to sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too,
+in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience.
+He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to
+the mercy of others--and all for what?"
+
+"For country, I suppose."
+
+"For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My
+head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling
+salts? And why will you always forget to...."
+
+Roma left the room, but the voice of her aunt scolding the maid followed
+her down to the studio.
+
+Her dog was below, and the black poodle received her with noisy
+demonstrations, but the humorous voice which usually saluted her with a
+cheery welcome she did not hear. Bruno was there, nevertheless, but
+silent and morose, and bending over his work with a sulky face.
+
+She had no difficulty in understanding the change when she looked at her
+own work. It stood on an easel in a compartment of the studio shut off
+by a glass partition, and was a head of David Rossi which she had
+roughed out yesterday. Not yet feeling sure which of the twelve apostles
+around the dish of her fountain was the subject that Rossi should sit
+for, she had decided to experiment on a bust. It was only a sketch, but
+it was stamped with the emotions that had tortured her, and it showed
+her that unconsciously her choice had been made already. Her choice was
+Judas.
+
+Last night she had laughed when looking at it, but this morning she saw
+that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the
+clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more
+until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write a letter.
+
+    "MY DEAR BARON,--Thanks for Cardinal Felice. He will be a great
+    comfort in this household if only he can keep the peace with
+    Monsignor Bruno, and live in amity with the Archbishop of Porter's
+    Lodge. Senator Tom-tit has been here to suggest some astonishing
+    arrangement about my fountain, and to ask me to mention his
+    nephew, Charles Minghelli, as a fit and proper person to be chief
+    of your new department of secret police. Madame de Trop and Count
+    Signorina have also been, but of their modest messages more anon.
+
+    "As for D. R., my barometer is 'set fair,' but it is likely to be
+    a stormier time than I expected. Last night I decked myself in my
+    best bib and tucker, and, in defiance of all precedent, went down
+    to his apartment. But the strange thing was that, whereas I had
+    gone to find out all about _him_, I hadn't been ten minutes in his
+    company before he told all about _me_--about my father, at all
+    events, and his life in London. I believe he knew me in that
+    connection and expected to appeal to my filial feelings. Did too,
+    so strong is the force of nature, and then and thereafter, and all
+    night long, I was like somebody who had been shaken in an
+    earthquake and wanted to cry out and confess. It was not until I
+    remembered what my father had been--or rather hadn't--and that he
+    was no more to me than a name, representing exposure to the
+    cruellest fate a girl ever passed through, that I recovered from
+    the shock of D. R.'s dynamite.
+
+    "He has promised to sit to me for his bust, and is to come this
+    morning!--Affectionately,                                    ROMA.
+
+    "P. S.--My gentleman has good features, fine eyes, and a wonderful
+    voice, and though I truly believe he trembles at the sight of a
+    woman and has never been in love in his life, he has an
+    astonishing way of getting at one. But I could laugh to think how
+    little execution his fusillade will make in this direction."
+
+"Honourable Rossi!" said Felice's sepulchral voice behind her, and at
+that moment David Rossi stepped into the studio.
+
+
+                                II
+
+In spite of her protestations, Roma was nervous and confused. Putting
+David Rossi to sit in the arm-chair on the platform for sitters, she
+rattled on about everything--her clay, her tools, her sponge, and the
+water they had forgotten to change for her. He must not mind if she
+stared at him--that wasn't nice, but it was necessary--and he must
+promise not to look at her work while it was unfinished--children and
+fools, you know--the proverb was musty.
+
+And while she talked she told herself that Thomas was the apostle he
+must stand for. These anarchists were all doubters, and the chief of
+doubters was the figure that would represent them.
+
+David Rossi did not speak much at first, and he did not join in Roma's
+nervous laughter. Sometimes he looked at her with a steadfast gaze,
+which would have been disconcerting if it had not been so simple and
+childlike. At length he looked out of the window to where the city lay
+basking in the sunshine, and birds were swirling in the clear blue sky,
+and began to talk of serious subjects.
+
+"How beautiful!" he said. "No wonder the English and Americans who come
+to Italy for health and the pleasure of art think it a paradise where
+every one should be content. And yet...."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Under the smile of this God-blessed land there is suffering such as can
+hardly be found in any other country of the world. Sometimes I think I
+cannot bear it any longer, and must go away, as others do."
+
+"A little more this way, please--thank you! That doesn't do much for
+them, does it?"
+
+"For them? No! God comfort the poor exiles--their path is a bridge of
+sighs! Poor, friendless, forgotten, huddled together in some dingy
+quarter of a foreign city, one a music-master, another a teacher of
+languages, a third a supernumerary at a theatre, a fourth an organ-man
+or even a beggar in the streets, yet weapons in the hand of God and
+shaking the thrones of the world!"
+
+"_You_ have seen something of that, haven't you?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"In London?"
+
+"Yes. There's an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district.
+It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer
+of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of
+Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty,
+has many bedfellows."
+
+"You lived there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of
+the window. "And your old friend, Doctor Roselli--he lived in Soho?"
+
+"In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and
+had a porch and trees in front of it."
+
+The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She
+took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.
+
+"A little more that way, please--thanks! Do you think your friend had a
+right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of
+his father--he would be broken-hearted."
+
+"He was--I've heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and
+forbade him to call himself his son."
+
+"There!"
+
+"But he would never hear a word against the old man. 'He's my
+father--that's enough,' he would say."
+
+The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma's fingers.
+
+"How stupid! But his mother...."
+
+"That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray
+him to come home. 'You are the best of mothers,' he would answer, 'but I
+cannot do so.'"
+
+"He never saw her again?"
+
+"Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength
+to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be
+merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!'"
+
+Roma's throat was throbbing. "He ... he was married?"
+
+"Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself."
+
+"Eyes the other way, at the window--thank you!... Did she know who he
+was?"
+
+"Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho."
+
+"They ... they were ... happy?"
+
+"As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty
+came...."
+
+"He became poor--very poor?"
+
+"Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then
+his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to
+be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now,
+one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them,
+but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the
+radiance of her sunny soul."
+
+Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ...
+died?"
+
+David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her
+death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very
+cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a
+cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days
+altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed
+her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little
+daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll
+on the floor."
+
+His voice had enough to do to control itself.
+
+"When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a
+blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now--the child
+with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the
+wall."
+
+His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma's eyes the tears
+were gathering.
+
+"We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh,
+the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!"
+
+Roma could not look at him any longer.
+
+"It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the
+grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the
+doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there
+too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed
+at the sights in the streets. Only six--and she had never been in a
+coach before!"
+
+At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the
+Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.
+
+"If you don't mind, I'll not try to do any more to-day," she said in a
+husky voice. "Somehow it isn't coming right this morning. It's like that
+sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow...."
+
+"With pleasure," said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.
+
+She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.
+
+"Not Thomas," she thought. "John--the beloved disciple! That would fit
+him exactly."
+
+As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope
+bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was
+missing.
+
+"He must have followed Mr. Rossi," said Roma, and without ado she read
+the letter.
+
+    "DEAR ROMA,--A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I
+    sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too,
+    for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it
+    to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly.
+    Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your
+    request and not come near you.--Affectionately,
+
+    "BONELLI."
+
+
+                                III
+
+Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.
+
+After coffee she went into the Countess's room as usual. The old lady
+had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.
+
+"Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the
+police?"
+
+"How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have
+expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a
+thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to
+anybody else while there was no judgment against your father."
+
+"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of
+kin."
+
+"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"
+
+"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"
+
+"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm
+tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of
+your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own
+right."
+
+"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and
+somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."
+
+The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and
+said:
+
+"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if
+you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice
+person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up
+for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten
+the baker's shop in London--or was it a pastry cook's, or what?--where
+they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given
+you away?"
+
+"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."
+
+"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches!
+Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"
+
+"I'm not defending my father, but still...."
+
+"Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in
+search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to
+go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and
+now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and
+forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be?
+Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had
+consigned you!"
+
+The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the
+drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had
+occurred.
+
+"Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work,
+work, work!"
+
+The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed.
+
+"Everybody has heard that _he_ is sitting to you, and everybody
+understands. That reminds me--I've a box at the new opera to-morrow
+night:--'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but
+if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular
+Samson...."
+
+"Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the
+room, with the black poodle bounding before him.
+
+"I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It followed
+me home yesterday, but I thought as I was coming to-day...."
+
+"Black has quite deserted me since Mr. Rossi appeared," said Roma, and
+then she introduced the deputy to the Princess.
+
+The little lady was effusive. "I was just saying, Honourable Rossi, that
+if you would honour my box at the opera to-morrow night...."
+
+David Rossi glanced at Roma.
+
+"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...."
+
+"With pleasure, Princess."
+
+"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel.
+Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I
+leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so
+well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer
+from it shockingly. Adieu!"
+
+Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work
+afresh.
+
+"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,"
+she said. "No, that way, please--eyes as before--thank you! About your
+old friend, I mean. He was a good man--I don't doubt that--but he made
+everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has
+anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the
+world?"
+
+"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must
+reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.
+
+"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter,
+for example. She was to lose everything--her father himself at last. How
+could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."
+
+"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except
+the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."
+
+A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
+
+"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all
+his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to
+gather itself up in the child."
+
+The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.
+
+"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house
+with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways--a gleam of the
+sun from our sunny Italy."
+
+She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her
+after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.
+
+"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she
+said.
+
+"He did."
+
+"How could he know what would happen?"
+
+"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant
+fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was
+stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness!
+Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel,
+and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be
+led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he
+did not love her."
+
+Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
+
+"He gave her away, you say?"
+
+"Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist
+it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break
+down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take
+her with him was impossible. A neighbour came--a fellow-countryman--he
+kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm only a poor man,' he
+said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two
+sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your
+heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at
+last."
+
+Roma listened with head aside.
+
+"One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her
+glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and
+would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed
+and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for
+the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets
+happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to
+bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one,
+and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side."
+
+Roma was holding her breath.
+
+"The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was
+playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were
+aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and
+the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The
+doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a
+glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too,
+and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said,
+'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too--you'll
+be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then
+you'll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.' But I could see
+that the doctor was not listening. 'Let us slip away now,' I said, and
+we stole out somehow."
+
+Roma's eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her
+hand.
+
+There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by
+the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns
+and children of Trinita de' Monti were singing their Benediction--_Ora
+pro nobis!_
+
+"I don't think I'll do any more to-day," said Roma. "The light is
+failing me, and my eyes...."
+
+"The day after to-morrow, then," said Rossi, rising.
+
+"But do you really wish to go to the opera to-morrow night?"
+
+He looked steadfastly into her face and answered "Yes."
+
+She understood him perfectly. He had sinned against her and he meant to
+atone. She could not trust herself to look at him, so she took the damp
+cloth and turned to cover up the clay. When she turned back he was gone.
+
+After dinner she replied to the Baron's letter of the day before.
+
+    "DEAR BARON,--I have misgivings about being on the right track,
+    and feel sorry you have set Minghelli to work so soon. Do Prime
+    Ministers appoint people at the mere mention of their names by
+    wards, second cousins, and lady friends generally? Wouldn't it
+    have been wise to make inquiries? What was the fault for which
+    Minghelli was dismissed in London?
+
+    "As for D. R., I must have been mistaken about his knowing me. He
+    doesn't seem to know me at all, and I believe his shot at me by
+    way of my father was a fluke. At all events, I'm satisfied that it
+    is going in the wrong direction to set Minghelli on his trail.
+    _Leave him to me alone._--Yours,                           ROMA.
+
+    "P.S.--Princess Potiphar and Don Saint Joseph are to take me to
+    the new opera to-morrow night. D. R. is also to be there, so he
+    will be seen with me in public!
+
+    "I have begun work on King David for a bust. He is not so
+    wonderfully good-looking when you look at him closely."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+The little Princess called for Roma the following night, and they drove
+to the opera in her magnificent English carriage. Already the theatre
+was full and the orchestra was tuning up. With the movement of people
+arriving and recognising each other there was an electrical atmosphere
+which affected everybody. Don Camillo came, oiled and perfumed, and when
+he had removed the cloaks of the ladies and they took their places in
+the front of the box, there was a slight tingling all over the house.
+This pleased the little Princess immensely, and she began to sweep the
+place with her opera-glass.
+
+"Crowded already!" she said. "And every face looking up at my box!
+That's what it is to have for your companion the most beautiful and the
+most envied girl in Rome. What a sensation! Nothing to what it will be,
+though, when your illustrious friend arrives."
+
+At that moment David Rossi appeared at the back, and the Princess
+welcomed him effusively.
+
+"So glad! So honoured! Gi-gi, let me introduce you--Honourable Rossi,
+Don Camillo Luigi Murelli."
+
+Roma looked at him--he had an air of distinction in a dress coat such as
+comes to one man in a thousand. He looked at Roma--she wore a white gown
+with violets on one shoulder and two rows of pearls about her beautiful
+white throat. The Princess looked at both of them, and her little eyes
+twinkled.
+
+"Never been here before, Mr. Rossi? Then you must allow me to explain
+everything. Take this chair between Roma and myself. No, you must not
+sit back. _You_ can't mind observation--so used to it, you know."
+
+Without further ado David Rossi took his place in front of the box, and
+then a faint commotion passed over the house. There were looks of
+surprise and whispered comments, and even some trills of laughter.
+
+He bore it without flinching, as if he had come for it and expected it,
+and was taking it as a penance.
+
+Roma dropped her head and felt ashamed, but the little Princess went on
+talking. "These boxes on the first tier are occupied by Roman society
+generally, those on the second tier mainly by the diplomatic corps, and
+the stalls are filled by all sorts and conditions of people--political
+people, literary people, even trades-people if they're rich enough or
+can pretend to be."
+
+"And the upper circles?" asked Rossi.
+
+"Oh," in a tired voice, "professional people, I think--Collegio Romano
+and University of Rome, you know."
+
+"And the gallery?"
+
+"Students, I suppose." Then eagerly, after bowing to somebody below,
+"Gi-gi, there's Lu-lu. Don't forget to ask him to supper.... All the
+beautiful young men of Rome are here to-night, Mr. Rossi, and presently
+they'll pay a round of calls on the ladies in the boxes."
+
+The voice of the Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the
+conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the
+lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a
+constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an
+almost unbroken chatter.
+
+The curtain fell on the first act without anybody knowing what the opera
+had been about, except that Samson loved a woman named Delilah, and the
+lords of the Philistines were tempting her to betray him. Students in
+the gallery, recognisable by their thin beards, shouted across at each
+other for the joy of shouting, and spoke by gestures to their professors
+below. People all over the house talked gaily on social subjects, and
+there was much opening and shutting of the doors of boxes. The beautiful
+young man called Lu-lu came to pay his respects to the Princess, and
+there was a good deal of gossip and laughter.
+
+The second act was more dramatic than the first, showing Samson in his
+character as a warrior, and when the curtain came down again, General
+Morra, the Minister of War, visited the Princess's box.
+
+"So you're taking lessons in the art of war from the professor who slew
+an army with the jaw-bone of an ass?" said Don Camillo.
+
+"Wish we could enlist a few thousands of him--jaw-bones as well," said
+the General. "The gentleman might be worth having at the War Office, if
+it was only as a _jettatura_." And then in a low voice to the Princess,
+with a glance at Roma, "Your beautiful young friend doesn't look so well
+to-night."
+
+The Princess shrugged her shoulders. "Of the pains of love one suffers
+but does not die," she whispered.
+
+"You surely cannot mean...."
+
+The Princess put the tip of her fan to his lips and laughed.
+
+Roma was conscious of a strange conflict of feelings. The triumph she
+had promised herself by David Rossi's presence with her in public--the
+triumph over the envious ones who would have rejoiced in her
+downfall--brought her no pleasure.
+
+The third act dealt with the allurements of Delilah, and was received
+with a good deal of laughter.
+
+"Ah, these sweet, round, soft things--they can do anything they like
+with the giants," said Don Camillo.
+
+The Baron, who had dined with the King, came round at the end of the
+next act, wearing a sash diagonally across his breast, with crosses,
+stars, and other decorations. He bowed to David Rossi with ceremonious
+politeness, greeted Don Camillo familiarly, kissed the hand of the
+Princess, and offered his arm to Roma to take her into the corridor to
+cool--she was flushed and overheated.
+
+"I see you are getting on, my child! Excellent idea to bring him here!
+Everybody is saying you cannot be the person he intended, so his trumpet
+has brayed to no purpose."
+
+"You received my letters?" she said in a faltering voice.
+
+"Yes, but don't be uneasy. I'm neither the prophet nor the son of a
+prophet if we are not on the right track. What a fortunate thought about
+the man Minghelli! An inspiration! You asked what his fault was in
+London--forgery, my dear!"
+
+"That's serious enough, isn't it?"
+
+"In a Secretary of Legation, yes, but in a police agent...."
+
+He laughed significantly, and she felt her skin creep.
+
+"Has he found out anything?" she asked.
+
+"Not yet, but he is clearly on the track of great things. It is nearly
+certain that your King David is a person wanted by the law."
+
+Her hand twitched at his arm, but they were turning at the end of the
+corridor and she pretended to trip over her train.
+
+"Some clues missing still, however, and to find them we are sending
+Minghelli to London."
+
+"London? Anything connected with my father?"
+
+"Possibly! We shall see. But there's the orchestra and here's your box!
+You're wonderful, my dear! Already you've undone the mischief he did
+you, and one half of your task is accomplished. Diplomatists! Pshaw!
+We'll all have to go to school to a girl. Adieu!"
+
+All through the next act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where
+the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the
+Princess said:
+
+"Everybody is looking this way, my dear! See what it is to be the most
+talked-of girl in Rome!"
+
+And then she felt David Rossi's hand on the back of her chair, and heard
+his soft voice saying:
+
+"The light is in your eyes, Donna Roma. Let me change places with you
+for a while."
+
+After that everything passed in a kind of confusion. She heard somebody
+say:
+
+"He's putting a good deal of heart into it, poor thing!"
+
+And somebody answered, "Yes, of broken heart apparently."
+
+Then there was a crash and the opera was over, and she was going out in
+a crowd on David Rossi's arm, and feeling as if she would fall if she
+dropped it.
+
+The magnificent English carriage drew up under the portico and all four
+of them got into it.
+
+"Grand Hotel!" cried Don Camillo. Then dropping back to his place he
+laughed and chanted:
+
+"And the dead he slew at his death were more than he slew in his
+life ... and he judged Israel twenty years."
+
+
+                                V
+
+A marshy air from the Campagna shrouded the city as with a fog, and
+pierced through the closed windows of the carriage, but there was warmth
+and glow in the Grand Hotel.
+
+One woman after another came in clothed in diamonds under the fur cloak
+which hung over her bare arms and shoulders, until the room was a
+dazzling blaze of jewels.
+
+People caught each other's eyes through lorgnettes and eye-glasses, and
+there were constant salutations. The men chattered, the women laughed,
+and there was an affectation of baby-talk at nearly every table. Then
+supper was served, glasses were held up as signals, and bright eyes
+began to play about the room, until the atmosphere was tingling with
+electric currents and heated by human passion.
+
+Roma sat facing the Princess. She was still confused and preoccupied,
+but when rallied upon her silence she brightened up for a moment and
+tried to look buoyant and happy. David Rossi, who was on her left, was
+still quiet and collected, but bore the same air as before, of a man
+going through a penance.
+
+This was observed by Don Camillo, who sat on the right of the Princess,
+and led to various little scenes.
+
+"Very good company here, Mr. Rossi. Always sure of seeing some beautiful
+young women," said Don Camillo.
+
+"And beautiful young men, apparently," said David Rossi.
+
+The beautiful young man called Lu-lu was there, and reaching over to Don
+Camillo, and speaking in a whisper between the puff of a cigarette and a
+sip of coffee, he said:
+
+"Why doesn't the Minister buy the man up? Easy enough to buy the press
+these days."
+
+"He's doing better than that," said Don Camillo. "He's drawing him from
+opposition by the allurements of...."
+
+"Office?"
+
+"No, the lady," whispered Don Camillo, but Roma heard him.
+
+She was ashamed. The innuendoes which belittled David Rossi were
+belittling herself as well, and she wanted to get up and fly.
+
+Rossi himself seemed to be unconscious of anything hurtful. Although
+silent, he was calm and cheerful, and his manner was natural and polite.
+The wife of one of the royal aides-de-camp sat next to him, and talked
+constantly of the King.
+
+Roma found herself listening to every word that was said to David Rossi,
+but she also heard a conversation that was going on at the other end of
+the table.
+
+"Wants to be another Cola di Rienzi, doesn't he?" said Lu-lu.
+
+"Another Christ," said Don Camillo. "He'll be asking for a crown of
+thorns by-and-by, and calling on the world to immolate him for the sake
+of humanity. Look! He's talking to the little Baroness, but he is
+fifteen thousand miles above the clouds at this moment."
+
+"Where does he come from, I wonder?" said Lu-lu, and then the two hands
+of Don Camillo played the invisible accordion.
+
+"Madame de Trop says his father was Master of the House to Prince
+Petrolium--vice-prince, you know, and brought up in the little palace,"
+said the Princess.
+
+"Don't believe a word of it," said Don Camillo, "and I'll wager he never
+supped at a decent hotel before."
+
+"I'll ask him! Listen now! Some fun," said the Princess. "Honourable
+Rossi!"
+
+"Yes, Princess," said David Rossi.
+
+The eyes of the little Princess swept the table with a sparkling light.
+
+"Beautiful room, isn't it?"
+
+"Beautiful."
+
+"Never been here before, I suppose?"
+
+David Rossi looked steadfastly into her eyes and answered, "Oh yes,
+Princess. When I first returned to Italy eight years ago I was a waiter
+in this house for a month."
+
+The sparkling face of the little Princess broke up like a snowball in
+the sun, and the two other men dropped their heads.
+
+Roma hardly knew what her own feelings were. Humiliation, shame,
+confusion, but above all, pride--pride in David Rossi's courage and
+strength.
+
+The white mist from the Campagna pierced to the bone as they came out by
+the glass-covered hall, and an old woman with an earthenware scaldino,
+crouching by the marble pillars in the street, held out a chill, damp
+hand and cried:
+
+"A penny for God's sake! May I die unconfessed if I've eaten anything
+since yesterday!... God bless you, my daughter! and the Holy Virgin and
+all the saints!"
+
+At the door of her house Roma parted from the Princess, and said to
+Rossi, as the carriage drove away, "Come early to-morrow. I've not yet
+been able to work properly somehow."
+
+She was restless and feverish, and she would have gone to bed
+immediately, but crossing the drawing-room she heard the fretful voice
+of her aunt saying, "Is that you, Roma?" and she had no choice but to go
+into the Countess's bedroom.
+
+A red lamp burned before the shrine, and the old lady was in an
+embroidered nightdress, but she was wide awake, and her eyes flashed and
+her lips trembled.
+
+"Ah, it's you at last! Sit down! I want to speak to you. Natalina!"
+cried the Countess. "Oh, dear me, the girl has gone to bed. Give me the
+cognac. There it is--on the dressing-table."
+
+She sipped the brandy, fidgeted with her cambric handkerchief, and said:
+
+"Roma, I'm surprised at you! You hadn't used to be so stupid! How? Don't
+you see what that woman is doing? What woman? The Princess, of course.
+Inviting you to share her box at the opera so that you may be seen in
+public with that man. She hates him like poison, but she would swallow
+anything to throw you and this Rossi together. Do you expect the Baron
+to approve of that? His enemy, and you on such terms with the man? Here,
+take back this cognac. I feel as if I would choke--Natalina...."
+
+"You're quite mistaken, Aunt Betsy," said Roma. "The Baron was at the
+opera and came into the box himself, and he approved of everything."
+
+"Tut! Don't tell me! Because he has some respect for himself and keeps
+his own counsel you are simple enough to think he will not be offended."
+
+The old lady's voice was dying down to a choking whisper, but she went
+on without a pause.
+
+"If you've no thought for yourself, you might have some for me. You are
+young, and anything may come to you, but I'm old and I'm tied down to
+this mattress, and what is to happen if the Baron takes offence? The
+income he allows us from your father's estates is under his own control
+still. He can cut it off at any moment, and if he does, what is to
+become of me?"
+
+Roma's bosom was swelling under her heavy breathing, her heart was
+beating violently and her head was dizzy. All the bitterness of the
+evening was boiling in her throat, and it burst out at length in a
+flood.
+
+"So that is all your moral protestations come to, is it?" she said.
+"Because the Baron is necessary to you and you cannot exist without him,
+you expect me to buy and sell myself according to your necessities."
+
+"Roma! What are you saying? Aren't you ashamed...."
+
+"Aren't _you_ ashamed? You've been trying to throw me into the arms of
+the Baron, and you haven't cared what would happen so long as I kept up
+appearances."
+
+"Oh, dear! I see what it is. You want to be the death of me! You will,
+too, before you've done. Natalina! Where is...."
+
+"More than that, you've poisoned my mind against my father, and because
+I couldn't remember him, you've brought me up to think of him as selfish
+and vain and indifferent to his own daughter. But my father wasn't that
+kind of man at all."
+
+"Who told you that, miss?"
+
+"Never mind who told me. My father was a saint and a martyr, and a great
+man, and he loved me with all his heart and soul."
+
+"Oh, my head! My poor head!... A martyr indeed! A socialist, a
+republican, a rebel, an anarchist, you mean!"
+
+"Never mind what his politics were. He was my father--that is
+enough--and you had no right to make _me_ think ill of him, whatever the
+world might do."
+
+Roma was superb at that moment, with her head thrown back, her eyes
+flaming, and her magnificent figure swelling and heaving under her
+clinging gown.
+
+"You'll kill me, I tell you. The cognac ... Natalina...." cried the
+Countess, but Roma was gone.
+
+Before going to bed Roma wrote to the Baron:
+
+    "Certain you are wrong. Why waste time sending Charles Minghelli
+    to London? Why? Why? Why? The forger will find out nothing, and if
+    he does, it will only be by exercise of his Israelitish art of
+    making bricks without straw. Stop him at once if you wish to save
+    public money and spare yourself personal disappointment. Stop him!
+    Stop him! Stop him!
+
+    "P.S.--To show you how far astray your man has gone, D. R.
+    mentioned to-night that he was once a waiter at the Grand Hotel!"
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Next morning David Rossi arrived early.
+
+"Now we must get to work in earnest," said Roma. "I think I see my way
+at last."
+
+It was not John the beloved disciple, John who lay in the bosom of his
+Lord. It was Peter, the devoted, stalwart, brave individual, human,
+erring but glorious Peter. "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my
+church."
+
+"Same position as before. Eyes the other way. Thank you!... Afraid you
+didn't enjoy yourself last night--no?"
+
+"At the theatre? I was interested. But the human spectacle was perhaps
+more to me than the artistic one. I am no artist, you see.... How did
+_you_ become a sculptor?"
+
+"Oh, I studied a little in the studios of Paris, where I went to school,
+you see."
+
+"But you were born in London?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you come to Rome?"
+
+"Rome was the home of my people, you know. And then there was my
+name--Roma!"
+
+"I knew a Roma long ago."
+
+"Really? Another Roma?"
+
+There was a tremor in her voice.
+
+"It was the little daughter of the friend I've spoken about."
+
+"How interest ... No, at the window, please--that will do."
+
+Roma was choking with a sense of duplicity, but save for a turn of the
+head David Rossi gave no sign.
+
+"She was only seven when I saw her last."
+
+"That was long ago, you say?"
+
+"Seventeen years ago."
+
+"Then she will be the same age as...."
+
+"The first time I saw her she was only three, and she was in her
+nightdress ready for bed."
+
+Roma laughed a little, but she knew that every note in her voice was
+confused and false.
+
+"She said her prayers with a little lisp at that time. 'Our Fader oo art
+in heben, alud be dy name.'"
+
+He laughed a little now, as he mimicked the baby voice. They laughed
+together, then they looked at each other, and then with serious eyes
+they turned away.
+
+"You'll think it strange, but I date my first conscious and definite
+aspiration to the memory of that hour."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Ten years afterward, when I was in America, the words of that prayer
+came back to me in Roma's little lisp. 'Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done
+on eard as it is in heben.'"
+
+For some time after that Roma worked on without speaking, feeling
+feverish and restless. But just as the silence was becoming painful, and
+she could bear it no longer, Felice came to announce lunch.
+
+"You'll stay? I want so much to work on while I'm in the mood," she
+said.
+
+"With pleasure," he replied.
+
+She ate hardly at all, for she was troubled by many misgivings. Did he
+know her? He did; he must; every word, every tone seemed to tell her
+that. Then why did he not speak out plainly? Because, having revealed
+himself to her, he was waiting for her to reveal herself to him. And why
+had she not done so? Because she was enmeshed in the nets of the society
+she lived in; because she was ashamed of the errand that had brought
+them together; and most of all because she had not dared to lay bare
+that secret of his life which, like an escaped convict, dragged behind
+it the broken chain of the prison-house.
+
+_David Leone is dead!_ To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact
+that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and
+listening at the grating of the confessional!
+
+No matter! She must do it! She must reveal herself as her heart and
+instinct might direct. She must claim the parentage of the noblest soul
+that ever died for liberty, and David Rossi must trust his secret to the
+bond of blood which would make it impossible for her to betray the
+foster-son of her own father.
+
+Having come to this conclusion, the light seemed to break in her heavy
+sky, but the clouds were charged with electricity. As they returned to
+the studio she was excited and a little hysterical, for she thought the
+time was near. At that moment a regiment of soldiers passed along under
+the ilex trees to the Pincio, with their band of music playing as they
+marched.
+
+"Ah, the dear old days!" said David Rossi. "Everything reminds me of
+them! I remember that when she was six...."
+
+"Roma?"
+
+"Yes--a regiment of troops returned from a glorious campaign, and the
+doctor took us to see the illuminations and rejoicings. We came to a
+great piazza almost as large as the piazza of St. Peter's, with
+fountains and a tall column in the middle of it."
+
+"I know--Trafalgar Square!"
+
+"Dense crowds covered the square, but we found a place on the steps of a
+church."
+
+"I remember--St. Martin's Church. You see, I know London."
+
+"The soldiers came in by the big railway station close by...."
+
+"Charing Cross, isn't it."
+
+"And they marched to the tune of the 'British Grenadiers' and the
+thunder of fifty thousand throats. And as their general rode past, a
+beacon of electric lights in the centre of the square blazed out like an
+aureole about the statue of a great Englishman who had died long ago for
+the cause which had then conquered."
+
+"Gordon!" she cried--she was losing herself every moment.
+
+"'Look, darling!' said the doctor to little Roma. And Roma said, 'Papa,
+is it God?' I was a tall boy then, and stood beside him. 'She'll never
+forget that, David,' he said."
+
+"And she didn't ... she couldn't ... I mean.... Have you ever told me what
+became of her?"
+
+She would reveal herself in a moment--only a moment--after all, it was
+delicious to play with this sweet duplicity.
+
+"Have you?" she said in a tremulous voice.
+
+His head was down. "Dead!" he answered, and the tool dropped out of her
+hand on to the floor.
+
+"I was five years in America after the police expelled me from London,
+and when I returned to England I went back to the little shop in Soho."
+
+She was staring at him and holding her breath. He was looking out of the
+window.
+
+"The same people were there, and their own daughter was a grown-up girl,
+but Roma was gone."
+
+She could hear the breath in her nostrils.
+
+"They told me she had been missing for a week, and then ... her body had
+been found in the river."
+
+She felt like one struck dumb.
+
+"The man took me to the grave. It was the grave of her mother in Kensal
+Green, and under her mother's name I read her own inscription--'Sacred
+also to the memory of Roma Roselli, found drowned in the Thames, aged
+twelve years.'"
+
+The warm blood which had tingled through her veins was suddenly frozen
+with horror.
+
+"Not to-day," she thought, and at that moment a faint sound of the band
+on the Pincio came floating in by the open window.
+
+"I must go," said David Rossi, rising.
+
+Then she recovered herself and began to talk on other subjects. When
+would he come again? He could not say. The parliamentary session opened
+soon. He would be very busy.
+
+When David Rossi was gone Roma went upstairs, and Natalina met her
+carrying two letters. One of them was going to the post--it was from the
+Countess to the Baron. The other was from the Baron to herself.
+
+    "MY DEAREST ROMA,--A thousand thanks for the valuable clue about
+    the Grand Hotel. Already we have followed up your lead, and we
+    find that the only David Rossi who was ever a waiter there gave as
+    reference the name of an Italian baker in Soho. Minghelli has gone
+    to London, and I am sending him this further information. Already
+    he is fishing in strange waters, and I am sure you are dying to
+    know if he has caught anything. So am I, but we must possess our
+    souls in patience.
+
+    "But, my dearest Roma, what is happening to your handwriting? It
+    is so shaky nowadays that I can scarcely decipher some of
+    it.--With love.
+                                                                "B."
+
+
+                                VII
+
+    "DEAR GUARDIAN,--But I'm not--I'm not! I'm not in the least
+    anxious to hear of what Mr. Minghelli is doing in London, because
+    I know he is doing nothing, and whatever he says, either through
+    his own mouth or the mouth of his Italian baker in Soho, I shall
+    never believe a word he utters. As to Mr. Rossi, I am now
+    perfectly sure that he does not identify me at all. He believes my
+    father's daughter is dead, and he has just been telling me a
+    shocking story of how the body of a young girl was picked out of
+    the Thames (about the time you took me away from London) and
+    buried in the name of Roma Roselli. He actually saw the grave and
+    the tombstone! Some scoundrel has been at work somewhere. Who is
+    it, I wonder?--Yours,
+                                                              "R. V."
+
+Having written this letter in the heat and haste of the first moment
+after David Rossi's departure, she gave it to Bruno to post immediately.
+
+"Just so!" said Bruno to himself, as he glanced at the superscription.
+
+Next morning she dressed carefully, as if expecting David Rossi as
+usual, but when he did not come she told herself she was glad of it.
+Things had happened too hurriedly; she wanted time to breathe and to
+think.
+
+All day long she worked on the bust. It was a new delight to model by
+memory, to remember an expression and then try to reproduce it. The
+greatest difficulty lay in the limitation of her beautiful art. There
+were so many memories, so many expressions, and the clay would take but
+one of them.
+
+The next day after that she dressed herself as carefully as before, but
+still David Rossi did not come. No matter! It would give her time to
+think of all he had said, to go over his words and stories.
+
+Did he know her? Certainly he knew her! He must have known from the
+first that she was her father's daughter, or he would never have put
+himself in her power. His belief in her was such a sweet thing. It was
+delicious.
+
+Next day also David Rossi did not come, and she began to torture herself
+with misgivings. Was he indifferent? Had all her day-dreams been
+delusions? Little as she wished to speak to Bruno, she was compelled to
+do so.
+
+Bruno hardly lifted his eyes from his chisel and soft iron hammer.
+"Parliament is to meet soon," he said, "and when a man is leader of a
+party he has enough to do, you know."
+
+"Ask him to come to-morrow. Say I wish for one more sitting--only one."
+
+"I'll tell him," said Bruno, with a bob of his head over the block of
+marble.
+
+But David Rossi did not come the next day either, and Bruno had no
+better explanation.
+
+"Busy with his new 'Republic' now, and no time to waste, I can tell
+you."
+
+"He will never come again," she thought, and then everything around and
+within her grew dark and chill.
+
+She was sleeping badly, and to tire herself at night she went out to
+walk in the moonlight along the path under the convent wall. She walked
+as far as the Pincio gates, where the path broadens to a circular space
+under a table of clipped ilexes, beneath which there is a fountain and
+a path going down to the Piazza di Spagna. The night was soft and very
+quiet, and standing under the deep shadows of the trees, with only the
+cruel stars shining through, and no sound in the air save the sobbing of
+the fountain, she heard a man's footstep on the gravel coming up from
+below.
+
+It was David Rossi. He passed within a few yards, yet he did not see
+her. She wanted to call to him, but she could not do so. For a moment he
+stood by the deep wall that overlooks the city, and then turned down the
+path which she had come by. A trembling thought that was afraid to take
+shape held her back and kept her silent, but the stars beat kindly in an
+instant and the blood in her veins ran warm. She watched him from where
+she stood, and then with a light foot she followed him at a distance.
+
+It was true! He stopped at the parapet before the church, and looked up
+at her windows. There was a light in one of them, and his eyes seemed to
+be steadfastly fixed on it. Then he turned to go down the steps. He went
+down slowly, sometimes stopping and looking up, then going on again.
+Once more she tried to call to him. "Mr. Rossi." But her voice seemed to
+die in her throat. After a moment he was gone, the houses had hidden
+him, and the church clock was striking twelve.
+
+When she returned to her bedroom and looked at herself in the glass, her
+face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling. She did not want to sleep
+at all that night, for the beating of her heart was like music, and the
+moon and stars were singing a song.
+
+"If I could only be quite, quite sure!" she thought, and next morning
+she tackled Bruno.
+
+Bruno was no match for her now, but he put down his shaggy head, like a
+bull facing a stone fence.
+
+"Tell you the honest truth, Donna Roma," he said, "Mr. Rossi is one of
+those who think that when a man has taken up a work for the world it is
+best if he has no ties of family."
+
+"Really? Is that so?" she answered. "But I don't understand. He can't
+help having father and mother, can he?"
+
+"He can help having a wife, though," said Bruno, "and Mr. Rossi thinks a
+public man should be like a priest, giving up home and love and so
+forth, that others may have them more abundantly."
+
+"So for that reason...."
+
+"For that reason he doesn't throw himself in the way of temptation."
+
+"And you think that's why...."
+
+"I think that's why he keeps out of the way of women."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't care for them--some men don't, you know."
+
+"Care for them! Mr. Rossi is one of the men who think pearls and
+diamonds of women, and if he had to be cast on a desert island with
+anybody, he would rather have one woman than a hundred thousand men."
+
+"Ah, yes, but perhaps there's no 'one woman' in the world for him yet,
+Bruno."
+
+"Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't," said Bruno, and his hammer fell
+on the chisel and the white sparks began to fly.
+
+"_You_ would soon see if there were, wouldn't you, Bruno?"
+
+"Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn't," said Bruno, and then he wagged
+his wise head and growled, "In the battle of love he wins who flies."
+
+"Does _he_ say that, Bruno?"
+
+"He does. One day our old woman was trying to lead him on a bit. 'A
+heart to share your joys and sorrows is something in this world,' says
+she."
+
+"And what did Mr. Rossi say?"
+
+"'A woman's love is the sweetest thing in the world,' he said; 'but if I
+found myself caring too much for anybody I should run away.'"
+
+"Did Mr. Rossi really say that, Bruno?"
+
+"He did--upon my life he did!"
+
+Bruno had the air of a man who had achieved a moral victory, and Roma,
+whose eyes were dancing with delight, wanted to fall on his stupid,
+sulky face and kiss and kiss it.
+
+During the afternoon of the day following, the Princess Bellini came in
+with Don Camillo. "Here's Gi-gi!" she cried. "He comes to say there's to
+be a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow. If you'd like to
+come I'll take you, and if you think Mr. Rossi will come too...."
+
+"If he rides and has time to spare," said Roma.
+
+"Precisely," said Don Camillo. "The worst of being a prophet is that it
+gives one so much trouble to agree with one's self, you know. Rumour
+says that our illustrious Deputy has been a little out of odour with his
+own people lately, and is now calling a meeting to tell the world what
+his 'Creed and Charter' doesn't mean. Still a flight into the country
+might do no harm even to the stormy petrel of politics, and if any one
+could prevail with him...."
+
+"Leave that to Roma, and see to everything else yourself," said the
+Princess. "On the way to that tiresome tea-room in the Corso, my dear.
+'Charity and Work,' you know. Committee for the protection of poor
+girls, or something. But we must see the old aunt first, I suppose. Come
+in, Gi-gi!"
+
+Three minutes afterwards Roma was dressed for the street, and her dog
+was leaping and barking beside her.
+
+"Carriage, Eccellenza?"
+
+"Not to-day, thank you! Down, Black, down! Keep the dog from following
+me, Felice."
+
+As she passed the lodge the porter handed her an envelope bearing the
+seal of the Minister, but she did not stop to open it. With a light step
+she tripped along the street, hailed a _coupe_, cried "Piazza Navona,"
+and then composed herself to read her letter.
+
+When the Princess and Don Camillo came out of the Countess's room Roma
+was gone, and the dog was scratching at the inside of the outer door.
+
+"Now where can she have gone to so suddenly, I wonder? And there's her
+poor dog trying to follow her!"
+
+"Is that the dog that goes to the Deputy's apartment?"
+
+"Certainly it is! His name is Black. I'll hold him while you open the
+door, Felice. There! Good dog! Good Black! Oh, the brute, he has broken
+away from me."
+
+"Black! Black! Black!"
+
+"No use, Felice. He'll he half way through the streets by this time."
+
+And going down the stairs the little Princess whispered to her
+companion: "Now, if Black comes home with his mistress this evening it
+will be easy to see where _she_ has been."
+
+Meantime Roma in her _coupe_ was reading her letter--
+
+    "DEAREST,--Been away from Rome for a few days, and hence the delay
+    in answering your charming message. Don't trouble a moment about
+    the dead-and-buried nightmare. If the story is true, so much the
+    better. R. R. _is_ dead, thank God, and her unhappy wraith will
+    haunt your path no more. But if Dr. Roselli knew nothing about
+    David Rossi, how comes it that David Rossi knows so much about Dr.
+    Roselli? It looks like another clue. Thanks again. A thousand
+    thanks!
+
+    "Still no news from London, but though I pretend neither to
+    knowledge nor foreknowledge, I am still satisfied that we are on
+    the right track.
+
+    "Dinner-party to-night, dearest, and I shall be obliged to you if
+    I may borrow Felice. Your Princess Potiphar, your Don Saint
+    Joseph, your Count Signorina, your Senator Tom-tit, and--will you
+    believe it?--your Madame de Trop! I can deny you nothing, you see,
+    but I am cruelly out of luck that my dark house must lack the
+    light of all drawing-rooms, the sunshine of all Rome!
+
+    "How clever of you to throw dust in the eyes of your aunt herself!
+    And these red-hot prophets in petticoats, how startled they will
+    soon be! Adieu!
+                                                           "BONELLI."
+
+As the _coupe_ turned into the Piazza Navona, Roma was tearing the
+letter into shreds and casting them out of the window.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+While Roma climbed the last flight of stairs to David Rossi's apartment,
+with the slippery-sloppery footsteps of the old Garibaldian going before
+her, Bruno's thunderous voice was rocking through the rooms above.
+
+"Look at him, Mr. Rossi! Republican, democrat, socialist, and rebel!
+Upsets the government of this house once a day regularly--dethrones the
+King and defies the Queen! Catch the piggy-wiggy, Uncle David! Here goes
+for it--one, two, three, and away!"
+
+Then shrieks and squeals of childish laughter, mingled with another
+man's gentler tones, and a woman's frightened remonstrance. And then
+sudden silence and the voice of the Garibaldian in a panting whisper,
+saying, "She's here again, sir!"
+
+"Donna Roma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come in," cried David Rossi, and from the threshold of the open hall
+she saw him, in the middle of the floor, with a little boy pitching and
+heaving like a young sea-lion in his arms.
+
+He slipped the boy to his feet and said, "Run to the lady and kiss her
+hand, Joseph." But the boy stood off shyly, and, stepping into the room,
+Roma knelt to the child and put her arms about him.
+
+"What a big little man, to be sure! His name is Joseph, is it? And
+what's his age? Six! Think of that! Have I seen him before, Mrs. Rocco?
+Yes? Perhaps he was here the day I called before? Was he? So? How stupid
+of me to forget! Ah, of course, now I remember, he was in his
+nightdress and asleep, and Mr. Rossi was carrying him to bed."
+
+The mother's heart was captured in a moment. "Do you love children,
+Donna Roma?"
+
+"Indeed, I do!"
+
+During this passage between the women Bruno had grunted his way out of
+the room, and was now sidling down the staircase, being suddenly smitten
+by his conscience with the memory of a message he had omitted to
+deliver.
+
+"Come, Joseph," said Elena. But Joseph, who had recovered from his
+bashfulness, was in no hurry to be off, and Roma said:
+
+"No, no! I've only called for a moment. It is to say," turning to David
+Rossi, "that there's a meet of the foxhounds on the Campagna to-morrow,
+and to tell you from Don Camillo that if you ride and would care to
+go...."
+
+"_You_ are going?"
+
+"With the Princess, yes! But there will be no necessity to follow the
+hounds all day long, and perhaps coming home...."
+
+"I will be there."
+
+"How charming! That's all I came to say, and so...."
+
+She made a pretence of turning to go, but he said:
+
+"Wait! Now that you are here I have something to show to you."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"Come in," he cried, and, blowing a kiss to the boy, Roma followed Rossi
+into the sitting-room.
+
+"One moment," he said, and he left her to go into the bedroom.
+
+When he came back he had a small parcel in his hands wrapped in a lace
+handkerchief.
+
+"We have talked so much of my old friend Roselli that I thought you
+might like to see his portrait."
+
+"His portrait? Have you really got his portrait?"
+
+"Here it is," and he put into her hands the English photograph which
+used to hang by his bed.
+
+She took it eagerly and looked at it steadfastly, while her lips
+trembled and her eyes grew moist. There was silence for a moment, and
+then she said, in a voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was
+the father of little Roma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is it very like him?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on
+the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she
+lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath,
+and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears
+and said:
+
+"That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my
+little namesake."
+
+David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said
+with another nervous laugh:
+
+"Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best
+father a girl ever had, but she...."
+
+"She was a child," said David Rossi.
+
+"Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...."
+
+"She was only seven, remember."
+
+"Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a
+little selfish?"
+
+"You mustn't abuse my friend Roma."
+
+Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a
+sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best.
+And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father
+had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..."
+
+Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion.
+
+"I want to give you that portrait," he said.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You would like to have it?"
+
+"More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?"
+
+"Beyond anything I possess."
+
+"Then how can I take it from you?"
+
+"There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it,
+and I am contented."
+
+It was impossible to hear the strain any longer without crying out, and
+to give physical expression to her feelings she lifted the portrait to
+her lips again and kissed and kissed it.
+
+He smiled at her, she smiled back; the silence was hard to break, but
+just as they were on the edge of the precipice the big shock-head of the
+little boy looked in on them through the chink of the door and cried:
+
+"You needn't ask me to come in, 'cause I won't!"
+
+By the blessed instinct of the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood
+the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," she said.
+
+"_Would_ you?" said Joseph, and in he came, with a face shining all
+over.
+
+"Hurrah! A piano!" said Roma, leaping up and seating herself at the
+instrument. "What shall I play for you, Joseph?"
+
+Joseph was indifferent so long as it was a song, and with head aside,
+Roma touched the keys and pretended to think. After a moment of sweet
+duplicity she struck up the air she had come expressly to play.
+
+It was the "British Grenadiers." She sang a verse of it. She sang in
+English and with the broken pronunciation of a child--
+
+    "Some talk of Allisander, and some of Hergoles;
+    Of Hector and Eyesander, and such gate names as these..."
+
+Suddenly she became aware that David Rossi was looking at her through
+the glass on the mantel-piece, and to keep herself from crying she began
+to laugh, and the song came to an end.
+
+At the same moment the door burst open with a bang, and the dog came
+bounding into the room. Behind it came Elena, who said:
+
+"It was scratching at the staircase door, and I thought it must have
+followed you."
+
+"Followed Mr. Rossi, you mean. He has stolen my dog's heart away from
+me," said Roma.
+
+"That is what I say about my boy's," said Elena.
+
+"But Joseph is going for a soldier, I see."
+
+"It's a porter he wants to be."
+
+"Then so he shall--he shall be my porter some day," said Roma, whereupon
+Joseph was frantic with delight, and Elena was saying to herself, "What
+wicked lies they tell of her--I wonder they are not ashamed!"
+
+The fire was going down and the twilight was deepening.
+
+"Shall I bring you the lamp, sir?" said Elena.
+
+"Not for me," said Roma. "I am going immediately." But even when mother
+and child had gone she did not go. Unconsciously they drew nearer and
+nearer to each other in the gathering darkness, and as the daylight died
+their voices softened and there were quiet questions and low replies.
+The desire to speak out was struggling in the woman's heart with the
+delight of silence. But she would reveal herself at last.
+
+"I have been thinking a great deal about the story they told you in
+London--of Roma's death and burial, I mean. Had you no reason to think
+it might be false?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"It never occurred to you that it might be to anybody's advantage to say
+that she was dead while she was still alive?"
+
+"How could it? Who was to perpetrate a crime for the sake of the
+daughter of a poor doctor in Soho--a poor prisoner in Elba?"
+
+"Then it was not until afterward that you heard that the poor doctor was
+a great prince?"
+
+"Not until the night you were here before."
+
+"And you had never heard anything of his daughter in the interval?"
+
+"Once I had! It was on the same day, though. A man came here from London
+on an infamous errand..."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"Charles Minghelli."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said Roma Roselli was not dead at all, but worse than dead--that she
+had fallen into the hands of an evil man, and turned out badly."
+
+"Did you ... did you believe that story?"
+
+"Not one word of it! I called the man a liar, and flung him out of the
+house."
+
+"Then you ... you think ... if she is still living...."
+
+"My Roma is a good woman."
+
+Her face burned up to the roots of her hair. She choked with joy, she
+choked with pain. His belief in her purity stifled her. She could not
+speak now--she could not reveal herself. There was a moment of silence,
+and then in a tremulous voice she said:
+
+"Will you not call _me_ Roma, and try to think I am your little friend?"
+
+When she came to herself after that she was back in her own apartment,
+in her aunt's bedroom, and kissing the old lady's angular face. And the
+Countess was breaking up the stupefaction of her enchantment with sighs
+and tears and words of counsel.
+
+"I only want you to preserve yourself for your proper destiny, Roma. You
+are the _fiancee_ of the Baron, as one might say, and the poor maniac
+can't last long."
+
+Before dressing for dinner Roma replied to the Minister:--
+
+    "DEAR BARON BONELLI,--Didn't I tell you that Minghelli would find
+    out nothing? I am now more than ever sure that the whole idea is
+    an error. Take my advice and drop it. Drop it! Drop it! I shall,
+    at all events!--Yours,
+
+    "ROMA VOLONNA.
+
+    "Success to the dinner! Am sending Felice. He will give you this
+    letter.--R. V."
+
+
+                                IX
+
+It was the sweetest morning of the Roman winter. The sun shone with a
+gentle radiance, and the motionless air was fragrant with the odour of
+herbs and flowers. Outside the gate which leads to the old Appian Way
+grooms were waiting with horses, blanketed and hooded, and huntsmen in
+red coats, white breeches, pink waistcoats, and black boots, were
+walking their mounts to the place appointed for the meet. In a line of
+carriages were many ladies, some in riding-habits, and on foot there was
+a string of beggars, most of them deformed, with here and there, at
+little villages, a group of rosy children watching the procession as it
+passed.
+
+The American and English Ambassadors were riding side by side behind a
+magnificent carriage with coachman and tiger in livery of scarlet and
+gold.
+
+"Who would think, to look on a scene like this, that the city is
+seething with dissatisfaction?" said the Englishman.
+
+"Rome?" said the American. "Its aristocratic indifference will not allow
+it to believe that here, as everywhere else in the world, great and
+fatal changes are going on all the time. These lands, for example--to
+whom do they belong? Nominally to the old Roman nobility, but really to
+the merchants of the Campagna--a company of middlemen who grew rich by
+leasing them from the princes and subletting them to the poor."
+
+"And the nobles themselves--how are they faring?"
+
+"Badly! Already they are of no political significance, and the State
+knows them not."
+
+"They don't appear to go into the army or navy--what do they go into?"
+
+"Love!"
+
+"And meantime the Italian people?"
+
+"Meantime the great Italian people, like the great English people, the
+great German people, and the people of every country where the
+privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep
+all this sea-wrack high and dry on to the rocks."
+
+"And this wave of the people," said the Englishman, inclining his head
+toward the carriage in front, "is represented by men like friend Rossi?"
+
+"Would be, if he could keep himself straight," said the American.
+
+"And where is the Tarpeian rock of friend Rossi's politics?"
+
+The American slapped his glossy boot with his whip, lowered his voice,
+and said, "There!"
+
+"Donna Roma?"
+
+"A fortnight ago you heard his speech on the liveries of scarlet and
+gold, and look! He's under them himself already."
+
+"You think there is no other inference?"
+
+The American shook his head. "Always the way with these leaders of
+revolution. It's Samson's strength with Samson's weakness in every
+mother's son of them."
+
+"Good-morning, General Potter!" said a cheerful voice from the carriage
+in front.
+
+It was Roma herself. She sat by the side of the little Princess, with
+David Rossi on the seat before them. Her eyes were bright, there was a
+glow in her cheeks, and she looked lovelier than ever in her
+close-fitting riding-habit.
+
+At the meeting-place there was a vast crowd of on-lookers, chiefly
+foreigners, in cabs and carriages and four-in-hand coaches from the
+principal hotels. The Master of the Hunt was ready, with his impatient
+hounds at his feet, and around him was a brilliant scene. Officers in
+blue, huntsmen in red, ladies in black, jockeys in jackets, a sea of
+feathers and flowers and sunshades, with the neighing of the horses and
+yapping of the dogs, the vast undulating country, the smell of earth and
+herbs, and the morning sunlight over all.
+
+Don Camillo was waiting with horses for his party, and they mounted
+immediately. The horse for Roma was a quiet bay mare with limpid eyes.
+General Potter helped her to the saddle, and she went cantering through
+the long lush grass.
+
+"What has your charming young charge been doing with herself, Princess?"
+said the American. "She was always beautiful, but to-day she's lovely."
+
+"She's like Undine after she had found her soul," said the Englishman.
+
+The little Princess laughed. "Love and a cough cannot be hidden,
+gentlemen," she whispered, with a look toward David Rossi.
+
+"You don't mean...."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Meantime Rossi, in ordinary walking dress, was approaching the horse he
+was intended to ride. It was a high strong-limbed sorrel with wild eyes
+and panting nostrils. The English groom who held it was regarding the
+rider with a doubtful expression, and a group of booted and spurred
+huntsmen were closing around.
+
+To everybody's surprise, the deputy gathered up the reins and leaped
+lightly to the saddle, and at the next moment he was riding at Roma's
+side. Then the horn was sounded, the pack broke into music, the horses
+beat their hoofs on the turf and the hunt began.
+
+There was a wall to jump first, and everybody cleared it easily until it
+came to David Rossi's turn, when the sorrel refused to jump. He patted
+the horse's neck and tried it again, but it shied and went off with its
+head between its legs. A third time he brought the sorrel up to the
+wall, and a third time it swerved aside.
+
+The hunters had waited to watch the result, and as the horse came up for
+a fourth trial, with its wild eyes flashing, its nostrils quivering, and
+its forelock tossed over one ear, it was seen that the bridle had broken
+and Rossi was riding with one rein.
+
+"He'll be lucky if he isn't hurt," said some one.
+
+"Why doesn't he give it the whip over its quarters?" said another.
+
+But David Rossi only patted his horse until it came to the spot where it
+had shied before. Then he reached over its neck on the side of the
+broken rein, and with open hand struck it sharply across the nose. The
+horse reared, snorted, and jumped, and at the next moment it was
+standing quietly on the other side of the wall.
+
+Roma, on her bay mare, was ashen pale, and the American Ambassador
+turned to her and said:
+
+"Never knew but one man to do a thing like that, Donna Roma."
+
+Roma swallowed something in her throat and said: "Who was it, General
+Potter?"
+
+"The present Pope when he was a Noble Guard."
+
+"He can ride, by Jove!" said Don Camillo.
+
+"That sort of stuff has to be in a man's blood. Born in him--must be!"
+said the Englishman.
+
+And then David Rossi came up with a new bridle to his sorrel, and Sir
+Evelyn added: "You handle a horse like a man who began early, Mr.
+Rossi."
+
+"Yes," said David Rossi; "I was a stable-boy two years in New York, your
+Excellency."
+
+At that moment the huntsman who was leading with two English terriers
+gave the signal that the fox was started, whereupon the hounds yelped,
+the whips whistled, and the horses broke into a canter.
+
+Two hours afterwards the poor little creature that had been the origin
+of the holiday was tracked to earth and killed. Its head and tail were
+cut off, and the rest of its body was thrown to the dogs. After that
+flasks were taken out, healths were drunk, cheers were given, and then
+the hunt broke up, and the hunters began to return at an easy trot.
+
+Roma and David Rossi were riding side by side, and the Princess was a
+pace or two behind them.
+
+"Roma!" cried the Princess, "what a stretch for a gallop!"
+
+"Isn't it?" said Roma, and in a moment she was off.
+
+"I believe her mare has mastered her," said the Princess, and at the
+next instant David Rossi was gone too.
+
+"Peace be with them! They're a lovely pair!" said the Princess,
+laughing. "But we might as well go home. They are like Undine, and will
+return no more."
+
+
+                                X
+
+Meantime, with the light breeze in her ears, and the beat of her horse's
+hoofs echoing among the aqueducts and tombs, Roma galloped over the
+broad Campagna. After a moment she heard some one coming after her, and
+for joy of being pursued she whipped up and galloped faster. Without
+looking back she knew who was behind, and as her horse flew over the
+hillocks her heart leaped and sang. When the strong-limbed sorrel came
+up with the quiet bay mare, they were nearly two miles from their
+starting-place, and far out of the track of their fellow-hunters. Both
+were aglow from head to foot, and as they drew rein they looked at each
+other and laughed.
+
+"Might as well go on now, and come out by the English cemetery," said
+Roma.
+
+"Good!" said David Rossi.
+
+"But it's half-past two," said Roma, looking at her little watch, "and
+I'm as hungry as a hunter."
+
+"Naturally," said David Rossi, and they laughed again. There was an
+osteria somewhere in that neighbourhood. He had known it when he was a
+boy. They would dine on yellow beans and macaroni.
+
+Presently they saw a house smoking under a scraggy clump of eucalyptus.
+It was the osteria, half farmstead and half inn. A timid lad took their
+horses, an evil-looking old man bowed them into the porch, and an
+elderly woman, with a frightened expression and a face wrinkled like the
+bark of a cedar, brought them a bill of fare.
+
+They laughed at everything--at the unfamiliar menu, because it was
+soiled enough to have served for a year; at the food, because it was so
+simple; and at the prices, because they were so cheap.
+
+Roma looked over David Rossi's shoulder as he read out the bill of fare,
+and they ordered the dinner together.
+
+"Macaroni--threepence! Right! Trout--fourpence! Shall we have
+fourpennyworth of trout? Good! Lamb--sixpence! We'll take two lambs--I
+mean two sixpenny-worths," and then more laughter.
+
+While the dinner was cooking they went out to walk among the eucalyptus,
+and came upon a beautiful dell surrounded by trees and carpeted with
+wild flowers.
+
+"Carnival!" cried Roma. "Now if there was anybody here to throw a flower
+at one!"
+
+He picked up a handful of violets and tossed them over her head.
+
+"When I was a boy this was where men fought duels," said David Rossi.
+
+"The brutes! What a lovely spot! Must be the place where Pharaoh's
+daughter found Moses in the bulrushes!"
+
+"Or where Adam found Eve in the garden of Eden?"
+
+They looked at each other and smiled.
+
+"What a surprise that must have been to him," said Roma. "Whatever did
+he think she was, I wonder?"
+
+"An angel who had come down in the moonlight and forgotten to go up in
+the morning!"
+
+"Nonsense! He would know in a moment she was a woman."
+
+"Think of it! She was the only woman in the world for him!"
+
+"And fancy! He was the only man!"
+
+The dinner was one long delight. Even its drawbacks were no
+disadvantage. The food was bad, and it was badly cooked and badly
+served, but nothing mattered.
+
+"Only one fork for all these dishes?" asked David Rossi.
+
+"That's the best of it," said Roma. "You only get one dirty one."
+
+Suddenly she dropped knife and fork, and held up both hands. "I forgot!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I was to be little Roma all day to-day."
+
+"Why, so you are, and so you have been."
+
+"That cannot be, or you would call her by her name, you know."
+
+"I'll do so the moment she calls me by mine."
+
+"That's not fair," said Roma, and her face flushed up, for the wine of
+life had risen to her eyes.
+
+In a vineyard below a girl working among the orange trees was singing
+_stornelli_. It was a song of a mother to her son. He had gone away from
+the old roof-tree, but he would come back some day. His new home was
+bright and big, but the old hearthstone would draw him home. Beautiful
+ladies loved him, but the white-haired mother would kiss him again.
+
+They listened for a short dreaming space, and their laughter ceased and
+their eyes grew moist. Then they called for the bill, and the old man
+with the evil face came up with a forced smile from a bank that had
+clearly no assets of that kind to draw upon.
+
+"You've been a long time in this house, landlord," said David Rossi.
+
+"Very long time, Excellency," said the man.
+
+"You came from the Ciociaria."
+
+"Why, yes, I did," said the man, with a look of surprise. "I was poor
+then, and later on I lived in the caves and grottoes of Monte Parioli."
+
+"But you knew how to cure the phylloxera in the vines, and when your
+master died you married his daughter and came into his vineyard."
+
+"Angelica! Here's a gentleman who knows all about us," said the old man,
+and then, grinning from ear to ear, he added:
+
+"Perhaps your Excellency was the young gentleman who used to visit with
+his father at the Count's palace on the hill twenty to thirty years
+ago?"
+
+David Rossi looked him steadfastly in the face and said: "Do you
+remember the poor boy who lived with you at that time?"
+
+The forced smile was gone in a moment. "We had no boy then, Excellency."
+
+"He came to you from Santo Spirito and you got a hundred francs with him
+at first, and then you built this pergola."
+
+"If your Excellency is from the Foundling, you may tell them again, as I
+told the priest who came before, that we never took a boy from there,
+and we had no money from the people who sent him to London."
+
+"You don't remember him, then?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Nor you?"
+
+The old woman hesitated, and the old man made mouths at her.
+
+"No, Excellency."
+
+David Rossi took a long breath. "Here is the amount of your bill, and
+something over. Good-bye!"
+
+The timid lad brought round the horses and the riders prepared to mount.
+Roma was looking at the boy with pitying eyes.
+
+"How long have you been here?" she asked.
+
+"Ten years, Excellency," he replied.
+
+He was just twelve years of age and both his parents were dead.
+
+"Poor little fellow!" said Roma, and before David Rossi could prevent
+her she was emptying her purse into the boy's hand.
+
+They set off at a trot, and for some time they did not exchange a word.
+The sun was sinking and the golden day was dying down. Over the broad
+swell of the Campagna, treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping
+like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath
+of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except
+the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like
+the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of
+cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies.
+Here and there were wretched straw huts, with groups of fever-stricken
+people crouching over the embers of miserable fires, and here and there
+were dirty pothouses, which alternated with wooden crosses of the Christ
+and grass-covered shrines of the Madonna.
+
+The rhythm of the saddles ceased and the horses walked.
+
+"Was that the place where you were brought up?" said Roma.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And those were the people who sold you into slavery, so to speak?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!"
+
+"What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders."
+
+"No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you
+could hate him for what he has made you suffer?"
+
+David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the
+saint who saved me from so much besides. 'Don't try to find out who
+your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out,
+don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world.
+By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for
+what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't.
+Leave him to God!'"
+
+"It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?"
+said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply.
+
+"And then--who knows?--perhaps some day you may discover that your
+father deserved your love and pity after all."
+
+"Perhaps!"
+
+They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus
+trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was
+everywhere in this home of silence.
+
+They went up on to the roof. From that height the whole world around
+seemed to be invaded by silence.
+
+It was the silence of all sacred things, the silence of the mass; and
+the undying paganism in the hearts of the two that stood there had its
+eloquent silence also.
+
+Roma was leaning on the parapet with David Rossi behind her, when
+suddenly she began to weep. She wept violently and sobbed.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, but she did not answer.
+
+After a while she grew calm and dried her eyes, called herself foolish,
+and began to laugh. But the heart-beats were too audible without saying
+something, and at length she tried to speak.
+
+"It was the poor boy at the inn," she said; "the sight of his sweet face
+brought back a scene I had quite forgotten," and then, in a faltering
+voice, turning her head away, she told him everything.
+
+"It was in London, and my father had found a little Roman boy in the
+streets on a winter's night, carrying a squirrel and playing an
+accordion. He wore a tattered suit of velveteens, and that was all that
+sheltered his little body from the cold. His fingers were frozen stiff,
+and he fainted when they brought him into the house. After a while he
+opened his eyes, and gazed around at the fire and the faces about him,
+and seemed to be looking for something. It was his squirrel, and it was
+frozen dead. But he grasped it tight and big tears rolled on to his
+cheeks, and he raised himself as if to escape. He was too weak for that,
+and my father comforted him and he lay still. That was when I saw him
+first; and looking at the poor boy at the inn I thought ... I thought
+perhaps he was another ... perhaps my little friend of long ago...."
+
+Her throat was throbbing, and her faltering voice was failing like a
+pendulum that is about to stop.
+
+"Roma!" he cried over her shoulder.
+
+"David!"
+
+Their eyes met, their hands clasped, their pent-up secret was out, and
+in the dim-lit catacombs of love two souls stood face to face.
+
+"How long have you known it?" she whispered.
+
+"Since the night you came to the Piazza Navona. And you?"
+
+"Since the moment I heard your voice." And then she shuddered and
+laughed.
+
+When they left the house of silence a blessed hush had fallen on them, a
+great wonder which they had never known before, the wonder of the
+everlasting miracle of human hearts.
+
+The sun was sitting behind Rome in a glorious blaze of crimson, with the
+domes of churches glistening in the horizontal rays, and the dark globe
+of St. Peter's hovering over all. The mortal melancholy which had been
+lying over the world seemed to be lifted away, and the earth smiled with
+flowers and the heavens shone with gold.
+
+Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung
+to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and
+then they smiled, but they did not speak.
+
+The sun went down, and there was a far-off ringing of bells. It was Ava
+Maria. They drew up the horses for a moment and dropped their heads.
+Then they started again.
+
+The night chills were coming, and they rode hard. Roma bent over the
+mane of her horse and looked proud and happy.
+
+Grooms were waiting for them at the gate of St. Paul, and, giving up
+their horses, they got into a carriage. When they reached Trinita de'
+Monti the lamplighter was lighting the lamps on the steps of the piazza,
+and Roma said in a low voice, with a blush and a smile:
+
+"Don't come in to-night--not to-night, you know."
+
+She wanted to be alone.
+
+
+                                XI
+
+Felice met Roma at the door of her own apartment, and in more than
+usually sepulchral tones announced that the Countess had wished to see
+her as soon as she came home. Without waiting to change her
+riding-habit, Roma turned into her aunt's room.
+
+The old lady was propped up with pillows, and Natalina was fussing about
+her. Her eyes glittered, her thin lips were compressed, and regardless
+of the presence of the maid, she straightway fell upon Roma with bitter
+reproaches.
+
+"Did you wish to see me, aunt?" said Roma, and the old lady answered in
+a mocking falsetto:
+
+"Did I wish to see you, miss? Certainly I wished to see you, although
+I'm a broken-hearted woman and sorry for the day I saw you first."
+
+"What have I done now?" said Roma, and the radiant look in her face
+provoked the old lady to still louder denunciations.
+
+"What have you done? Mercy me!... Give me my salts, Natalina!"
+
+"Natalina," said Roma quietly, "lay out my studio things, and if Bruno
+has gone, tell Felice to light the lamps and see to the stove
+downstairs."
+
+The old lady fanned herself with her embroidered handkerchief and began
+again.
+
+"I thought you meant to mend your ways when you came in yesterday,
+miss--you were so meek and modest. But what was the fact? You had come
+to me straight from that man's apartments. You had! You know you had!
+Don't try to deny it."
+
+"I don't deny it," said Roma.
+
+"Holy Virgin! She doesn't deny it! Perhaps you admit it?"
+
+"I do admit it."
+
+"Madonna mia! She admits it! Perhaps you made an appointment?"
+
+"No, I went without an appointment."
+
+"Merciful heavens! She is on such terms with the man that she can go to
+his apartments without even an appointment! Perhaps you were alone with
+him, miss?"
+
+"Yes, we were quite alone," said Roma.
+
+The old lady, who was apparently about to faint right away, looked up at
+her little shrine, and said:
+
+"Goodness! A girl! Not even a married woman! And without a maid, too!"
+
+Trying not to lose control of herself, Roma stepped to the door, but her
+aunt followed her up.
+
+"A man like that, too! Not even a gentleman! The hypocrite! The
+impostor! With his airs of purity and pretence!"
+
+"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "I was sorry I spoke to you as I did the other
+night, not because anything I said was wrong, but because you are weak
+and bedridden and suffering. Don't provoke me to speak again as I spoke
+before. I did go to Mr. Rossi's rooms yesterday, and if there is any
+fault in that, I alone am to blame."
+
+"Are you indeed?" said the old lady, with a shrill, piping cry. "Holy
+Saints! she admits so much! Do you know what people will call you when
+they hear of it? A hussy! A shameless hussy!"
+
+Roma was flaming up, but she controlled herself and put her hand on the
+door-handle.
+
+"They _will_ hear of it, depend on that," cried the Countess. "Last
+night at dinner the women were talking of nothing else. Felice heard all
+their chattering. That woman let the dog out to follow you, knowing it
+would go straight to the man's rooms. 'Whom did it come home with,
+Felice?' 'Donna Roma, your Excellency.' 'Then it's clear where Donna
+Roma had been.' Ugh! I could choke to think of it. My head is fit to
+split! Is there any cognac...?"
+
+Roma's bosom was visibly stirred by her breathing, but she answered
+quietly:
+
+"No matter! Why should I care what is thought of my conduct by people
+who have no morality of their own to judge me by?"
+
+"Really now?" said the Countess, twisting the wrinkles of her old face
+into skeins of mock courtesy. "Upon my word, I didn't think you were so
+simple. Understand, miss, it isn't the opinion of the Princess Bellini I
+am thinking about, but that of the Baron Bonelli. He has his dignity to
+consider, and when the time comes and he is free to take a wife, he is
+not likely to marry a girl who has been talked of with another man.
+Don't you see what that woman is doing? She has been doing it all along,
+and like a simpleton you've been helping her. You've been flinging away
+your chances with this Rossi and making yourself impossible to the
+Minister."
+
+Roma tossed her head and answered:
+
+"I don't care if I have, Aunt Betsy. I'm not of the same mind as I used
+to be, and I think no longer that the holiest things are to be bought
+and sold like so much merchandise."
+
+The old lady, who had been bending forward in her vehemence, fell back
+on the pillow.
+
+"You'll kill me!" she cried. "Where did you learn such folly? Goodness
+knows I've done my best by you. I have tried to teach you your duty to
+the baron and to society. But all this comes of admitting these
+anarchists into the house. You can't help it, though. It's in your
+blood. Your father before you...."
+
+Crimson and trembling from head to foot, Roma turned suddenly and left
+the room. Natalina and Felice were listening on the other side of the
+door.
+
+But not even this jarring incident could break the spell of Roma's
+enchantment, and when dinner was over, and she had gone to the studio
+and closed the door, the whole world seemed to be shut out, and nothing
+was of the slightest consequence.
+
+Taking the damp cloth from the bust, she looked at her work again. In
+the light of the aurora she now lived in, the head she had wrought with
+so much labour was poor and inadequate. It did not represent the
+original. It was weak and wrong.
+
+She set to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began
+to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was
+audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She was not afraid.
+
+Time passed, but she did not heed it. She was working at lightning
+speed, and with a power she had never felt before.
+
+Night came on, and the old Rome, the Rome of the Popes, repossessed
+itself of the Eternal City. The silent streets, the dark patches, the
+luminous piazzas, the three lights on the loggia of the Vatican, the
+grey ghost of the great dome, the kind stars, the sweet moon, and the
+church bells striking one by one during the noiseless night.
+
+At length she became aware of a streak of light on the floor. It was
+coming through the shutters of the window. She threw them open, and the
+breeze of morning came up from the orange trees in the garden below. The
+day was dawning over the sleepy city. Convent bells were ringing for
+matins, but all else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep.
+
+She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now.
+She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on
+the stars. She was happy, happy, happy!
+
+Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams
+tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome,
+the Rome of the Kings, awoke.
+
+Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his
+work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although
+the sunlight was streaming into the room.
+
+"Been working all night, Donna Roma?"
+
+"Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now."
+
+She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did
+that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet!
+
+She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment,
+when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post,
+and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters.
+
+One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for
+Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his
+translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking
+her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over
+her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an
+immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life.
+
+There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had
+seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made
+her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must!
+
+    "MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail!
+    Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the
+    dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything!
+    Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is _not_ David Rossi,
+    but a _condemned man who has no right to live in Italy_! Prepare
+    for a still greater surprise--_he has no right to live at all_!
+
+    "So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He
+    insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio
+    and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the
+    effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've
+    done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your
+    work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ...
+    let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have begun...."
+
+Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped
+out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the
+sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and
+her face was pale and rigid.
+
+"No, I will _not_ go on!" she thought. "I will _not_ betray him! I will
+_save_ him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I
+love him! I love him!"
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       PART FOUR--DAVID ROSSI
+
+
+                                I
+
+David Rossi was in his bedroom writing his leader for next morning's
+paper. A lamp with a dark shade burned on the desk, and the rest of the
+room was in shadow. It was late, and the house was quiet.
+
+The door opened softly, and Bruno, in shirt-sleeves and slippered feet,
+came on tiptoe into the room. He brought a letter in a large violet
+envelope with a monogram on the front of it, and put it down on the desk
+by Rossi's side. It was from Roma.
+
+    "DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--Without rhyme or reason I have been expecting
+    to see you here to-day, having something to say which it is
+    important that you should hear. May I expect you in the morning?
+    Knowing how busy you are, I dare not bid you come, yet the matter
+    is of great consequence and admits of no delay. It is not a
+    subject on which it is safe or proper to write, and how to speak
+    of it I am at a loss to decide. But you shall help me. Therefore
+    come without delay! There! I have bidden you come in spite of
+    myself. Judge from that how eager is my expectation.--In haste,
+                                                              "ROMA V.
+
+    "P.S.--I open my envelope, to wonder if you can ever forgive me
+    the humiliations you have suffered for my sake. To think that _I_
+    threw you into the way of them! And merely to wipe out an offence
+    that is not worth considering! I am ashamed of myself. I am also
+    ashamed of the people about me. You will remember that I told you
+    they were pitiless and cruel. They are worse--they are heartless
+    and without mercy. But how bravely you bore their insults and
+    innuendoes! I almost cry to think of it, and if I were a good
+    Catholic I should confess and do penance. See? I do confess, and
+    if you want me to do penance you will come yourself and impose it."
+
+It was the first letter that David Rossi had received from Roma, and as
+he read it the air seemed to him to be filled with the sweet girlish
+voice. He could see the play of her large, bright, violet eyes. The
+delicate fragrance of the scented paper rose to his nostrils, and
+without being conscious of what he was doing he raised the letter to his
+lips.
+
+Then he became aware that Bruno was still in the room. The good fellow
+was in the shadow behind him, pushing things about under some pretext
+and trying to make a noise.
+
+"Don't let me keep you up, Bruno."
+
+"Sure you don't want anything, sir?" said Bruno with confusion.
+
+David Rossi rose and walked about the room with his slow step.
+
+"You have something to say to me?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir--yes, I have."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Bruno scratched his shock head and looked about as if for help. His eyes
+fell on the letter lying open in the light on the desk.
+
+"It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the
+monogram."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled
+out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said:
+
+"Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you."
+
+"What are they saying, Bruno?"
+
+"Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'?
+Sun in the eyes--that's what they're saying, sir."
+
+"So they're saying that, are they?"
+
+"They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like
+it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of
+you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing."
+
+David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro.
+
+"'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right,
+sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called
+out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first
+of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week we
+hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet
+they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house
+of a bad woman?"
+
+"Bruno!" cried Rossi in a stern voice, "what right have you to talk to
+me like this?"
+
+Bruno was frightened at what he had said, but he tried to carry it off
+with a look of passion.
+
+"Right? The right of a friend, sir, who can't stand by and see you
+betrayed. Yes, betrayed, that's the word for it. Betrayed! Betrayed!
+It's a plot to ruin the people through the weakness of their leader. A
+woman drawn across a man's trail. The trick is as old as the ages. Never
+heard what we say in Rome?--'The man is fire, the woman is tow; then
+comes the devil and puts them together.'"
+
+David Rossi was standing face to face with Bruno, who was growing hot
+and trying to laugh bitterly.
+
+"Oh, I know what I'm saying, sir. The Prime Minister is at the bottom of
+everything. David Rossi never goes to Donna Roma's house but the Baron
+Bonelli knows all about it. They write to each other every day, and I've
+posted her letters myself. _Her_ house is _his_ house. Carriages,
+horses, servants, liveries--how else could she support it? By her art,
+her sculpture?"
+
+Bruno was frightened to the bottom of his soul, but he continued to talk
+and to laugh bitterly.
+
+"She's deceiving you, sir. Isn't it as plain as daylight? You hit her
+hard, and old Vampire too, in your speech on the morning of the Pope's
+Jubilee, and she's paying you out for both of them."
+
+"That's enough, Bruno."
+
+"All Rome knows it, and everybody will be laughing at you soon."
+
+"You've said enough, I tell you. Go to bed."
+
+"Oh, I know! The heart has its reasons, but it listens to none."
+
+"Go to bed, I tell you! Isn't it sufficient that by your tittle-tattle
+you caused me to wrong the lady?"
+
+"_I_ did?"
+
+"_You_ did."
+
+"I did not."
+
+"You did, and if it hadn't been for the tales you told me before I knew
+her, or had ever seen her, I should never have spoken of her as I did."
+
+"She deserved all you said of her."
+
+"She didn't deserve one word of it, and it was your lies that made me
+slander her."
+
+Bruno's eyes flinched as if a blow had fallen on them. Then he tried to
+laugh.
+
+"Hit me again. The skin of the ass is used to blows. Only don't go too
+far with me, David Rossi."
+
+"Then don't _you_ go too far with your falsehoods and suspicion."
+
+"Suspicion! Holy Virgin! Is it suspicion that she has had you at her
+studio to make a Roman holiday for her friends and cronies? By the
+saints! Suspicion!"
+
+"Go on, if it becomes you."
+
+"If what becomes me?"
+
+"To eat her bread and talk against her."
+
+"That's a lie, David Rossi, and you know it. It's my own bread I'm
+eating. My labour belongs to me, and I sell it to my employer. But my
+conscience belongs to God, and she cannot buy it."
+
+David Rossi's white and angry face broke up like a snow-flake in the
+sun.
+
+"I was wrong when I said that, Bruno, and I ask your pardon."
+
+"Do you say that, sir? And after I've insulted you?"
+
+David Rossi held out his hand, and Bruno clasped it.
+
+"I had no right to be angry with you, Bruno, but you are wrong about
+Donna Roma. Believe me, dear friend, cruelly, awfully, terribly wrong."
+
+"You think she is a good woman."
+
+"I know she is, and if I said otherwise, I take it back and am ashamed."
+
+"Beautiful! If I could only believe in her as you do, sir. But I've
+known her for two years."
+
+"And I've known her for twenty."
+
+"_You_ have?"
+
+"I have. Shall I tell you who she is? She is the daughter of my old
+friend in England."
+
+"The one who died in Elba?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The good man who found you and fed you, and educated you when you were
+a boy in London?"
+
+"That was the father of Donna Roma."
+
+"Then he was Prince Volonna, after all?"
+
+"Yes, and they lied to me when they told me she was dead and buried."
+
+Bruno was silent for a moment, and then in a choking voice he said:
+
+"Why didn't you strike me dead when I said she was deceiving you?
+Forgive me, sir!"
+
+"I do forgive you, Bruno, but not for myself--for her."
+
+Bruno turned away with a dazed expression.
+
+"Forget what I said about going to Donna Roma's, sir."
+
+Rossi sat down and took up his pen.
+
+"No, I cannot forget it," he said. "I _will not_ forget it. I will go to
+her house no more."
+
+Bruno was silent for a moment, and then he said in a thick voice:
+
+"I understand! God help you, David Rossi. It's a lonely road you mean to
+travel."
+
+Rossi drew a long breath and made ready to write.
+
+"Good-night, Bruno."
+
+"Good-night," said Bruno, and the good fellow went out with wet eyes.
+
+
+                                II
+
+The night was far gone, and the city lay still, while Rossi replied to
+Roma.
+
+    "MY DEAR R.,--You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard
+    to my poor doings, or tryings-to-do. They were necessary, and if
+    the penalties had been worse a hundredfold I should not chew the
+    cud of my bargain now. Besides your wish, I had another motive, a
+    secret motive, and perhaps, if I were a good Catholic, I should
+    confess too, although not with a view to penance. Apparently, it
+    has come out well, and now that it seems to be all over, both your
+    scheme and mine, now that the wrong I did you is to some extent
+    undone, and my own object is in some measure achieved, I find
+    myself face to face with a position in which it is my duty to you
+    as well as to myself to bring our intercourse to an end.
+
+    "The truth is that we cannot be friends any longer, for the reason
+    that I love some one in whom you are, unhappily, too much
+    interested, and because there are obstacles between that person
+    and myself which are decisive and insurmountable. This alone puts
+    it on me as a point of honour that you and I should never see each
+    other again. Each of my visits adds to my embarrassment, to the
+    feeling that I am doing wrong in paying them, and to the certainty
+    that I must give them up altogether.
+
+    "Thank you again and again for the more than pleasant hours we
+    have spent together. It is not your fault that I must bury the
+    memory of them in oblivion. This does not mean that it is any part
+    of the painful but unavoidable result of circumstances I cannot
+    explain, that we should not write to each other as occasion may
+    arise. Continue to think of me as your brother--your brother far
+    away--to be called upon for counsel in your hour of need and
+    necessity. And whenever you call, be sure I shall be there.
+
+    "What you say of an important matter suggests that something has
+    come to your knowledge which concerns myself and the authorities;
+    but when a man has spent all his life on the edge of a precipice,
+    the most urgent perils are of little moment, and I beg of you not
+    to be alarmed for my sake. Whatever it is, it is only a part of
+    the atmosphere of danger I have always lived in--the glacier I
+    have always walked upon--and 'if it is not now, it is to come; if
+    it is not to come, it will be now--the
+    readiness is all.' Good-bye!--Yours, dear R----,                 D."
+
+
+                                III
+
+Next day brought Roma's reply.
+
+    "MY DEAR D.,--Your letter has thrown me into the wildest state of
+    excitement and confusion. I have done no work all day long, and
+    when Black has leapt upon me and cried, 'Come out for a walk, you
+    dear, dear dunce,' I have hardly known whether he barked or
+    talked.
+
+    "I am sorry our charming intercourse is to be interrupted, but you
+    can't mean that it is to be broken off altogether. You can't, you
+    can't, or my eyes would be red with crying, instead of dancing
+    with delight.
+
+    "Yet why they should dance I don't really know, seeing you are so
+    indefinite, and I have no right to understand anything. If you
+    cannot write by post, or even send messages by hand, if my man F.
+    is your enemy, and your housemate B. is mine, isn't that precisely
+    the best reason why you should come and talk matters over? Come at
+    once. I bid you come! In a matter of such inconceivable
+    importance, surely a sister has a right to command.
+
+    "In that character, I suppose, I ought to be glad of the news you
+    give me. Well, I _am_ glad! But being a daughter of Eve, I have a
+    right to be curious. I want to ask questions. You say I know the
+    lady, and am, unhappily, too deeply interested in her--who is she?
+    Does she know of your love for her? Is she beautiful? Is she
+    charming? Give me one initial of her name--only one--and I will be
+    good. I am so much in the dark, and I cannot commit myself until I
+    know more.
+
+    "You speak of obstacles, and say they are decisive and
+    insurmountable. That's terrible, but perhaps you are only thinking
+    of what the poets call the 'cruel madness' of love, as if its
+    madness and cruelty were sufficient reason for flying away from
+    it. Or perhaps the obstacles are those of circumstances; but in
+    that case, if the woman is the right one, she will be willing to
+    wait for such difficulties to be got over, or even to find her
+    happiness in sharing them.
+
+    "See how I plead for my unknown sister! Which is sweet of me,
+    considering that you don't tell me who she is, but leave me to
+    find out if she is likely to suit me. But why not let me help you?
+    Come at once and talk things over.
+
+    "Yet how vain I am! Even while I proffer assistance with so loud a
+    voice, I am smitten cold with the fear of an impediment which you
+    know a thousand times better than I do how to measure and to meet.
+    Perhaps the woman you speak of is unworthy of your friendship and
+    love. I can understand that to be an insurmountable obstacle. You
+    stand so high, and have to think about your work, your aims, your
+    people. And perhaps it is only a dream and a delusion, a mirage of
+    the heart, that love lifts a woman up to the level of the man who
+    loves her.
+
+    "Then there may be some fault--some grave fault. I can understand
+    that too. We do not love because we should, but because we must,
+    and there is nothing so cruel as the inequality of man and woman
+    in the way the world regards their conduct. But I am like a bat in
+    the dark, flying at gleams of light from closely-curtained
+    windows. Will you not confide in me? Do! Do! Do!
+
+    "Besides, I have the other matter to talk about. You remember
+    telling me how you kicked out the man M----? He turned spy as the
+    consequence, and has been sent to England. You ought to know that
+    he has been making inquiries about you, and appears to have found
+    out various particulars. Any day may bring urgent news of him, and
+    if you will not come to me I may have to go to you in spite of
+    every protest.
+
+    "To-morrow is the day for your opening of Parliament, and I have a
+    ticket for the Court tribune, so you may expect to see me floating
+    somewhere above you in an atmosphere of lace and perfume.
+    Good-night!--Your poor bewildered sister,               ROMA."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+Next morning David Rossi put on evening dress, in obedience to the
+etiquette of the opening day of Parliament. Before going to the ceremony
+he answered Roma's letter of the night before.
+
+    "DEAR R.,--If anything could add to the bitterness of my regret at
+    ending an intercourse which has brought me the happiest moments of
+    my life, it would be the tone of your sweet and charming letter.
+    You ask me if the woman I love is beautiful. She is more than
+    beautiful, she is lovely. You ask me if she knows that I love her.
+    I have never dared to disclose my secret, and if I could have
+    believed that she had ever so much as guessed at it, I should have
+    found some consolation in a feeling which is too deep for the
+    humiliations of pride. You ask me if she is worthy of my
+    friendship and love. She is worthy of the love and friendship of a
+    better man than I am or can ever hope to be.
+
+    "Yet even if she were not so, even if there were, as you say, a
+    fault in her, who am I that I should judge her harshly? I am not
+    one of those who think that a woman is fallen because
+    circumstances and evil men have conspired against her. I reject
+    the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past, a woman
+    never can. I abhor the judgment of the world by which a woman may
+    be punished because she is trying to be pure, and dragged down
+    because she is rising from the dirt. And if she had sinned as I
+    have sinned, and suffered as I have suffered, I would pray for
+    strength enough to say, 'Because I love her we are one, and we
+    stand or fall together.'
+
+    "But she is sweet, and pure, and true, and brave, and noble-hearted,
+    and there is no fault in her, or she would not be the daughter of
+    her father, who was the noblest man I ever knew or ever expect to
+    know. No, the root of the separation is in myself, in myself only,
+    in my circumstances and the personal situation I find myself in.
+
+    "And yet it is difficult for me to state the obstacle which
+    divides us, or to say more about it than that it is permanent and
+    insurmountable. I should deceive myself if I tried to believe that
+    time would remove or lessen it, and I have contended in vain with
+    feelings which have tempted me to hold on at any price to the only
+    joy and happiness of my life.
+
+    "To go to her and open my heart is impossible, for personal
+    intercourse is precisely the peril I am trying to avoid. How weak
+    I am in her company! Even when her dress touches me at passing, I
+    am thrilled with an emotion I cannot master; and when she lifts
+    her large bright eyes to mine, I am the slave of a passion which
+    conquers all my will.
+
+    "No, it is not lightly and without cause that I have taken a step
+    which sacrifices love to duty. I love her, with all my heart and
+    soul and strength I love her, and that is why she and I, for her
+    sake more than mine, should never meet again.
+
+    "I note what you say about the man M----, but you must forgive me
+    if I cannot be much concerned about it. There is nobody in London
+    who knows me in the character I now bear, and can link it to the
+    one you are thinking of. Good-bye, again! God be with you and keep
+    you always!  D."
+
+Having written this letter, David Rossi sealed it carefully and posted
+it with his own hand on his way to the opening of Parliament.
+
+
+                                V
+
+The day was fine, and the city was bright with many flags in honour of
+the King. All the streets leading from the royal palace to the Hall of
+the Deputies were lined with people. The square in front of the
+Parliament House was kept clear by a cordon of Carabineers, but the open
+windows of the hotels and houses round about were filled with faces.
+
+David Rossi entered the house by the little private door for deputies in
+the side street. The chamber was already thronged, and as full of
+movement as a hive of bees. Ladies in light dresses, soldiers in
+uniform, diplomatists wearing decorations, senators and deputies in
+white cravats and gloves, were moving to their places and saluting each
+other with bows and smiles.
+
+Rossi slipped into the place he usually occupied among the deputies. It
+was the corner seat by the door on the left of the royal canopy,
+immediately facing the section, which had been apportioned to the Court
+tribune. He did not lift his eyes as he entered, but he was conscious of
+a tall, well-rounded yet girlish figure in a grey dress that glistened
+in a ray of sunshine, with dark hair under a large black hat, and
+flashing eyes that seemed to pierce into his own like a shaft of light.
+
+Beautiful ladies with big oriental eyes were about her, and young
+deputies were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised
+curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of
+gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching
+gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom.
+
+The clock over the reporters' gallery showed seven minutes after the
+hour appointed, when the walls of the chamber shook with the vibration
+of a cannon-shot. It was a gun fired at the Castle of St. Angelo to
+announce the King's arrival. At the same moment there came the muffled
+strains of the royal hymn played by the band in the piazza. The little
+gales of gossip died down in an instant, and in dead silence the
+assembly rose to its feet.
+
+A minute afterwards the King entered amid a fanfare of trumpets, the
+shouts of many voices, and the clapping of hands. He was a young man, in
+the uniform of a general, with a face that was drawn into deep lines
+under the eyes by ill-health and anxiety. Two soldiers, carrying their
+brass helmets with waving plumes, walked by his side, and a line of his
+Ministers followed. His Queen, a tall and beautiful girl, came behind,
+surrounded by many ladies.
+
+The King took his seat under the baldacchino, with his Ministers on his
+left. The Queen sat on his right hand, with her ladies beside her. They
+bowed to the plaudits of the assembly, and the drawn face of the young
+King wore a painful smile.
+
+The Baron Bonelli, in court dress and decorations, stood at the King's
+elbow, calm, dignified, self-possessed--the one strong face and figure
+in the group under the canopy. After the cheering and the shouting had
+subsided he requested the assembly, at the command of His Majesty, to
+resume their seats. Then he handed a paper to the King.
+
+It was the King's speech to his Parliament, and he read it nervously in
+a voice that had not learned to control itself. But the speech was
+sufficiently emphatic, and its words were grandiose and even florid.
+
+It consisted of four clauses. In the first clause the King thanked God
+that his country was on terms of amity with all foreign countries, and
+invoked God's help in the preservation of peace. The second clause was
+about the increase of the army.
+
+"The army," said the King, "is very dear to me, as it has always been
+dear to my family. My illustrious grandfather, who granted freedom to
+the kingdom, was a soldier; my honoured father was a soldier, and it is
+my pride that I am myself a soldier also. The army was the foundation of
+our liberty and it is now the security of our rights. On the strength
+and stability of the army rest the power of our nation abroad and the
+authority of our institutions at home. It is my firm resolve to maintain
+the army in the future as my illustrious ancestors have maintained it in
+the past, and therefore my Government will propose a bill which is
+intended to increase still further its numbers and its efficiency."
+
+This was received with a great outburst of applause and the waving of
+many handkerchiefs. It was observed that some of the ladies shed tears.
+
+The third clause was about the growth and spread of anarchism.
+
+"My house," said the King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my
+duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to
+Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but
+throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most
+devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and
+divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the
+most innocent and the most highly placed, which have sent a thrill of
+horror into all humane hearts. My Government asks for an absolute power
+over such criminals, and if we are to bring security to the State, we
+must reinvigorate the authority to which society trusts the high mandate
+of protecting and governing."
+
+A still greater outburst of cheering interrupted the young King, who
+raised his head amid the shouts, the clapping of hands, and the
+fluttering of handkerchiefs, and smiled his painful smile.
+
+"More than that," continued the King, "I have to deplore the spread of
+associations, sodalities, and clubs, which, by an erroneous conception
+of liberty, are disseminating the germs of revolt against the State.
+Under the most noble propositions about the moral and economical
+redemption of the people is hidden a propaganda for the conquest of the
+public powers.
+
+"My aim is to gain the affection of my people, and to interest them in
+the cause of order and public security, and therefore my Government will
+present an urgent bill, which is intended to stop the flowering of these
+parasitic organisations, by revising these laws of the press and of
+public meeting, in whose defects agitators find opportunity for their
+attacks on the doctrines of the State."
+
+A prolonged outburst of applause followed this passage, mingled with a
+tumult of tongues, which went on after the King had begun to read again,
+rendering his last clause--an invocation of God's blessing on the
+deliberations of Parliament--almost inaudible.
+
+The end of the speech was a signal for further cheering, and when the
+King left the hall, bowing as before, and smiling his painful smile, the
+shouts of "Long live the King," the clapping of hands, and the waving of
+handkerchiefs followed him to the street. The entire ceremony had
+occupied twelve minutes.
+
+Then the clamour of voices drowned the sound of the royal hymn outside.
+Deputies were climbing about to join their friends among the ladies,
+whose light laughter was to be heard on every side.
+
+David Rossi rose to go. Without lifting his head, he had been conscious
+that during the latter part of the King's speech many eyes were fixed
+upon him. Playing with his watch-chain, he had struggled to look calm
+and impassive. But his heart was sick, and he wished to get away
+quickly.
+
+A partition, shielding the door of the corridor, stood near to his seat,
+and he was trying to get round it. He heard his name in the air around
+him, mingled with significant trills and unmistakable accents. All at
+once he was conscious of a perfume he knew, and of a girlish figure
+facing him.
+
+"Good-day, Honourable," said a voice that thrilled him like the strings
+of a harp drawn tight.
+
+He lifted his head and answered. It was Roma. Her face was lighted up
+with a fire he had never seen before. Only one glance he dared to take,
+but he could see that at the next instant those flashing eyes would
+burst into tears.
+
+The tide was passing out by the front doors where the carriages and the
+reporters waited, but Rossi stepped round to the back. He was on the way
+to the office of his newspaper, and dipping into the Corso from a lane
+that crossed it, he came upon the King's carriage returning to the
+Quirinal. It was entirely surrounded by soldiers, the military commander
+of Rome on the right, the commander of the Carabineers on the left, and
+the Cuirassiers, riding two deep, before and behind, so that the King
+and Queen were scarcely visible to the cheering crowd. Last in the royal
+procession came an ordinary cab containing two detectives in plain
+clothes.
+
+The office of the _Sunrise_ was in a narrow lane out of the Corso. It
+was a dingy building of three floors, with the machine-rooms on the
+ground-level, the composing-rooms at the top, and the editorial rooms
+between. Rossi's office was a large apartment, with three desks, that
+were intended for the editor and his day and night assistants.
+
+His day assistant received him with many bows and compliments. He was a
+small man with an insincere face.
+
+Rossi drank a cup of coffee and settled to his work. It was an article
+on the day's doings, more fearless and outspoken than he had ever
+published before. Such a day as they had just gone through, with the
+flying of flags and the playing of royal hymns, was not really a day of
+joy and rejoicing, but of degradation and shame. If the people had known
+what they were doing, they would have hung their flags with crape and
+played funeral marches.
+
+"Such a scene as we have witnessed to-day," he wrote, "like all such
+scenes throughout the world, whether in Germany, Russia, and England, or
+in China, Persia, and the darkest regions of Africa, is but proof of the
+melancholy fact that while man, as the individual, has been nineteen
+hundred years converted to Christianity, man, as the nation, remains to
+this day for the most part utterly pagan."
+
+The assistant editor, who had glanced over the pages of manuscript as
+Rossi threw them aside, looked up at last and said:
+
+"Are you sure, sir, that you wish to print this article?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+The man made a shrug of his shoulders, and took the copy upstairs.
+
+The short day had closed in when Rossi was returning home. Screamers in
+the streets were crying early editions of the evening papers, and the
+cafes in the Corso were full of officers and civilians, sipping vermouth
+and reading glowing accounts of the King's enthusiastic reception.
+Pitiful! Most pitiful! And the man who dared to tell the truth must be
+prepared for any consequences.
+
+David Rossi told himself that he _was_ prepared. Henceforth he would
+devote himself to the people, without a thought of what might happen.
+Nothing should come between him and his work--nothing whatever--not
+even ... but, no, he could not think of it!
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Two letters were awaiting David Rossi in his rooms at home.
+
+One was a circular from the President of the Chamber of Deputies
+summoning Parliament for the day after to-morrow to elect officials and
+reply to the speech of the King.
+
+The other was from Roma, and the address was in a large, hurried hand.
+David Rossi broke the seal with nervous fingers.
+
+    "MY DEAR FRIEND,--I know! I know! I know now what the obstacle is.
+    B. gave me the hint of it on one of the days of last week, when I
+    was so anxious to see you and you did not come. It is your
+    unflinching devotion to your mission and to your public duties.
+    You are one of those who think that when a man has dedicated his
+    life to work for the world, he should give up everything
+    else--father, mother, wife, child--and live like a priest, who puts
+    away home, and love, and kindred, that others may have them more
+    abundantly. I can understand that, and see a sort of nobility in
+    it too, especially in days when the career of a statesman is only
+    a path to vainglory of every kind. It is great, it is glorious, it
+    thrills me to think of it.
+
+    "But I am losing faith in my unknown sister that is to be, in
+    spite of all my pleading. You say she is beautiful--that's well
+    enough, but it comes by nature. You say she is sweet, and true,
+    and charming--and I am willing to take it all on trust. But when
+    you say she is noble-hearted I respectfully refuse to believe it.
+    If she were that, you would be sure that she would know that
+    friendship is the surest part of love, and to be the friend of a
+    great man is to be a help to him, and not an impediment.
+
+    "My gracious! What does she think you are? A _cavaliere servente_
+    to dance attendance on her ladyship day and night? Give me the
+    woman who wants her husband to be a man, with a man's work to do,
+    a man's burdens to bear, and a man's triumphs to win.
+
+    "Yet perhaps I am too hard on my unknown sister that is to be, or
+    ought to be, and it is only your own distrust that wrongs her. If
+    she is the daughter of one brave man and really loves another, she
+    knows her place and her duty. It is to be ready to follow her
+    husband wherever he must go, to share his fate whatever it may be,
+    and to live his life, because it is now her own.
+
+    "And since I am in the way of pleading for her again, let me tell
+    you how simple you are to suppose that because you have never
+    disclosed your secret she may never have guessed it. Goodness me!
+    To think that men who can make women love them to madness itself
+    can be so ignorant as not to know that a woman can always tell if
+    a man loves her, and even fix the very day, and hour, and minute
+    when he looked into her eyes and loved her first.
+
+    "And if my unknown sister that ought to be knows that you love
+    her, be sure that she loves you in return. Then trust her. Take
+    the counsel of a woman and go to her. Remember, that if you are
+    suffering by this separation, perhaps she is suffering too, and if
+    she is worthy of the love and friendship of a better man than you
+    are, or ever hope to be (which, without disparaging her ladyship,
+    I respectfully refuse to believe), let her at least have the
+    refusal of one or both of them.
+
+    "Good-night! I go to the Chamber of Deputies again the day after
+    to-morrow, being so immersed in public matters (and public men)
+    that I can think of nothing else at present. Happily my bust is
+    out of hand, and the caster (not B. this time) is hard at work on
+    it.
+
+    "You won't hear anything about the M---- doings, yet I assure you
+    they are a most serious matter. Unless I am much mistaken there is
+    an effort on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely
+    sufficiently alarming. M---- is returning to Rome, and I hear
+    rumours of an intention to bring pressure on some one _here_ in
+    the hope of leading to identification. Think of it, I beg, I
+    pray!--Your friend,
+                                                                 "R."
+
+
+                                VII
+
+Next day Rossi's editorial assistant came with a troubled face. There
+was bad news from the office. The morning's edition of the _Sunrise_ had
+been confiscated by the police owing to the article on the King's speech
+and procession. The proprietors of the paper were angry with their
+editor, and demanded to see him immediately.
+
+"Tell them I'll be at the office at four o'clock, as usual," said Rossi,
+and he sat down to write a letter.
+
+It was to Roma. The moment he took up the pen to write to her the air of
+the room seemed to fill with a sweet feminine presence that banished
+everything else. It was like talking to her. She was beside him. He
+could hear her soft replies.
+
+    "If it were possible to heighten the pain of my feelings when I
+    decided to sacrifice my best wishes to my sense of duty, a letter
+    like your last would be more than I could bear. The obstacle you
+    deal with is not the one which chiefly weighs with me, but it is a
+    very real impediment, not altogether disposed of by the sweet and
+    tender womanliness with which you put it aside. In that regard
+    what troubles me most is the hideous inequality between what the
+    man gives and what he gets, and the splendid devotion with which
+    the woman merges her life in the life of the man she marries only
+    quickens the sense of his selfishness in allowing himself to
+    accept so great a prize.
+
+    "In my own case, the selfishness, if I yielded to it, would be
+    greater far than anybody else could be guilty of, and of all men
+    who have sacrificed women's lives to their own career, I should
+    feel myself to be the most guilty and inexcusable. My dear and
+    beloved girl is nobly born, and lives in wealth and luxury, while
+    I am poor--poor by choice, and therefore poor for ever, brought up
+    as a foundling, and without a name that I dare call my own.
+
+    "What then? Shall such a man as I am ask such a woman as she is to
+    come into the circle of his life, to exchange her riches for his
+    poverty, her comfort for his suffering? No.
+
+    "Besides, what woman could do it if I did? Women can be unselfish,
+    they can be faithful, they can be true; but--don't ask me to say
+    things I do not want to say--women love wealth and luxury and
+    ease, and shrink from pain and poverty and the forced marches of a
+    hunted life. And why shouldn't they? Heaven spare them all such
+    sufferings as men alone should bear!
+
+    "Yet all this is still outside the greater obstacle which stands
+    between me and the dear girl from whom I must separate myself now,
+    whatever it may cost me, as an inexorable duty. I entreat you to
+    spare me the pain of explaining further. Believe that for her sake
+    my resolution, in spite of all your sweet and charming pleading,
+    is strong and unalterable.
+
+    "Only one thing more. If it is as you say it may be, that she
+    loves me, though I had no right to believe so, that will only add
+    to my unhappiness in thinking of the wrench that she must suffer.
+    But she is strong, she is brave, she is the daughter of her
+    father, and I have faith in the natural power of her mind, in her
+    youth and the chances of life for one so beautiful and so gifted,
+    to remove the passing impression that may have been made.
+
+    "Good-bye yet again! And God bless you!                       D.
+
+    "P. S.--I am not afraid of M----, and come when he may, I shall
+    certainly stand my ground. There is only one person in Rome who
+    could be used against me in the direction you indicate, and I
+    could trust her with my heart's blood."
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Before two o'clock next day the Chamber of Deputies was already full.
+The royal chair and baldacchino had been removed, and their place was
+occupied by the usual bench of the President.
+
+When the Prime Minister took his place, cool, collected, smiling,
+faultlessly dressed and wearing a flower in his button-hole, he was
+greeted with some applause from the members, and the dry rustle of fans
+in the ladies' tribune was distinctly heard. The leader of the
+Opposition had a less marked reception, and when David Rossi glided
+round the partition to his place on the extreme Left, there was a
+momentary hush, followed by a buzz of voices.
+
+Then the President of the Chamber entered, with his secretaries about
+him, and took his seat in a central chair under a bust of the young
+King. Ushers, wearing a linen band of red, white, and green on their
+arms, followed with portfolios, and with little trays containing
+water-bottles and glasses. Conversation ceased, and the President rang a
+hand-bell that stood by his side, and announced that the sitting was
+begun.
+
+The first important business of the day was the reply to the speech of
+the King, and the President called on the member who had been appointed
+to undertake this duty. A young Deputy, a man of letters, then made his
+way to a bar behind the chairs of the Ministers and read from a printed
+paper a florid address to the sovereign.
+
+Having read his printed document, the Deputy proceeded to move the
+adoption of the reply.
+
+With the proposal of the King and the Government to increase the army he
+would not deal. It required no recommendation. The people were patriots.
+They loved their country, and would spend the last drop of their blood
+to defend it. The only persons who were not with the King in his desire
+to uphold the army were the secret foes of the nation and the
+dynasty--persons who were in league with their enemies.
+
+"That," said the speaker, "brings us to the next clause of our reply to
+His Majesty's gracious speech. We know that there exists among the
+associations aimed at a compact between strangely varying
+forces--between the forces of socialism, republicanism, unbelief, and
+anarchy, and the forces of the Church and the Vatican."
+
+At this statement there was a great commotion. Members on the Left
+protested with loud shouts of "It is not true," and in a moment the
+tongues and arms of the whole assembly were in motion. The President
+rang his bell, and the speaker concluded.
+
+"Let us draw the teeth of both parties to this secret conspiracy, that
+they may never again use the forces of poverty and discontent to disturb
+public order."
+
+When the speaker sat down, his friends thronged around him to shake
+hands with him and congratulate him.
+
+Then the eyes of the House and of the audience in the gallery turned to
+David Rossi. He had sat with folded arms and head down while his
+followers screamed their protests. But passing a paper to the President,
+he now rose and said:
+
+"I ask permission to propose an amendment to the reply to the King's
+speech."
+
+"You have the word," said the President.
+
+David Rossi read his amendment. At the feet of His Majesty it humbly
+expressed an opinion that the present was not a time at which fresh
+burdens should be laid upon the country for the support of the army,
+with any expectation that they could be borne. Misfortune and suffering
+had reached their climax. The cup of the people was full.
+
+At this language some of the members laughed. There were cries of
+"Order" and "Shame," and then the laughter was resumed. The President
+rang his bell, and at length silence was secured. David Rossi began to
+speak, in a voice that was firm and resolute.
+
+"If," he said, "the statement that members of this House are in alliance
+with the Pope and the Vatican is meant for me and mine, I give it a flat
+denial. And, in order to have done with this calumny once and for ever,
+permit me to say that between the Papacy and the people, as represented
+by us, there is not, and never can be, anything in common. In temporal
+affairs, the theory of the Papacy rejects the theory of the democracy.
+The theory of the democracy rejects the theory of the Papacy. The one
+claims a divine right to rule in the person of the Pope because he is
+Pope. The other denies all divine right except that of the people to
+rule themselves."
+
+This was received with some applause mingled with laughter, and certain
+shouts flung out in a shrill hysterical voice. The President rang his
+bell again, and David Rossi continued.
+
+"The proposal to increase the army," he said, "in a time of tranquillity
+abroad but of discord at home, is the gravest impeachment that could be
+made of the Government of a country. Under a right order of things
+Parliament would be the conscience of the people, Government would be
+the servant of that conscience, and rebellion would be impossible. But
+this Government is the master of the country and is keeping the people
+down by violence and oppression. Parliament is dead. For God's sake let
+us bury it!"
+
+Loud shouts followed this outburst, and some of the Deputies rose from
+their seats, and crowding about the speaker in the open space in front,
+yelled and screamed at him like a pack of hounds. He stood calm, playing
+with his watch-chain, while the President rang his bell and called for
+silence. The interruptions died down at last, and the speaker went on:
+
+"If you ask me what is the reason of the discontent which produces the
+crimes of anarchism, I say, first, the domination of a Government which
+is absolute, and the want of liberty of speech and meeting. In other
+countries the discontented are permitted to manifest their woes, and are
+not punished unless they commit deeds of violence; but in Italy alone,
+except Russia, a man may be placed outside the law, torn from his home,
+from the bedside of his nearest and dearest, and sent to _domicilio
+coatto_ to live or die in a silence as deep as that of the grave. Oh, I
+know what I am saying. I have been in the midst of it. I have seen a
+father torn from his daughter, and the motherless child left to the
+mercy of his enemies."
+
+This allusion quieted the House, and for a moment there was a dead
+silence. Then through the tense air there came a strange sound, and the
+President demanded silence from the galleries, whereupon the reporters
+rose and made a negative movement of the hand with two fingers upraised,
+pointing at the same time to the ladies' tribune.
+
+One of the ladies had cried out. David Rossi heard the voice, and, when
+he began again, his own voice was softer and more tremulous.
+
+"Next, I say that the cause of anarchism in Italy, as everywhere else,
+is poverty. Wait until the 1st of February, and you shall see such an
+army enter Rome as never before invaded it. I assert that within three
+miles of this place, at the gates of this capital of Christendom, human
+beings are living lives more abject than that of savage man.
+
+"Housed in huts of straw, sleeping on mattresses of leaves, clothed in
+rags or nearly nude, fed on maize and chestnuts and acorns, worked
+eighteen hours a day, and sweated by the tyranny of the overseers, to
+whom landlords lease their lands while they idle their days in the
+_salons_ of Rome and Paris, men and women and children are being treated
+worse than slaves, and beaten more than dogs."
+
+At that there was a terrific uproar, shouts of "It's a lie!" and
+"Traitor!" followed by a loud outbreak of jeers and laughter. Then, for
+the first time, David Rossi lost control of himself, and, turning upon
+Parliament with flaming eyes and quivering voice, he cried:
+
+"You take these statements lightly--you that don't know what it is to be
+hungry, you that have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest
+it. But _I_ know these things by bitter knowledge--by experience. Don't
+talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and
+comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a
+poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the
+miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the
+Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At
+the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living
+lives of moral anaemia and physical atrophy more terrible by far than
+those which made the pagan poet say two thousand years ago--_Paucis
+vivit humanum genus_--the human race exists for the benefit of the few."
+
+The silence was breathless while the speaker made this personal
+reference, and when he sat down, after a denunciation of the militarism
+which was consuming the heart of the civilised world, the House was too
+dazed to make any manifestation.
+
+In the dead hush that followed, the President put the necessary
+questions, but the amendment fell through without a vote being taken,
+and the printed reply was passed.
+
+Then the Minister of War rose to give notice of his bill for increased
+military expenditure, and proposed to hand it over to the general
+committee of the budget.
+
+The Baron Bonelli rose next as Minister of the Interior, and gave notice
+of his bill for the greater security of the public, and the remodelling
+of the laws of the press and of association.
+
+He spoke incisively and bitterly, and he was obviously excited, but he
+affected his usual composure.
+
+"After the language we have heard to-day," he said, "and the knowledge
+we possess of mass meetings projected, it will not surprise the House
+that I treat this measure as urgent, and propose that we consider it on
+the principle of the three readings, taking the first of them in four
+days."
+
+At that there were some cries from the Left, but the Minister continued:
+
+"It will also not surprise the House that, to prevent the obstruction of
+members who seem ready to sing their Miserere without end, I will ask
+the House to take the readings without debate."
+
+Then in a moment the whole House was in an uproar and members were
+shaking their fists in each other's faces. In vain the President rang
+his bell for silence. At length he put on his hat and left the Chamber,
+and the sitting was at an end.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+The last post that night brought Rossi a letter from Roma.
+
+    "MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND,--It's all up! I'm done with her! My unknown
+    and invisible sister that is to be, or rather isn't to be and
+    oughtn't to be, is not worth thinking about any longer. You tell
+    me that she is good and brave and noble-hearted, and yet you would
+    have me believe that she loves wealth, and ease, and luxury, and
+    that she could not give them up even for the sweetest thing that
+    ever comes into a woman's life. Out on her! What does she think a
+    wife is? A pet to be pampered, a doll to be dressed up and danced
+    on your knee? If that's the sort of woman she is, I know what I
+    should call her. A name is on the tip of my tongue, and the point
+    of my finger, and the end of my pen, and I'm itching to have it
+    out, but I suppose I must not write it. Only don't talk to me any
+    more about the bravery of a woman like that.
+
+    "The wife I call brave is a man's friend, and if she knows what
+    that means, to be the friend of her husband to all the limitless
+    lengths of friendship, she thinks nothing about sacrifices between
+    him and her, and differences of class do not exist for either of
+    them. Her pride died the instant love looked out of her eyes at
+    him, and if people taunt her with his poverty, or his birth, she
+    answers and says: 'It's true he is poor, but his glory is, that he
+    was a workhouse boy who hadn't father or mother to care for him,
+    and now he is a great man, and I'm proud of him, and not all the
+    wealth of the world shall take me away.'
+
+    "One thing I will say, though, for the sister that isn't to be,
+    and that is, that you are deceiving yourself if you suppose that
+    she is going to reconcile herself to your separation while she is
+    kept in the dark as to the cause of it. It is all very well for
+    you to pay compliments to her beauty and youth and the natural
+    strength of her mind to remove passing impressions, but perhaps
+    the impressions are the reverse of passing ones, and if you go out
+    of her life, what is to become of her? Have you thought of that?
+    Of course you haven't.
+
+    "No, no, no! My poor sister! you shall not be so hard on her! In
+    my darkness I could almost fancy that I personate her, and I am
+    she and she is I. Conceited, isn't it? But I told you it wasn't
+    for nothing I was a daughter of Eve. Anyhow I have fought hard for
+    her and beaten you out and out, and now I don't say: 'Will you go
+    to her?' You will--I know you will.
+
+    "My bust is out of the caster's hand, and ought to be under mine,
+    but I've done no work again to-day. Tried, but the glow of soul
+    was not there, and I was injuring the face at every touch.
+
+    "No further news of M----, and my heart's blood is cold at the
+    silence. But if you are fearless, why should I be afraid?--Your
+    friend's friend,                                           R."
+
+
+                                X
+
+Before going to bed that night, Rossi replied to Roma.
+
+    "My Dearest,--Bruno will take this letter, and I will charge him
+    on his soul to deliver it safely into your hands. When you have
+    read it, you will destroy it immediately, both for your sake and
+    my own.
+
+    "From this moment onward I throw away all disguises. The
+    duplicities of love are sweet and touching, but I cannot play
+    hide-and-seek with you any longer.
+
+    "You are right--it is you that I love, and little as I understand
+    and deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and
+    strength. I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is
+    madness to do so, for the obstacles to our union are just as
+    insurmountable as before.
+
+    "It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that
+    separates us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only
+    the inequality of our birth and social conditions, though that is
+    an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a
+    barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death.
+
+    "Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by
+    disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even
+    while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and
+    most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of
+    life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for
+    him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every
+    embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss
+    the chill breath of the tomb.
+
+    "Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her
+    miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of
+    God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things
+    well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable,
+    without hope or dreams.
+
+    "Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here
+    first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt
+    at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported
+    without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them
+    in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of
+    the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death.
+
+    "I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's
+    name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws
+    of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have
+    never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me
+    still, and though the court which condemned me was a military
+    court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I
+    see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in
+    five, ten, twenty years in a cell.
+
+    "What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor
+    consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late,
+    conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging
+    myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel,
+    it would be wrong and wicked.
+
+    "No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or
+    liberty is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament
+    and in public life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter
+    that you have written to me shows plainly that you know it. And
+    when you say your heart's blood runs cold at the thought of what
+    may happen when Minghelli returns from England, you betray the
+    weakness, the natural weakness, the tender and womanly weakness,
+    which justifies me in saying that, as long as we love each other,
+    you and I should never meet again.
+
+    "Don't think that I am a coward and tremble at the death that
+    hangs over me. I neither fear the future nor regret the past. In
+    every true cause some one is called to martyrdom. To die for the
+    right, for humanity, to lay down all you hold most dear for the
+    sake of the poor and the weak and the down-trodden and God's holy
+    justice--it is a magnificent duty, a privilege! And I am ready. If
+    my death is enough, let me give the last drop of my blood, and be
+    dragged through the last degrees of infamy. Only don't let me drag
+    another after me, and endanger a life that is a thousand times
+    dearer to me than my own.
+
+    "I want you, dearest, I want you with my soul, but my doom is
+    certain; it waits for me somewhere; it may be here, it may be
+    there; _it may come to me to-morrow_, or next day, or next year,
+    but it is coming, I feel it, I am sure of it, and I will not fly
+    away. But if I go on until my beloved is my bride, and my name is
+    stamped all over her, and she has taken up my fate, and we are
+    one, and the world knows no difference, what then? Then death with
+    its sure step will come in to separate us, and after death for me,
+    danger, shame, poverty for you, all the penalties a woman pays for
+    her devotion to a man who is down and done.
+
+    "I couldn't bear it. The very thought of it would unman me. It
+    would turn heaven into hell. It would disturb the repose of the
+    grave itself.
+
+    "Isn't it hard enough to do what is before me without tormenting
+    myself with thoughts like these? It is true I have had my dreams
+    like other men--dreams of the woman whom Heaven might give a man
+    for his support--the anchor to which his soul might hold in storm
+    and tempest, and in the very hour of death itself. But what woman
+    is equal to a lot like that? Martyrdom is for man. God keep all
+    women safe from it!
+
+    "Have I said sufficient? If this letter gives you half the pain on
+    reading it that I have felt in writing it, you will be satisfied
+    at last that the obstacles to our union are permanent and
+    insuperable. The time is come when I am forced to tell you the
+    secrets which I have never before revealed to any human soul. You
+    know them now. _They are in your keeping, and it is enough._
+
+    "Heaven be over you! And when you are reconciled to our
+    separation, and both of us are strong, remember that if you want
+    me I will come, and that as long as I live, as long as I am at
+    liberty, I shall be always ready, always waiting, always near. God
+    bless you, my dear one! Adieu!
+                                                        "DAVID LEONE."
+
+During the afternoon of the following day a letter came by a flying
+messenger on a bicycle. It was written in pencil in large and straggling
+characters.
+
+    "DEAR MR. ROSSI,--Your letter has arrived and been read, and, yes,
+    it has been destroyed, too, according to your wish, although the
+    flames that burnt it burnt my hand also, and scorched my heart as
+    well.
+
+    "No doubt you have done wisely. You know better than I do what is
+    best for both of us, and I yield, I submit. Only--and therefore--I
+    must see you immediately. There is a matter of some consequence on
+    which I wish to speak. It has nothing to do with the subject of
+    your letter--nothing directly, at all events--or yet is it in any
+    way related to the Minghelli mischief-making. So you may receive
+    me without fear. And you will find me with a heart at ease.
+
+    "Didn't I tell you that if you wouldn't come to me I must go to
+    you? Expect me this evening about Ave Maria, and arrange it that I
+    may see you alone.
+                                                             "ROMA V."
+
+
+                                XI
+
+As Ave Maria approached, David Rossi became still more agitated. The sky
+had darkened, but there was no wind; the air was empty, and he listened
+with strained attention for every sound from the staircase and the
+street. At length he heard a cab stop at the door, and a moment
+afterwards a light hurrying footstep in the outer room seemed to beat
+upon his heart.
+
+The door opened and Roma came in quickly, with a scarcely audible
+salutation. He saw her with her golden complexion and her large violet
+eyes, wearing a black hat and an astrachan coat, but his head was going
+round and his pulses were beating violently, and he could not control
+his eyes.
+
+"I have come for a minute only," she said. "You received my letter?"
+
+Rossi bent his head.
+
+"David, I want the fulfilment of your promise."
+
+"What promise?"
+
+"The promise to come to me when I stand in need of you. I need you now.
+My fountain is practically finished, and to-morrow afternoon I am to
+have a reception to exhibit it. Everybody will be there, and I want you
+to be present also."
+
+"Is that necessary?" he asked.
+
+"For my purposes, yes. Don't ask me why. Don't question me at all. Only
+trust me and come."
+
+She was speaking in a firm and rapid voice, and looking up he saw that
+her brows were contracted, her lips were set, her cheeks were slightly
+flushed, and her eyes were shining. He had never seen her like that
+before. "What is the secret of it?" he asked himself, but he only
+answered, after a brief pause:
+
+"Very well, I will be there."
+
+"That's all. I might have written, but I was afraid you might object,
+and I wished to make quite certain. Adieu!"
+
+He had only bowed to her as she entered, and now she was going away
+without offering her hand.
+
+"Roma," he said, in a voice that sounded choked.
+
+She stopped but did not speak, and he felt himself growing hot all over.
+
+"I'm relieved--so much relieved--to hear that you agree with what I said
+in my letter."
+
+"The last--in which you wish me to forget you?"
+
+"It is better so--far better. I am one of those who think that if either
+party to a marriage"--he was talking in a constrained way--"entertains
+beforehand any rational doubt about it, he is wiser to withdraw, even at
+the church door, rather than set out on a life-long voyage under doubtful
+auspices."
+
+"Didn't we promise not to speak of this?" she said impatiently. Then
+their eyes met for a moment, and he knew that he was false to himself
+and that his talk of renunciation was a mockery.
+
+"Roma," he said again, "if you want me in the future you must write."
+
+Her face clouded over.
+
+"For your own sake, you know...."
+
+"Oh, that! That's nothing at all--nothing now."
+
+"But people are insulting me about you, and...."
+
+"Well--and you?"
+
+The colour rushed to his cheeks and he smote the back of a chair with
+his clenched fist.
+
+"I tell them...."
+
+"I understand," she said, and her eyes began to shine again. But she
+only turned away, saying: "I'm sorry you are angry that I came."
+
+"Angry!" he cried, and at the sound of his voice as he said the word
+their love for each other went thrilling through and through them.
+
+The rain had begun to fall, and it was beating with smart strokes on the
+window panes.
+
+"You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again
+there is something you ought to hear."
+
+She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on
+to her shoulders.
+
+The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was
+bubbling like a lake.
+
+"The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the
+matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that
+you should hear it now."
+
+Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her
+lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy
+hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty.
+
+Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed
+himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is,"
+he thought. "What is the meaning of it?"
+
+He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet.
+
+"Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked.
+
+"That is all I do remember about my father. Why?"
+
+"It is here in this cylinder."
+
+She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again.
+
+"Tell me," she said.
+
+"When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner
+at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The
+legal term of _domicilio coatto_ is from one year to five, but excuses
+were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come
+and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the
+world outside."
+
+"Did he ever hear of me?"
+
+"Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David
+Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised
+David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send
+me a message."
+
+"Was it about...."
+
+"Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out
+by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a
+way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to
+one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet
+at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were
+certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the
+time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the
+cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to."
+
+With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular
+cardboard-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust,"
+and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only--to
+be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him."
+
+The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying
+fire he could see that her face had turned white.
+
+"And this contains my father's voice?" she said.
+
+"His last message."
+
+"He is dead--two years dead--and yet...."
+
+"Can you bear to hear it?"
+
+"Go on," she said, hardly audibly.
+
+He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the
+instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain,
+lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the
+machine began.
+
+He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm.
+
+Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a
+clear, full voice:
+
+"David Leone--your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying
+message...."
+
+The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking
+whisper, Roma said:
+
+"Wait! Give me one moment."
+
+She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a
+ghostly presence.
+
+She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast.
+
+"I am better now. Go on," she said.
+
+The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came
+as before:
+
+"My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled
+faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was
+meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long
+a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was
+the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies,
+nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England _as_
+Volonna--nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma."
+
+The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim.
+
+"Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has
+happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter
+which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the
+police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for
+his treachery."
+
+"The Baron?"
+
+Rossi had stopped the phonograph.
+
+"Can you bear it?" he said.
+
+The pale young face flushed with resolution.
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and
+husky than before.
+
+"After he had betrayed the father, what impulse of fear or humanity
+prompted him to take charge of the child, God alone, who reads all
+hearts, can say. He went to England to look for her, found her in the
+streets to which she had been abandoned by the faithlessness of the
+guardians to whom I left her, and shut their mouths by buying them to
+the perjury of burying the unknown body of an unfortunate being in the
+name of my beloved child."
+
+The hand on Rossi's arm trembled feebly, and slipped down to his own
+hand. It was cold as ice. The voice from the phonograph was growing
+faint.
+
+"She is now in Rome, living in the name that was mine in Italy, amid an
+atmosphere of danger and perhaps of shame. My son, save her from it. The
+man who betrayed the father may betray the daughter also. Take her from
+him. Rescue her. It is my dying prayer."
+
+The hand in Rossi's hand was holding it tightly, and his blood was
+throbbing at his heart.
+
+"David," the voice from the phonograph was failing rapidly, "when this
+shall come to your hands the darkness of the grave will be over me....
+In my great distress of mind I torture myself with many terrors.... Do
+not trifle with my request. But whatever you decide to do ... be gentle
+with the child.... I dream of her every night, and send my heart's heart
+to her on the swelling tides of love.... Adieu, my son. The end is near.
+God be with you in all you do that I did ill or left undone. And if
+death's great sundering does not annihilate the memory of those who
+remain on earth, be sure you have a helper and an advocate in heaven."
+
+The voice ceased, the whirring of the instrument came to an end, and an
+invisible spirit seemed to fade into the air. The pattering of the rain
+had stopped, and there was the crackle of cab wheels on the pavement
+below. Roma had dropped Rossi's hand, and was leaning forward on her
+knees with both hands over her face. After a moment, she wiped her eyes
+with her handkerchief and began to put on her hat.
+
+"How long is it since you received this message?" she said.
+
+"On the night you came here first."
+
+"And when I asked you to come to my house on that ... that useless
+errand, you were thinking of ... of my father's request as well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You have known all this about the Baron for a month, yet you have said
+nothing. _Why_ have you said nothing?"
+
+"You wouldn't have believed me at first, whatever I had said against
+him."
+
+"But afterwards?"
+
+"Afterwards I had another reason."
+
+"Did it concern me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Now that I have to part from you I am compelled to tell you what he
+is."
+
+"But if you had known that all this time he has been trying to use
+somebody against you...."
+
+"That would have made no difference."
+
+She lifted her head, and a look of fire, almost of fierceness, came into
+her face, but she only said, with a little hysterical cry, as if her
+throat were swelling:
+
+"Come to me to-morrow, David! Be sure you come! If you don't come I
+shall never, never forgive you! But you will come! You will! You will!"
+
+And then, as if afraid of breaking out into sobs, she turned quickly and
+hurried away.
+
+"She can never fall into that man's hands now," he thought. And then he
+lit his lamp and sat down to his work, but the light was gone, and the
+night had fallen on him.
+
+
+                                XII
+
+Next morning David Rossi had not yet risen when some one knocked at his
+door. It was Bruno. The great fellow looked nervous and troubled, and he
+spoke in a husky whisper.
+
+"You're not going to Donna Roma's to-day, sir?"
+
+"Why not, Bruno?"
+
+"Have you seen her bust of yourself?"
+
+"Hardly at all."
+
+"Just so. My case, too. She has taken care of that--locking it up every
+night, and getting another caster to cast it. But I saw it the first
+morning after she began, and I know what it is."
+
+"What is it, Bruno?"
+
+"You'll be angry again, sir."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Judas--that's what it is, sir; the study for Judas in the fountain for
+the Municipality."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All?... But it's a caricature, a spiteful caricature! And you sat four
+days and never even looked at it! I tell you it's disgusting, sir.
+Simply disgusting. It's been done on purpose, too. When I think of it I
+forget all you said, and I hate the woman as much as ever. And now she
+is to have a reception, and you are going to it, just to help her to
+have her laugh. Don't go, sir! Take the advice of a fool, and don't
+go!"
+
+"Bruno," said Rossi, lying with his head on his arm, "understand me once
+for all. Donna Roma may have used my head as a study for Judas--I cannot
+deny that since you say it is so--but if she had used it as a study for
+Satan, I would believe in her the same as ever."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes, by God! So now, like a good fellow, go away and leave her alone."
+
+The streets were more than usually full of people when Rossi set out for
+the reception. Thick groups were standing about the hoardings, reading a
+yellow placard, which was still wet with the paste of the bill-sticker.
+It was a proclamation, signed by the Minister of the Interior, and it
+ran:
+
+    "ROMANS,--It having come to the knowledge of the Government that a
+    set of misguided men, the enemies of the throne and of society,
+    known to be in league with the republican, atheist, and anarchist
+    associations of foreign countries, are inciting the people to
+    resist the just laws made by their duly elected Parliament, and
+    sanctioned by their King, thus trying to lead them into outbreaks
+    that would be unworthy of a cultivated and generous race, and
+    would disgrace us in the view of other nations--the Government
+    hereby give notice that they will not allow the laws to be
+    insulted with impunity, and therefore they warn the public against
+    the holding of all such mass meetings in public buildings,
+    squares, and streets, as may lead to the possibility of serious
+    disturbances."
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+The little Piazza of Trinita de' Monti was full of carriages, and Roma's
+rooms were thronged. David Rossi entered with the calmness of a man who
+is accustomed to personal observation, but Roma met him with an almost
+extravagant salutation.
+
+"Ah, you have come at last," she said in a voice that was intended to be
+heard by all. And then, in a low tone, she added, "Stay near me, and
+don't go until I say you may."
+
+Her face had the expression that had puzzled him the day before, but
+with the flushed cheeks, the firm mouth and the shining eyes, there was
+now a strange look of excitement, almost of hysteria.
+
+The company was divided into four main groups. The first of them
+consisted of Roma's aunt, powdered and perfumed, propped up with
+cushions on an invalid chair, and receiving the guests by the door, with
+the Baron Bonelli, silent and dignified, but smiling his icy smile, by
+her side. A second group consisted of Don Camillo and some ladies of
+fashion, who stood by the window and made little half-smothered trills
+of laughter. The third group included Lena and Olga, the journalists,
+with Madame Sella, the modiste; and the fourth group was made up of the
+English and American Ambassadors, Count Mario, and some other
+diplomatists.
+
+The conversation was at first interrupted by the little pauses that
+follow fresh arrivals; and after it had settled down to the dull buzz of
+a beehive, when the old brood and her queen are being turned out, it
+consisted merely of hints, giving the impression of something in the air
+that was scandalous and amusing, but could not be talked about.
+
+"Have you heard that" ... "Is it true that" ... "No?" "Can it be
+possible?" "How delicious!" and then inaudible questions and low
+replies, with tittering, tapping of fans, and insinuating glances.
+
+But Roma seemed to hear everything that was said about her, and
+constantly broke in upon a whispered conversation with disconcerting
+openness.
+
+"That man here!" said one of the journalists at Rossi's entrance. "In
+the same room with the Prime Minister!" said another. "After that
+disgraceful scene in the House, too!"
+
+"I hear that he was abominably rude to the Baron the other day," said
+Madame Sella.
+
+"Rude? He has blundered shockingly, and offended everybody. They tell me
+the Vatican is now up in arms against him, and is going to denounce him
+and all his ways."
+
+"No wonder! He has made himself thoroughly disagreeable, and I'm only
+surprised that the Prime Minister...."
+
+"Oh, leave the Prime Minister alone. He has something up his sleeve....
+Haven't you heard why we are invited here to-day? No? Not heard that...."
+
+"Really! So that explains ... I see, I see!" and then more tittering and
+tapping of fans.
+
+"Certainly, he is an extraordinary man, and one of the first statesmen
+in Europe."
+
+"It's so unselfish of you to say that," said Roma, flashing round
+suddenly, "for the Minister has never been a friend of journalists, and
+I've heard him say that there wasn't one of them who wouldn't sell his
+mother's honour if he thought he could make a sensation."
+
+"Love?" said the voice of Don Camillo in the silence that followed
+Roma's remark. "What has marriage to do with love except to spoil it?"
+And then, amidst laughter, and the playful looks of the ladies by whom
+he was surrounded, he gave a gay picture of his own poverty, and the
+necessity of marrying to retrieve his fortunes.
+
+"What would you have? Look at my position! A great name, as ancient as
+history, and no income. A gorgeous palace, as old as the pyramids, and
+no cook!"
+
+"Don't be so conceited about your poverty, Gi-gi," said Roma. "Some of
+the Roman ladies are as poor as the men. As for me, Madame Sella could
+sell up every stick in my house to-morrow, and if the Municipality
+should throw up my fountain...."
+
+"Senator Palomba," said Felice's sepulchral voice from the door.
+
+The suave, oily little Mayor came in, twinkling his eyes and saying:
+
+"Did I hear my name as I entered?"
+
+"I was saying," said Roma, "that if the Municipality should throw up my
+fountain...."
+
+The little man made an amusing gesture, and the constrained silence was
+broken by some awkward laughter.
+
+"Roma," said the testy voice of the Countess, "I think I've done my duty
+by you, and now the Baron will take me back. Natalina! Where's
+Natalina?"
+
+But half-a-dozen hands took hold of the invalid chair, and the Baron
+followed it into the bedroom.
+
+"Wonderful man!" "Wonderful!" whispered various voices as the Minister's
+smile disappeared through the door.
+
+The conversation had begun to languish when the Princess Bellini
+arrived, and then suddenly it became lively and general.
+
+"I'm late, but do you know, my dear," she said, kissing Roma on both
+cheeks, "I've been nearly torn to pieces in coming. My carriage had to
+plough its way through crowds of people."
+
+"Crowds?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, and the streets are nearly impassable. Another
+demonstration, I suppose! The poor must always be demonstrating."
+
+"Ah! yes," said Don Camillo. "Haven't you heard the news, Roma?"
+
+"I've been working all night and all day, and I have heard nothing,"
+said Roma.
+
+"Well, to prevent a recurrence of the disgraceful scene of yesterday,
+the King has promulgated the Public Security Act by royal decree, and
+the wonderful crisis is at an end."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Now the Prime Minister is master of the situation, and has begun by
+proclaiming the mass meeting which was to have been held in the
+Coliseum."
+
+"Good thing too," said Count Mario. "We've heard enough of liberal
+institutions lately."
+
+"And of the scandalous speeches of professional agitators," said Madame
+Sella.
+
+"And of the liberty of the press," said Senator Palomba. And then the
+effeminate old dandy, the fashionable dressmaker, and the oily little
+Mayor exchanged significant nods.
+
+"Wait! Only wait!" said Roma, in a low voice, to Rossi, who was standing
+in silence by her side.
+
+"Unhappy Italy!" said the American Ambassador. "With the largest array
+of titled nobility and the largest army of beggars. The one class
+sipping iced drinks in the piazzas during the playing of music, and the
+other class marching through the streets and conspiring against
+society."
+
+"You judge us from a foreign standpoint, dear friend," said Don Camillo,
+"and forget our love of a pageant. The Princess says our poor are always
+demonstrating. We are all always demonstrating. Our favourite
+demonstration is a funeral, with drums beating and banners waving. If we
+cannot have a funeral we have a wedding, with flowers and favours and
+floods of tears. And when we cannot have either, we put up with a
+revolution, and let our Radical orators tell us of the wickedness of
+taxing the people's bread."
+
+"Always their bread," said the Princess, with a laugh.
+
+"In America, dear General, you are so tragically sincere, but in Italy
+we are a race of actors. The King, the Parliament, the Pope himself...."
+
+"Shocking!" said the little Princess. "But if you had said as much of
+our professional agitators...."
+
+"Oh, they are the most accomplished and successful actors, Princess.
+But we are all actors in Italy, from the greatest to the least, and the
+'curtain' is to him who can score off everybody else."
+
+"So," began the American, "to be Prime Minister in Rome...."
+
+"Is to be the chief actor in Europe, and his leading part is that in
+which he puts an end to his adversary amidst a burst of inextinguishable
+laughter."
+
+"What is he driving at?" said the English to the American Ambassador.
+
+"Don't you know? Haven't you heard what is coming?" And then some
+further whispering.
+
+"Wait, only wait!" said Roma.
+
+"Gi-gi," said the Princess, "how stupid you are! You're all wrong about
+Roma. Look at her now. To think that men can be so blind! And the Baron
+is no better than the rest of you. He's too proud to believe what I tell
+him, but he'll learn the truth some day. He is here, of course? In the
+Countess's room, isn't he?... How do you like my dress?"
+
+"It's perfect."
+
+"Really? The black and the blue make a charming effect, don't they? They
+are the Baron's favourite colours. How agitated our hostess is! She
+seems to have all the world here. When are we to see the wonderful work?
+What's she waiting for? Ah, there's the Baron coming out at last!"
+
+"They're all here, aren't they?" said Roma, looking round with flushed
+cheeks and flaming eyes at the jangling, slandering crew, who had
+insulted and degraded David Rossi.
+
+"Take care," he answered, but she only threw up her head and laughed.
+
+Then the company went down the circular iron staircase to the studio.
+Roma walked first with her rapid step, talking nervously and laughing
+frequently.
+
+The fountain stood in the middle of the floor, and the guests gathered
+about it.
+
+"Superb!" they exclaimed one after another. "Superb!" "Superb!"
+
+The little Mayor was especially enthusiastic. He stood near the Baron,
+and holding up both hands he cried:
+
+"Marvellous! Miraculous! Fit to take its place beside the masterpieces
+of old Rome!"
+
+"But surely this is 'Hamlet' without the prince," said the Baron. "You
+set out to make a fountain representing Christ and His twelve apostles,
+and the only figure you leave unfinished is Christ Himself."
+
+He pointed to the central figure above the dish, which was merely shaped
+out and indicated.
+
+"Not only one, your Excellency," said Don Camillo. "Here is another
+unfinished figure--intended for Judas, apparently."
+
+"I left them to the last on purpose," said Roma. "They were so
+important, and so difficult. But I have studies for both of them in the
+boudoir, and you shall give me your advice and opinion."
+
+"The saint and the satyr, the God and the devil, the betrayed and the
+betrayer--what subjects for the chisel of the artist!" said Don Camillo.
+
+"Just so," said the Mayor. "She must do the one with all the emotions of
+love, and the other with all the faculties of hate."
+
+"Not that art," said Don Camillo, "has anything to do with life--that is
+to say, real life...."
+
+"Why not?" said Roma sharply. "The artist has to live in the world, and
+he isn't blind. Therefore, why shouldn't he describe what he sees around
+him?"
+
+"But is that art? If so, the artist is at liberty to give his views on
+religion and politics, and by the medium of his art he may even express
+his private feelings--return insults and wreak revenge."
+
+"Certainly he may," said Roma; "the greatest artists have often done
+so." Saying this, she led the way upstairs, and the others followed with
+a chorus of hypocritical approval.
+
+"It's only human, to say the least." "Of course it is!" "If she's a
+woman and can't speak out, or fight duels, it's a lady-like way, at all
+events." And then further tittering, tapping of fans, and significant
+nods at Rossi when his back was turned.
+
+Two busts stood on pedestals in the boudoir. One of them was covered
+with a damp cloth, the other with a muslin veil. Going up to the latter
+first, Roma said, with a slightly quavering voice:
+
+"It was so difficult to do justice to the Christ that I am almost sorry
+I made the attempt. But it came easier when I began to think of some one
+who was being reviled and humiliated and degraded because he was poor
+and wasn't ashamed of it, and who was always standing up for the weak
+and the down-trodden, and never returning anybody's insult, however
+shameful and false and wicked, because he wasn't thinking of himself at
+all. So I got the best model I could in real life, and this is the
+result."
+
+With that she pulled off the muslin veil and revealed the sculptured
+head of David Rossi, in a snow-white plaster cast. The features
+expressed pure nobility, and every touch was a touch of sympathy and
+love.
+
+A moment of chilling silence was followed by an under-breath of gossip.
+"Who is it?" "Christ, of course." "Oh, certainly, but it reminds me of
+some one." "Who can it be?" "The Pope?" "Why, no; don't you see who it
+is?" "Is it really?" "How shameful!" "How blasphemous!"
+
+Roma stood looking on with a face lighted up by two flaming eyes. "I'm
+afraid you don't think I've done justice to my model," she said. "That's
+quite true. But perhaps my Judas will please you better," and she
+stepped up to the bust that was covered by the wet cloth.
+
+"I found this a difficult subject also, and it was not until yesterday
+evening that I felt able to begin on it."
+
+Then, with a hand that trembled visibly, she took from the wall the
+portrait of her father, and offering it to the Minister, she said:
+
+"Some one told me a story of duplicity and treachery--it was about this
+poor old gentleman, Baron--and then I knew what sort of person it was
+who betrayed his friend and master for thirty pieces of silver, and
+listened to the hypocrisy, and flattery, and lying of the miserable
+group of parasites who crowded round him because he was a traitor, and
+because he kept the purse."
+
+With that she threw off the damp cloth, and revealed the clay model of a
+head. The face was unmistakable, but it expressed every
+baseness--cunning, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality.
+
+The silence was freezing, and the company began to turn away, and to
+mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the
+Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A
+scarecrow!"
+
+Roma watched them for a moment, and then said: "You don't like my Judas?
+Neither do I. You're right--it _is_ disgusting."
+
+And taking up in both hands a piece of thin wire, she cut the clay
+across, and the upper part of it fell face downward with a thud on to
+the floor.
+
+The Princess, who stood by the side of the Baron, offered him her
+sympathy, and he answered in his icy smile:
+
+"But these artists are all slightly insane, you know. That is an evil
+which must be patiently endured, without noticing too much the ludicrous
+side of it."
+
+Then, stepping up to Roma, and handing back the portrait, the Baron
+said, with a slight frown:
+
+"I must thank you for a very amusing afternoon, and bid you good-day."
+
+The others looked after him, and interpreted his departure according to
+their own feelings. "He is done with her," they whispered. "He'll pay
+her out for this." And without more ado they began to follow him.
+
+Roma, flushed and excited, bowed to them as they went out one by one,
+with a politeness that was demonstrative to the point of caricature. She
+was saying farewell to them for ever, and her face was lighted up with a
+look of triumphant joy. They tried to bear themselves bravely as they
+passed her, but her blazing eyes and sweeping curtseys made them feel as
+if they were being turned out of the house.
+
+When they were all gone, she shut the door with a bang, and then turning
+to David Rossi, who alone remained, she burst into a flood of hysterical
+tears, and threw herself on to her knees at his feet.
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+"David!" she cried.
+
+"Don't do that. Get up," he answered.
+
+His thoughts were in a whirl. He had been standing aside, trembling for
+Roma as he had never trembled for himself in the hottest moments of his
+public life. And now he was alone with her, and his blood was beating in
+his breast in stabs.
+
+"Haven't I done enough?" she cried. "You taunted me with my wealth, but
+I am as poor as you are now. Every penny I had in the world came from
+the Baron. He allowed me to use part of the revenues of my father's
+estates, but the income was under his control, and now he will stop it
+altogether. I am in debt. I have always been in debt. That was my
+benefactor's way of reminding me of my dependence on his bounty. And now
+all _I_ have will be sold to satisfy my creditors, and I shall be turned
+out homeless."
+
+"Roma...." he began, but her tears and passion bore down everything.
+
+"House, furniture, presents, carriages, horses, everything will go soon,
+and I shall have nothing whatever! No matter! You said a woman loved
+ease and wealth and luxury. Is that all a woman loves? Is there nothing
+else in the world for any of us? Aren't you satisfied with me at last?"
+
+"Roma," he answered, breathing hard, "don't talk like that. I cannot
+bear it."
+
+But she did not listen. "You taunted me with being a woman," she said
+through a fresh burst of tears. "A woman was incapable of friendship and
+sacrifices. She was intended to be a man's plaything. Do you think I
+want to be my husband's mistress? I want to be his wife, to share his
+fate, whatever it may be, for good or bad, for better or worse."
+
+"For God's sake, Roma!" he cried. But she broke in on him again.
+
+"You taunted me with the dangers you had to go through, as if a woman
+must needs be an impediment to her husband, and try to keep him back. Do
+you think I want my husband to do nothing? If he were content with that
+he would not be the man I had loved, and I should despise him and leave
+him."
+
+"Roma!..."
+
+"Then _you_ taunted me with the death that hangs over you. When you were
+gone I should be left to the mercy of the world. But that can never
+happen. Never! Do you think a woman can outlive the man she loves as I
+love you?... There! I've said it. You've shamed me into it."
+
+He could not speak now. His words were choking in his throat, and she
+went on in a torrent of tears:
+
+"The death that threatens you comes from no fault of yours, but only
+from your fidelity to my father. Therefore I have a right to share it,
+and I will not live when you are dead."
+
+"If I give way now," he thought, "all is over."
+
+And clenching his hands behind his back to keep himself from throwing
+his arms around her, he began in a low voice:
+
+"Roma, you have broken your promise to me."
+
+"I _don't_ care," she interrupted. "I would break ten thousand
+promises. I deceived you. I confess it. I pretended to be reconciled to
+your will, and I was not reconciled. I wanted you to see me strip myself
+of all I had, that you might have no answer and excuse. Well, you have
+seen me do it, and now ... what are you going to do _now_?"
+
+"Roma," he began again, trembling all over, "there have been two men in
+me all this time, and one of them has been trying to protect you from
+the world and from yourself, while the other ... the other has been
+wanting you to despise all his objections, and trample them under your
+feet.... If I could only believe that you know all you are doing, all
+the risk you are running, and the fate you are willing to share ... but
+no, it is impossible."
+
+"David," she cried, "you love me! If you didn't love me, I should know
+it now--at this moment. But I am braver than you are...."
+
+"Let me go. I cannot answer for myself."
+
+"I am braver than you are, for I have not only stripped myself of all my
+possessions, and of all my friends ... I have even compromised myself
+again and again, and been daring and audacious, and rude to everybody
+for your sake.... I, a woman ... while you, a man ... you are afraid ...
+yes, afraid ... you are a coward--that's it, a coward!... No, no, no!
+What am I saying?... David Leone!"
+
+And with a cry of passion and remorse she flung both arms about his
+neck.
+
+He had stood, during this fierce struggle of love and pain, holding
+himself in until his throbbing nerves could bear the strain no longer.
+
+"Come to me, then--come to me," he cried, and at the moment when she
+threw herself upon him he stretched out his arms to receive her.
+
+"You do love me?" she said.
+
+"Indeed, yes! And you?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!"
+
+He clasped her in his arms with redoubled ardour, and pressed her to his
+breast and kissed her. The love so long pent up was bursting out like a
+liberated cataract that sweeps the snow and the ice before it.
+
+All at once the girl who had been so brave in the great battle of her
+love became weak and womanish in the moment of her victory. Under the
+warmth of his tenderness she dropped her head on to his breast to
+conceal her face in her shame.
+
+"You will never think the worse of me?" she faltered.
+
+"The worse of you! For loving me?"
+
+"For telling you so and forcing myself into your life?"
+
+"My darling, no!"
+
+She lifted her head, and he kissed away the tears that were shining in
+her eyes.
+
+"But tell me," he said, "are you sure--quite sure? Do you know what is
+before you?"
+
+"I only know I love you."
+
+He folded her afresh in his strong embrace, and kissed her head as it
+lay on his breast.
+
+"Think again," he said. "A man's enemies can be merciless. They may
+watch you and put pressure upon you, and even humiliate you for my
+sake."
+
+"No matter, I am not afraid," she answered, and again he tightened his
+arms about her in a passionate embrace, and covered her hair and her
+neck and her hands and her finger-tips with kisses.
+
+They did not speak for a long time after that. There was no need for
+words. He was conquered, yet he was conqueror, and she was happy and at
+peace. The long fight was over, and everything was well.
+
+He put her to sit in a chair, and sat himself on the arm of it, with his
+face to her face, and her arms still round his neck. It was like a
+dream. She could scarcely believe it. He whom she had looked up to with
+adoration was caressing her. She was like a child in her joy, blushing
+and half afraid.
+
+He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead. She threw back
+her head that she might put her lips to his forehead in return, and he
+kissed her full, round throat.
+
+Then they exchanged rings as the sign of their eternal union. When she
+put her diamond ring, set in gold, on to his finger, he looked grave and
+even sad; but when he put his plain silver one on to hers, she lifted up
+her glorified hand to the light, and kissed and kissed it.
+
+They began to talk in low tones, as if some one had been listening. It
+was the whispering of their hearts, for the angel of happy love has no
+voice louder than a whisper. She asked him to say again that he loved
+her, but as soon as he began to say it she stopped his mouth with a
+kiss.
+
+They talked of their love. She was sure she had loved him before he
+loved her, and when he said that he had loved her always, she protested
+in that case he did not love her at all.
+
+They rose at length to close the windows, and side by side, his arm
+about her waist, her head leaning lightly on his shoulder, they stood
+for a moment looking out. The mother of cities lay below in its
+lightsome whiteness, and over the ridge of its encircling hills the glow
+of the departing sun was rising in vaporous tints of amber and crimson
+into the transparent blue, with the dome of St. Peter's, like a balloon
+ready to rise into a celestial sky.
+
+"A storm is coming," he said, looking at the colours in the sunset.
+
+"It has come and gone," she whispered, and then his arm folded closer
+about her waist.
+
+It took him half-an-hour to say adieu. After the last kiss and the last
+handshake, their arms would stretch out to the utmost limit, and then
+close again for another and another and yet another embrace.
+
+
+                                XV
+
+When at length Rossi was gone, Roma ran into her bedroom to look at her
+face in the glass. The golden complexion was heightened by a bright spot
+on either cheek, and a teardrop was glistening in the corner of each of
+her eyes.
+
+She went back to the boudoir. David Rossi was no longer there, but the
+room seemed to be full of his presence. She sat in the chair again, and
+again she stood by the window. At length she opened her desk and wrote a
+letter:--
+
+    "DEAREST,--You are only half-an-hour gone, and here I am sending
+    this letter after you, like a handkerchief you had forgotten. I
+    have one or two things to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple
+    things, but I cannot think of them sensibly for joy of the
+    certainty that you love me. Of course I knew it all the time, but
+    I couldn't be at ease until I had heard it from your own lips; and
+    now I feel almost afraid of my great happiness. How wonderful it
+    seems! And, like all events that are long expected, how suddenly
+    it has happened in the end. To think that a month ago--only a
+    little month--you and I were both in Rome, within a mile of each
+    other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed
+    by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it!
+
+    "Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said
+    so savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your
+    anxiety about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of
+    the women who think that a wife should further a man's aims in
+    life if she can; and if she can't do that, she should stand aside
+    and not impede him. So go on, dear heart, without fear for me. I
+    will take care of myself, whatever occurs. Don't let one hour or
+    one act of your life be troubled by the thought of what would
+    happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am your beloved, but I
+    am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow where my captain
+    calls:
+
+        "'Teach me, only teach, Love!
+          As I ought
+        I will speak thy speech, Love!
+          Think thy thought.'
+
+    "And if I was not half afraid that you would think it bolder than
+    is modest in your bride to be, I would go on with the next lines
+    of my sweet quotation.
+
+    "Another thing. You went away without saying you forgive me for
+    the wicked duplicity I practised upon you. It was very wrong, I
+    suppose, and yet for my life I cannot get up any real contrition
+    on the subject. There's always some duplicity in a woman. It is
+    the badge of every daughter of Eve, and it must come out
+    somewhere. In my case it came out in loving you to all the lengths
+    and ends of love, and drawing you on to loving me. I ought to be
+    ashamed, but I'm not--I'm glad.
+
+    "I _did_ love first, and, of course, I knew you from the
+    beginning, and when you wrote about being in love with some one
+    else, I knew quite well you meant me. But it was so delicious to
+    pretend not to know, to come near and then to sheer off again, to
+    touch and then to fly, to tempt you and then to run away, until a
+    strong tide rushed at me and overwhelmed me, and I was swooning in
+    your arms at last.
+
+    "Dearest, don't think I made light of the obstacles you urged
+    against our union. I knew all the time that the risks of marriage
+    were serious, though perhaps I am not in a position even yet to
+    realise how serious they may be. Only I knew also that the dangers
+    were greater still if we kept apart, and that gave me courage to
+    be bold and to defy conventions.
+
+    "Which brings me to my last point, and please prepare to be
+    serious, and bend your brow to that terrible furrow which comes
+    when you are fearfully in earnest. What you said of your enemies
+    being merciless, and perhaps watching me and putting pressure upon
+    me to injure you, is only too imminent a danger. The truth is that
+    I have all along known more than I had courage to tell, but I was
+    hoping you would understand, and now I tremble to think how I have
+    suffered myself to be silent.
+
+    "The Minghelli matter is an alarming affair, for I have reason to
+    believe that the man has lit on the name you bore in England, and
+    that when he returns to Rome he will try to fix it upon you by
+    means of me. This is fearful to contemplate, and my heart quakes
+    to think of it. But happily there is a way to checkmate such a
+    devilish design, and it is within your own power to save me from
+    life-long remorse.
+
+    "I don't think the laws of any civilized country compel a man's
+    _wife_ to compromise him, and thinking of this gives me courage to
+    be unmaidenly and say: Don't let it be long, dearest! I could die
+    to bring it to pass in a moment. With all my great, great
+    happiness, I shall have the heartache until it is done, and only
+    when it is over shall I begin to live.
+
+    "There! You didn't know what a forward hussy I could be if I
+    tried, and really I have been surprised at myself since I began to
+    be in love with you. For weeks and weeks I have been thin and
+    haggard and ugly, and only to-day I begin to be a little
+    beautiful. I couldn't be anything but beautiful to-day, and I've
+    been running to the glass to look at myself, as the only way to
+    understand why you love me at all. And I'm glad--so glad for your
+    sake.
+
+    "Good-bye, dearest! You cannot come to-morrow or the next day, and
+    what a lot I shall have to live before I see you again! Shall I
+    look older? No, for thinking of you makes me feel younger and
+    younger every minute. How old are you? Thirty-four? I'm twenty-four
+    and a half, and that is just right, but if you think I ought to be
+    nearer your age I'll wear a bonnet and fasten it with a bow.
+
+    "ROMA.
+
+    "P.S.--Don't delay the momentous matter. Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+She dined alone that night that she might be undisturbed in her thoughts
+of Rossi. Ordinary existence had almost disappeared from her
+consciousness, and every time Felice spoke as he served the dishes his
+voice seemed to come from far away.
+
+She went to bed early, but it was late before she slept. For a long time
+she lay awake to think over all that had happened, and, when the night
+was far gone, and she tried to fall asleep in order to dream of it also,
+she could not do so for sheer delight of the prospect. But at last amid
+the gathering clouds of sleep she said "Good-night," with the ghost of a
+kiss, and slept until morning.
+
+When she awoke it was late, and the sun was shining into the room. She
+lay on her back and stretched out both arms for sheer sweetness of the
+sensation of health and love. Everything was well, and she was very
+happy. Thinking of yesterday, she was even sorry for the Baron, and told
+herself she had been too bold and daring.
+
+But that thought was gone in a moment. Body and soul were suffused with
+joy, and she leapt out of bed with a spring.
+
+A moment afterwards Natalina came with a letter. It was from the Baron
+himself, and it was dated the day before:--
+
+    "Minghelli has returned from London, and therefore I must see you
+    to-morrow at eleven o'clock. Be so good as to be at home, and give
+    orders that for half-an-hour at least we shall be quite undisturbed."
+
+Then the sun went out, the air grew dull, and darkness fell over all the
+world.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                   PART FIVE--THE PRIME MINISTER
+
+
+                                I
+
+It was Sunday. The storm threatened by the sunset of the day before had
+not yet come, but the sun was struggling through a veil of clouds, and a
+black ridge lay over the horizon.
+
+At eleven o'clock to the moment the Baron arrived. As usual, he was
+faultlessly dressed, and he looked cool and tranquil.
+
+"I am to show you into this room, Excellency," said Felice, leading the
+way to the boudoir.
+
+"Thanks!... Anything to tell me, Felice?"
+
+"Nothing, Excellency," said Felice. Then, pointing to the plaster bust
+on its pedestal in the corner, he added in a lower tone, "_He_ remained
+last night after the others had gone, and...."
+
+But at that moment there was the rustle of a woman's dress outside, and,
+interrupting Felice, the Baron said in a high-pitched voice:
+
+"Certainly; and please tell the Countess I shall not forget to look in
+upon her before I go."
+
+Roma came into the room with a gloomy and firm-set face. The smile that
+seemed always to play about her mouth and eyes had given place to a
+slight frown and an air of defiance. But the Baron saw in a moment that
+behind the lips so sternly set, and the straight look of the eyes, there
+was a frightened expression which she was trying to conceal. He greeted
+her with his accustomed calm and naturalness, kissed her hand, offered
+her the flower from his button-hole, put her to sit in the arm-chair
+with its back to the window, took his own seat on the couch in front of
+it, and leisurely drew off his spotless gloves.
+
+Not a word about the scene of yesterday, not a look of pain or reproof.
+Only a few casual pleasantries, and then a quiet gliding into the
+business of his visit.
+
+"What an age since we were here alone before! And what changes you've
+made! Your pretty nest is like a cell! Well, I've obeyed your mandate,
+you see. I've stayed away for a month. It was hard to do--bitterly
+hard--and many a time I've told myself it was imprudent. But you were a
+woman. You were inexorable. I was forced to submit. And now, what have
+you got to tell me?"
+
+"Nothing," she answered, looking straight before her.
+
+"Nothing whatever?"
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+She did not move or turn her face, and he sat for a moment watching her.
+Then he rose, and began to walk about the room.
+
+"Let us understand each other, my child," he said gently. "Will you
+forgive me if I recall facts that are familiar?"
+
+She did not answer, but looked fixedly into the fire, while he leaned on
+the stove and stood face to face with her.
+
+"A month ago, a certain Deputy, an obstructionist politician, who has
+for years made the task of government difficult, uttered a seditious
+speech, and brought himself within the power of the law. In that speech
+he also attacked me, and--shall I say?--grossly slandered you.
+Parliament was not in session, and I was able to order his arrest. In
+due course, he would have been punished, perhaps by imprisonment,
+perhaps by banishment, but you thought it prudent to intervene. You
+urged reasons of policy which were wise and far-seeing. I yielded, and,
+to the bewilderment of my officials, I ordered the Deputy's release. But
+he was not therefore to escape. You undertook his punishment. In a
+subtle and more effectual way, you were to wipe out the injury he had
+done, and requite him for his offence. The man was a mystery--you were
+to find out all about him. He was suspected of intrigue--you were to
+discover his conspiracies. Within a month, you were to deliver him into
+my hands, and I was to know _the inmost secrets of his soul_."
+
+It was with difficulty that Roma maintained her calmness while the Baron
+was speaking, but she only shook a stray lock of hair from her forehead,
+and sat silent.
+
+"Well, the month is over. I have given you every opportunity to deal
+with our friend as you thought best. Have you found out anything about
+him?"
+
+She put on a bold front and answered, "No."
+
+"So your effort has failed?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Then you are likely to give up your plan of punishing the man for
+defaming and degrading you?"
+
+"I have given it up already."
+
+"Strange! Very strange! Very unfortunate also, for we are at this moment
+at a crisis when it is doubly important to the Government to possess the
+information you set out to find. Still, your idea was a good one, and I
+can never be sufficiently grateful to you for suggesting it. And
+although _your_ efforts have failed, you need not be uneasy. You have
+given us the clues by which _our_ efforts are succeeding, and you shall
+yet punish the man who insulted you so publicly and so grossly."
+
+"How is it possible for me to punish him?"
+
+"By identifying David Rossi as one who was condemned in contumacy for
+high treason sixteen years ago."
+
+"That is ridiculous," she said. "Sixteen months ago I had never heard
+the name of David Rossi."
+
+The Baron stooped a little and said:
+
+"Had you ever heard the name of David Leone?"
+
+She dropped back in her chair, and again looked straight before her.
+
+"Come, come, my child," said the Baron caressingly, and moving across
+the room to look out of the window, he tapped her lightly on the
+shoulder:
+
+"I told you that Minghelli had returned from London."
+
+"That forger!" she said hoarsely.
+
+"No doubt! One who spends his life ferreting out crime is apt to have
+the soul of a criminal. But civilisation needs its scavengers, and it
+was a happy thought of yours to think of this one. Indeed, everything
+we've done has been done on your initiative, and when our friend is
+finally brought to justice, the deed will really be due to you, and you
+alone."
+
+The defiant look was disappearing from her eyes, and she rose with an
+expression of pain.
+
+"Why do you torture me like this?" she said. "After what has happened,
+isn't it quite plain that I am his friend, and not his enemy?"
+
+"Perhaps," said the Baron. His face assumed a death-like rigidity. "Sit
+down and listen to me."
+
+She sat down, and he returned to his place by the stove.
+
+"I say you gave us the clues we have worked upon. Those clues were
+three. First, that David Rossi knew the life-story of Doctor Roselli in
+London. Second, that he knew the story of Doctor Roselli's daughter,
+Roma Roselli. Third, that he was for a time a waiter at the Grand Hotel
+in Rome. Two minor clues came independently, that David Rossi was once a
+stable-boy in New York, that his mother drowned herself in the Tiber,
+and he was brought up in a Foundling. By these five clues the
+authorities have discovered eight facts. Permit me to recite them."
+
+Leaning his elbow on the stove and opening his hand, the Baron ticked
+off the facts one by one on his fingers.
+
+"Fact one. Some thirty odd years ago a woman carrying a child presented
+herself at the office in Rome for the registry of births. She gave the
+name of Leonora Leone, and wished her child, a boy, to be registered as
+David Leone. But the officer in attendance discovered that the woman's
+name was Leonora Rossi, and that she had been married according to the
+religious rites of the Church, but not according to the civil
+regulations of the State. The child was therefore registered as David
+Rossi, son of Leonora Rossi and of a father unknown."
+
+"Shameful!" cried Roma. "Shameful! shameful!"
+
+"Fact two," said the Baron, without the change of a tone. "One night a
+little later the body of a woman found drowned in the Tiber was
+recognised as the body of Leonora Rossi, and buried in the pauper part
+of the Campo Verano under that name. The same night a child was placed
+by an unknown hand in the _rota_ of Santo Spirito, with a paper attached
+to its wrist, giving particulars of its baptism and its name. The name
+given was David Leone."
+
+The Baron ticked off the third of his fingers and continued:
+
+"Fact three. Fourteen years afterwards a boy named David Leone, fourteen
+years of age, was living in the house of an Italian exile in London. The
+exile was a Roman prince under the incognito of Doctor Roselli; his
+family consisted of his wife and one child, a daughter named Roma, four
+years of age. David Leone had been adopted by Doctor Roselli, who had
+picked him up in the street."
+
+Roma covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Fact four. Four years later a conspiracy to assassinate the King of
+Italy was discovered at Milan. The chief conspirator turned out to be,
+unfortunately, the English exile known as Doctor Roselli. By the good
+offices of a kinsman, jealous of the honour of his true family name, he
+was not brought to public trial, but deported by one of the means
+adopted by all Governments when secrecy or safety is in question. But
+his confederates and correspondents were shown less favour, and one of
+them, still in England, being tried in contumacy by a military court
+which sat during a state of siege, was condemned for high treason to the
+military punishment of death. The name of that confederate and
+correspondent was David Leone."
+
+Roma's slippered foot was beating the floor fast, but the Baron went on
+in his cool and tranquil tone.
+
+"Fact five. Our extradition treaty excluded the delivery of political
+offenders, but after representations from Italy, David Leone left
+England. He went to America. There he was first employed in the stables
+of the Tramway Company in New York, and lived in the Italian quarter of
+the city, but afterwards he rose out of his poverty and low position and
+became a journalist. In that character he attracted attention by a new
+political and religious propaganda. Jesus Christ was lawgiver for the
+nation as well as for the individual, and the redemption of the world
+was to be brought to pass by a constitution based on the precepts of the
+Lord's Prayer. The creed was sufficiently sentimental to be seized upon
+by fanatics in that country of countless faiths, but it cut at the roots
+of order, of poverty, even of patriotism, and being interpreted into
+action, seemed likely to lead to riot."
+
+The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache, and said, with a smile,
+"David Leone disappeared from New York. From that time forward no trace
+of him has yet been found. He was as much gone as if he had ceased to
+exist. _David Leone was dead._"
+
+Roma's hands had come down from her face, and she was picking at the
+buttons of her blouse with twitching fingers.
+
+"Fact six," said the Baron, ticking off the thumb of his other hand.
+"Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David
+Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving
+the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a
+baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor
+Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to Italy. They
+told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried."
+
+Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on
+a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster.
+
+"Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the
+Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer,
+propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New
+York, and exciting the same interest."
+
+"Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David
+Rossi is David Rossi--there is no more in it than that."
+
+The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and
+said, in a slightly exalted tone:
+
+"Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the
+Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the
+woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The
+pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but
+the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been
+buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his
+knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At
+length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away."
+
+Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her
+chair.
+
+"That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it
+worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the
+mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?--David
+Rossi! Who was David Rossi?--David Leone! The circle had closed around
+him--the evidence was complete."
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+Roma had leapt up and was moving about the room. Her lips were
+compressed with scorn, her eyes were flashing, and she burst into a
+torrent of words, which spluttered out of her quivering lips.
+
+"Oh, to think of it! To think of it! You are right! The man who spends
+his life looking for crime must have the soul of a criminal! He has no
+conscience, no humanity, no mercy, no pity. And when he has tracked and
+dogged a man to his mother's grave--_his mother's grave_--he can dine,
+he can laugh, he can go to the theatre! Oh, I hate you! There, I've
+told you! Now, do with me as you please!"
+
+The death-like rigidity in the Baron's face decomposed into an expression
+of intense pain, but he only passed his hand over his brow, and said,
+after a moment of silence:
+
+"My child, you are not only offending me, you are offending the theory
+and principle of Justice. Justice has nothing to do with pity. In the
+vocabulary of Justice there is but one word--duty. Duty called upon me
+to fix this man's name upon him, that his obstructions, his slanders,
+and his evil influence might be at an end. And now Justice calls upon
+you to do the same."
+
+The Baron leaned against the stove, and spoke in a calm voice, while
+Roma in her agitation continued to walk about the room.
+
+"Being a Deputy, and Parliament being in session, David Rossi can only
+be arrested by the authorisation of the Chamber. In order to obtain that
+authorisation, it is necessary that the Attorney-General should draw up
+a statement of the case. The statement must be presented by the
+Attorney-General to the Government, by the Government to the President,
+by the President to a Committee, and by the Committee to Parliament.
+Towards this statement the police have already obtained important
+testimony, and a complete chain of circumstantial evidence has been
+prepared. But they lack one link of positive proof, and until that link
+is obtained the Attorney-General is unable to proceed. It is the
+keystone of the arch, the central fact, without which all other facts
+fall to pieces--the testimony of somebody who can swear, if need be,
+that she knew both David Leone and David Rossi, and can identify the one
+with the other."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The Baron, who had stopped, continued in a calm voice: "My dear Roma,
+need I go on? Dead as a Minister is to all sensibility, I had hoped to
+spare you. There is only one person known to me who can supply that
+link. That person is yourself."
+
+Roma's eyes were red with anger and terror, but she tried to laugh over
+her fear.
+
+"How simple you are, after all!" she said. "It was Roma Roselli who knew
+David Leone, wasn't it? Well, Roma Roselli is dead and buried. Oh, I
+know all the story. You did that yourself, and now it cuts the ground
+from under you."
+
+"My dear Roma," said the Baron, with a hard and angry face, "if I did
+anything in that matter, it was done for your welfare, but whatever it
+was, it need not disturb me now. Roma Roselli is _not_ dead, and it
+would be easy to bring people from England to say so."
+
+"You daren't! You know you daren't! It would expose them to persecution
+for perpetrating a crime."
+
+"In England, not in Italy."
+
+Roma's red eyes fell, and the Baron began to speak in a caressing voice:
+
+"My child, don't fence with me. It is so painful to silence you.... It
+is perhaps natural that you should sympathise with the weaker side. That
+is the sweet and tender if illogical way of all women. But you must not
+imagine that when David Rossi has been arrested he will be walked off to
+his death. As a matter of fact, he must go through a new trial, he must
+be defended, his sentence would in any case be reduced to imprisonment,
+and it may even be wiped out altogether. That's all."
+
+"All? And you ask me to help you to do that?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I won't!"
+
+"Then you could if you would?"
+
+"I can't!"
+
+"Your first word was the better one, my child."
+
+"Very well, I won't! I won't! Aren't you ashamed to ask me to do such a
+thing? According to your own story, David Leone was my father's friend,
+yet you wish me to give him up to the law that he may be imprisoned,
+perhaps for life, and at least turned out of Parliament. Do you suppose
+I am capable of treachery like that? Do you judge of everybody by
+yourself?... Ah, I know that story too! For shame! For shame!"
+
+The Baron was silent for a moment, and then said in an impassive voice:
+
+"I will not discuss that subject with you now, my child--you are
+excited, and don't quite know what you are saying. I will only point out
+to you that even if David Leone was your father's friend, David Rossi
+was your own enemy."
+
+"What of that? It's my own affair, isn't it? If I choose to forgive him,
+what matter is it to anybody else? I _do_ forgive him! Now, whose
+business is it except my own?"
+
+"My dear Roma, I might tell you that it's mine also, and that the
+insult that went through you was aimed at me. But I will not speak of
+myself.... That you should change your plans so entirely, and setting
+out a month ago to ... to ... shall I say betray ... this man Rossi, you
+are now striving to save him, is a problem which admits of only one
+explanation, and that is that ... that you...."
+
+"That I love him--yes, that's the truth," said Roma boldly, but flushing
+up to the eyes and trembling with fear.
+
+There was a death-like pause in the duel. Both dropped their heads, and
+the silent face in the bust seemed to be looking down on them. Then the
+Baron's icy cheeks quivered visibly, and he said in a low, hoarse voice:
+
+"I'm sorry! Very sorry! For in that case I may be compelled to justify
+your conclusion that a Minister has no humanity and no pity. If David
+Rossi cannot be arrested by the authorisation of Parliament, he must be
+arrested when Parliament is not in session, and then his identity will
+have to be established in a public tribunal. In that event you will be
+forced to appear, and having refused to make a private statement in the
+secrecy of a magistrate's office, you will be compelled to testify in
+the Court of Assize."
+
+"Ah, but you can't make me do that!" cried Roma excitedly, as if seized
+by a sudden thought.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Never mind why not. You can't do it, I tell you," she cried excitedly.
+
+He looked at her as if trying to penetrate her meaning, and then said:
+
+"We shall see."
+
+At that moment the fretful voice of the Countess was heard calling to
+the Baron from the adjoining room.
+
+
+                                II
+
+Roma went to her bedroom when the Baron left her, and remained there
+until late in the afternoon. In spite of the bold front she had put on,
+she was quaking with terror and tortured by remorse. Never before had
+she realised David Rossi's peril with such awful vividness, and seen her
+own position in relation to him in its hideous nakedness.
+
+Was it her duty to confess to David Rossi that at the beginning of their
+friendship she had set out to betray him? Only so could she be secure,
+only so could she be honest, only so could she be true to the love he
+gave her and the trust he reposed in her.
+
+Yet why should she confess? The abominable impulse was gone. Something
+sweet and tender had taken its place. To confess to him now would be
+cruel. It would wound his beautiful faith in her.
+
+And yet the seeds she had sown were beginning to fructify. They might
+spring up anywhere at any moment, and choke the life that was dearer to
+her than her own. Thank God, it was still impossible to injure him
+except by her will and assistance. But her will might be broken and her
+assistance might be forced, unless the law could be invoked to protect
+her against itself. It could and it should be invoked! When she was
+married to David Rossi no law in Italy would compel her to witness
+against him.
+
+But if Rossi hesitated from any cause, if he delayed their marriage, if
+he replied unfavourably to the letter in which she had put aside all
+modesty and asked him to marry her soon--what then? How was she to
+explain his danger? How was she to tell him that he must marry her
+before Parliament rose, or she might be the means of expelling him from
+the Chamber, and perhaps casting him into prison for life? How was she
+to say: "I was Delilah; I set out to betray you, and unless you marry me
+the wicked work is done!"
+
+The afternoon was far spent; she had eaten nothing since morning, and
+was lying face down on the bed, when a knock came to the door.
+
+"The person in the studio to see you," said Felice.
+
+It was Bruno in Sunday attire, with little Joseph in top-boots, and more
+than ever like the cub of a young lion.
+
+"A letter from him," said Bruno.
+
+It was from Rossi. She took it without a word of greeting, and went back
+to her bedroom. But when she returned a moment afterwards her face was
+transformed. The clouds had gone from it and the old radiance had
+returned. All the brightness and gaiety of her usual expression were
+there as she came swinging into the drawing-room and filling the air
+with the glow of health and happiness.
+
+"_That's_ all right," she said. "Tell Mr. Rossi I shall expect to see
+him soon ... or no, don't say that ... say that as he is over head and
+ears in work this week, he is not to think it necessary.... Oh, say
+anything you like," she said, and the pearly teeth and lovely eyes
+broke into an aurora of smiles.
+
+Bruno, whose bushy face and shaggy head had never once been raised since
+he came into the room, said:
+
+"He's busy enough, anyway--what with this big meeting coming off on
+Wednesday, and the stairs to his room as full of people as the Santa
+Scala."
+
+"So you've brought little Joseph to see me at last?" said Roma.
+
+"He has bothered my life out to bring him ever since you said he was to
+be your porter some day."
+
+"And why not? Gentlemen ought to call on the ladies, oughtn't they,
+Joseph?"
+
+And Joseph, whose curly poll had been hiding behind the leg of his
+father's trousers, showed half of a face that was shining all over.
+
+"See! See here--do you know who _this_ is? This gentleman in the bust?"
+
+"Uncle David," said the boy.
+
+"What a clever boy you are, Joseph!"
+
+"Doesn't want much cleverness to know that, though," said Bruno. "It's
+wonderful! it's magnificent! And it will shut up all their damned ...
+excuse me, miss, excuse _me_."
+
+"And Joseph still intends to be a porter?"
+
+"Dead set on it, and says he wouldn't change his profession to be a
+king."
+
+"Quite right, too! And now let us look at something a little birdie
+brought me the other day. Come along, Joseph. Here it is. Down on your
+knees, gentleman, and help me to drag it out. One--two--and away!"
+
+From the knee-hole of the desk came a large cardboard box, and Joseph's
+eyes glistened like big black beads.
+
+"Now, what do you think is in this box, Joseph? Can't guess? Give it up?
+Sure? Well, listen! Are you listening? Which do you think you would like
+best--a porter's cocked hat, or a porter's long coat, or a porter's mace
+with a gilt hat and a tassel?"
+
+Joseph's face, which had gleamed at every item, clouded and cleared,
+cleared and clouded at the cruel difficulty of choice, and finally
+looked over at Bruno for help.
+
+"Choose now--which?"
+
+But Joseph only sidled over to his father, and whispered something which
+Roma could not hear.
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He says it is his birthday on Wednesday," said Bruno.
+
+"Bless him! He shall have them all, then," said Roma, and Joseph's legs
+as well as his eyes began to dance.
+
+The cords were cut, the box was opened, the wonderful hat and coat and
+mace were taken out, and Joseph was duly invested. In the midst of this
+ceremony Roma's black poodle came bounding into the room, and when
+Joseph strutted out of the boudoir into the drawing-room the dog went
+leaping and barking beside him.
+
+"Dear little soul!" said Roma, looking after the child; but Bruno, who
+was sitting with his head down, only answered with a groan.
+
+"What is the matter, Bruno?" she asked.
+
+Bruno brushed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, set his teeth, and said
+with a savage fierceness:
+
+"What's the matter? Treason's the matter, telling tales and taking away
+a good woman's character--that's what is the matter! A man who has been
+eating your bread for years has been lying about you, and he is a rascal
+and a sneak and a damned scoundrel, and I would like to kick him out of
+the house."
+
+"And who has been doing all this, Bruno?"
+
+"Myself! It was I who told Mr. Rossi the lies that made him speak
+against you on the day of the Pope's Jubilee, and when you asked him to
+come here, I warned him against you, and said you were only going to pay
+him back and ruin him."
+
+"So you said that, did you?"
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"And what did Mr. Rossi say to you?"
+
+"Say to me? 'She's a good woman,' says he, 'and if I have ever said
+otherwise, I take it all back, and am ashamed.'"
+
+Roma, who had turned to the window, heaved a sigh and said: "It has all
+come out right in the end, Bruno. If you hadn't spoken against me to Mr.
+Rossi, he wouldn't have spoken against me in the piazza, and then he and
+I should never have met and known each other and been friends. All's
+well that ends well, you know."
+
+"Perhaps so, but the miracle doesn't make the saint, and you oughtn't to
+keep me any longer."
+
+"Do you mean that I ought to dismiss you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Bruno," said Roma, "I am in trouble just now, and I may be in worse
+trouble by-and-by. I don't know how long I may be able to keep you as a
+servant, but I may want you as a friend, and if you leave me now...."
+
+"Oh, put it like that, miss, and I'll never leave you, and as for your
+enemies...."
+
+Bruno was doubling up the sleeve of his right arm, when Joseph and the
+poodle came back to the room. Roma received them with a merry cry, and
+there was much noise and laughter. At length the gorgeous garments were
+taken off, the cardboard box was corded, and Bruno and the boy prepared
+to go.
+
+"You'll come again, won't you, Joseph?" said Roma, and the boy's face
+beamed.
+
+"I suppose this little man means a good deal to his mother, Bruno?"
+
+"Everything! I do believe she'd die, or disappear, or drown herself if
+anything happened to that boy."
+
+"And Mr. Rossi?"
+
+"He's been a second father to the boy ever since the young monkey was
+born."
+
+"Well, Joseph must come here sometimes, and let me try and be a second
+mother to him too.... What is he saying now?"
+
+Joseph had dragged down his father's head to whisper something in his
+ear.
+
+"He says he's frightened of your big porter downstairs."
+
+"Frightened of _him_! He is only a man, my precious! Tell him you are a
+little Roman boy, and he'll _have_ to let you up. Will you remember? You
+will? That's right! By-bye!"
+
+Before going to sleep that night, Roma switched on the light that hung
+above her head and read her letter again. She had been hoarding it up
+for that secret hour, and now she was alone with it, and all the world
+was still.
+
+                                                      "_Saturday Night._
+
+    "MY DEAR ONE,--Your sweet letter brought me the intoxication of
+    delight, and the momentous matter you speak of is under way. It is
+    my turn to be ashamed of all the great to-do I made about the
+    obstacles to our union when I see how courageous you can be. Oh,
+    how brave women are--every woman who ever marries a man! To take
+    her heart into her hands, and face the unknown in the fate of
+    another being, to trust her life into his keeping, knowing that if
+    he falls she falls too, and will never be the same again! What
+    _man_ could do it? Not one who was ever born into the world. Yet
+    some woman does it every day, promising some man that she
+    will--let me finish your quotation--
+
+        "'Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and
+        spirit In thy hands.'
+
+    "Don't think I am too much troubled about the Minghelli matter,
+    and yet it is pitiful to think how merciless the world can be even
+    in the matter of a man's name. A name is only a word, but it is
+    everything to the man who bears it--honour or dishonour, poverty
+    or wealth, a blessing or a curse. If it is a good name, everybody
+    tries to take it away from him, but if it's a bad name and he has
+    attempted to drop it, everybody tries to fix it on him afresh.
+
+    "The name I was compelled to leave behind me when I returned to
+    Italy was a bad name in nothing except that it was the name of my
+    father, and if the spies and ferrets of authority ever fix it upon
+    me God only knows what mischief they may do. But one thing _I_
+    know--that if they do fix my father's name upon me, and bring me
+    to the penalties which the law has imposed on it, it will not be
+    by help of my darling, my beloved, my brave, brave girl with the
+    heart of gold.
+
+    "Dearest, I wrote to the Capitol immediately on receiving your
+    letter, and to-morrow morning I will go down myself to see that
+    everything is in train. I don't yet know how many days are
+    necessary to the preparations, but earlier than Thursday it would
+    not be wise to fix the event, seeing that Wednesday is the day of
+    the great mass meeting in the Coliseum, and, although the police
+    have proclaimed it, I have told the people they are to come. There
+    is some risk at the outset, which it would be reckless to run, and
+    in any case the time is short.
+
+    "Good-night! I can't take my pen off the paper. Writing to you is
+    like talking to you, and every now and then I stop and shut my
+    eyes, and hear your voice replying. Only it is myself who make the
+    answers, and they are not half so sweet as they would be in
+    reality. Ah, dear heart, if you only knew how my life was full of
+    silence until you came into it, and now it is full of music!
+    Good-night, again!                                           "D. R.
+
+                                                    "_Sunday Morning._
+
+    "Just returned from the Capitol. The legal notice for the
+    celebration of a marriage is longer than I expected. It seems that
+    the ordinary term must be twelve days at least, covering two
+    successive Sundays (on which the act of publication is posted on
+    the board outside the office) and three days over. Only twelve
+    days more, my dear one, and you will be mine, mine, mine, and
+    all the world will know!"
+
+It took Roma a good three-quarters of an hour to read this letter, for
+nearly every word seemed to be written out of a lover's lexicon, which
+bore secret meanings of delicious import, and imperiously demanded their
+physical response from the reader's lips. At length she put it between
+the pillow and her cheek, to help the sweet delusion that she was cheek
+to cheek with some one and had his strong, protecting arms about her.
+Then she lay a long time, with eyes open and shining in the darkness,
+trying in vain to piece together the features of his face. But in the
+first dream of her first sleep she saw him plainly, and then she ran,
+she raced, she rushed to his embrace.
+
+Next day brought a message from the Baron:
+
+    "DEAR ROMA,--Come to the Palazzo Braschi to-morrow (Tuesday)
+    morning at eleven o'clock. Don't refuse, and don't hesitate. If
+    you do not come, you will regret it as long as you live, and
+    reproach yourself for ever afterwards.--Yours,
+                                                        "BONELLI."
+
+
+                                III
+
+The Palazzo Braschi is a triangular palace, whereof one front faces to
+the Piazza Navona and the two other fronts to side streets. It is the
+official palace of the Minister of the Interior, usually the President
+of the Council and Prime Minister of Italy.
+
+Roma arrived at eleven o'clock, and was taken to the Minister's room
+immediately, by way of an outer chamber, in which colleagues and
+secretaries were waiting their turn for an interview. The Baron was
+seated at a table covered with books and papers. There was a fur rug
+across his knees, and at his right hand lay a small ivory-handled
+revolver. He rose as Roma entered, and received her with his great but
+glacial politeness.
+
+"How prompt! And how sweet you look to-day, my child! On a cheerless
+morning like this you bring the sun itself into a poor Minister's gloomy
+cabinet. Sit down."
+
+"You wished to see me?" said Roma.
+
+The Baron rested his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand,
+looked at her with his never-varying smile, and said:
+
+"I hear you are to be congratulated, my dear."
+
+She changed colour slightly.
+
+"Are you surprised that I know?" he asked.
+
+"Why should I be surprised?" she answered. "You know everything.
+Besides, this is published at the Capitol, and therefore common
+knowledge."
+
+His smiling face remained perfectly impassive.
+
+"Now I understand what you meant on Sunday. It is a fact that a wife
+cannot be called as a witness against her husband."
+
+She knew he was watching her face as if looking into the inmost recesses
+of her soul.
+
+"But isn't it a little courageous of you to think of marriage?"
+
+"Why courageous?" she asked, but her eyes fell and the colour mounted to
+her cheek.
+
+"_Why_ courageous?" he repeated.
+
+He allowed a short time to elapse, and then he said in a a low tone,
+"Considering the past, and all that has happened...."
+
+Her eyelids trembled and she rose to her feet.
+
+"If this is all you wish to say to me...."
+
+"No, no! Sit down, my child. I sent for you in order to show you that
+the marriage you contemplate may be difficult, perhaps impossible."
+
+"I am of age--there can be no impediment."
+
+"There may be the greatest of all impediments, my dear."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean ... But wait! You are not in a hurry? A number of gentlemen are
+waiting to see me, and if you will permit me to ring for my
+secretary.... Don't move. Colleagues merely! They will not object to
+_your_ presence. My ward, you know--almost a member of my own household.
+Ah, here is the secretary. Who now?"
+
+"The Minister of War, the Prefect, Commendatore Angelelli, and one of
+his delegates," replied the secretary.
+
+"Bring the Prefect first," said the Baron, and a severe-looking man of
+military bearing entered the room.
+
+"Come in, Senator. You know Donna Roma. Our business is urgent--she will
+allow us to go on. I am anxious to hear how things stand and what you
+are doing."
+
+The Prefect began on his report. Immediately the new law was promulgated
+by royal decree, he had sent out a circular to all the Mayors in his
+province, stating the powers it gave the police to dissolve associations
+and forbid public meetings.
+
+"But what can we expect in the provincial towns, your Excellency, while
+in the capital we are doing nothing? The chief of all subversive
+societies is in Rome, and the directing mind is at large among
+ourselves. Listen to this, sir."
+
+The Prefect took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read:
+
+    "ROMANS,--The new law is an attempt to deprive us of liberties
+    which our fathers made revolutions to establish. It is, therefore,
+    our duty to resist it, and to this end we must hold our meeting on
+    the 1st of February according to our original intention. Only thus
+    can we show the Government and the King what it is to oppose the
+    public opinion of the world.... Meet in the Piazza del Popolo at
+    sundown and walk to the Coliseum by way of the Corso. Be peaceful
+    and orderly, and God put it into the hearts of your rulers to avert
+    bloodshed."
+
+"That is from the _Sunrise_?"
+
+"Yes, sir, the last of many manifestoes. And what is the result? The
+people are flocking into Rome from every part of the province."
+
+"And how many political pilgrims are here already?"
+
+"Fifty thousand, sixty, perhaps a hundred thousand. It cannot be allowed
+to go on, your Excellency."
+
+"It is a _levee-en-masse_ certainly. What do you advise?"
+
+"That the enemies of the Government and the State, whose erroneous
+conceptions of liberty have led to this burst of anarchist feelings, be
+left to the operation of the police laws."
+
+The Baron glanced at Roma. Her face was flushed and her eyes were
+flashing.
+
+"That," he said, "may be difficult, considering the number of the
+discontented. What is the strength of your police?"
+
+"Seven hundred in uniform, four hundred in plain clothes, and five
+hundred and fifty municipal guards. Besides these, sir, there are three
+thousand Carabineers and eight thousand regular troops."
+
+"Say twelve thousand five hundred armed men in all?"
+
+"Precisely, and what is that against fifty, a hundred, perhaps a hundred
+and fifty thousand people?"
+
+"You want the army at call?"
+
+"Exactly! but above everything else we want the permission of the
+Government to deal with the greater delinquents, whether Deputies or
+not, according to the powers given us by the statute."
+
+The Baron rose and held out his hand. "Thanks, Senator! The Government
+will consider your suggestions immediately. Be good enough to send in my
+colleague, the Minister of War."
+
+When the Prefect left the room Roma rose to go.
+
+"You cannot suppose this is very agreeable to me?" she said in an
+agitated voice.
+
+"Wait! I shall not be long ... Ah, General Morra! Roma, you know the
+General, I think. Sit down, both of you.... Well, General, you hear of
+this _levee-en-masse_?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"The Prefect is satisfied that the people are moved by a revolutionary
+organisation, and he is anxious to know what force we can put at his
+service to control it."
+
+The General detailed his resources. There were sixteen thousand men
+always under arms in Rome, and the War Office had called up the
+old-timers of two successive years--perhaps fifty thousand in all.
+
+"As a Minister of State and your colleague," said the General, "I am at
+one with you in your desire to safeguard the cause of order and protect
+public institutions, but as a man and a Roman I cannot but hope that you
+will not call upon me to act without the conditions required by law."
+
+"Indeed, no," said the Baron; "and in order to make sure that our
+instructions are carried out with wisdom and humanity, let these be the
+orders you issue to your staff: First, that in case of disturbance
+to-morrow night, whether at the Coliseum or elsewhere, the officers must
+wait for the proper signal from the delegate of police."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"Next, that on receiving the order to fire, the soldiers must be careful
+that their first volley goes over the heads of the people."
+
+"Excellent!"
+
+"If that does not disperse the crowds, if they throw stones at the
+soldiers or otherwise resist, the second volley--I see no help for
+it--the second volley, I say, must be fired at the persons who are
+leading on the ignorant and deluded mob."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The General hesitated, and Roma, whose breathing came quick and short,
+gave him a look of tenderness and gratitude.
+
+"You agree, General Morra?"
+
+"I'm afraid I see no alternative. But if the blood of their leader only
+infuriates the people, is the third volley...."
+
+"That," said the Baron, "is a contingency too terrible to contemplate.
+My prediction would be that when their leader falls, the poor, misguided
+people will fly. But in all human enterprises the last word has to be
+left to destiny. Let us leave it to destiny in the present instance.
+Adieu, dear General! Be good enough to tell my secretary to send in the
+Chief of Police."
+
+The Minister of War left the room, and once more Roma rose to go.
+
+"You cannot possibly imagine that a conversation like this...." she
+began, but the Baron only interrupted her again.
+
+"Don't go yet. I shall be finished presently. Angelelli cannot keep me
+more than a moment. Ah, here is the Commendatore."
+
+The Chief of Police came bowing and bobbing at every step, with the
+extravagant politeness which differentiates the vulgar man from the
+well-bred.
+
+"About this meeting at the Coliseum, Commendatore--has any authorisation
+been asked for it?"
+
+"None whatever, your Excellency."
+
+"Then we may properly regard it as seditious?"
+
+"Quite properly, your Excellency."
+
+"Listen! You will put yourself into communication with the Minister of
+War immediately. He will place fifty thousand men at the disposition of
+your Prefect. Choose your delegates carefully. Instruct them well. At
+the first overt act of resistance, let them give the word to fire. After
+that, leave everything to the military."
+
+"Quite so, your Excellency."
+
+"Be careful to keep yourself in touch with me until midnight to-morrow.
+It may be necessary to declare a state of siege, and in that event the
+royal decree will have to be obtained without delay. Prepare your own
+staff for a general order. Ask for the use of the cannon of St. Angelo
+as a signal, and let it be understood that if the gun is fired to-morrow
+night, every gate of the city is to be closed, every outward train is to
+be stopped, and every telegraph office is to be put under control. You
+understand me?"
+
+"Perfectly, Excellency."
+
+"After the signal has been given let no one leave the city, and let no
+telegraphic message of any kind be despatched. In short, let Rome from
+that hour onward be entirely under the control of the Government."
+
+"Entirely, your Excellency."
+
+"The military have already received their orders. After the call of the
+delegate of police, the first volley is to be fired over the heads of
+the people, and the second at the ringleaders. But if any of these
+should escape...."
+
+The Baron paused, and then repeated in a low tone with the utmost
+deliberation:
+
+"I say, _if_ any of these should escape, Commendatore...."
+
+"They shall not escape, your Excellency."
+
+There was a moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt herself to be
+suffocating, and could scarcely restrain the cry that was rising in her
+throat.
+
+"Let me go," she said, when the Chief of Police had backed and bowed
+himself out; but again the Baron pretended to misunderstand her.
+
+"Only one more visitor! I shall be finished in a few minutes," and then
+Charles Minghelli was shown into the room.
+
+The man's watchful eyes blinked perceptibly as he came face to face
+with Roma, but he recovered himself in a moment, and began to brush with
+his fingers the breast of his frockcoat.
+
+"Sit down, Minghelli. You may speak freely before Donna Roma. You owe
+your position to her generous influence, you may remember, and she is
+abreast of all our business. You know all about this meeting at the
+Coliseum?"
+
+Minghelli bent his head.
+
+"The delegates of police have received the strictest orders not to give
+the word to the military until an overt act of resistance has been
+committed. That is necessary as well for the safety of our poor deluded
+people as for our own credit in the eyes of the world. But an act of
+rebellion in such a case is a little thing, Mr. Minghelli."
+
+Again Minghelli bent his head.
+
+"A blow, a shot, a shower of stones, and the peace is broken and the
+delegate is justified."
+
+A third time Minghelli bent his head.
+
+"Unfortunately, in the sorrowful circumstances in which the city is
+placed, an overt act of resistance is quite sure to be committed."
+
+Minghelli flecked a speck of dust from his spotless cuff and said:
+
+"Quite sure, your Excellency."
+
+There was another moment of profound silence, in which Roma felt her
+heart beat violently.
+
+"Adieu, Mr. Minghelli. Tell my secretary as you pass out that I wish to
+dictate a letter."
+
+The letter was to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
+
+"Dear colleague," dictated the Baron, "I entirely approve of the
+proposal you have made to the Governments of Europe and America to
+establish a basis on which anarchists should be suppressed by means of
+an international net, through which they can hardly escape. My
+suggestion would be the universal application of the Belgian clause in
+all existing extradition treaties, whereby persons guilty of regicide
+may be dealt with as common murderers. In any case please say that the
+Government of Italy intends to do its duty to the civilised world, and
+will look to the Governments of other countries to allow it to follow up
+and arrest the criminals who are attempting to reconstruct society by
+burying it under ruins."
+
+Notwithstanding all her efforts to appear calm, Roma felt as if she must
+go out into the streets and scream. Now she knew why she had been sent
+for. It was in order that the Baron might talk to her in parables--in
+order that he might show her by means of an object lesson, as palpable
+as pitiless, what was the impediment which made her marriage with David
+Rossi impossible.
+
+The marriage could not be celebrated until after eleven days, but the
+meeting at the Coliseum must take place to-morrow, and as surely as it
+did so it must result in riot and David Rossi must be shot.
+
+The secretary gathered up his note-book and left the room, and then the
+Baron turned to Roma with beaming eyes and lips expanding to a smile.
+
+"Finished at last! A thousand apologies, my dear! Twelve o'clock
+already! Let us go out and lunch somewhere."
+
+"Let me go home," said Roma.
+
+She was trembling violently, and as she rose to her feet she swayed a
+little.
+
+"My dear child! you're not well. Take this glass of water."
+
+"It's nothing. Let me go home."
+
+The Baron walked with her to the head of the staircase.
+
+"I understand you perfectly," she said in a choking voice, "but there is
+something you have not counted upon, and you are quite mistaken."
+
+And making a great call on her resolution, she threw up her head and
+walked firmly down the stairs.
+
+Immediately on reaching home she wrote to David Rossi:
+
+    "I _must_ see you to-night. Where can it be? To-night! Mind,
+    to-night. To-morrow will be too late.                  ROMA."
+
+Bruno delivered the note by hand, and brought back an answer:
+
+    "DEAREST,--Come to the office at nine o'clock. Sorry I cannot
+    go to you. It is impossible.                           D. R.
+
+    "P.S.--You have converted Bruno, and he would die for you. As for
+    the 'little Roman boy,' he is in the seventh heaven over your
+    presents, and says he must go up to Trinita de' Monti to begin
+    work at once."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+The office of the _Sunrise_ at nine o'clock that night tingled with
+excitement. A supplement had already gone to press, and the machines in
+the basement were working rapidly. In the business office on the first
+floor people were constantly coming and going, and the footsteps on the
+stairs of the composing-room sounded through the walls like the
+irregular beat of a hammer.
+
+The door of the editor's room was frequently swinging open, as reporters
+with reports, messengers with telegrams, and boys with proofs came in
+and laid them on the desk at which the sub-editor sat at work.
+
+David Rossi stood by his desk at the farther end of the room. This was
+the last night of his editorship of the _Sunrise_, and by various silent
+artifices the staff were showing their sympathy with the man who had
+made the paper and was forced to leave it.
+
+The excitement within the office of the _Sunrise_ corresponded to the
+commotion outside. The city was in a ferment, and from time to time
+unknown persons, the spontaneous reporters of tumultuous days, were
+brought in from the outer office to give the editor the latest news of
+the night. Another trainful of people had arrived from Milan! Still
+another from Bologna and Carrara! The storm was growing! Soon would be
+heard the crash of war! Their faces were eager and their tone was one of
+triumph. They pitched their voices high, so as to be heard above the
+reverberation of the machines, whose deep thud in the rooms below made
+the walls vibrate like the side of a ship at sea.
+
+David Rossi did not catch the contagion of their joy. At every fresh
+announcement his face clouded. The unofficial head of the surging and
+straining democracy, which was filling itself hourly with hopes and
+dreams, was unhappy and perplexed. He was trying to write his last
+message to his people, and he could not get it clear because his own
+mind was confused.
+
+"_Romans_," he wrote first, "_your rulers are preparing to resist your
+right of meeting, and you will have nothing to oppose to the muskets and
+bayonets of their soldiers but the bare breasts of a brave but peaceful
+people. No matter. Fifty, a hundred, five hundred of you killed at the
+first volley, and the day is won! The reactionary Government of
+Italy--all the reactionary Governments of Europe--will be borne down lay
+the righteous indignation of the world._"
+
+It would not do! He had no right to lead the people to certain
+slaughter, and he tore up his manifesto and began again.
+
+"_Romans_," he wrote the second time, "_when reforms cannot be effected
+without the spilling of blood, the time for them has not yet come, and
+it is the duty of a brave and peaceful people to wait for the silent
+operation of natural law and the mighty help of moral forces. Therefore
+at the eleventh hour I call upon you, in the names of your wives and
+children...._"
+
+It was impossible! The people would think he was afraid, and the
+opportune moment would be lost.
+
+One man in the office of the _Sunrise_ was entirely outside the circle
+of its electric currents. This was the former day-editor, who had been
+appointed by the proprietors to take Rossi's place, and was now walking
+about with a silk hat on his head, taking note of everything and
+exercising a premature and gratuitous supervision.
+
+David Rossi was tearing up the second of his manifestoes when this
+person came to say that a lady in the outer office was asking to see
+him.
+
+"Show her into the private waiting-room," said Rossi.
+
+"But may I suggest," said the man, "that considering who the lady is, it
+would perhaps be better to see her elsewhere?"
+
+"Show her into the private room, sir," said Rossi, and the man shrugged
+his shoulders and disappeared.
+
+As David Rossi opened the door of a small room at his right hand,
+something rustled lightly in the corridor outside, and a moment
+afterwards Roma glided into his arms. She was pale and nervous, and
+after a moment she began to cry.
+
+"Dear one," said Rossi, pressing her head against his breast, "what has
+happened? Tell me! Something has frightened you. You look anxious."
+
+"No wonder," she said, and then she told him of her summons to the
+Palazzo Braschi, and of the business she saw done there.
+
+There was to be a riot at the meeting at the Coliseum, because, if need
+be, the Government itself would provoke violence. The object was to
+kill _him_, not the people, and if he stayed in Rome until to-morrow
+night there would be no possibility of escape.
+
+"You must fly," she said. "You are the victim marked out by all these
+preparations--you, you, nobody but you."
+
+"It is the best news I've heard for days," he said. "If I am the only
+one who runs a risk...."
+
+"Risk! My dearest, don't you understand? Your life is aimed at, and you
+must fly before it is quite impossible."
+
+"It is already impossible," he answered.
+
+He drew off one of her white gloves and kissed her finger-tips. "My dear
+one," he said, "if there were nothing else to think of, do you suppose I
+could go away and leave you behind me? That is just what somebody
+expected me to do when he permitted you to witness his preparations. But
+he was mistaken. I cannot and I will not leave you."
+
+Her pale face was suddenly overspread by a burning blush, and she threw
+both arms about his neck.
+
+"Very well," she said, "I will go with you."
+
+"Darling!" he cried, and he clasped her to his breast again. "But no!
+That is impossible also. Our marriage cannot take place for ten days."
+
+"No matter! I'll go without it."
+
+"My dear child, you don't know what you are saying. You are too good,
+too pure...."
+
+"Hush! Our marriage is nothing to anybody but ourselves, and if we
+choose to go without it...."
+
+"My dear girl!"
+
+"I can't hear you," she said. Loosening her hands from his neck, she had
+covered her ears.
+
+"Dearest, I know what you are thinking of, but it must not be."
+
+"I can't hear a word you're saying," she said, beating her hands over
+her ears. "I'm ready to go now, this very minute--and if you don't take
+me, it is because you love other things better than you love me."
+
+"My darling, don't tempt me. If you only knew what it costs me ... but I
+would rather die...."
+
+"I don't want you to die. That's just it! I want you to live, and I am
+willing to risk everything--everything...."
+
+Her warm and lovely form was quivering in his arms, and his heart was
+labouring wildly.
+
+"Dearest," he whispered over her head, "you are so good, so pure, so
+noble, that you don't know how evil tongues can wag at a woman because
+she is brave and true. But I must remember my mother--and if your poor
+father is to rest in his grave...."
+
+His voice broke and he stopped.
+
+"See how much I love you," he whispered again, "when I would rather lose
+you than see you lower yourself in your own esteem.... And then think of
+my people! my poor people who trust me and look up to me so much more
+than I deserve. I called them and they have come. They are here now,
+tens of thousands of them. And they will be here to-morrow wherever I
+may be. Shall I desert them in their hour of need, thinking of my own
+safety, my own happiness? No! You cannot wish it! You do not wish it! I
+know you too well!"
+
+She lifted her head from his breast. "You are right," she said. "You
+must stay."
+
+"My sweet girl!"
+
+"Can you ever forgive me for being frightened at the first note of
+danger and telling you to fly?"
+
+"I will always love you for it."
+
+"And you will never think the worse of me for offering to go with you?"
+
+"I will love you for that too."
+
+"I must be brave," she said, drawing herself up proudly, though her lips
+were trembling, her voice was breaking, and her eyes were wet. "Whether
+you are right or wrong in what you are doing it is not for me to decide,
+but if your heart tells you to do it you _must_ do it, and I must be
+your soldier, ready and waiting for my captain's call."
+
+"My brave girl!"
+
+"It is not for nothing that I am my father's daughter. _He_ risked
+everything and so will I, and if they come to me to-morrow night and say
+that ... that you ... that you are...."
+
+The proud face had fallen on his breast again. But after a moment it was
+raised afresh, and then it was shining all over.
+
+"That's right! How beautiful your face is when it smiles, Roma! Roma, do
+you know what I'm going to do when this is all over? I'm going to spend
+my life in making you smile all the time."
+
+She gave him a sudden kiss, and then broke out of his arms.
+
+"I must be going. I've stayed too long. I may not see you before the
+meeting, but I won't say 'good-bye.' I've thought of something, and now
+I know what I'm going to do."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Don't ask me."
+
+She opened the door.
+
+"Come to me to-morrow night--I shall expect you," she whispered, and
+waving her glove to him over her head she disappeared from the room.
+
+He stood a moment where she had left him, trying to think what she
+intended to do, and then he returned to his desk in the outer office.
+His successor was there, looking sour and stubborn.
+
+"Mr. Rossi," he said, "this afternoon I was told at the Press Club that
+the authorities were watching for a plausible excuse for suppressing the
+paper; and considering the relations of this lady to the Minister of the
+Interior, and the danger of spies...."
+
+"Listen to this carefully, sir," interrupted Rossi. "When you come into
+possession of the chair I occupy, you may do as you think well, but
+to-night it is mine, and I shall conduct the paper as I please."
+
+"Still, you will allow me to say...."
+
+"Not one word."
+
+"Permit me to protest...."
+
+"Leave the room immediately."
+
+When the man was gone, David Rossi wrote a third and last version of his
+manifesto:
+
+"_Romans.--Have no fear. Do not allow yourselves to be terrified by the
+military preparations of your Government. Believe a man who has never
+deceived you--the soldiers will not fire upon the people! Violate no
+law. Assail no enemy. Respect property. Above all, respect life. Do not
+allow yourself to be pushed into the doctrine of physical force. If any
+man tries to provoke violence, think him an agent of your enemies and
+pay no heed. Be brave, be strong, be patient, and to-morrow night you
+will send up such a cry as will ring throughout the world. Romans,
+remember your fathers and be great._"
+
+Rossi was handing his manuscript to the sub-editor, that it might be
+sent upstairs, when all at once the air seemed to become empty and the
+world to stand still. The machine in the basement had ceased to work.
+There was a momentary pause, such as comes on a steamship at sea when
+the engines are suddenly stopped, and then a sound of frightened voices
+and the noise of hurrying feet. Somebody ran along the corridor outside
+and rapped sharply at the door.
+
+At the next moment the door opened and four men entered the room. One of
+them was an inspector, another was a delegate, and the others were
+policemen in plain clothes.
+
+"The journal is sequestered," said the inspector to David Rossi. And
+turning to one of his men, he said, "Go up to the composing-room and
+superintend the distribution of the type."
+
+"Allow no one to leave the building," said the delegate to the other
+policeman.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the inspector, "we are charged to make a perquisition,
+and must ask you for the keys of your desks."
+
+"What is this?" said the delegate, taking the manifesto out of Rossi's
+fingers, and proceeding to read it.
+
+At that moment the editor-elect came rushing into the room with a face
+like the rising sun.
+
+"I demand to see a list of the things sequestered," he cried.
+
+"You shall do so at the police-office," said the inspector.
+
+"Does that mean that we are all arrested?"
+
+"Not all. The Honourable Rossi, being a Deputy, is at liberty to leave."
+
+"Thought as much," said the new editor, with a contemptuous snort. And
+turning to Rossi, and showing his teeth in a bitter smile, he said:
+"What did I say would happen? Has it followed quickly enough to satisfy
+you?"
+
+The inspector and the delegate opened the editors' desks and were
+rummaging among their papers when David Rossi put on his hat and went
+home.
+
+At the door of the lodge the old Garibaldian was waiting in obvious
+excitement.
+
+"Old John has been here, sir," he said. "Something to tell you. Wouldn't
+tell me. But Bruno got it out of him at last. Must be something serious,
+for the big booby has been drinking ever since. Hear him in the cafe,
+sir. I'll send him up."
+
+Half-an-hour afterwards Bruno staggered into Rossi's room. He had a
+tearful look in his drink-deadened eyes, and was clearly struggling
+with a desire to put his arms about Rossi's neck and weep over him.
+
+"D'ye know wha'?" he mumbled in a maudlin voice. "Ole Vampire is a
+villain! Ole John--'member ole John?--well, ole John heard his grandson,
+the d'ective, say that if you go to the Coliseum to-morrow night...."
+
+"I know all about it, Bruno. You may go to bed."
+
+"Stop a minute, sir," said Bruno, with a melancholy smile. "You don't
+unnerstand. They're going t' shoot you. See? Ole John--'member ole John?
+Well, ole John...."
+
+"I know, Bruno. But I'm going nevertheless."
+
+Bruno fought with the vapour in his brain, and said: "You don' mean t'
+say you inten' t' let yourself be a target...."
+
+"That's what I do mean, Bruno."
+
+Bruno burst into a loud laugh. "Well, I'll be ... wha' the devil.... But
+you sha'n't go. I'll ... I'll see you damned first!"
+
+"You're drunk, Bruno. Go and put yourself to bed."
+
+The drink-deadened eyes flashed, and to grief succeeded rage. "Pu' mysel
+t' bed! D'ye know wha' I'd like t' do t' you for t' nex' twenty-four
+hours? I'd jus' like--yes, by Bacchus--I'd jus' like to punch you in t'
+belly and put _you_ t' bed."
+
+And straightening himself up with drunken dignity, Bruno stalked out of
+the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Baron Bonelli in the Piazza Leone was rising from his late and
+solitary dinner when Felice entered the shaded dining-room and handed
+him a letter from Roma. It ran:
+
+    "This is to let you know that I intend to be present at the
+    meeting in the Coliseum to-morrow night. Therefore, if any shots
+    are to be fired by the soldiers at the crowd or their leader, you
+    will know beforehand that they must also be fired at me."
+
+As the Baron held the letter under the red shade of the lamp, the usual
+immobility of his icy face gave way to a rapturous expression.
+
+"The woman is magnificent! And worth fighting for to the bitter end."
+
+Then, turning to Felice, he told the man to ring up the Commendatore
+Angelelli and tell him to send for Minghelli without delay.
+
+
+                                V
+
+Next day began with heavy clouds lying low over the city, a cold wind
+coming down from the mountains, and the rumbling of distant thunder.
+Nevertheless the people who had come to Rome for the demonstration at
+the Coliseum seemed to be in the streets the whole day long. From early
+morning they gathered in the Piazza Navona, inquired for David Rossi,
+stood by the fountains, and looked up at his windows.
+
+As the day wore on the crowds increased.
+
+All the public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad,
+ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen
+began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the
+principal streets with a band that played the royal march.
+
+Meantime, the leader, to whom thousands were looking up, was miserable
+and alone. He had cried "Peace," but the perils of protest were so many
+and so near. A blow, a push, a quarrel at a street corner, and God knows
+what might happen!
+
+Elena came with his coffee. The timid creature kept looking at him out
+of her liquid eyes as if struggling with a desire to speak, but when she
+did so it was only on indifferent subjects.
+
+Bruno had got up with a headache and gone off to work. Little Joseph was
+very trying this morning, and she had threatened to whip him.
+
+Her father had been upstairs to say that countless people were asking
+for the Deputy, and he wished to know if anybody was to come up.
+
+"Tell him I wish to be quite alone to-day," said Rossi, and then the
+soft voice ceased, and the timid creature went out with a guilty look.
+
+Like a man who is going on a long and perilous journey, David Rossi
+spent the morning in arranging his affairs. He looked over his letters
+and destroyed most of them. The letters from Roma were hard to burn, but
+he read each of them again, as if trying to stamp their words and
+characters on his brain, and with a deep sigh he committed them to the
+flames.
+
+It was twelve o'clock by this time, and Francesca, in her red cotton
+handkerchief, brought up his lunch. The good old thing looked at him
+with a comical expression of pity on her wrinkled face, and he knew that
+Bruno had told his story.
+
+"Come now, my son! Put away your papers and get something on your
+stomach. People eat even if they're going to the gallows, you know."
+
+After lunch Rossi called upstairs for Joseph, and the shock-headed
+little cub was brought down, with his wet eyes twinkling and his petted
+lip beginning to smile.
+
+"Joseph has been naughty, Uncle David," said Elena. "He is crying for
+the clothes Donna Roma gave him, and he says he must go out because it
+is his birthday."
+
+"Does a man cry when he is seven?" said Uncle David.
+
+Thereupon Joseph, keeping his eyes upon his mother, whispered something
+in Uncle David's ear, and straightway the gorgeous garments were
+produced.
+
+"Joseph will promise not to go out to-day; won't you, Joseph?"
+
+And Joseph rolled his fists into his eyes and was understood to say
+"Yes."
+
+At four o'clock Bruno came home, looking grim and resolute.
+
+"I was pretty drunk last night, sir," he said, "but if there's shooting
+to be done this evening I'm going to be there."
+
+The time came for the two men to go, and everybody saw them to the door.
+
+"Adieu!" said Rossi. "Thank you for all you've done for me, and may God
+bless you! Take care of my little Roman boy. Kiss me, Joseph! Again! For
+the last time! Adieu!"
+
+"Ah, God is a good old saint. He'll take care of you, my son," said the
+old woman.
+
+"Adieu, Uncle David! Adieu, papa!" cried Joseph over the banisters, and
+the brave little voice, with its manly falsetto, was the last the men
+heard as they descended the stairs.
+
+The Piazza del Popolo was densely crowded, and seemed to be twice as
+large as usual. Bruno elbowed a way through for himself and Rossi until
+they came to the obelisk in the centre of the great circle. On the steps
+of the obelisk a company of artillery was stationed with a piece of
+cannon which commanded the three principal thoroughfares of the city,
+the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babunio, which branch off from that
+centre like the ribs from the handle of a fan. Without taking notice of
+the soldiers, the people ranged themselves in order and prepared for
+their procession. At the ringing of Ave Maria the great crowd linked in
+files and turned their faces towards the Corso.
+
+Bruno walked first, carrying from his stalwart breast a standard, on
+which was inscribed, under the title of the "Republic of Man," the
+words, "Give us this day our daily bread." Rossi had meant to walk
+immediately behind Bruno, but he found himself encircled by a group of
+his followers. No sovereign was ever surrounded by more watchful guards.
+
+By the spontaneous consent of the public, traffic in the street was
+suspended, and crowds of the people of the city had turned out to look
+on. The four tiers of the Pincian Hill were packed with spectators, and
+every window and balcony in the Corso was filled with faces. All the
+shops were shut, and many of them were barricaded within and without. A
+regiment of infantry was ranged along the edge of the pavement, and the
+people passed between two lines of rifles.
+
+As the procession went on it was constantly augmented, and the column,
+which had been four abreast when it started from the Popolo, was eight
+abreast before it reached the end of the Corso. There were no bands of
+music, and there was no singing, but at intervals some one at the head
+of the procession would begin to clap, and then the clapping of hands
+would run down the street like the rattle of musketry.
+
+Going up the narrow streets beyond the Venezia, the people passed into
+the Forum--out of the living city of the present into the dead city of
+the past, with its desolation and its silence, its chaos of broken
+columns and cornices, of corbels and capitals, of wells and
+watercourses, lying in the waste where they had been left by the
+earthquake which had passed over them, the earthquake of the ages--and
+so on through the arch of Titus to the meeting-place in the Coliseum.
+
+All this time David Rossi's restless eyes had passed nervously from side
+to side. Coming down the Corso he had been dimly conscious of eyes
+looking at him from windows and balconies. He was struggling to be calm
+and firm, but he was in a furnace of dread, and beneath his breath he
+was praying from time to time that God would prevent accident and avert
+bloodshed. He was also praying for strength of spirit and feeling like a
+guilty coward. His face was deadly pale, the fire within seemed to
+consume the grosser senses, and he walked along like a man in a dream.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Half-an-hour before Ave Maria, Roma had put on an inconspicuous cloak, a
+plain hat, and a dark veil, and walked down to the Coliseum. Soldiers
+were stationed on all the high ground about the circus, and large
+numbers of persons were already assembled inside. The people were poor
+and ill-clad, and they smelt of garlic and uncleanness. "_His_ people,
+though," thought Roma, and so she conquered her repulsion.
+
+Three tiers encircle the walls of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a
+great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of
+Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the
+soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement
+beneath their jesting was deep and strong.
+
+The low cloud which had hung over the city from early morning seemed to
+lie like a roof over the topmost circle of the amphitheatre, and as
+night came on the pit below grew dark and chill. Then torches were lit
+and put in prominent places--long pitch sticks covered with rags or
+brown paper. The people were patient and good-humoured, but to beguile
+the tedium of waiting they sang songs. They were songs of labour
+chiefly, but one man started the _Te Deum_, and the rest joined in with
+one voice. It was like the noise the sea makes on a heavy day when it
+breaks on a bank of sand.
+
+After a while there was a deep sound from outside. The procession was
+approaching. It came on like a great tidal wave and flowed into the vast
+place in the gathering darkness with the light of a hundred fresh
+torches.
+
+In less than half-an-hour the ruined amphitheatre was a moving mass of
+heads from the ground to its upmost storey. Long sinuous trails of blue
+smoke swept across the people's faces, and the great brown mass of
+circular stones was lit up in fitful gleams.
+
+Roma was lifted off her feet by the breaker of human beings that surged
+around. At one moment she was conscious of some one behind who was
+pressing the people back and making room for her. At the next moment she
+was aware that through the multitudinous murmur of voices that rumbled
+as in a vault somebody near her was trying to speak.
+
+The speaking ceased and there was a sharp crackle of applause which had
+the effect of producing silence. In this silence another voice, a clear,
+loud, vibrating voice, said, "Romans and brothers," and then there was a
+prolonged shout of recognition from ten thousand throats.
+
+In a moment a dozen torches were handed up, and the speaker was in a
+circle of light and could be seen by all. It was Rossi. He was standing
+bareheaded on a stone, with a face of unusual paleness. He was wearing
+the loose cloak of the common people of Rome, thrown across his breast
+and shoulder. Bruno stood by his left side holding a standard above
+their heads. At his right hand were two other men who partly concealed
+him from the crowd. Roma found herself immediately below them, and
+within two or three paces.
+
+After a moment the shouting died down, and there was no sound in the
+vast place but a soft, quick, indrawn hiss that was like the palpitating
+breath of an immense flock of sheep. Then Rossi began again.
+
+"First and foremost," he said, "let me call on you to preserve the
+peace. One false step to-night and all is lost. Our enemies would like
+to fix on us the name of rebels. Rebels against whom? There is no
+rebellion except rebellion against the people. The people are the true
+sovereigns, and the only rebels are the classes who oppress them."
+
+A murmur of assent broke from the crowd. Rossi paused, and looked around
+at the soldiers.
+
+"Romans," he said, "do not let the armed rebels of the State provoke you
+to violence. It is to their interest to do so. Defeat them. You have
+come here in the face of their rifles and bayonets to show that you are
+not afraid of death. But I ask you to be afraid of doing an unrighteous
+thing. It is on my responsibility that you are here, and it would be an
+undying remorse to me if through any fault of yours one drop of blood
+were shed.
+
+"I call on you as earnestly as if my nearest and dearest were among you,
+liable to be shot down by the rifles of the military, not to give any
+excuse for violence."
+
+Roma turned to look at the soldiers. As far as she could see in the
+uncertain light, they were standing passively in their circle, with
+their rifles by their sides.
+
+"Romans," said Rossi again, "a month ago we protested against an
+iniquitous tax on the first necessary of life. The answer is sixty
+thousand men in arms around us. Therefore we are here to-night to appeal
+to the mightiest force on earth, mightier than any army, more powerful
+than any parliament, more absolute than any king--the force of moral
+sympathy and public opinion throughout the world."
+
+At this there were shouts of "Bravo!" and some clapping of hands.
+
+"Romans, if your bread is moistened by tears to-day, think of the power
+of suffering and be strong. Think of the history of these old walls.
+Think of the words of Christ, 'Which of the prophets have not your
+fathers stoned?' The prophets of humanity have all been martyrs, and God
+has marked you out to be the martyr nation of the world. Suffering is
+the sacred flame that sanctifies the human soul. Pray to God for
+strength to suffer, and He will bless you from the heights of Heaven."
+
+People were weeping on every hand.
+
+"Brothers, you are hungry, and I say these things to you with a beating
+heart. Your children are starving, and I swear before God that from this
+day forward I will starve with them. If I have eaten two meals a day
+hitherto, for the future I will eat but one. But leave it to the powers
+that are over you to do their worst. If they imprison you for resisting
+their tyrannies, others will take your place. If they kill your leader,
+God will raise up another who will be stronger than he. Swear to me in
+this old Coliseum, sacred to the martyrs, that, come what may, you will
+not yield to injustice and wrong."
+
+There was something in Rossi's face at that last moment that seemed to
+transcend the natural man. He raised his right arm over his head and in
+a loud voice cried, "Swear!"
+
+The people took the oath with uplifted hands and a great shout. It was
+terrible.
+
+Rossi stepped down, and the excitement was overwhelming. The vast crowd
+seemed to toss to and fro under the smoking lights like a tumultuous
+sea. The simple-hearted Roman populace could not contain themselves.
+
+The crowd began to break up, and the people went off singing. Rossi and
+his group of friends had disappeared when Roma turned to go. She found
+herself weeping and singing, too, but for another reason. The danger was
+passed, and all was over!
+
+Going out by one of the arches, she was conscious of somebody walking
+beside her. Presently a voice said:
+
+"You don't recognise me in the darkness, Donna Roma?"
+
+It was Charles Minghelli. He had been told to take care of her. Could he
+offer her his escort home?
+
+"No, thank you," she replied, and she was surprised at herself that she
+experienced no repulsion.
+
+Her heart was light, a great weight had been lifted away, and she felt a
+large and generous charity. At the top of the hill she found a cab, and
+as it dipped down the broad avenue that leads out of the circle of the
+dead centuries into the world of living men, she turned and looked back
+at the Coliseum. It was like a dream. The moving lights--the shadows of
+great heads on the grim old walls--the surging crowds--the cheers from
+hoarse throats. But the tinkle of the electric tram brought her back to
+reality, and then she noticed that it had begun to snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruno ploughed a way for David Rossi, and they reached home at last.
+
+Elena was standing at the door of David Rossi's rooms, with an agitated
+face.
+
+"Have you seen anything of Joseph?" she asked.
+
+"Joseph?"
+
+"I opened the window to look if you were coming, and in a moment he was
+gone. On a night like this, too, when it isn't too safe for anybody to
+be in the streets."
+
+"Has he still got the clothes on?" said Bruno.
+
+"Yes, and the naughty boy has broken his promise and must be whipped."
+
+The men looked into each other's faces.
+
+"Donna Roma?" said Rossi.
+
+"I'll go and see," said Bruno.
+
+"I must have a rod, whatever you say. I really must!" said Elena.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+Roma reached home in a glow of joy. She told herself that Rossi would
+come to her in obedience to her command. He must dine with her to-night.
+Seven was now striking on all the clocks outside, and to give him time
+to arrive she put back the dinner until eight. Her aunt would dine in
+her own room, so they would be quite alone. The conventions of life had
+fallen absolutely away, and she considered them no more.
+
+Meantime she must dress and perhaps take a bath. A certain sense of
+soiling which she could not conquer had followed her up from that
+glorious meeting. She felt a little ashamed of it, but it was there, and
+though she told herself "They were _his_ people, poor things," she was
+glad to take off the clothes she had worn at the Coliseum.
+
+She combed out the curls of her glossy black hair, put herself into a
+loose tea gown and red slippers, took one backward glance at herself in
+the glass, and then going into the drawing-room, she stood by the window
+to dream and wait. The snow still fell in thin flakes, but the city was
+humming on, and the piazza down below was full of people.
+
+After a while the electric bell of the outer door was rung, and her
+heart beat against her breast. "It's he," she thought, and in the
+exquisite tumult of the moment she lifted her arms and turned to meet
+him.
+
+But when the door was opened it was the Baron Bonelli who was shown into
+the room. He was in evening dress, with black tie and studs which had a
+chilling effect, and his manner was as cold and calm as usual.
+
+"I regret," he said, "that we must enter on a painful interview."
+
+"As you please," she answered, and sitting on a stool by the fire she
+rested her elbows on her knees, and looked straight before her.
+
+"Your letter of last night, my dear, produced the result you desired. I
+sent for Commendatore Angelelli, invented some plausible excuses, and
+reversed my orders. I also sent for Minghelli and told him to take care
+of you on your reckless errand. The matter has thus far ended as you
+wished, and I trust you are satisfied."
+
+She nodded her head without turning round, and bore herself with a
+certain air of defiance.
+
+"But it is necessary that we should come to an understanding," he
+continued. "You have driven me hard, my child. With all the tenderness
+and sympathy possible, I am compelled to speak plainly. I wished to
+spare your feelings. You will not permit me to do so."
+
+The incisiveness of his speech cut the air like ice dropping from a
+glacier, and Roma felt herself turning pale with a sense of something
+fearful whirling around her.
+
+"According to your own plans, Rossi is to marry you within a week,
+although a month ago he spoke of you in public as an unworthy woman.
+Will you be good enough to tell me how this miracle has come to pass?"
+
+She laughed, and tried to carry herself bravely.
+
+"If it is a miracle, how can I explain it?" she said.
+
+"Then permit me to do so. He is going to marry you because he no longer
+thinks as he thought a month ago; because he believes he was wrong in
+what he said, and would like to wipe it out entirely."
+
+"He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly;
+"that's why he is going to marry me."
+
+At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed
+before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her
+own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as
+from a tomb.
+
+"Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he
+could scarcely be heard.
+
+"Told him what?" she said.
+
+"The truth--the fact."
+
+She caught her breath and was silent.
+
+"My child, you are doing wrong. There is a secret between you already.
+That is a bad basis to begin life upon, and the love that is raised on
+it will be a house built on the sand."
+
+Her heart was beating violently, but she turned on him with a burning
+glance.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said, while the colour increased in her cheeks
+and forehead. "I am a good woman. You know I am."
+
+"To me, yes! The best woman in the world."
+
+She had risen to her feet, and was standing by the chimney-piece.
+
+"Understand me, my child," he said affectionately. "When I say you are
+doing wrong, it is only in keeping a secret from the man you intend to
+marry. Between you and me ... there is no secret."
+
+She looked at him with haggard eyes.
+
+"For me you are everything that is sweet and good, but for another who
+knows? When a man is about to marry a woman, there is one thing he can
+never forgive. Need I say what that is?"
+
+The glow that had suffused her face changed to the pallor of marble, and
+she turned to the Baron and stood over him with the majesty of a statue.
+
+"Is it you that tell me this?" she said. "You--you? Can a woman never be
+allowed to forget? Must the fault of another follow her all her life?
+Oh, it is cruel! It is merciless.... But no matter!" she said in another
+voice; and turning away from him she added, as if speaking to herself:
+"He believes everything I tell him. Why should I trouble?"
+
+The Baron followed her with a look that pierced to the depths of her
+soul.
+
+"Then you have told him a falsehood?" he said.
+
+She pressed her lips together and made no answer.
+
+"That was foolish. By-and-by somebody may come along who will tell him
+the truth."
+
+"What can any one tell him that he has not heard already? He has heard
+everything, and put it all behind his back."
+
+"Could nobody bring conviction to his mind? Nobody whatever? Not even
+one who had no interest in slandering you?"
+
+"You don't mean that you...."
+
+"Why not? He has come between us. What could be more natural than that I
+should tell him so?"
+
+A look of dismay came over her face, and it was followed by an
+expression of terror.
+
+"But you wouldn't do that," she stammered. "You couldn't do it. It is
+impossible. You are only trying me."
+
+His face remained perfectly passive, and she seized him by the arm.
+
+"Think! Only think! You would do no good for yourself. You might stop
+the marriage--yes! But you wouldn't carry out your political purpose.
+You couldn't! And while you would do no good for yourself, think of the
+harm you would do for me. He loves me, and you would hurt his beautiful
+faith in me, and I should die of grief and shame."
+
+"You are cruel, my child," said the Baron, speaking with dignity. "You
+think _I_ am hard and unrelenting, but _you_ are selfish and cruel. You
+are so concerned about your own feelings that you don't even suspect
+that perhaps you are wounding mine."
+
+"Ah, yes, it is too bad," she said, dropping to her knees at his feet.
+"After all, you have been very good to me thus far, and it was partly my
+own fault if matters ended as they did. Yes, I confess it. I was vain
+and proud. I wanted all the world. And when you gave me everything,
+being so tied yourself, I thought I might forgive you.... But I was
+wrong--I was to blame--nothing in the world could excuse you--I saw that
+the moment afterwards. I really hadn't thought at all until then--but
+then my soul awoke. And then...."
+
+She turned her head aside that he might not see her face.
+
+"And then love came, and I was like a woman who had married a man thirty
+years older than herself--married without love--just for the sake of her
+pride and vanity. But love, real love, drove all that away. It is gone
+now; I only wish to lead a good life, however simple and humble it may
+be. Let me do so!... Do not take him away from me! Do not...."
+
+She stammered and stopped, with a sudden consciousness of what she was
+doing.
+
+"What a fool I am!" she said, leaping to her feet. "What fresh story can
+you tell him that he is likely to believe?"
+
+"I can tell him that, according to the law of nature and of reason, you
+belong to me," said the Baron.
+
+"Very well! It will be your word against mine, will it not? Tell him,
+and he will fling your insult in your face."
+
+The Baron rose and began to walk about the room, and there were some
+moments in which nothing could be heard but the slight creaking of his
+patent-leather boots. Then he said:
+
+"In that case I should be compelled to challenge him."
+
+"Challenge him!" She repeated the words with scorn. "Is it likely? Do
+you forget that duelling is a crime, that you are a Minister, that you
+would have to resign, and expose yourself to penalties?"
+
+"If a man insults me grievously in my affections and my honour, I will
+challenge him," said the Baron.
+
+"But he will not fight--it would be contrary to his principles," said
+Roma.
+
+"In that event he will never be able to lift his head in Italy again.
+But make no mistake on that point, my child. The man who is told that
+the woman he is going to marry is secretly the wife of another must
+either believe it or he must not. If he believes it, he casts her off
+for ever. If he does not believe it, he fights for her name and his own
+honour. If he does neither, he is not a man."
+
+Roma had returned to the stool, and was resting her elbows on her knees
+and gazing into the fire.
+
+"Have you thought of that?" said the Baron. "If the man fights a duel,
+it will be in defence of what you have told him. In the blindness of his
+belief in your word he will be ready to risk his life for it. Are you
+going to stand by and see him fight for a lie?"
+
+Roma hid her face in her hands.
+
+"Say he is wounded--it will be for a lie! Say he wounds his
+adversary--that will be for a lie too! Say that David Rossi kills
+me--what then? He must fly from Italy, and his career is at an end. If
+he is alone, he is a miserable exile who has earned what he may not
+enjoy. If you are with him, you are both miserable, for a lie stands
+between you. Every hour of your life is poisoned by the secret you
+cannot share with him. You are afraid of blurting it out in your sleep.
+At last you go to him and confess everything. What then? The idol he
+worshipped has turned to clay. What he thought an act of retribution is
+a crime. The dead man had told the truth, and he committed murder on the
+word of a woman who was a deceiver--a drab."
+
+Roma raised her hands to her head as if to avert a blow.
+
+"Stop! stop!" she cried in a choking voice, and lifting her face,
+distorted with suffering, tears rose in her eyes. To see Roma cry
+touched the only tenderness of which his iron nature was capable. He
+patted the beautiful head at his feet, and said in a caressing tone:
+
+"Why will you make me seem so hard, my child? There is really no need to
+talk of these things. They will not occur. How can I have any desire to
+degrade you since I must degrade myself at the same time? I have no wish
+to tell any one the secret which belongs only to you and me. In that
+matter you were not to blame either. It was all my doing. I was
+sweltering under the shameful law which tied me to a dead body, and I
+tried to attach you to me. And then your beauty--your loveliness...."
+
+At that moment Felice announced Commendatore Angelelli. Roma walked over
+to the window and leaned her face against the glass. Snow was still
+falling, and there were some rumblings of thunder. Sheets of light shone
+here and there in the darkness, but the world outside was dark and
+drear. Would David Rossi come to-night? She almost hoped he would not.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Behind her the Prime Minister, who had apologised for turning her house
+into a temporary Ministry of the Interior, was talking to his Chief of
+Police.
+
+"You were there yourself?"
+
+"I was, Excellency. I went up into a high part and looked down. It was a
+strange and wild sight."
+
+"How many would there be?"
+
+"Impossible to guess. Inside and outside, Romans, country people,
+perhaps a hundred thousand."
+
+"And Rossi's speech?"
+
+"The usual appeal to the passions of the people, Excellency. An
+extraordinary exhibition of the art of flying between wind and water. We
+couldn't have found a word that was distinctly seditious, even if we
+hadn't had your Excellency's order to let the man go on."
+
+"You have stopped the telegraph wires?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When the meeting was over, Rossi went home?"
+
+"He did, Excellency."
+
+"And the hundred thousand?"
+
+"In their excitement they began to sing and to march through the
+streets. They are still doing so. After going down to the Piazza Navona,
+they are coming up by the Piazza del Popolo and along the Babuino with
+banners and torches."
+
+"Men only?"
+
+"Men, women, and children."
+
+"You would say that their attitude is threatening?"
+
+"Distinctly threatening, your Excellency."
+
+"Let your delegates give the legal warning and say that the gathering of
+great mobs at this hour will be regarded as open rebellion. Allow three
+minutes' grace for the sake of the women and children, and then ... let
+the military do their duty."
+
+"Quite so, your Excellency."
+
+"After that you may carry out the instructions I gave you yesterday."
+
+"Certainly, your Excellency."
+
+"Keep in touch with all the leaders. Some of them will find that the air
+of Rome is a little dangerous to their health to-night, and may wish to
+fly to Switzerland or England, where it would be impossible to follow
+them."
+
+Roma heard behind her the thin cackle as of a hen over her nest, which
+always came when Angelelli laughed.
+
+"Their meeting itself was illegal, and our license has been abused."
+
+"Grossly abused, your Excellency."
+
+"The action of the Government was too conciliatory, and has rendered
+them audacious, but the new law is clear in prohibiting the carrying of
+seditious flags and emblems."
+
+"We'll deal with them according to Articles 134 and 252 of the Penal
+Code, your Excellency."
+
+"You can go. But come back immediately if anything happens. I must
+remain here for the present, and in case of riot I may have to send you
+to the King."
+
+Angelelli's thin voice fell to a whisper of awe at the mention of
+Majesty, and after a moment he bowed and backed out of the room.
+
+Roma did not turn round, and the Minister, who had touched the bell and
+called for pen and paper, spoke to her from behind.
+
+"I daresay you thought I was hard and inhuman at the Palazzo Braschi
+yesterday, but I was really very merciful. In letting you see the
+preparations to enclose your friend as in a net, I merely wished you to
+warn him to fly from the country. He has not done so, and now he must
+take the consequences."
+
+Felice brought the writing materials, and the Baron sat down at the
+table. There was a long silence in which nothing could be heard but the
+scratching of the Minister's pen, the snoring of the poodle, and the
+deadened sound through the wall of the Countess's testy voice scolding
+Natalina.
+
+Roma stepped into the boudoir. The room was dark, and from its unlit
+windows she could see more plainly into the streets. Masses of shadow
+lay around, but the untrodden steps were white with thin snow, and the
+piazza were alive with black figures which moved on the damp ground like
+worms on an upturned sod.
+
+She was leaning her hot forehead against the glass and looking out with
+haggard eyes, when a deep rumble as of a great multitude came from
+below. The noise quickly increased to a loud uproar, with shouts, songs,
+whistles, and shrill sounds blown out of door-keys. Before she was aware
+of his presence the Baron was standing behind her, between the window
+and the pedestal with the plaster bust of Rossi.
+
+"Listen to them," he said. "The proletariat indeed!... And this is the
+flock of bipeds to whom men in their senses would have us throw the
+treasures of civilisation and hand over the delicate machinery of
+government."
+
+He laughed bitterly, and drew back the curtain with an impatient hand.
+
+"Democracy! _Christian_ Democracy! _Vox Populi vox Dei!_ The sovereignty
+and infallibility of the people! Pshaw! I would as soon believe in the
+infallibility of the Pope!"
+
+The crowds increased in the piazza until the triangular space looked
+like the rapids of a swollen river, and the noise that came up from it
+was like the noise of falling cliffs and uprooted trees.
+
+"Fools! Rabble! Too ignorant to know what you really want, and at the
+mercy of every rascal who sows the wind and leaves you to reap the
+whirlwind."
+
+Roma crept away from the Baron with a sense of physical repulsion, and
+at the next moment, from the other window, she heard the blast of a
+trumpet. A dreadful silence followed the trumpet blast, and then a clear
+voice cried:
+
+"In the name of the law I command you to disperse."
+
+It was the voice of a delegate of the police. Roma could see the man on
+the lowest stage of the steps with his tricoloured scarf of office about
+him. A second blast came from the trumpet, and again the delegate cried:
+
+"In the name of the law I command you to disperse."
+
+At that moment somebody cried, "Long live the Republic of Man!" and
+there was great cheering. In the midst of the cheering the trumpet
+sounded a third time, and then a loud voice cried "Fire!"
+
+At the next moment a volley was fired from somewhere, a cloud of white
+smoke was coiling in front of the window at which Roma stood, and women
+and children in the vagueness below were uttering acute cries.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"Don't be afraid, my child. Nothing has happened yet. The police had
+orders to fire first over the people's heads."
+
+In her fear and agitation Roma ran back to the outer room, and a moment
+afterwards Angelelli opened the door and stood face to face with her.
+
+"What have you done?" she demanded.
+
+"An unfortunate incident, Excellency," said Angelelli, as the Baron
+appeared. "After the warning of the delegate the mob laughed and threw
+stones, and the Carabineers fired. They were in the piazza and fired up
+the steps."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Unluckily there were a few persons on the upper flights at the moment,
+and some of them are wounded, and a child is dead."
+
+Roma muttered a low moan and sank on to the stool.
+
+"Whose child is it?"
+
+"We don't yet know, but the father is there, and he is raging like a
+madman, and unless he is arrested he will provoke the people to frenzy,
+and there will be riot and insurrection."
+
+The Baron took from the table a letter he had written and sealed.
+
+"Take this to the Quirinal instantly. Ask for an immediate audience with
+the King. When you receive his written reply, call up the Minister of
+War and say you have the royal decree to declare a state of siege."
+
+Angelelli was going out hurriedly.
+
+"Wait! Send to the Piazza Navona and arrest Rossi. Be careful! You will
+arrest the Deputy under Articles 134 and 252 on a charge of using the
+great influence he has acquired over the people to urge the masses by
+speeches and writings to resist public authority and to change violently
+the form of government and the constitution of the State."
+
+"Good!"
+
+Angelelli disappeared, the acute cries outside died away, the scurrying
+of flying feet was no more heard, and Roma was still on the stool before
+the fire, moaning behind the hands that covered her face. The Baron came
+near to her and touched her with a caressing gesture.
+
+"I'm sorry, my child, very sorry. Rossi is a dreamer, not a statesman,
+but he is none the less troublesome on that account No wonder he has
+fascinated you, as he has fascinated the people, but time will wipe away
+an impression like that. The best thing that can happen for both of you
+is that he should be arrested to-night. It will save you so many ordeals
+and so much sorrow."
+
+At that moment a cannon-shot boomed through the darkness outside, and
+its vibration rattled the windows and walls.
+
+"The signal from St. Angelo," said the Baron. "The gates are closed and
+the city is under siege."
+
+
+                                IX
+
+When, in the commotion of the household caused by the near approach of
+the crowd which brought Rossi home from the Coliseum, little Joseph
+slipped down the stairs and made a dash for the street, he chuckled to
+himself as he thought how cleverly he had eluded his mother, who had
+been looking out of the bedroom window, and those two old watch-dogs,
+his grandfather and grandmother, who were nearly always at the door.
+
+It was not until he was fairly plunged into the great sea of the city,
+and had begun to be a little dazed by more lights than he ever saw when
+he closed his eyes in bed, that he remembered that he had disobeyed
+orders and broken his promise not to go out. But even then, he told
+himself, he was not responsible. He was Donna Roma's porter now.
+Therefore, he couldn't be Joseph, could he?
+
+So, with his magic mace in hand, the serious man of seven marched on,
+and reconciled himself to his disobedience by thinking nothing more
+about it. People looked at him and smiled as he passed through the
+Piazza Madama, where the Senate House stands, and that made him lift his
+head and walk on proudly, but as he went through the Piazza of the
+Pantheon a boy who was coming out of a cookshop with a tray on his head
+cried, "Helloa, kiddy! playing Pulcinello?" and that dashed his
+worshipful dignity for several minutes.
+
+It began to snow, and the white flakes on his gold braid clouded his
+soul at first, but when he remembered that porters had to work in all
+weathers, he wagged his sturdy head and strode on. He was going to Donna
+Roma's according to her invitation, and he found his way by his
+recollection of what he had seen when he made the same journey on
+Sunday--here a tramcar coming round a corner, there a line of posts
+across a narrow thoroughfare, and there a fat man with a gruff voice
+shouting something at the door of a trattoria.
+
+At the corner of a lane there was a shop window full of knives and
+revolvers. He didn't care for knives--they cut people's fingers--but he
+liked guns, and when he grew up to be a man he would buy one and kill
+somebody.
+
+Coming to the Piazza Monte Citorio, he remembered the soldiers at the
+door of the House of Parliament, and the cellar full of long guns with
+knives (bayonets) stuck on the ends of their muzzles. One of the
+soldiers laughed, called him "Uncle," and asked him something about
+enlisting, but he only struck his mace firmly on the flags and marched
+on.
+
+At the corner of the Piazza Colonna he had to wait some time before he
+could cross the Corso, for the crowds were coming both ways and the
+traffic frightened him. He had made various little sorties and had been
+driven back, when a soft hand was slipped into his fat palm and he was
+piloted across in safety. Then he looked up at his helper. It was a girl
+with big white feathers in her hat, and her face painted pink and white
+like the face of the little Jesus in the cradle in church at Christmas.
+She asked him what his name was, and he told her; also where he was
+going, and he told her that too. It was dark by this time, and the great
+little man was beginning to be glad of company.
+
+"Aren't you tired of carrying that heavy stick?" she said.
+
+It wasn't a stick, and he wasn't a bit tired of carrying it.
+
+"But aren't you tired _yourself_?" she said, and he admitted that
+perhaps it was so.
+
+So she picked him up, and carried him in her arms, while he carried the
+mace, and for some minutes both were satisfied. But presently some one
+in the Via Tritone cried out, "Helloa! here comes the Blessed Bambino,"
+whereupon his worshipful dignity was again wounded, and he wriggled to
+the ground.
+
+It began to thunder and there were some flashes of lightning, whereupon
+Joseph shuddered and crept closer to the girl's side.
+
+"Are you afraid of lightning, Joseph?" she asked.
+
+He wasn't. He often saw it at home when he went to bed. His mother held
+his hand and he covered up his head in the clothes, and then he liked
+it.
+
+The girl took the wee, fat hand again, and the little feet toddled on.
+
+After vain efforts to snatch a kiss, which were defeated by a proper
+withdrawal of the manly head in the cocked hat, the girl with the
+feathers and the doll's face left him in the Via due Macelli under a
+bright electric lamp that hung over the door of a cafe-chantant.
+
+Joseph knew then that he was not far from Donna Roma's, and he began to
+think of what he would do when he got there. If the big porter at the
+door tried to stop him he would say, "I'm a little Roman boy," and the
+man would _have_ to let him go up. Then he would take charge of the
+hall, and when he had not to open the door he would play with the dog,
+and sometimes with Donna Roma.
+
+With sound practical sense he thought of his wages. Would it be a penny
+a week or twopence? He thought it would be twopence. Men didn't work for
+nothing nowadays. He had heard his father say so.
+
+Then he remembered his mother, and his lip began to drop. But it rose
+again when he told himself that of course she would come every night to
+put him to bed as usual. "Good-night, mamma! See you in the morning," he
+would say, and when he opened his eyes it would be to-morrow.
+
+He was feeling sleepy now, and do what he would he could hardly keep his
+eyes from closing. But he was in the Piazza di Spagna by this time, and
+his little feet in their top-boots began to patter up the snowy steps.
+
+There are three principal landings to the Spanish Steps, and the great
+little man of seven had reached the second of them when a noise in the
+streets below made him stop and turn his head.
+
+A great crowd, carrying hundreds of torches, was marching into the
+piazza. They were singing, shouting, and blowing whistles and trumpets.
+It was like _Befana_ in the Piazza Navona, and when Joseph blinked his
+eyes he almost thought he was at home in bed.
+
+All at once silence--then soldiers--then a jump all over his body like
+that which came to him when he was falling asleep--then a sense of
+something warm--then a buzzing noise--then a boom like that of the gun
+of St. Angelo at dinner-time ... then a deep, familiar voice calling and
+calling to him, and his eyes opened for a moment and saw his father's
+face.
+
+"Good-night, papa! So sleepy! See you in the morning!"
+
+And then nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Elena waited for Bruno's return with little Joseph, she went up
+and downstairs between David Rossi's apartment and her own on all manner
+of invented errands. Meantime she tried to keep down her anxiety by
+keeping up her anger. Joseph was so worrisome. When he came home he
+would have to be whipped and sent to bed without his supper. It was true
+his _verdura_ was already on the stove, but he must not be allowed to
+touch it. You really must be strict with children. They would like you
+all the better for it when they grew up to be men and women.
+
+But every moment broke down this brave severity, until the desire to
+punish Joseph for his disobedience was all gone. She stood at the head
+of the stairs and listened for his voice and his little pattering feet.
+If she had heard them, her anxious expression would have given way to a
+cross look and she would have scolded both father and son all the way up
+to bed. But they did not come, and she turned to the dining-room with a
+downcast face.
+
+"Where can the boy be? If I could only have him back! I will never let
+him out of my sight again. Never!"
+
+David Rossi, who was walking in the sitting-room to calm his nerves
+after a trying time, tried to comfort her. It would be all right. Depend
+upon it, Joseph had gone up to Donna Roma's. She was to remember what
+Bruno told them on Sunday. "The little Roman boy." Joseph had thought of
+nothing else for three days, and this being his birthday....
+
+"You think so? You really think...."
+
+"I'm sure of it. Bruno will be back presently, carrying Joseph on his
+back. Or perhaps Donna Roma will send the boy home in the carriage, and
+the great little man will come upstairs like the Mayor. Meantime she has
+kept him to play with, and...."
+
+"Yes, that must be it," said Elena, with shining eyes. "The Signorina
+must have kept him to play with! He must be playing now with the
+Signorina!"
+
+At that moment through the open door there came the sound of a heavy
+tread on the stairs, mingled with various voices. Elena's shining face
+suddenly clouded, and Rossi, who read her thought, went out on to the
+landing. Bruno was coming up the staircase with something in his arms,
+and behind him were the Garibaldian and his old wife and a line of
+strangers.
+
+Rossi ran down two flights of stairs and met them. He saw everything as
+by a flash of lightning. The boy lay in his father's arms. He was white
+and cold, with his head fallen back, and his hair matted with flakes of
+snow. His gay coat was open, and his little stained shirt was torn out
+at the breast. A stranger behind was carrying the cocked hat and mace.
+
+Elena, who was at the head of the stairs by this time, was screaming.
+
+"Keep her away, sir," said Bruno. The poor fellow was trying to be brave
+and strong, but his voice was like a voice from the other side of an
+abyss.
+
+They took the boy into the dining-room, and laid him on a sofa. There
+was no keeping the mother back. She forced her way through and laid hold
+of the child.
+
+"Get away, he's mine," she cried fiercely.
+
+And then she dropped on her knees before the boy, threw her arms about
+him and called on him by his name.
+
+"Joseph! Speak to me! Open your eyes and speak!... What have you been
+doing with my child? He is ill. Why don't you send for a doctor? Don't
+stand there like fools. Go for a doctor, I tell you ... Joseph! Only a
+word!... Have you carried him home without his hat on? And it's snowing
+too! He'll get his death of cold ... what's this? Blood on his shirt?
+And a wound? Look at this red spot. Have they shot him? No, no, it's
+impossible! A child! Joseph! Joseph! Speak to me!... Yes, his heart is
+beating." She was pressing her ear to the boy's breast. "Or is it only
+the beating in my head? Oh, where is the doctor? Why don't you send for
+him?"
+
+They could not tell her that it was useless, that a doctor had seen the
+child already, and that all was over. All they could do was to stand
+round her with awe in their faces. She understood them without words.
+Her hair fell from its knot, and her eyes began to blaze like the eyes
+of a maniac.
+
+"They've killed my child!" she cried. "He's dead! My little boy is dead!
+Only seven, and it was his birthday! O God! My child! What had he done
+that they should kill him?"
+
+And then Bruno, who was standing by with a wild lustre in his eyes, said
+between his teeth, "Done? Done nothing but live under a Government of
+murderers and assassins."
+
+The room filled with people. Neighbours who had never before set foot in
+the rooms came in without fear, for death was among them. They stood
+silent for the most part, only handing round the table the little cocked
+hat and the mace, with sighs and deep breathing. But some one speaking
+to Rossi told him what had happened. It was at the Spanish Steps. The
+delegate gave the word, and the Carabineers fired over the people's
+heads. But they hit the child and made him cold. His little heart had
+burst.
+
+"And I was going to whip him," said Elena. "Not a minute before I was
+talking about the rod, and not giving him his supper. O God! I can never
+forgive myself."
+
+And then the blessed tears came and she wept bitterly.
+
+David Rossi put his arms about her, and her head fell on his breast. All
+barriers were broken down, and she clung to him and cried.
+
+Just then cries came from the piazza--"Hurrah for the Revolution!" and
+"Down with the destroyers of the people!"--the woolly tones of voices
+shouting in the snow. Somebody on the stairs explained that a young man
+was going about waving a bloody handkerchief, and that the sight of it
+was exasperating the people to frenzy. Women were marching through the
+streets, and the entire city was on the point of insurrection.
+
+In the dining-room the stricken ones still stood around the couch.
+Presently there was a sound of singing outside. A great crowd was coming
+into the piazza, singing the Garibaldi Hymn. Bruno heard it, and the
+wild lustre in his eyes gave place to a look of savage joy. An awful
+oath burst from his lips, and he ran out of the house. At the next
+moment he was heard in the street, singing in a thundering voice:
+
+    "The tombs are uncovered,
+    The dead arise,
+    The martyrs are rising
+    Before our eyes."
+
+The old Garibaldian threw up his head like a warhorse at the call of
+battle, and his rickety limbs were going towards the door.
+
+"Stay here, father," said Rossi, and the old man obeyed him.
+
+Elena was quieter by this time. She was sitting by the child and
+stroking his little icy hand.
+
+David Rossi, who had hardly spoken, went into his bedroom. His lips were
+tightly pressed together, his eyes were bloodshot, and his breath was
+labouring hard in his heaving breast.
+
+He took up his dagger paper-knife, tried its point on his palm with two
+or three reckless thrusts and threw it back on the desk. Then he went
+down on his hands and knees and rummaged among the newspapers lying in
+heaps under the window. At last he found what he looked for. It was the
+six-chambered revolver which had been sent to him as a present. "I'll
+kill the man like a dog," he thought.
+
+He loaded the revolver, put it in his breast-pocket, went back to the
+sitting-room, and made ready to go out.
+
+
+                                X
+
+Ten was striking on the different clocks of the city. Felice had lit the
+stove in the boudoir and the wood was burning in fitful blue and red
+flames. There was no other light in the room, and Roma lay with her body
+on the floor, and her face buried in the couch.
+
+The world outside was full of fearful and unusual noises. Snow was still
+falling, and the voices heard through it had a peculiar sound of
+sobbing. The soft rolling of thunder came from a long way off, like the
+boom of a slow wave on a distant beach. At intervals there was the
+crackle of musketry, like the noise of rockets sent up in the night, and
+sometimes there were pitiful cries, smothered by the unreverberating
+snow, like the cries of a drowning man on a foundering ship at sea.
+
+Roma, face downward, heard these sounds in the lapses of a terrible
+memory. She was seeing, as in a nightmare, the incidents of a night that
+was hardly six weeks past. One by one the facts flashed back upon her
+with a burning sense of shame, and she felt herself to be a sinner and a
+criminal.
+
+It was the night of the royal ball at the Quirinal. The blaze of lights,
+the glitter of jewels, the brilliant throng of handsome men and lovely
+women, the clash of music, the whirl of dancing, and finally the smiles
+and compliments of the King. Then going home in the carriage in the
+early morning, swathed in furs over her thin white silk, with the
+Baron, in his decorations worn diagonally over his white breast, and
+through the glass the waning moon, the silent stars, the empty streets.
+
+Then this room, this couch, sinking down on it, very tired, with eyes
+smiling and half closed, and nearly gone already into the mists of
+sleep. And then the Baron at her feet, pressing his lips to her wrist
+where the pulse was beating, kissing her arms and shoulders.... "Oh,
+dear! You are mad! I must not listen to you." And then burning words of
+love and passion: "My wife! My wife that is to be!" And then the call of
+her aunt from the adjoining chamber, "Roma!"
+
+The sobbing sounds from outside broke in on Roma's nightmare, and when
+the chain of memory linked on again it was morning in her vision, and
+the Countess was comforting her in a whimpering voice:
+
+"After all, God is merciful, and things that happen to everybody can be
+atoned for by prayer and penance. Besides, the Baron is a man of honour,
+and the poor maniac cannot last much longer."
+
+The sobbing sounds in the snow, the cries far away, the crackle of the
+rifle-shots, the rumble of the thunder broke in again, and the elements
+outside seemed to whirl round her in the tempest of her trouble. For a
+moment she lifted her head and heard voices in the next room.
+
+The Baron was still there, and from time to time, as he wrote his
+despatches, messengers came to take them away, to bring replies, and to
+deliver the latest news of the night. The populace had risen in all
+parts of the city, and the soldiers had charged them. There had been
+several misadventures and many arrests. The large house of detention by
+St. Andrea delle Frate was already full, but the people continued to
+hold out. They had disconnected the gas at the gasometer and cut the
+electric wires, and the city was plunged in darkness.
+
+"Tell the electric light company to turn on the flashlight from Monte
+Mario," said the Baron.
+
+And when the voices ceased in the drawing-room there came the deadened
+sound of the Countess's frightened treble behind the wall.
+
+"O Holy Virgin, full of grace, save me! It would be a sin to let me die
+to-night! Holy Virgin, see! I have given thee two more candles. Art
+thou not satisfied? Save me from murder, Mother of God."
+
+Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face,
+which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto
+the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of
+her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was
+compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to
+confess.
+
+Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw
+herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the
+deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She
+had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was
+waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she
+had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and
+alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented.
+
+"No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound
+of her voice, the Baron came into the room.
+
+"My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall
+never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear
+you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful
+eyes and be calm."
+
+She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with
+one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she
+said:
+
+"I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment
+for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps
+this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ...
+it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but
+there is no help for it."
+
+The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her
+throat.
+
+"The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also.
+He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love
+for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him.
+Perhaps he is in prison by this time."
+
+Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron
+tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very
+natural and very womanly. But time was the great remedy for human ills.
+It would heal everything.
+
+"Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the
+only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you
+the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over
+and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...."
+
+"I can never forget and I don't want to be great. I only want to be
+good. Leave me!"
+
+"You _are_ good. You have always been good. What happened was my fault
+alone, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I found you
+growing up to be a great woman, and passing out of my legal control,
+while I was bound down to a poor, helpless, living corpse. Some day you
+would meet a younger, freer man, and you would be lost to me for good.
+Wasn't it human to try to hold you to me until the time came when I
+could claim you altogether? And if meanwhile this man has
+interposed...."
+
+He pointed to the bust on the pedestal. She looked up at it, and then
+dropped her head.
+
+"Put the man out of your mind, my dear, and all will be well. Probably
+he is in the hands of the authorities already. God grant it may be so!
+No trouble about his arrest this time! It cannot be complicated by the
+danger of scandal. Nobody else's name and character will be concerned in
+it. And if it serves to dispose of a dangerous man and a subversive
+politician, I am willing to let everything else sleep."
+
+He paused a moment, and then added in his most incisive accents: "But if
+not, the law must take its course, and Roma Roselli must complete what
+Roma Volonna has begun."
+
+At that moment Felice's dark form stood against the light in the open
+door.
+
+"Commendatore Angelelli and Charles Minghelli, Excellency."
+
+As the Baron went back to the drawing-room Roma returned to the window.
+Scales of snow adhered to the glass, and it was difficult to see
+anything outside. But the masses of shadow and sheets of light were
+gone, and the city lay in utter darkness. The sobbing sounds, the
+crackle of musketry and the rumble of thunder were all gone, and the air
+was empty and void.
+
+At one moment there was a soft patter as of a flock of sheep passing
+under the window in the darkness. It was a company of riflemen going at
+a quick march over the snow, with torches and lanterns.
+
+Voices came from the next room, and Roma found herself listening.
+
+"Apparently the insurrection is suppressed, your Excellency."
+
+"I congratulate you."
+
+"The soldiers are patrolling the streets, and all is quiet."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"We have some hundreds of rioters in the house of detention, and the
+military courts will begin to sit to-morrow morning."
+
+"Excellent!"
+
+"The misadventures have been few and unimportant, the child I spoke of
+being the only one killed."
+
+"You have discovered whose child it was?"
+
+"Yes. Unluckily...."
+
+Roma felt dizzy. A thought had flashed upon her.
+
+"It is the child of Donna Roma's man, Bruno Rocco, and apparently...."
+
+A choking cry rang through the room. Was it herself who made it?
+
+"Go on, Commendatore. Apparently...."
+
+"The child was dressed in some carnival costume, and apparently he was
+on his way to this house."
+
+Roma's dizziness increased, and to save herself from falling she caught
+at a side-table that stood under the bust.
+
+On this table were some sculptor's tools--a chisel and a small mallet,
+with which she had been working.
+
+There was an interval in which the voices were deadened and confused.
+Then they became clear and sharp as before.
+
+"But the most important fact you have not yet given me. I trust you are
+only saving it up for the last. The Deputy Rossi is arrested?"
+
+"Unfortunately ... Excellency...."
+
+"No?"
+
+"He left home immediately after the outbreak and has not been seen
+since. Presently the flashlight will be turned on by a separate battery
+from Monte Mario, and every corner of the city shall be searched. But we
+fear he is gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Perhaps by the train that left just before the signal."
+
+Roma felt a cry rising to her throat again, but she put up her hand to
+keep it down.
+
+"No matter! Commendatore, send telegrams after the train to all stations
+up to the frontier, with orders that nobody is to alight until every
+carriage has been overhauled. Minghelli, go to the Consulta immediately,
+and ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to despatch a portrait of Rossi
+to every foreign Government."
+
+"But no portrait exists, Excellency. It was a difficulty I found in
+England."
+
+"Yes, there is a portrait. Come this way."
+
+Roma felt the room going round as the Baron came into it and switched on
+the light.
+
+"_There_ is the only portrait of the illustrious Deputy, and our hostess
+will lend it to be photographed."
+
+"Never!" said Roma, and taking up the mallet she struck the bust a heavy
+blow, and it fell in fragments to the floor.
+
+Half-an-hour afterwards Roma was sitting amid the wreck of her work when
+the Baron, wearing his fur-lined overcoat and pulling on his gloves,
+came into the boudoir.
+
+"I am compelled," he said, "to inflict my presence upon you for a moment
+longer in order to tell you what my attitude in the future is to be, and
+what feelings are to guide you. I shall continue to think of you as my
+wife according to the law of nature, and of the man who has come between
+us as your lover. I will not give you up to him, whatever happens; and
+if he tries to take you away, or if you try to go to him, you must be
+prepared to find that I offer every resistance. Two passions are now
+engaged against the man, and I will not shrink from any course that
+seems necessary to subdue either him or you, or both."
+
+A moment afterwards she heard the patrol challenging him on the piazza.
+Then "Pardon, Excellency," and the soft swish of carriage wheels in the
+snow.
+
+
+                                XI
+
+When Rossi left home he was like a raging madman. He made straight for
+the Palazzo Braschi at the other side of the piazza, and going up the
+marble staircase on limbs that could scarcely support him, his thoughts
+went back in a broken maze to the scene he had left behind.
+
+"Our little boy dead! Dead in his mother's arms! O God! let me meet the
+man face to face!... Our innocent darling! The light of our eyes put out
+in a moment! Our sweet little Joseph!... Shall there be no retribution?
+God forbid! The man who has been the chief cause of this crime shall be
+the first to suffer punishment. No use wasting time on the hounds who
+executed his orders. They are only delegates of police, and over them is
+this Minister of the Interior. He alone is responsible, and he is here!"
+
+When he reached the green baize door to the hall, he stopped to wipe
+away the perspiration which stood on his forehead although his face was
+flecked with snow. The messengers looked scared when he stepped inside,
+and they answered his questions with obvious hesitation. The Minister
+was not in his cabinet. He had not been there that night. It was
+possible the Honourable might find his Excellency at home.
+
+Rossi turned on his heel instantly, and went hurriedly downstairs. He
+would go to the Palazzo Leone. There was no time to lose. Presently the
+man would hide himself in the darkness like a toad under a stone.
+
+As he left the Ministry of the Interior he heard the singing of the
+Garibaldi Hymn in the distance, and turning into the Corso Victor
+Emmanuel, he came upon crowds of people and some noisy and tumultuous
+scenes.
+
+One group had broken into a gun-shop and seized rifles and cartridges;
+another group had taken possession of two electric tram-cars, and
+tumbled them on their sides to make a barricade across the street; and a
+third group was tearing up the street itself to use the stones for
+missiles. "Our turn now," they were shouting, and there were screams of
+delirious laughter.
+
+As Rossi crossed the bridge of St. Angelo the cannon was fired from the
+Castle, and he knew that it was meant for a signal. "No matter!" he
+thought. "It will be too late when the soldiers arrive."
+
+Notwithstanding the tumult in the city the Piazza of St. Peter's was
+silent and deserted. Not the sound of a footfall, not the rattle of a
+carriage-wheel; only the swish-swish of the fountains, whose waters were
+playing in the lamplight through the falling snow, and the echoing
+hammer of the clock of the Basilica.
+
+The porter of the Palazzo Leone was asleep in his lodge, and Rossi
+passed upstairs.
+
+"I'll bring the man to justice now," he thought. "He imagined we were
+only tame cats and would submit to anything. He was wrong. We'll show
+him we know how to punish tyrants. Haven't we always done so, we Romans?
+He has a sharp tongue for the people, but I have a sharper one here for
+him."
+
+And he felt for the revolver in his breast-pocket to make certain it was
+there.
+
+The lackey in knee-breeches and yellow stockings who answered the inside
+bell was almost speechless at the sight of the white face which
+confronted him at the door. No, the Baron was not at home. He had not
+been there since early in the evening. Had he gone to the Prefettura?
+Possibly. Or the Consulta? Perhaps.
+
+"Which, man, which?" said Rossi, and to say something the lackey
+stammered "The Consulta," and closed the door.
+
+Rossi set his face towards the Foreign Office. There was a light in the
+stained-glass windows of the Pope's private chapel--the Holy Father was
+at his prayers. A canvas-covered barrow containing a man who had been
+injured by the soldiers was being wheeled into the Hospital of Santo
+Spirito, and a woman and a child were walking and crying beside it.
+
+The streets were covered with broken tiles which had been thrown on to
+the heads of the cavalry as they galloped through the principal
+thoroughfares. Carabineers, with revolvers in hand, were dragging
+themselves on their stomachs along the roofs, trying to surprise the
+rioters who were hiding behind chimney-stacks. Some one shouted: "Cut
+the electric wires," and men were clambering up the tall posts and
+breaking the electric lamps.
+
+The Consulta, the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stands in
+the Piazza of the Quirinal, and when Rossi reached it the great square
+of the King was as silent as the great square of the Pope had been.
+
+Two sentries were in boxes on either side of the royal gate, and one
+Carabineer was in the doorway. The gardens down the long corridor lay
+dark in the shadows, but the fountain with sculptured horses, the
+splashing water, and the front of the building were white under the
+electric lamps as if from a dazzling moon.
+
+Before turning into the silent courtyard of the Consulta, Rossi paused
+and listened to the noises that came from the city. Men were singing and
+women were screaming. The rattle of musketry mingled with the cries of
+children. And over all were the steady downfall of the snow and the dull
+rumble of distant thunder.
+
+Rossi held his head between his hands to prevent his senses from leaving
+him. His rage was ebbing away, and he was beginning to tremble.
+Nevertheless, he forced himself to go on. As he rang the bell at the
+Foreign Office, he was partly conscious of a secret desire that the
+Prime Minister might not be there.
+
+The porter was not sure. The Baron's carriage had just gone. Let him ask
+on the telephone.... No, there had been a messenger from the Minister of
+the Interior, but the Minister himself had not been there that night.
+
+Rossi took a long breath of relief and went away. He had returned to the
+bright side of the piazza when the lights seemed to be wiped out as
+though by an invisible wing, and the whole city was plunged in darkness.
+At the next moment a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the Quirinal,
+and the gates of the royal palace and of the Consulta were closed.
+
+Midnight struck.
+
+For two hours the soldiers had been charging the crowds by the light of
+lanterns and torches. They had arrested hundreds of persons. Chained
+together, two and two, the insurgents had been taken to the places of
+detention, amid the cries of their women and children. "Who knows
+whether we shall see each other again?" said the prisoners, as they
+passed into the "House of Pain." One old woman went on her knees to the
+soldiers and begged them to have pity on the people. "They are your
+brothers, my sons," she cried.
+
+One o'clock struck.
+
+The streets were still dark, but a searchlight from Monte Mario was
+sweeping over the city like a flash of a supernatural eye. With
+tottering limbs and his head on his breast, David Rossi was walking down
+the Via due Macelli towards the column of the Immaculate Conception,
+when a young girl spoke to him.
+
+"Honourable," she said, "is it true that the little boy is dead?... It
+is? Oh, dear! I met him in the Corso, and brought him up as far as the
+Varietes, and if I had only taken him all the way.... Oh, I shall never
+forgive myself!"
+
+The city was quiet and all was hushed on every side when Rossi found
+himself on a flight of steps at the back of Roma's apartment. From these
+steps a door opened into the studio. One panel of the door was glazed,
+and a light was shining from within. Going cautiously forward, Rossi
+looked into the room. Roma was seated on a stool with her hands clasped
+in her lap and her hair hanging loose. She was very pale. Her face
+expressed unutterable sadness.
+
+Rossi listened for a moment, but there was not a sound to be heard
+except that of the different clocks chiming the quarter. Then he tapped
+lightly on the glass.
+
+"Roma!" he said in a low tone. "Roma!"
+
+She rose up and shrank back. Then coming to the door, and shielding her
+eyes from the light, she put her face close to the pane. At the next
+moment she threw the door open.
+
+"Is it you?" she said in a tremulous voice, and taking his hand she drew
+him hurriedly into the house.
+
+
+                                XII
+
+After the Baron was gone, Roma had sat a long time in the dark among the
+ruins of the broken bust. When twelve o'clock struck she was feeling hot
+and feverish, and, in spite of the coldness of the night, she rose and
+opened the window. The snow had ceased to fall, the thunder was gone,
+and the city was quiet.
+
+At that moment the revolving searchlight on Monte Mario passed over the
+room. The white flash lit up the broken fragments at her feet, and
+brought a new train of reflections. The bust she destroyed had been only
+the plaster cast; the piece-mould remained, and might be a cause of
+danger.
+
+She closed the window, took a candle, and went down to the studio to put
+the mould out of the way. She had done so, and was sitting to rest and
+to think when Rossi's knock came at the door. In a moment all her dreams
+were gone. She was clasped in his arms and had put up her mouth to be
+kissed.
+
+"Is it you?"
+
+"Roma!"
+
+It was not at first that she realised what was happening, but after a
+moment she recovered from her bewilderment, and extinguished the candle
+lest Rossi should be seen from outside.
+
+They were in the dark, save at intervals when the revolving light in its
+circuit of the city swept across the studio, and lit up their faces as
+by a flash of lightning. He seemed to be dazed. His weary eyes looked as
+if their light were almost extinct.
+
+"You are safe? You are well?" she asked.
+
+"O God! what sights!" he said. "You have heard what has happened?"
+
+"Yes, yes! But you are not injured?"
+
+"The people were peaceful and meant no evil, but the soldiers were
+ordered to fire, and our little boy is dead."
+
+"Don't let us speak of it.... The police were told to arrest you, but
+you have escaped thus far, and now...."
+
+"Bruno is taken, and hundreds of others are in prison."
+
+"But you are safe? You are well? You are uninjured?"
+
+"Yes," he answered between his teeth, and then he covered his face with
+his hands. "God knows I did my best to prevent this bloodshed--I would
+have laid down my life to prevent it."
+
+"God _does_ know it."
+
+"Take this."
+
+He drew something from his breast-pocket and put it into her hands.
+
+It was the revolver.
+
+"I cannot trust myself any longer."
+
+"You haven't used it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"I should have done so if I could have met the man face to face."
+
+"The Baron?"
+
+"I searched for him everywhere, and couldn't find him. God kept him out
+of my way to save me from sin and shame."
+
+With a frightened cry she put down the revolver and clasped her hands
+about his neck. He began to recover his dazed senses and to smooth the
+hair on her damp forehead.
+
+"My poor Roma! You didn't think we were to part like this?"
+
+Her arms slackened, and she dropped her head on to his shoulder.
+
+"Last night you told me to fly, and I wouldn't do so. There was no man
+in Rome I was afraid of then. But to-night there is some one I am afraid
+of. I am afraid of myself."
+
+"You intend to go?"
+
+"Yes! I shall feel like a captain who deserts his sinking ship. Would to
+God I could have gone down with her!... Yet no! She is not lost yet.
+Everything is in God's hands. Perhaps there is work for me abroad, now
+that the paths are closed to me at home. Let us wait and see."
+
+They were both silent for a while.
+
+"Then it's all over," she said, gulping down a sob.
+
+"God forbid! This black night in Rome is only the beginning of the end.
+It will be the dawn of the resurrection everywhere."
+
+"But it is all over between you and me."
+
+"Indeed, no. No, no! I cannot take you with me. That is impossible. I
+couldn't see you suffer hunger and thirst and the privations of exile,
+but...."
+
+"Our marriage cannot be celebrated now, and that being so...."
+
+"The banns are good for half a year, Roma, and before that time I shall
+be back. Have no fear! The immortality stirring beneath the ruins of
+this old city will give us victory all over Italy. I will return and we
+shall be very happy. How happy we shall be!"
+
+"Yes, yes," she brought out at intervals.
+
+"Be brave, my girl, be brave!"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+The revolving searchlight flashed through the room at that moment, and
+she dropped her face again.
+
+"Dearest," she said faintly, "if I should not be here when you come
+back...."
+
+He started and seized her arm.
+
+"Roma, you cannot intend to submit to the will of that man?"
+
+She shook her head as it rested on his shoulder.
+
+"The man is a monster. He may put pressure upon you."
+
+"It is not that."
+
+"He may even make you suffer for my sake."
+
+"Nor that either."
+
+"By-and-by he may require everybody to take an oath of allegiance to the
+King."
+
+"I have taken mine already--to _my_ king."
+
+"Roma, if you wish me to stay I will do so in spite of everything."
+
+"I wish you to go, dearest."
+
+"Then what is it you fear?"
+
+"Nothing--only...."
+
+"But you are sad. Why is it?"
+
+"A foreboding. I feel as if we were parting for ever."
+
+He passed his hands through her hair. "It may be so. Only God can tell."
+
+"It was too sweet dreaming. I was too happy for a little while."
+
+"If it must be, it must be. But let us be brave, dear! We, who take up a
+life like this, must learn renunciation.... Crying, Roma?"
+
+"No! Oh, no! But renunciation! That's it--renunciation." She could feel
+the beating of her heart against his breast. "Love comes to every one,
+but to some it comes too late, and then it comes in vain." She was
+striving to keep down her sobs. "They have only to conquer it and
+renounce it, and to pray God to unite them to their loved ones in
+another life." She was choking, but she struggled on. "Sometimes I think
+it must be my lot to be like that. Other women may dream of love and
+home and children...."
+
+"Don't unman me, Roma."
+
+"Dearest, promise me that whatever happens you will think the best of
+me."
+
+"Roma!"
+
+"Promise me that whoever says anything to the contrary you will always
+believe I loved you."
+
+"Why should we talk of what can never happen?"
+
+"If we are parting for ever ... if we are saying a long farewell to all
+earthly affections, promise me...."
+
+"For God's sake, Roma!"
+
+"Promise me!"
+
+"I promise!" he said. "And you?"
+
+"I promise too--I promise that as long as I live, and wherever I am and
+whatever becomes of me, I will ... yes, because I cannot help it ... I
+will love you to the last."
+
+Saying this in passionate tones, she drew down his head and he met her
+kiss with his lips.
+
+"It is our marriage, David. Others are married in church and by the
+hand, and with a ring. We are married in our spirits and our souls."
+
+A long time passed, during which they did not speak. The searchlight
+flashed in on them again and again with its supernatural eye, and as
+often as it did so Rossi looked at her with strange looks of pity and of
+love.
+
+Meantime, she cut a lock from her hair, tied it with a piece of ribbon,
+and put it in his pocket with his watch. Then she dried her eyes with
+her handkerchief and pushed it in his breast.
+
+The night went on, and nothing was to be heard but the chiming of clocks
+outside. At length through the silence there came a muffled rumble from
+the streets.
+
+"You must go now," she said, and when the next flash came round she
+looked up at him with a steadfast gaze, as if trying to gather into her
+eyes her last memories of his face.
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"It is still dark, but the streets are patrolled and every gate is
+closed, and how are you to escape?"
+
+"If the soldiers had wished to take me they could have done so a hundred
+times."
+
+"But the city is stirring. Be careful for my sake. Adieu!"
+
+"Roma," said Rossi, "if I do not take you with me it is partly because I
+want your help in Rome. Think of the poor people I leave behind me in
+poverty and in prison. Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning,
+alone with her terrible grief. Some one should be here to represent me
+for a time at all events--to take the messages I must send, the
+instructions I shall have to give. It will be a dangerous task, Roma, a
+task that can only be undertaken by some one who loves me, some one
+who...."
+
+"That is enough. Tell me what I can do," she said.
+
+They arranged a channel of correspondence, and then Roma began her
+farewells afresh.
+
+"Roma," said Rossi again, "since I must go away before our civil
+marriage can be celebrated, is it not best that our spiritual one should
+have the blessing of the Church?"
+
+Roma looked at him and trembled.
+
+"When I am gone God knows what may happen. The Baron may be a free man
+any day, and he may put pressure on you to marry him. In that case it
+will be strength and courage to you to know that in God's eyes you are
+married already. It will be happiness and comfort to me, too, when I am
+far away from you and alone."
+
+"But it is impossible."
+
+"Not so. A declaration before a parish priest is all that is necessary.
+'Father, this is my wife.' 'This is my husband.' That is enough. It will
+have no value in the eye of the law, but it will be a religious marriage
+for all that."
+
+"There is no time. You cannot wait...."
+
+"Hush!" The clocks were striking three. "At three o'clock there is mass
+at St. Andrea delle Frate. That is your parish church, Roma. The priest
+and his acolytes are the only witnesses we require."
+
+"If you think ... that is to say ... if it will make you happy, and be a
+strength to me also...."
+
+"Run for your cloak and hat, dearest--in ten minutes it will be done."
+
+"But think again." She was breathing audibly. "Who knows what may happen
+before you return? Will you never repent?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"But ... but there is something ... something I ought to tell
+you--something painful. It is about the past."
+
+"The past is past. Let us think of the future."
+
+"You do not wish to hear it."
+
+"If it is painful to you--no!"
+
+"Will nothing and nobody divide us?"
+
+"Nothing and nobody in the world."
+
+She gulped down another choking sob and threw both arms about his neck.
+
+"Take me, then. I am your wife before God and man."
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+It was still dark overhead, and the streets with their thin covering of
+snow were as silent as a catacomb. Through the door of the church, when
+the leather covering was lifted, there came the yellow light of the
+candles burning on the altar. The priest in his gold vestments stood
+with his face to the glistening shrine, and his acolytes knelt beside
+him. There was only one worshipper, an old woman who was kneeling before
+a chair in the gloom of a side chapel. The tinkle of the acolytes' bell
+and the faint murmur of the priest's voice were the only sounds that
+broke the stillness.
+
+Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass
+and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled
+and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice
+of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They
+parted at the church door.
+
+"You will write when you cross the frontier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Adieu then, until we meet again!"
+
+"If I am long away from you, Roma...."
+
+"You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always."
+
+She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a
+dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice.
+
+He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. "If the
+result of this night's work is that I am arrested and brought back and
+imprisoned...."
+
+"I can wait for you," she said.
+
+"If I am banished for life...."
+
+"I can follow you."
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst, and one way or another death itself
+should be the fate that falls to me...."
+
+"I can follow you there, too."
+
+"If we meet again we can laugh at all this, Roma."
+
+"Yes, we can laugh at all this," she faltered.
+
+"If not ... Adieu!"
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+She disengaged her clinging arms with one last caress; there was an
+instant of unconsciousness, and when she recovered herself he was gone.
+
+At the next moment there came through the darkness the measured tramp,
+tramp, tramp of the patrol. With a quivering heart Roma stood and
+listened. There was a slight movement among the soldiers, a scarcely
+perceptible pause, and then the tramp, tramp, tramp as before. Rossi
+looked back as he turned the corner, and saw Roma, in her light cloak,
+gliding across the silent street like a ghost.
+
+Three or four hundred yards inside the gate of St. John Lateran in one
+of the half-finished tenement houses on the outskirts of Rome, there is
+a cellar used as a resting-place and eating-house by the carriers from
+the country who bring wine into the city. This cellar was the only place
+that seemed to be awake when Rossi walked towards the city walls. Some
+eight or nine men, in the rude dress of wine-carriers, lay dozing or
+talking on the floor. They had been kept in Rome overnight by the
+closing of the gate, and were waiting for it to be opened in the
+morning.
+
+Without a moment's hesitation David Rossi stepped down and spoke to the
+men.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "you know who I am. I am Rossi. The police have
+orders to arrest me. Will you help me to get out of Rome?"
+
+"What's that?" shouted a drowsy voice from the smoky shadows of the
+cellar.
+
+"It's the Honourable Rossi," said a lad who had shambled up. "The
+oysters are after him, and will we help him to escape?"
+
+"Will we? It's not _will_ we; it's _can_ we, Honourable," said a
+thick-set man, who lifted his head from an upturned horse-saddle.
+
+In a moment the men were all on their feet, asking questions and
+discussing chances. The gate was to be opened at six, and the first
+train north was to go out at half-past nine. But the difficulty was that
+everybody in Rome knew Rossi. Even if he got through the gate he could
+not get on to the train within ten miles of the city without the
+certainty of recognition.
+
+"I have it!" said the thick-set man with the drowsy voice. "There's
+young Carlo. He got a scratch in the leg last night from one of the wet
+nurses of the Government, and he'll have to lie upstairs for a week at
+least. Why can't he lend his clothes to the Honourable? And why can't
+the Honourable drive Carlo's cart back to Monte Rotondo, and then go
+where he likes when he gets there?"
+
+"That will do," said Rossi, and so it was settled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the train which left Rome for Florence and Milan at 9.30 in the
+morning arrived at the country station of Monte Rotondo, eighteen miles
+out, a man in top-boots, blue trousers, a white waistband and a
+red-lined overcoat got into the people's compartment. The train was
+crowded with foreigners who were flying from the risks of insurrection,
+and even the third-class carriages were filled with well-dressed
+strangers. They were talking bitterly of their experiences the night
+before. Most of them had been compelled to barricade their bedroom doors
+at the hotels, and some had even passed the night at the railway
+station.
+
+"It all comes of letting men like this Rossi go at large," said a young
+Englishman with the voice of a pea-hen. "For my part, I would put all
+these anarchists on an uninhabited island and leave them to fight it out
+among themselves."
+
+"Say, Rossi isn't an anarchist," said a man with an American intonation.
+
+"What is he?"
+
+"A dreamer of dreams."
+
+"Bad dreams, then," said the voice of the pea-hen, and there was general
+laughter.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                    PART SIX--THE ROMAN OF ROME
+
+
+                                I
+
+Roma awoke next morning with a feeling of joy. The dangers of last night
+were over and David Rossi had escaped. Where would he be by this time?
+She looked at her little round watch and reckoned the hours that had
+passed against the speed of the train.
+
+Natalina came with the tea and the morning newspaper. The maid's tongue
+went faster than her hands as she rattled on about the terrors of the
+night and the news of the morning. Meantime Roma glanced eagerly over
+the columns of the paper for its references to Rossi. He was gone. The
+authorities were unable to say what had become of him.
+
+With boundless relief Roma turned to the other items of intelligence.
+The journal was the organ of the Government, and it contained an extract
+from the Official Gazette and the text of a proclamation by the Prefect.
+The first announced that the riot was at an end and Rome was quiet; the
+second notified the public that by royal decree the city was declared to
+be in a state of siege, and that the King had nominated a Royal
+Commissioner with full powers.
+
+Besides this news there was a general account of the insurrection. The
+ringleaders were anarchists, socialists, and professed atheists,
+determined on the destruction of both throne and altar by any means,
+however horrible. Their victims had been drawn, without seeing where
+they were going, into a vortex of disorder, and the soldiers had
+defended society and the law. Happily the casualties were few. The only
+fatal incident had been the death of a child, seven years of age, the
+son of a workman. The people of Rome had to congratulate themselves on
+the promptness of a Government which had reinstated authority with so
+small a loss of blood.
+
+Roma remembered what Rossi had said about Elena--"Think of Elena when
+she awakes in the morning, alone with her terrible grief"--and putting
+on a plain dark cloth dress she set off for the Piazza Navona.
+
+It was eleven o'clock, and the sun was shining on the melting snow. Rome
+was like a dead city. The breath of revolution had passed over it.
+Broken tiles lay on the pavement of the slushy streets, and here and
+there were the remains of abandoned barricades. The shops, which are the
+eyes of a city, were nearly all closed and asleep.
+
+At a flower-shop, which was opened to her knock, Roma bought a wreath of
+white chrysanthemums. A group of men and women stood at the door in the
+Piazza Navona, and she received their kisses on her hands. The
+Garibaldian followed her up the stairs, and his old wife, who stood at
+the top, called her "Little Sister," and then burst into tears.
+
+The boy lay on the couch, just where Roma had first seen him, when David
+Rossi was lifting him up asleep. He might have been asleep now, so
+peaceful was his expression under the mysterious seal of death. The
+blinds were drawn, and the sun came through them with a yellow light.
+Four candles were burning on chairs at the head and two at the feet. The
+little body was still dressed in the gay clothes of the festival, and
+the cocked hat and gilt-headed mace lay beside it. But the chubby hands
+were clasped over a tiny crucifix, and the hair of the shock head was
+brushed smooth and flat.
+
+"There he is," said Elena, in a cracked voice, and she went down on her
+knees between the candles.
+
+Roma, who could not speak, put the wreath of chrysanthemums on the brave
+little breast, and knelt by the mother's side. At that they all broke
+down together.
+
+The old Garibaldian wiped his rheumy eyes and began to talk of David
+Rossi. He was as fond of Joseph as if the boy had been his own son. But
+what had become of the Honourable? Before daybreak the police had made a
+domiciliary perquisition in the apartment, carried off his papers and
+sealed up his rooms.
+
+"Have no fear for him," said Roma, and then she asked about Bruno. All
+they knew was that Bruno had been arrested and locked up in the prison
+called Regina C[oe]li.
+
+"Poor Bruno! He'll be dying to know what is happening here," said Elena.
+
+"I'll see him," said Roma.
+
+It was well she had come early. In the stupefaction of their sorrow the
+three poor souls were like helpless children and had done nothing. Roma
+sent the Garibaldian to the sanitary office for the doctor who was to
+verify the death, to the office of health to register it, and to the
+municipal office to arrange for the funeral. It was to be a funeral of
+the third category, with a funeral car of two horses and a coach with
+liveried coachmen. The grave was to be one of the little vaults, the
+Fornelli, set apart for children. The priest was to be instructed to buy
+many candles and order several Frati. The expense would be great, but
+Roma undertook to bear it, and when she left the house the old people
+kissed her hands again and loaded her with blessings.
+
+
+                                II
+
+The Roman prison with the extraordinary name, "The Queen of Heaven," is
+a vast yellow building on the Trastevere side of the river. Behind it
+rises the Janiculum, in front of it runs the Tiber, and on both sides of
+it are narrow lanes cut off by high walls.
+
+On the morning after the insurrection a great many persons had gathered
+at the entrance of this prison. Old men, who were lame or sick or nearly
+blind, stood by a dead wall which divides the street from the Tiber, and
+looked on with dazed and vacant eyes. Younger men nearer the entrance
+read the proclamations posted up on the pilasters. One of these was the
+proclamation of the Prefect announcing the state of siege; another was
+the proclamation of the Royal Commissioner calling on citizens to
+consign all the arms in their possession to the Chief of Police under
+pain of imprisonment.
+
+In the entrance-hall there was a crowd of women, each carrying a basket
+or a bundle in a handkerchief. They were young and old, dressed
+variously as if from different provinces, but nearly all poor, untidy,
+and unkempt.
+
+An iron gate was opened, and an officer, two soldiers, and a warder came
+out to take the food which the women had brought for their relatives
+imprisoned within. Then there was a terrible tumult. "Mr. Officer,
+please!" "Please, Mr. Officer!" "Be kind to Giuseppe, and the saints
+bless you!" "My turn next!" "No, mine!" "Don't push!" "You're pushing
+yourself!" "You're knocking the basket out of my hands!" "Getaway!" "You
+cat! You...."
+
+"Silence! Silence! Silence!" cried the officer, shouting the women down,
+and meantime the men in the street outside curled their lips and tried
+to laugh.
+
+Into this wild scene, full of the acrid exhalations of human breath, and
+the nauseating odour of unclean bodies, but moved, nevertheless, by the
+finger of God Himself, the cab which brought Roma to see Bruno
+discharged her at the prison door.
+
+The officer on the steps saw her over the heads of the women with their
+outstretched arms, and judging from her appearance that she came on
+other business, he called to a Carabineer to attend to her.
+
+"I wish to see the Director," said Roma.
+
+"Certainly, Excellency," said the Carabineer, and with a salute he led
+the way by a side door to the offices on the floor above.
+
+The Governor of Regina C[oe]li was a middle-aged man with a kindly face,
+but under the new order he could do nothing.
+
+"Everything relating to the political prisoners is in the hands of the
+Royal Commissioner," he said.
+
+"Where can I see him, Cavaliere?"
+
+"He is with the Minister of War to-day, arranging for the military
+tribunals, but perhaps to-morrow at his office in the Castle of St.
+Angelo...."
+
+"Thanks! Meantime can I send a message into the prison?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And may I pay for a separate cell for a prisoner, with food and light,
+if necessary?"
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+Roma undertook the expense of these privileges and then scribbled a note
+to Bruno.
+
+    "DEAR FRIEND,--Don't lose heart! Your dear ones shall be cared for
+    and comforted. He whom you love is safe and your darling is in
+    heaven. Sleep well! These days will pass.
+                                                               "R. V."
+
+
+                                III
+
+That night Roma wrote the first part of a letter to David Rossi:
+
+    "David--my David! It is early days to call you by a dearer name,
+    but the sweet word is on the tip of my pen, and I can hardly help
+    myself from scribbling it. You wished me to tell you what is
+    happening in Rome, and here I am beginning to write already,
+    though when and how and where this letter is to reach you, I must
+    leave it to Fate and to yourself to determine. Fancy! Only
+    eighteen hours since we parted! It seems inconceivable! I feel as
+    if I had lived a lifetime.
+
+    "Do you know, I did not go to bed when you left me. I had so many
+    things to think about. And, tired as I was, I slept little, and
+    was up early. The morning dawned beautifully. It was perfectly
+    tragic. So bright and sunny after that night of slaughter. No
+    rattle of cars, no tinkle of trams, no calls of the water-carriers
+    and of the pedlars in the streets. It was for all the world like
+    that awful quiet of the sea the morning after a tempest, with the
+    sun on its placid surface and not a hint of the wrecks beneath.
+
+    "I remembered what you said about Elena, and went down to see her.
+    The poor girl has just parted with her dead child. She did it with
+    a brave heart, God pity her! taking comfort in the Blessed Virgin,
+    as the mother in heaven who knows all our sorrows and asks God to
+    heal them. Ah, what a sweet thing it must be to believe that! Do
+    you believe it?"
+
+    Here she wanted to say something about her great secret. She
+    tried, but she could not do it.
+
+    "I couldn't see Bruno to-day, but I hope to do so to-morrow, and
+    meantime I have ordered food to be supplied to him. If I could
+    only do something to some purpose! But five hundred of your
+    friends are in Regina C[oe]li, and my poor little efforts are a drop
+    of water in a mighty ocean.
+
+    "Rome is a deserted city to-day, and but for the soldiers, who are
+    everywhere, it would look like a dead one! The steps of the Piazza
+    di Spagna are empty, not a model is to be seen, not a flower is to
+    be bought, and the fountain is bubbling in silence. After sunset a
+    certain shiver passes over the world, and after an insurrection
+    something of the same kind seems to pass over a city. The churches
+    and the hospitals are the only places open, and the doctors and
+    their messengers are the only people moving about.
+
+    "Just one of the newspapers has been published to-day, and it is
+    full of proclamations. Everybody is to be indoors by nine o'clock
+    and the cafes are to be closed at eight. Arms are to be consigned
+    at the Questura, and meetings of more than four persons are
+    strictly forbidden. Rewards of pardon are offered to all rioters
+    who will inform on the ringleaders of the insurrection, and of
+    money to all citizens who will denounce the conspirators. The
+    military tribunals are to sit to-morrow and domiciliary
+    visitations are already being made. Your own apartments have been
+    searched and sealed and the police have carried off papers.
+
+    "Such are the doings of this evil day, and yet--selfish woman that
+    I am--I cannot for my life think it is all evil. Has it not given
+    me you? And if it has taken you away from me as well, I can wait,
+    I can be patient. Where are you now, I wonder? And are you
+    thinking of me while I am thinking of you? Oh, how splendid! Think
+    of it! Though the train may be carrying you away from me every
+    hour and every minute, before long we shall be together. In the
+    first dream of the first sleep I shall join you, and we shall be
+    cheek to cheek and heart to heart. Good-night, my dear one!"
+
+Again she tried to say something about her secret. But no! "Not
+to-night," she thought, and after switching off the light and kissing
+her hand in the darkness to the stars that hung over the north, she
+laughed at her own foolishness and went to bed.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+Roma awoke next day with a sense of pain. Thus far she had beaten the
+Baron--yes! But David Rossi? Had she sinned against God and against her
+husband? She must confess. There was no help for it. And there must be
+no hesitation and no delay.
+
+Natalina came into the bedroom and threw open the shutters. She was
+bringing a telegram, and Roma almost snatched it out of her hands. It
+was from Rossi and had been sent off from Chiasso. "Crossed frontier
+safe and well."
+
+Roma made a cry of joy and leapt out of bed. All day long that telegram
+was like wings under her heels and made her walk with an elastic step.
+
+While taking her coffee she remembered the responsibilities she had
+undertaken the day before--for the boy's funeral and Bruno's
+maintenance--and for the first time in her life she began to consider
+ways and means. Her ready money was getting low, and it was necessary to
+do something.
+
+Then Felice came with a sheaf of papers. They were tradesmen's bills and
+required immediate payment. Some of the men were below and refused to go
+away without the cash.
+
+There was no help for it. She opened her purse, discharged her debts,
+swept her debtors out of the house, and sat down to count what remained.
+
+Very little remained. But what matter? The five words of that telegram
+were five bright stars which could light up a darker sky than had fallen
+on her yet.
+
+In this high mood she went down to the studio--silent now in the absence
+of the humorous voice that usually rang in it, and with Bruno's chisels
+and mallet lying idle, with his sack on a block of half-hewn marble.
+Uncovering her fountain, she looked at it again. It was good work; she
+knew it was good; she could be certain it was good. It should justify
+her yet, and some day the stupid people who were sheering away from her
+now would come cringing to her feet afresh.
+
+That suggested thoughts of the Mayor. She would write to him and get
+some money with which to meet the expenses of yesterday as well as the
+obligations which she might perhaps incur to-day or in the future.
+
+"Dear Senator Palomba," she wrote, "no doubt you have often wondered why
+your much-valued commission has not been completed before. The fact is
+that it suffered a slight accident a few days ago, but a week or a
+fortnight ought to see it finished, and if you wish to make arrangements
+for its reception you may count on its delivery in that time. Meantime
+as I am pressed for funds at the moment, I shall be glad if you can
+instruct your treasurer at the Municipality to let me have something on
+account. The price mentioned, you remember, was 15,000 francs, and as I
+have not had anything hitherto, I trust it may not be unreasonable to
+ask for half now, leaving the remainder until the fountain is in its
+place."
+
+Having despatched this challenge by Felice, not only to the Mayor, but
+also to herself, her pride, her poverty, and to the great world
+generally, she put on her cloak and hat and drove down to the Castle of
+St. Angelo.
+
+When she returned, an hour afterwards, there was a dry glitter in her
+eyes, which increased to a look of fever when she opened the
+drawing-room door and saw who was waiting there. It was the Mayor
+himself. The little oily man in patent-leather boots, holding upright
+his glossy silk hat, was clearly nervous and confused. He complimented
+her on her appearance, looked out of the window, extolled the view, and
+finally, with his back to his hostess, began on his business.
+
+"It is about your letter, you know," he said awkwardly. "There seems to
+be a little misunderstanding on your part. About the fountain, I mean."
+
+"None whatever, Senator. You ordered it. I have executed it. Surely the
+matter is quite simple."
+
+"Impossible, my dear. I may have encouraged you to an experimental
+trial. We all do that. Rome is eager to discover genius. But a simple
+member of a corporate body cannot undertake ... that is to say, on his
+own responsibility, you know...."
+
+Roma's breath began to come quickly. "Do you mean that you didn't
+commission my fountain?"
+
+"How could I, my child? Such matters must go through a regular form. The
+proper committee must sanction and resolve...."
+
+"But everybody has known of this, and it has been generally understood
+from the first."
+
+"Ah, understood! Possibly! Rumour and report perhaps."
+
+"But I could bring witnesses--high witnesses--the very highest if needs
+be...."
+
+The little man smiled benevolently.
+
+"Surely there is no witness of any standing in the State who would go
+into a witness-box and say that, without a contract, and with only a few
+encouraging words...."
+
+The dry glitter in Roma's eyes shot into a look of anger. "Do you call
+your letters to me a few encouraging words only?" she said.
+
+"My letters?" the glossy hat was getting ruffled.
+
+"Your letters alluding to this matter, and enumerating the favours you
+wished me to ask of the Prime Minister."
+
+"My dear," said the Mayor after a moment, "I'm sorry if I have led you
+to build up hopes, and though I have no authority ... if it will end
+matters amicably ... I think I can promise ... I might perhaps promise a
+little money for your loss of time."
+
+"Do you suppose I want charity?"
+
+"Charity, my dear?"
+
+"What else would it be? If I have no right to everything I will have
+nothing. I will take none of your money. You can leave me."
+
+The little man shuffled his feet, and bowed himself out of the room,
+with many apologies and praises which Roma did not hear. For all her
+brave words her heart was breaking, and she was holding her breath to
+repress a sob. The great bulwark she had built up for herself lay
+wrecked at her feet. She had deceived herself into believing that she
+could be somebody for herself. Going down to the studio, she covered up
+the fountain. It had lost every quality which she had seen in it before.
+Art was gone from her. She was nobody. It was very, very cruel.
+
+But that glorious telegram rustled in her breast like a captive
+song-bird, and before going to bed she wrote to David Rossi again.
+
+"Your message arrived before I was up this morning, and not being
+entirely back from the world of dreams, I fancied that it was an angel's
+whisper. This is silly, but I wouldn't change it for the greatest
+wisdom, if, in order to be the most wise and wonderful among women, I
+had to love you less.
+
+"Business first and other things afterwards. Most of the newspapers have
+been published to-day, and some of them are blowing themselves out of
+breath in abuse of you, and howling louder than the wolves of the
+Capitol before rain. The military courts began this morning, and they
+have already polished off fifty victims. Rewards for denunciations have
+now deepened to threats of imprisonment for non-denunciation. General
+Morra, Minister of War, has sent in his resignation, and there is
+bracing weather in the neighbourhood of the Palazzo Braschi. An editor
+has been arrested, many journals and societies have been suppressed, and
+twenty thousand of the contadini who came to Rome for the meeting in the
+Coliseum have been despatched to their own communes. Finally, the Royal
+Commissioner has written to the Pope, calling on him to assist in the
+work of pacifying the people, and it is rumoured that the Holy Office is
+to be petitioned by certain of the Bishops to denounce the 'Republic of
+Man' as a secret society (like the Freemasons) coming within the ban of
+the Pontifical constitutions.
+
+"So much for general news, and now for more personal intelligence. I
+went down to the Castle of St. Angelo this morning, and was permitted to
+speak to the Royal Commissioner. Recognised him instantly as a regular
+old-timer at the heels of the Baron, and tackled him on our ancient
+terms. The wretch--he squints, and he smoked a cigarette all through the
+interview--couldn't allow me to see Bruno during the private preparation
+of the case against him, and when I asked if the instruction would take
+long he said, 'Probably, as it is complicated by the case of some one
+else who is not yet in custody.' Then I asked if I might employ separate
+counsel for the defence, and he shuffled and said it was unnecessary.
+This decided me, and I walked straight to the office of the great lawyer
+Napoleon Fuselli, promised him five hundred francs by to-morrow morning,
+and told him to go ahead without delay.
+
+"But heigh-ho, nonny! Coming home I felt like the witches in 'Macbeth.'
+'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' It was
+Senator Tom-tit, the little fat Mayor of Rome. His great ambition is to
+wear the green ribbon of St. Maurice and Lazarus, as none know better
+than myself. Wanting money on my fountain, I had written to the old
+wretch, but the moment we met I could see what was coming, so I braved
+it out, bustled about and made a noise. It was a mistake! There had been
+no commission at all! But if a little money would repay me for a loss of
+time....
+
+"It wasn't so much that I cared about the loss of the fees, badly as I
+needed them. It was mainly that I had allowed the summer flies who
+buzzed about me for the Baron's sake to flatter me into the notion that
+I was an artist, when I was really nobody for myself at all.
+
+"This humour lasted all afternoon, and spoiled my digestion for dinner,
+which was a pity, for there was some delicious wild asparagus. But then
+I thought of you and your work, and the future when you will come back
+with all Rome at your feet, and my vexation disappeared and I was
+content to be nothing and nobody except somebody whom you loved and who
+loved you, and that was to be everything and everybody in the world.
+
+"I don't care a rush about the matter now, but what do you think I've
+done? Sold my carriage and horses! Actually! The little job-master, with
+his tight trousers, close-cropped head, and chamois-leather waistcoat,
+has just gone off after cheating me abominably. No matter! What do I
+want with a grand carriage while you are going about as an exile and an
+outcast? I want nothing you have not got, and all I have I wish you to
+have too, including my heart and my soul and everything that is in
+them...."
+
+She stopped. This was the place to reveal her great secret. But she
+could not find her way to begin. "To-morrow will do," she thought, and
+so laid down the pen.
+
+
+                                V
+
+Early next morning Roma received a visit from the lawyer who conducted
+the business of her landlord. He was a middle-aged man in
+pepper-and-salt tweeds, and his manner was brusque and aggressive.
+
+"Sorry to say, Excellency, that I've had a letter from Count Mario at
+Paris saying that he will require this apartment for his own use. He
+regrets to be compelled to disturb you, but having frequently apprised
+you of his intention to live here himself...."
+
+"When does he want to come?" said Roma.
+
+"At Easter."
+
+"That will do. My aunt is ill, but if she is fit to be moved...."
+
+"Thanks! And may I perhaps present...."
+
+A paper in the shape of a bill came from the breast-pocket of the
+pepper-and-salt tweeds. Roma took it, and, without looking at it,
+replied:
+
+"You will receive your rent in a day or two."
+
+"Thanks again. I trust I may rely on that. And meantime...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"As I am personally responsible to the Count for all moneys due to him,
+may I ask your Excellency to promise me that nothing shall be removed
+from this apartment until my arrears of rent have been paid?"
+
+"I promise that you shall receive what is due from me in two days. Is
+not that enough?"
+
+The pepper-and-salt tweeds bowed meekly before Roma's flashing eyes.
+
+"Good-morning, sir."
+
+"Good-morning, Excellency."
+
+The man was hardly out of the house when a woman was shown in. It was
+Madame Sella, the fashionable modiste.
+
+"So unlucky, my dear! I'm driven to my wits' end for money. The people I
+deal with in Paris are perfect demons, and are threatening all sorts of
+pains and penalties if I don't send them a great sum straight away. Of
+course if I could get my own money in, it wouldn't matter. But the dear
+ladies of society are so slow, and naturally I don't like to go to their
+gentlemen, although really I've waited so long for their debts that
+if...."
+
+"Can you wait one day longer for mine?"
+
+"Donna Roma! And we've always been such friends, too!"
+
+"You'll excuse me this morning, won't you?" said Roma, rising.
+
+"Certainly. I'm busy, too. So good of you to see me. Trust I've not been
+_de trop_. And if it hadn't been for those stupid bills of mine...."
+
+Roma sat down and wrote a letter to one of the _strozzini_ (stranglers),
+who lend money to ladies on the security of their jewels.
+
+"I wish to sell my jewellery," she wrote, "and if you have any desire to
+buy it, I shall be glad if you can come to see me for this purpose at
+four o'clock to-morrow."
+
+"Roma!" cried a fretful voice.
+
+She was sitting in the boudoir, and her aunt was calling to her from the
+adjoining room. The old lady, who had just finished her toilet, and was
+redolent of perfume and scented soap, was propped up on pillows between
+the mirror and her Madonna, with her cat purring on the cushion at the
+foot of her bed.
+
+"Ah, you do come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her
+embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the
+carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it
+unless you tell me so yourself."
+
+"It is quite true, Aunt Betsy. I wanted money for various purposes, and
+among others to pay my debts," said Roma.
+
+"Goodness! It's true! Give me my salts. There they are--on the
+card-table beside you.... So it's true! It's really true! You've done
+some extraordinary things already, miss, but this ... Mercy me! Selling
+her horses! And she isn't ashamed of it!... I suppose you'll sell your
+clothes next, or perhaps your jewels."
+
+"That's just what I want to do, Aunt Betsy."
+
+"Holy Virgin! What are you saying, girl? Have you lost all sense of
+decency? Sell your jewels! Goodness! Your ancestral jewels! You must
+have grown utterly heartless as well as indifferent to propriety, or you
+wouldn't dream of selling the treasures that have come down to you from
+your own mother's breast, as one might say."
+
+"My mother never set eyes on any of them, auntie, and if some of them
+belonged to my grandmother, she must have been a good woman because she
+was the mother of my father, and she would rather see me sell them all
+than live in debt and disgrace."
+
+"Go on! Go on with your English talk! Or perhaps it's American, is it?
+You want to kill me, that's what it is! You will, too, and sooner than
+you expect, and then you'll be sorry and ashamed ... Go away! Why do you
+come to worry me? Isn't it enough ... Natalina! Nat-a-_lina_!"
+
+Late that night Roma resumed her letter to David Rossi:
+
+    "DEAREST,--You are always the last person I speak to before I go
+    to bed, and if only my words could sail away over Monte Mario in
+    the darkness while I sleep, they would reach you on the wings of
+    the morning.
+
+    "You want to know all that is happening, and here goes again. The
+    tyrannies of military rule increase daily, and some of its
+    enormities are past belief. Military court sat all day yesterday
+    and polished off eighty-five poor victims. Ten of them got ten
+    years, twenty got five years, and about fifty got periods of one
+    month to twelve.
+
+    "Lawyer Napoleon F. was here this afternoon to say that he had
+    seen Bruno and begun work in his defence. Strangely enough he
+    finds a difficulty in a quarter from which it might least be
+    expected. Bruno himself is holding off in some unaccountable way
+    which gives Napoleon F. an idea that the poor soul is being got
+    at. Apparently--you will hardly credit it--he is talking
+    doubtfully about you, and asking incredible questions about his
+    wife. Lawyer Napoleon actually inquired if there was 'anything in
+    it,' and the thing struck me as so silly that I laughed out in his
+    face. It was very wrong of me not to be jealous, wasn't it? Being
+    a woman, I suppose I ought to have leapt at the idea, according to
+    all the natural laws of love. I didn't, and my heart is still
+    tranquil. But poor Bruno was more human, and Napoleon has an idea
+    that something is going on inside the prison. He is to go there
+    again to-morrow and to let me know.
+
+    "Such doings at home too! I've been two years in debt to my
+    landlord, and at the end of every quarter I've always prayed like
+    a modest woman to be allowed to pass by unnoticed. Celebrity has
+    fallen on me at last, though, and I'm to go at Easter. Madame de
+    Trop, too, has put the screw on, and everybody else is following
+    suit. Yesterday, for example, I had the honour of a call from
+    every one in the world to whom I owed twopence. Remembering how
+    hard it used to be to get a bill out of these people, I find their
+    sudden business ardour humorous. They do not deceive me
+    nevertheless. I see the die is cast, the fact is known. I have
+    fallen from my high estate of general debtor to everybody and
+    become merely an honest woman.
+
+    "Do I suffer from these slings of fortune? Not an atom. When I was
+    rich, or seemed to be so, I was often the most miserable woman in
+    the world, and now I'm happy, happy, happy!
+
+    "There is only one thing makes me a little unhappy. Shall I tell
+    you what it is? Yes, I _will_ tell you because your heart is so
+    true, and like all brave men you are so tender to all women. It is
+    a girl friend of mine--a very close and dear friend, and she is in
+    trouble. A little while ago she was married to a good man, and
+    they love each other dearer than life, and there ought to be
+    nothing between them. But there is, and it is a very serious thing
+    too, although nobody knows about it but herself and me. How shall
+    I tell you? Dearest, you are to think my head is on your breast
+    and you cannot see my face while I tell you my poor friend's
+    secret. Long ago--it seems long--she was the victim of another
+    man. That is really the only word for it, because she did not
+    consent. But all the same she feels that she has sinned and that
+    nothing on earth can wash away the stain. The worst fact is that
+    her husband knows nothing about it. This fills her with
+    measureless regret and undying remorse. She feels that she ought
+    to have told him, and so her heart is full of tears, and she
+    doesn't know what it is her duty to.
+
+    "I thought I would ask you to tell me, dearest. You are kind, but
+    you mustn't spare her. I didn't. She wanted to draw a veil over
+    her frailty, but I wouldn't let her. I think she would like to
+    confess to her husband, to pour out her heart to him, and begin
+    again with a clean page, but she is afraid. Of course she hasn't
+    really been faithless, and I could swear on my life she loves her
+    husband only. And then her sorrow is so great, and she is
+    beginning to look worn with lying awake at nights, though some
+    people still think she is beautiful. I dare say you will say,
+    serve her right for deceiving a good man. So do I sometimes, but I
+    feel strangely inconsistent about my poor friend, and a woman has
+    a right to be inconsistent, hasn't she? Tell me what I am to say
+    to her, and please don't spare her because she is a friend of
+    mine."
+
+She lifted her pen from the paper. "He'll understand," she thought.
+"He'll remember our other letters and read between the lines. Well, so
+much the better, and God be good to me!"
+
+    "Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! I feel like a child--as if
+    the years had gone back with me, or rather as if they had only
+    just begun. You have awakened my soul and all the world is
+    different. Nearly everything that seemed right to me before seems
+    wrong to me now, and _vice versa_. Life? That wasn't life. It was
+    only existence. I fancy it must have been some elder sister of
+    mine who went through everything. Think of it! When you were
+    twenty and I was only ten! I'm glad there isn't as much difference
+    now. I'm catching up to you--metaphorically, I mean. If I could
+    only do so physically! But what nonsense I'm talking! In spite of
+    my poor friend's trouble I can't help talking nonsense to-night."
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Two days later Natalina, coming into Roma's bedroom, threw open the
+shutters and said:
+
+"Letter with a foreign postmark, Excellency--'Sister Angelica, care of
+the Porter.' It was delivered at the Convent, and the porter sent it
+over here."
+
+"Give it to me," said Roma eagerly. "It's quite right. I know whom it is
+for, and if any more letters come for the same person bring them to me
+immediately."
+
+Almost before the maid had left the room Roma had torn the letter open.
+It was dated from a street in Soho.
+
+    "MY DEAR WIFE,--As you see, I have reached London, and now I am
+    thinking of you always, wondering what sufferings are being
+    inflicted upon you for my sake and how you meet and bear them. To
+    think of you there, in the midst of our enemies, is a spur and an
+    inspiration. Only wait! If my absence is cruel to you it is still
+    more hard to me. I will see your lovely eyes again before long,
+    and there will be an end of all our sadness. Meantime continue to
+    love me, and that will work miracles. It will make all the slings
+    and slurs of life seem to be a long way off and of no account.
+    Only those who love can know this law of the human heart, but how
+    true it is and how beautiful!
+
+    "We reached London in the early morning, when the grey old city
+    was beginning to stir after its sleepless rest. I had telegraphed
+    the time of my arrival to the committee of our association, and
+    early as it was some hundreds of our people were at Charing Cross
+    to meet me. They must have been surprised to see a man step out of
+    the train in the disguise of driver of a wine-cart on the
+    Campagna, but perhaps that helped them to understand the position
+    better, and they formed into procession and marched to Trafalgar
+    Square as if they had forgotten they were in a foreign country.
+
+    "To me it was a strange and moving spectacle. The mist like a
+    shroud over the great city, some stars of leaden hue paling out
+    overhead, the day dawning over the vast square, the wide silence
+    with the far-off hum of awakening life, the English workmen
+    stopping to look at us as they went by to their work, and our
+    company of dark-bearded men, emigrants and exiles, sending their
+    hearts out in sympathy to their brothers in the south. As I spoke
+    from the base of the Gordon statue and turned towards St. Martin's
+    Church, I could fancy I saw your white-haired father on the steps
+    with his little daughter in his arms.
+
+    "I will write again in a day or two, telling you what we are
+    doing. Meantime I enclose a Proclamation to the People, which I
+    wish you to get printed and posted up. Take it to old Albert
+    Pelegrino in the Stamperia by the Trevi. Tell him to mention the
+    cost and the money shall follow. Call at the Piazza Navona and see
+    what is happening to Elena. Poor girl! Poor Bruno! And my poor
+    dear little darling!
+
+    "Take care of yourself, my dear one. I am always thinking of you.
+    It is a fearful thing to have taken up the burden of one who is
+    branded as an outcast and an outlaw. I cannot help but reproach
+    myself. There was a time when I saw my duty to you in another way,
+    but love came like a hurricane out of the skies and swept all
+    sense of duty away. My wife! my Roma! You have hazarded everything
+    for me, and some day I will give up everything for you.     D. R."
+
+
+                                VII
+
+    "DEAREST,--Your letter to Sister Angelica arrived safely, and
+    worked more miracles in her cloistered heart than ever happened to
+    the 'Blessed Bambino.' Before it came I was always thinking,
+    'Where is he now? Is he having his breakfast? Or is it dinner,
+    according to the difference of time and longitude?' All I knew was
+    that you had travelled north, and though the sun doesn't
+    ordinarily set in that direction, the sky over Monte Mario used to
+    glow for my special pleasure like the gates of the New Jerusalem.
+
+    "Your letters are so precious that I will ask you not to fill them
+    with useless things. Don't tell me to love you. The idea! Didn't I
+    say I should think of you always? I do! I think of you when I go
+    to bed at night, and that is like opening a jewel-case in the
+    moonlight. I think of you when I am asleep, and that is like an
+    invisible bridge which unites us in our dreams; and I think of you
+    when I wake in the morning, and that is like a cage of song-birds
+    that sing in my breast the whole day long.
+
+    "But you are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so
+    your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off
+    against those official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so
+    my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box.
+    Let me bring my despatches up to date.
+
+    "Military rule severer than ever, and poverty and misery on all
+    sides. Families of reserve soldiers starving, and meetings of
+    chief citizens to succour them. Donation from the King and from
+    the 'Black' Charity Circle of St. Peter. Even the clergy are
+    sending francs, so none can question their sincerity. Bureau of
+    Labour besieged by men out of work, and offices occupied by
+    Carabineers. People eating maize in polenta and granturco with the
+    certainty of sickness to follow. Red Cross Society organised as in
+    time of war, and many sick and wounded hidden in houses.
+
+    "And now for more personal matters. The proclamation is in hand,
+    and paid for, and will be posted first thing in the morning. From
+    the printer's I went on to the Piazza Navona and found a
+    wilderness of woe. Elena has gone away, leaving an ambiguous
+    letter behind her, saying that she wished her Madonna to be given
+    to me, as she would have no need of it in the place she was going
+    to. This led the old people to believe that for the loss of her
+    son and husband she had become demented and had destroyed herself.
+    I pretended to think differently, and warned them to say nothing
+    of their daughter's disappearance, thinking that Bruno might hear
+    of it, and find food for still further suspicions.
+
+    "Lawyer Napoleon F. has seen the poor soul again, and been here
+    this evening to tell me the result. It will seem to you
+    incredible. Bruno will do nothing to help in his own defence.
+    Talks of 'treachery' and the 'King's pardon.' Napoleon F. thinks
+    the Camorra is at work with him, and tells how criminals in the
+    prisons of Italy have a league of crime, with captains, corporals,
+    and cadets. My own reading of the mystery is different. I think
+    the Camorra in this case is the Council, and the only design is to
+    entrap by treachery one of the 'greater delinquents not in
+    custody.' I want to find out where Charles Minghelli is at
+    present. Nobody seems to know.
+
+    "As for me, what do you suppose is my last performance? I've sold
+    my jewels! Yesterday I sent for one of the _strozzini_, and the
+    old Shylock came this evening and cheated me unmercifully. No
+    matter! What do I want with jewellery, or a fine house, and
+    servants to follow me about as if I were a Cardinal? If _you_ can
+    do without them so can I. But you need not say you are anxious
+    about what is happening to me. I'm as happy as the day is long. I
+    am happy because I love you, and that is everything.
+
+    "Only one thing troubles me--the grief of the poor girl I told you
+    of. She follows me about, and is here all the time, so that I feel
+    as if I were possessed by her secret. In fact, I'm afraid I'll
+    blab it out to somebody. I think you would be sorry to see her.
+    She tries to persuade herself that because her soul did not
+    consent she was really not to blame. That is the thing that women
+    are always saying, isn't it? They draw this distinction when it is
+    too late, and use it as a quibble to gloss over their fault. Oh, I
+    gave it her! I told her she should have thought of that in time,
+    and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a
+    minute of weakness--mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue,
+    but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen
+    she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.
+
+    "Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I
+    felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so
+    sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so
+    shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the
+    best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There _is_
+    something in that, isn't there?
+
+    "One thing I must say for the poor girl--she has been a different
+    woman since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking
+    thing to say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in
+    the convent, and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized
+    and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to
+    read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of 'the
+    drunkenness of sin' were the instants of salvation. Who knows?
+    Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as
+    bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend,
+    she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares
+    nothing for the world and its vanities.
+
+    "Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands--why can't I
+    do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level,
+    and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite
+    blind. I'm not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all
+    events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to
+    say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that's
+    where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful!
+                                                               ROMA."
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her
+immediately.
+
+"I must have a doctor," she said. "It's perfectly heartless to keep me
+without one all this time."
+
+"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "you know quite well that but for your own
+express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along."
+
+"For mercy's sake, don't nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it
+be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now."
+
+Fedi was the Pope's physician, and therefore the most costly and
+fashionable doctor in Rome.
+
+Dr. Fedi came with an assistant who carried a little case of
+instruments. He examined the Countess, her breast, her side, and the
+glands under her arms, shot out a solemn under-lip, put two fingers
+inside his collar, twisted his head from side to side, and announced
+that the patient must have a nurse immediately.
+
+"Do you hear that, Roma? Doctor says that I must have a nurse. Of course
+I must have a nurse. I'll have one of the English nursing Sisters.
+Everybody has them now. They're foreigners, and if they talk they can't
+do much mischief."
+
+The Sister was sent for. She was a mild and gentle creature, in blue and
+white, but she talked perpetually of her Mother Superior, who had been
+bedridden for fifteen years, yet smiled sweetly all day long. That
+exasperated the Countess and fretted her. When the doctor came again the
+patient was worse.
+
+"Your aunt must have dainties to tempt her appetite and so keep up her
+strength."
+
+"Do you hear, Roma?"
+
+"You shall have everything you wish for, auntie."
+
+"Well, I wish for strawberries. Everybody eats them who is ill at this
+season."
+
+The strawberries were bought, but the Countess scarcely touched them,
+and they were finally consumed in the kitchen.
+
+When the doctor came a third time the patient was much emaciated and her
+skin had become sallow and earthy.
+
+"It would not be right to conceal from you the gravity of your
+condition, Countess," he said. "In such a case we always think it best
+to tell a patient to make her peace with God."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, doctor," whimpered the poor withered creature on
+the bed.
+
+"But while there's life there's hope, you know; and meantime I'll send
+you an opiate to relieve the pain."
+
+When the doctor was gone, the Countess sent for Roma.
+
+"That Fedi is a fool," she said. "I don't know what people see in him. I
+should like to try the Bambino of Ara C[oe]li. The Cardinal Vicar had
+it, and why shouldn't I? They say it has worked miracles. It may be
+dear, but if I die you will always reproach yourself. If you are short
+of money you can sign a bill at six months, and before that the poor
+maniac woman will be gone and you'll be the wife of the Baron."
+
+"If you really think the Bambino will...."
+
+"It will! I know it will."
+
+"Very well, I will send for it."
+
+Roma sent a letter to the Superior of the Franciscans at the Friary of
+Ara C[oe]li asking that the little figure of the infant Christ, which is
+said to restore the sick, should be sent to her aunt, who was near to
+death.
+
+At the same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli,
+requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little
+beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to see
+everything except Roma herself.
+
+"I wish to sell up my furniture," said Roma.
+
+"All of it?"
+
+"Except what is in my aunt's room and the room of her nurse, and such
+things in the kitchen, the servants' apartments, and my own bedroom as
+are absolutely necessary for present purposes."
+
+"Quite right. When?"
+
+"Within a week if possible."
+
+The Bambino came in a carriage with two horses, and the people in the
+street went down on their knees as it passed. One of the friars in
+priest's surplice carried it in a box with the lid open, and two friars
+in brown habits walked before it with lifted candles. But as the painted
+image in its scarlet clothes and jewels entered the Countess's bedroom
+with its grim and ghostly procession, and was borne like a baby mummy to
+the foot of her bed, it terrified her, and she screamed.
+
+"Take it away!" she shrieked. "Do you want to frighten me out of my
+life? Take it away!"
+
+The grim and ghostly procession went out. Its visit had lasted thirty
+seconds and cost a hundred francs.
+
+When the doctor came again the outline of the Countess's writhing form
+had shrunk to the lines of a skeleton under the ruffled counterpane.
+
+"It's not the Bambino you want--it's the priest," he said, and then the
+poor mortal who was still afraid of dying began to whimper.
+
+"And, Sister," said the doctor, "as the Countess suffers so much pain,
+you may increase the opiate from a dessert-spoonful to a tablespoonful,
+and give it twice as frequently."
+
+That evening the Sister went home for a few hours' leave, and Roma took
+her place by the sick-bed. The patient was more selfish and exacting
+than ever, but Roma had begun to feel a softening towards the poor
+tortured being, and was trying her best to do her duty.
+
+It was dusk, and the Countess, who had just taken her opiate in the
+increased doses, was out of pain, and wished to make her toilet. Roma
+brought up the night-table and the mirror, the rouge-pot, the rabbit's
+foot, the puff, the pencil, and the other appurtenances of her aunt's
+toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by
+the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she
+began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with
+death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then
+the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils
+were pencilled with the rosy hues of health and youth.
+
+Roma had turned on the electric light, but the glare oppressed the
+patient, and she switched it off again. The night had now closed in, and
+the only light in the room came from the little red oil-lamp which
+burned before the shrine.
+
+The drug began to operate, and its first effect was to loosen the old
+lady's tongue. She began to talk of priests in a tone of contempt and
+braggadocio.
+
+"I hate priests," she said, "and I can't bear to have them about me. Why
+so? Because they are always about the dead. Their black cassocks make me
+think of funerals. The sight of a graveyard makes me faint. Besides,
+priests and confessions go together, and why should a woman confess if
+she can avoid it? When people confess they have to give up the thing
+they confess to, or they can't get absolution. Fedi's a fool. Give it up
+indeed! I might as well talk of giving up the bed that's under me."
+
+Roma sat on a stool by the bedside, listening intently, yet feeling she
+had no right to listen. The drug was rapidly intoxicating the Countess,
+who went on to talk as if some one else had been in the room.
+
+"A priest would be sure to ask questions about that girl. I would have
+to tell him why the Baron put me here to look after her, and then he
+would prate about the Sacraments and want me to give up everything."
+
+The Countess laughed a hard, evil laugh, and Roma felt an icy shudder
+pass over her.
+
+"'I'm tied,' said the Baron. 'But you must see that she waits for me.
+Everything depends upon you, and if all comes out well....'"
+
+The old woman's tongue was thickening, and her eyes in the dull red
+light were glazed and stupid.
+
+Roma sat motionless and silent, watching with her own dilated eyes the
+grinning sinner, as she poured out the story of the plot for her capture
+and corruption. At that moment she hated her aunt, the unclean,
+malignant, unpitying thing who had poisoned her heart against her father
+and tried to break down every spiritual impulse of her soul.
+
+The diabolical horse-laughter came again, and then the devil who had
+loosened the tongue of the dying woman in the intoxication of the drug
+made her reveal the worst secret of her tortured conscience.
+
+"Why did I let him torment me? Because he knew something. It was about
+the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband
+was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror."
+
+The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow
+with a roaring in her ears.
+
+"It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the
+Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me."
+
+The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible.
+The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues,
+her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the
+innocence of sleep.
+
+Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with
+sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly
+rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her
+to the depths of abasement.
+
+The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now
+different.
+
+"Roma! Is that you?"
+
+"Yes, aunt."
+
+"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You
+know that quite well."
+
+Roma turned on the lights.
+
+"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"
+
+Roma tried to prevaricate.
+
+"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug
+to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was
+all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a
+lie, I tell you...."
+
+The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did
+not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing
+so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table
+by her bed.
+
+Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one,
+some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother,
+and her tears had begun to fall.
+
+It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the
+prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.
+
+"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of
+death--Amen!"
+
+When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying
+and was comforted.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps
+labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces
+of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were
+posted outside the street door announcing a sale of "Old and New Objects
+of Art" in the "Appartamento Volonna." Then came the "Grand
+Esposizione"--it was on Sunday morning--and the following day the
+auction.
+
+Roma built herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the
+apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room
+combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people
+assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing
+at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore
+Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of
+servility in his long face prevailed over the look of arrogance.
+
+"Good-morning, Donna Roma. May I perhaps...."
+
+"Come in."
+
+The lanky person settled himself comfortably and began on a confidential
+communication.
+
+"The Baron, sincerely sorry to hear of your distresses, sends me to say
+that you have only to make a request and this unseemly scene shall come
+to an end. In fact, I have authority to act on his behalf--as an unknown
+friend, you know--and stop these proceedings even at the eleventh hour.
+Only a word from you--one word--and everything shall be settled
+satisfactorily."
+
+Roma was silent for a moment, and the Commendatore concluded that his
+persuasions had prevailed. Somebody else knocked at the door.
+
+"Come in," said the Commendatore largely.
+
+This time it was the auctioneer. "Time to begin the sale, Signorina. Any
+commands?" He glanced from Roma to Angelelli with looks of
+understanding.
+
+"I think her Excellency has perhaps something to say," said Angelelli.
+
+"Nothing whatever. Go on," said Roma.
+
+The auctioneer disappeared through the door, and Angelelli put on his
+hat.
+
+"Then you have no answer for his Excellency?"
+
+"None."
+
+"_Bene_," said the Commendatore, and he went off whistling softly.
+
+The auction began. At a table on a platform where the piano used to
+stand sat the chief auctioneer with his ivory hammer. Beneath him at a
+similar table sat an assistant. As the men in red caps brought up the
+goods the two auctioneers took the bidding together, repeating each
+other in the manner of actor and prompter at an Italian theatre.
+
+The English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her niece
+immediately. The invalid, now frightfully emaciated and no longer able
+to sit up, was lying back on her lace-edged pillows. She was plucking
+with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma
+entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath. But the
+sound that came from her throat was like a voice shouted on a windy
+headland, and hardly louder than the muffled voices of the auctioneers
+as they found their way through the walls.
+
+Roma sat down on the stool by the bedside, stroked the cat with the
+gold cross suspended from its neck, and listened to the words within the
+room and without as they fell on her ear alternately.
+
+"Roma, you are treating me shamefully. While I am lying here helpless
+you are having an auction--actually an auction--at the door of my very
+room."
+
+"Camera da letto della Signorina! Bed in _noce_, richly ornamented with
+fruit and flowers." "Shall I say fifty?" "Thank you, fifty." "Fifty."
+"Fifty-five." "Fifty-five." "No advance on fifty-five?" "Gentlemen,
+gentlemen! The beautiful bed of a beautiful lady, and only fifty-five
+offered for it!..."
+
+"If you wanted money you had only to ask the Baron, and if you didn't
+wish to do that, you had only to sign a bill at six months, as I told
+you before. But no! You wanted to humble and degrade me. That's all it
+is. You've done it, too, and I'm dying in disgrace...."
+
+"Secretaire in walnut! Think, ladies, of the secrets this writing-desk
+might whisper if it would! How much shall I say?" "Sixty lire." "Sixty."
+"Sixty-five." "Sixty-five." "Writing-desk in walnut with the love
+letters hardly out of it, and only sixty-five lire offered!..."
+
+"This is what comes of a girl going her own way. Society is not so very
+exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the
+respectabilities. And quite right, too! Pity they could not be the only
+ones to suffer, but they can't. Their friends and relations are the real
+sufferers; and as for me...."
+
+The Countess's voice broke down into a maudlin whimper. Without a word
+Roma rose up to go. As she did so she met Natalina coming into the room
+with the usual morning plate of forced strawberries. They had cost four
+francs the pound.
+
+Some time afterwards, from her writing-table in the boudoir-bedroom,
+Roma heard a shuffling of feet on the circular iron stairs. The people
+were going down to the studio. Presently the auctioneer's voice came up
+as from a vault.
+
+"And now what am I offered for this large and important work of modern
+art?"
+
+There was a ripple of derisive laughter.
+
+"A fountain worthy, when finished, to rank with the masterpieces of
+ancient Rome."
+
+More derisive laughter.
+
+"Now is the time for anti-clericals. Gentlemen, don't all speak at once.
+Every day is not a festa. How much? Nothing at all? Not even a soldo?
+Too bad. Art is its own reward."
+
+Still more laughter, followed by the shuffling of feet coming up the
+iron stairs, and a familiar voice on the landing--it was the Princess
+Bellini's--"Madonna mia! what a fright it is, to be sure!"
+
+Then another voice--it was Madame Bella's--"I thought so the day of the
+private view, when she behaved so shockingly to the dear Baron."
+
+Then a third voice--it was the voice of Olga the journalist--"I said the
+Baron would pay her out, and he has. Before the day is over she'll not
+have a stick left or a roof to cover her."
+
+Roma dropped her head on to the table. Try as she might to keep a brave
+front, the waves of shame and humiliation were surging over her.
+
+Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Natalina with a telegram:
+"Letter received; my apartment is paid for to end of June; why not take
+possession of it?"
+
+From that moment onward nothing else mattered. The tumultuous noises in
+the drawing-room died down, and there was no sound but the voices of the
+auctioneer and his clerk, which rumbled like a drum in the empty
+chamber.
+
+It was four o'clock. Opening the window, Roma heard the music of a band.
+At that a spirit of defiance took possession of her, and she put on her
+hat and cloak. As she passed through the empty drawing-room, the
+auctioneer, who was counting his notes with the dry rustle of a
+winnowing machine, looked up with his beady eyes and said:
+
+"It has come out fairly well, Madame--better than we might have
+expected."
+
+On reaching the piazza she hailed a cab. "The Pincio!" she cried, and
+settled in her seat. When she returned an hour afterwards she wrote her
+usual letter to David Rossi.
+
+    "High doings to-day! Have had a business on my own account, and
+    done a roaring trade! Disposed of everything in the shop except
+    what I wanted for myself. It isn't every trades-woman who can say
+    that much, and I'm only a beginner to boot!
+
+    "Soberly, I've sold up. Being under notice to leave this
+    apartment, I didn't want all this useless furniture, so I thought
+    I might as well get done with it in good time. Besides, what right
+    had I to soft beds and fine linen while you were an exile,
+    sleeping Heaven knows where? And then my aunt, who is very ill and
+    wants all sorts of luxuries, is rather expensive. So for the past
+    week my drawing-room has been as full of fluting as a frog-pond at
+    sunset, and on Sunday morning people were banging away at my poor
+    piano as if it had been a hurdy-gurdy at an osteria.
+
+    "But, oh dear! how stupid the world is! People thought because I
+    was selling what I didn't want I must be done. You would have
+    laughed to hear their commentaries. To tell you the truth, I was
+    so silly that I could have cried, but just at the moment when I
+    felt a wee bit badly, down came your telegram like an angel from
+    Heaven--and what do you think I did? The old Adam, or say the new
+    Eve, took possession of me, and the minute the people were gone I
+    hired a cab--a common garden cab, Roman variety, with a horse on
+    its last legs and a driver in ragged tweeds--and drove off to the
+    Pincio! I wanted to show those fine folk that I _wasn't_ done, and
+    I did! They were all there, my dear friends and former
+    flatterers--every one of them who has haunted my house for years,
+    asking for this favour or that, and paying me in the coin of
+    sweetest smiles. It seemed as if fate had gathered them all
+    together for my personal inspection and wouldn't let a creature
+    escape.
+
+    "Did they see me? Not a soul of them! I drove through them and
+    between them, and they bowed across and before and behind me, and
+    I might have been as invisible as Asmodeus for all the
+    consciousness they betrayed of my presence. Was I humiliated?
+    Confused? Crushed? Oh, dear no! I was proud. I knew the day would
+    come, the day was near, when they must try to forget all this and
+    to persuade themselves it had never been, when for my own sake,
+    even mine, and for yours, most of all for yours, they would come
+    back humble, so humble and afraid.
+
+    "So I gave them every chance. I was bold and I did not spare them.
+    And when the sun began to sink behind St. Peter's and the band
+    stopped, and we turned to go, I know which of us went home happy
+    and unashamed. Oh, David Rossi! If you could have been there!
+
+    "I must write again on other matters. Meantime, one item of news.
+    Lawyer Napoleon, who continues to go to Regina C[oe]li to see the
+    bewildering Bruno, saw Charles Minghelli there in prison clothes!
+    If the God who settles the question of sex had only remembered to
+    make your wife the procurator-general, think how different the
+    history of the world would have been! The worst of it is he
+    mightn't have remembered to make you a woman; and in any case,
+    things being so nicely settled as they are, I don't think I want
+    to be a man. I waft a kiss to you on the wings of the wind. It's
+    ponente to-day, so it ought to be warm.                    "ROMA.
+
+    "P.S.--My poor friend is still in trouble. Although not a
+    religious woman, she has taken to saying a 'Hail Mary' every night
+    on going to bed, and if it wasn't for that I'm afraid she would
+    commit suicide, so frightful are the visions that enter her head
+    sometimes. I've told her how wrong it would be to do away with
+    herself, if only for the sake of her husband, who is away. Didn't
+    I tell you he was away at present? It would hurt you dreadfully if
+    _I_ were to die before _you_ return, wouldn't it? But I'm dying
+    already to hear what you think of her. Write! Write! Write!"
+
+
+                                X
+
+When the King of Terrors could no longer be beaten back the Countess
+sent for the priest. Before he arrived she insisted on making her toilet
+and receiving him in the dressing-gown which she used to wear when
+people made ante-camera to her in the days of her gaiety and strength.
+
+During the time of the Countess's confession Roma sat in her own room
+with a tremor of the heart which she had never felt before. Something
+personal and very intimate was creeping over her soul. She heard the
+indistinct murmur of the priest's voice at intervals, followed by a
+sibilant sound as of whispers and sobs.
+
+The confession lasted fifteen minutes and then the priest came out of
+the room. "Now that your relative has made her peace with God," he said,
+"she must receive the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, and the
+Apostolic Blessing."
+
+He went away to prepare for these offices, and the English Sister came
+to see Roma. "The Countess is like another woman already," she said, but
+Roma did not go into the sickroom.
+
+The priest returned in half-an-hour. He had now two assistants, one
+carrying the cross and banner, the other a vessel of holy water and the
+volume of the Roman ritual. The Sister and Felice met them at the door
+with lighted candles.
+
+"Peace be to this house!" said the priest.
+
+And the assistants said, "And to all dwelling in it."
+
+Then the priest took off an outer cloak, revealing his white surplice
+and violet stole, and followed the candles into the Countess's room. The
+little card-table had been covered with a damask napkin and laid out as
+an altar. All the dainty articles of the dying woman's dressing-table,
+her scent-flasks, rouge pots and puffs, were huddled together with
+various medicine bottles on a chest of drawers at the back. It was two
+o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining, so the curtains were
+drawn and the shutters closed. In the darkened room the candles burned
+like stars.
+
+The ghostly viaticum being over, the priest and his assistants left the
+house. But the pale, grinning shadow of death continued to stand by the
+perfumed couch.
+
+Roma had not been present at the offices, and presently the English
+Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her.
+
+"It's perfectly miraculous," said the Sister. "She's like another
+woman."
+
+"Has she had her opiate lately?" said Roma, and the Sister answered that
+she had.
+
+Roma found her aunt in a kind of mystical transport. A great light of
+joy, almost of pride, was shining in her face.
+
+"All my pains are gone," she said. "All my sorrows and trials too. I
+have laid them all on Christ, and now I am going to mount up with Him to
+God."
+
+Clearly she had no sense of her guilt towards Roma. She began to take a
+high tone with her, the tone of a saint towards a sinner.
+
+"You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner,
+but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am
+sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate
+your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your
+soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain."
+
+But the Countess's ethereal transports did not wholly eclipse her
+worldly vanities when she proceeded to preparations for her funeral.
+
+"Let there be a Requiem Mass, Roma. Everybody has it. It costs a little,
+certainly, but we can't think of money in a case like this. And send for
+the Raveggi Company to do the funeral pomps, and see they don't put me
+on a tressel. I am a noble and have a right to be laid on the church
+floor. See they bury me on high ground. The little Pincio is where the
+best people are buried now, above the tomb of Duke Massimo."
+
+Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart
+felt sore.
+
+Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured
+body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more
+and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular
+face was snapping all round.
+
+The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset,
+but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A
+band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with
+the petitions of the "breathing forth."
+
+Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was
+on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.
+
+The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it
+fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesu,
+Gesu, Gesu!"
+
+The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and
+the priest was praying fast and loud:
+
+"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into
+the bosom of Abraham."
+
+At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her
+diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the
+counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her
+head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in
+her chest. At last she became delirious.
+
+"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill
+it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.
+
+The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to
+his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the
+soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may
+live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life
+she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe
+out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."
+
+The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped.
+A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted,
+and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the
+room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an
+end.
+
+Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.
+
+The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down
+behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.
+
+"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last.
+How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the
+deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor,
+unhappy fellow-sinner.
+
+"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was
+pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death
+made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy
+in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets
+off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self
+forgiven!...
+
+"I cannot write any more to-day, my dear one, but there will be news for
+you next time, great and serious news."
+
+
+                                XI
+
+Roma fulfilled her promise. The funeral pomps, if the Countess could
+have seen them, would have satisfied her vain little mind. On going to
+the parish church the procession covered the entire length of the
+street. First the banner with skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass, then a
+confraternity of lay people, then twenty paid mourners in evening dress,
+then fifty Capuchins at two francs a head with yellow candles at three
+francs each, then the cross, then the secular clergy two and two, then
+the parish priest in surplice and black stole with servitors and
+acolytes, then a stately funeral car with four horses richly harnessed,
+and finally four coaches with coachmen and footmen in gala livery. The
+bier was loaded with flowers and streamers, and the cost of the cortege
+was nearly a thousand francs.
+
+As Roma passed out of the church with head down some one spoke to her.
+It was the Baron, carrying his hat, on which there was a deep black
+band. His tall spare figure, high forehead, straight hair, and features
+hard as iron, made a painful impression.
+
+"Sorry I cannot go on to the Campo Santo," he said, and then he added
+something about breaks in the chain of life which Roma did not hear.
+
+"I trust it is not true, as I am given to understand, that on leaving
+your apartment you are going to live in the house of a certain person
+whom I need not name. That would, I assure you, be a grave error, and I
+would earnestly counsel you not to commit it."
+
+She made no reply but walked on to the door of the carriage. He helped
+her to enter it, and then said: "Remember, my attitude is the same as
+ever. Do not deny me the satisfaction of serving you in your hour of
+need."
+
+When Roma came to full possession of herself after the Requiem Mass, the
+cortege was on its way to the cemetery. There was a line of carriages.
+Most of them were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The
+parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes
+so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins
+for to-morrow.
+
+The necropolis of Rome is outside the Porta San Lorenzo, by the church
+of that name. The bier drew up at the House of Deposit. When the coaches
+discharged their occupants, Roma saw that except the paid servants of
+the funeral she was the only mourner. The Countess's friends, like
+herself, disliked the sight of churchyards.
+
+The House of Deposit, a low-roofed chamber under a chapel, contained
+tressels for every kind and condition of the dead. One place was
+labelled "Reserved for distinguished corpses." The coffin of the
+Countess was put to rest there until the buriers should come to bury it
+in the morning, the wreaths and flowers and streamers were laid over it,
+the priest sprinkled it again with holy water, and then the funeral was
+at an end.
+
+"I will not go back yet," said Roma, and thereupon the priest and his
+assistants stepped into the carriages. The drivers lit cigarettes and
+started off at a brisk trot.
+
+It had been a gorgeous funeral, and the soul of the Countess would have
+been satisfied. But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the
+time, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
+
+Roma bought a wreath of wild flowers at a stall outside the cemetery
+gates, and by help of a paper given to her in the office she found the
+grave of little Joseph. It was in a shelf of vaults like ovens, each
+with its marble door, and a photograph on the front. They were all
+photographs of children, sweet smiling faces, a choir of little angels,
+now singing round the throne in heaven. The sun was shining on them, and
+the tall cypress trees were singing softly in the light wind overhead.
+Here and there a mother was trimming an oil-lamp that hung before her
+baby's face, and listening to the little voice that was not dead but
+speaking to her soul's soul.
+
+Roma hung her wreath on Joseph's vault and turned away. Going out of the
+gates she met a great concourse of people. At their head was a Capuchin
+carrying a black wooden cross with sponge, spear, hammer and nails
+attached. Two boys in blue and white carried candles by his side. The
+crowd behind were of the poorest, chiefly women and girls with shawls
+and handkerchiefs on their heads. It was Friday, and they were going to
+the Church of San Lorenzo to make the procession of the Stations of the
+Cross. Scarcely knowing why she did so, Roma followed them.
+
+The people filled the Basilica. Their devotion was deep and touching. As
+they followed the friar from station to station they sang in monotonous
+tones the strophes of the _Stabat Mater_.
+
+"Ah, Mother, fountain of love, make me feel the strength of sorrow that
+I may mourn with thee."
+
+Their prayer seemed hardly needful. They were the starving wives and
+daughters of men in prison, men in hospital, and reserve soldiers. Poor
+wrecks on life's shore, thrown up by the tide, they had turned to
+religion for consolation, and were sending up their cry to God.
+
+When they had finished their course and ended their canticles of grief
+they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was
+a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross
+and a rosary hung from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their
+lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through,
+and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the
+silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their
+sufferings upon them for their sins, that they must confess their sins,
+in order that their holy mother, the Church, might save them from their
+sins, there was a deep hum in the air like the reverberation in a great
+shell.
+
+A line of confessional boxes stood in each of the church aisles, and as
+the preacher described the sorrows of the man-God, His passion, His
+agony, His blood, the women and girls, weeping audibly, got up one by
+one and went over to confess. No sooner had one of them arisen than
+another took her place, and each as she rose to her feet looked calm and
+comforted.
+
+The emotion of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she
+could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the
+trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes
+had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it
+she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face.
+She had seen it before somewhere--perhaps in the Pope's procession.
+
+At that moment a poor girl with a handkerchief on her head, who had
+knelt down crying, was getting up with shining eyes. Roma was shaken by
+violent tremors. An overpowering desire had come upon her to confess.
+For a moment she held on to a chair, lest she should fall to the floor.
+Then by a sudden impulse, in a kind of delirium, scarcely knowing what
+she was doing until it was done, she flung herself in the place the girl
+had risen from, and with a palpitating heart said in a tremulous voice
+through the little brass grating:
+
+"Father, I am a great sinner--hear me, hear me!"
+
+The measured breathing inside the confessional was arrested, and the
+peaceful face of the priest looked out at the hectic cheeks and blazing
+eyes.
+
+"Wait, my daughter, do not agitate yourself. Say the Confiteor."
+
+She tried to speak, but her words were hardly audible or coherent.
+
+"I confess ... I confess ... I cannot, Father."
+
+A pinch of snuff dropped from the old man's fingers.
+
+"Are you not a Christian?"
+
+"I have not been baptized, but I was educated in a convent, and...."
+
+"Then I cannot hear your confession. Baptism is the door of the Church,
+and without it...."
+
+"But I am in great trouble. For Our Lady's sake, listen to me. Oh,
+listen to me, Father, only listen to me."
+
+Although accustomed to the sufferings of the human heart, a measureless
+pity came over the old priest, and he said in a kind and tender voice:
+
+"Go on, my daughter. I cannot give you absolution, for you are not a
+child of the Church; but I am an old man, and if I can help your poor
+soul to bear its burden, God forbid that I should turn you away."
+
+In a torrent of hot words Roma poured out her trouble, hiding nothing,
+extenuating nothing, and naming and blaming no one. At length the
+throbbing breath and quivering voice died down, and there was a moment's
+silence, in which the dull rumble in the church seemed to come from far
+away. Then the voice behind the grating said in tender tones:
+
+"My daughter, you have committed no sin in this case and have nothing to
+repent of. That you should be troubled by scruples shows that your soul
+is pure and that you are living in communion with God. Your bodily
+health is reduced by nervousness and anxiety, and it is natural that you
+should imagine that you have sinned where you have not sinned. That is
+the sweet grace of most women, but how few men! What sin there has been
+is not yours; therefore go home, and God comfort you."
+
+"But, dear Father ... it is so good of you, but have you forgotten...."
+
+"Your husband? No! Whether you should tell him it is beyond my power to
+say. In itself I should be against it, for why should you disturb his
+conscience and endanger the peace of a family? Your scruples about
+Nature coming to convict you, being without grounds of reason, are
+temptations of the devil and should be put behind your back. But that
+your marriage was a religious one only, that the other person (you did
+right not to name him, my child) may use that circumstance to separate
+you, and that your confession to your husband, if it came too late,
+would come prejudiced and worse than in vain, these are facts that make
+it difficult to advise you for your safety and peace of mind. Let me
+consult some one wiser than myself. Let me, perhaps, take your secret to
+a high place, a kindly ear, a saintly heart, a venerable and holy head.
+Come again, or leave me your name if you will, and if that holy person
+has anything to say you shall hear of it. Meantime go home in peace and
+content, my daughter, and may God bring you into His true fold at last."
+
+When Roma got up from the grating of the confessional she felt like one
+who had passed through a great sickness and was now better. Her whole
+being was going through a miraculous convalescence. A great weight had
+been lifted off; she was renewed as with a new soul and her very body
+felt light as air.
+
+The preacher was still preaching in his tremulous tones, and the women
+and girls were still crying, as Roma passed out of the church, but now
+she heard all as in a dream. It was not until she reached the portico,
+and a blind beggar rattled his can in her face, that the spell was
+broken, so sudden and mysterious was the transition when she came back
+from heaven to earth.
+
+
+                                XII
+
+By the first post next morning "Sister Angelica" received a letter from
+David Rossi.
+
+    "Dearest,--Your budget arrived safely and brought me great joy and
+    perhaps a little sadness. Apart from the pain I always suffer when
+    I think of our poor people, there was a little twinge as I read
+    between the lines of your letter. Are you not dissimulating some
+    of your happiness to keep up my spirits and to prevent me from
+    rushing back to you at all hazards? You shall be really happy some
+    day, my dear one. I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did
+    on that glorious day in the Campagna. Wait, only wait! We are
+    still young and we shall live.
+
+    "Pray for me, my heart, that what my hand is doing may not be done
+    amiss. I am working day and night. Meetings, committees,
+    correspondence early and late. A great scheme is afoot, dearest,
+    and you shall hear all about it presently. I am proud that I
+    judged rightly of the moral grandeur of your nature, and that it
+    is possible to tell you everything.
+
+    "We have elected a centre of action and mapped out our
+    organisation. Everybody agrees with me on the necessity for united
+    action. Europe seems to be ready for a complete change, but the
+    first great act must be done in Rome. I find encouragement
+    everywhere. The brotherly union of the peoples is going on. A
+    power stronger than brute force is sweeping through the world.
+
+    "Poor Bruno! You are no doubt right that pressure is being put
+    upon him to betray me. It is not for myself only that I am
+    troubled. It would be a lasting grief to me if his mind were
+    poisoned. Charles Minghelli being in prison in the disguise of a
+    prisoner means that anything may happen. When the man came to me
+    after his dismissal in London, it was to ask help to assassinate
+    the Baron. I refused it, and he went over to the other side. The
+    secret tribunal in which cases are prepared for public trial is a
+    hellish machine for cruelty and injustice. It has been abolished
+    in nearly every other civilised country, but the courts and jails
+    of our beautiful Italy continue to be the scene of plots in which
+    helpless unfortunates are terrorised by expedients which leave not
+    a trace of crime. A prisoner is no longer a man, but a human agent
+    to incriminate others. His soul is corrupted, and a price is put
+    upon treachery. See Bruno yourself if you can, and save him from
+    himself and the people whose only occupation in life is to secure
+    convictions.
+
+    "And now, as to your friend. Comfort her. The poor girl is no more
+    guilty than if a traction engine had run over her or a wild beast
+    had broken on her out of his cage. She must not torture herself
+    any longer. It is not right, it is not good. Our body is not the
+    only part of use that is subject to diseases, and you must save
+    her from a disease of the soul.
+
+    "As to whether she should tell her husband, I can have but one
+    opinion. I say, Yes, by all means. In the court of conscience the
+    sin, where it exists, is not wholly or mainly in the act. That has
+    been pardoned in secret as well as in public. God pardoned it in
+    David. Christ pardoned it in the woman of Jerusalem. But the
+    concealment, the lying and duplicity, these cannot be pardoned
+    until they have been confessed.
+
+    "Another point, which your pure mind, dearest, has never thought
+    of. There is the other man. Think of the power he holds over your
+    friend. If he still wishes to possess her in spite of herself, he
+    may intimidate her, he may threaten to reveal all to her husband.
+    This would make her miserable, and perhaps in the long run, her
+    will being broken, it might even make her yield. Or the man may
+    really tell her husband in order to insult and outrage both of
+    them. _If he does so, where is she? Is her husband to believe her
+    story then?_
+
+    "To meet these dangers let her speak out now. Let her trust her
+    husband's love and tell him everything. If he is a man he will
+    think, 'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will
+    love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every
+    man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But
+    his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She
+    loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be
+    struck at her it must go through me.'
+
+    "My love to you, dearest. Your friend must be a true woman, and it
+    was very sweet of you to be so tender with her. It was noble of
+    you to be severe with her too, and to make her go through
+    purgatorial fires. That is what good women always do with the
+    injured of their own sex. It is a kind of pledge and badge of
+    their purity, and it is a safeguard and shield, whatever the
+    unthinking may say. I love you for your severity to the poor
+    soiled dove, my dear one, just as much as I love you for your
+    tenderness. It shows me how rightly I judged the moral elevation
+    of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and heart of
+    gold. Until we meet again, my darling,                       D. R."
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+     "MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--All day long I've been carrying your
+     letter round like a reliquary, taking a peep at it in cabs, and
+     even, when I dare, in omnibuses and the streets.
+
+    "What you say about Bruno has put me in a fever, and I have
+    written to the Director-General for permission to visit the
+    prison. Even Lawyer Napoleon is of opinion that Bruno is being
+    made a victim of that secret inquisition. No Holy Inquisition was
+    ever more unscrupulous. Lawyer N. says the authorities in Italy
+    have inherited the traditions of a bad regime. To do evil to
+    prevent others from doing it is horrible. But in this case it is
+    doing evil to prevent others from doing good. I am satisfied that
+    Bruno is being tempted to betray you. If I could only take his
+    place! _Would their plots have any effect upon me?_ I should die
+    first.
+
+    "And now about my friend. I can hardly hold my pen when I write of
+    her. What you say is so good, so noble. I might have known what
+    you would think, and yet....
+
+    "Dearest, how can I go on? Can't you divine what I wish to tell
+    you? Your letter compels me to confess. Come what may, I can hold
+    off no longer. Didn't you guess who my poor friend was? I thought
+    you would remember our former correspondence when you pretended to
+    love somebody else. You haven't thought of it apparently, and that
+    is only another proof--a bitter sweet one this time--of your love
+    and trust. You put me so high that you never imagined that I could
+    be speaking of myself. I was, and my poor friend is my poor self.
+
+    "It has made me suffer all along to see what a pedestal of purity
+    you placed me on. The letters you wrote before you told me you
+    loved me, when you were holding off, made me ashamed because I
+    knew I was not worthy. More than once when you spoke of me as so
+    good, I couldn't look into your eyes. I felt an impulse to cry,
+    'No, no, no,' and to smirch the picture you were painting. Yet how
+    could I do it? What woman who loves a man can break the idol in
+    his heart? She can only struggle to lift herself up to it. That
+    was what I tried to do, and it is not my fault that it is not
+    done.
+
+    "I have been much to blame. There were moments when duty should
+    have made me speak. One such moment was before we married. Do you
+    remember that I tried to tell you something? You were kind, and
+    you would not listen. 'The past is past,' you said, and I was only
+    too happy to gloss it over. You didn't know what I wished to say,
+    or you would not have silenced me. I knew, and I have suffered
+    ever since. I _had_ to speak, and you see how I have spoken. And
+    now I feel as if I had tricked you. I have got you to commit
+    yourself to opinions and to a line of conduct. Forgive me! I will
+    not hold you to anything. Take it all back, and I shall have no
+    right to complain.
+
+    "Besides, there are features in my own case which I did not
+    present to you in my friend's. One of them was the fear of being
+    found out. Dearest, I must not shield myself behind the sweet
+    excuse you find for me. I _did_ think of the other man. It wasn't
+    that I was afraid that he would intimidate me, and so corrupt my
+    love. Not all the tyrannies of the world could do that now. But if
+    from revenge or a desire to wrest me away from you by making you
+    cast me off he told you his story before I had told you mine! That
+    was a day-long and night-long terror, and now I confess it lest
+    you should think me better than I am.
+
+    "Another thing you did not know. Dearest, I would give my life to
+    spare you the explanation, but I must tell you everything. You
+    know who the man is, and it is true before God that he alone was
+    to blame. But my own fault came afterwards. Instead of cutting him
+    off, I continued to be on good terms with him, to take the income
+    he allowed me from my father's estate, and even to think of him as
+    my future husband. And when your speech in the piazza seemed to
+    endanger my prospects I set out to destroy you.
+
+    "It is terrible. How can I tell you and not die of shame? Now you
+    know how much I deceived you, and the infamy of my purpose makes
+    me afraid to ask for pardon. To think that I was no better than a
+    Delilah when I met you first! But Heaven stepped in and saved you.
+    How you worked upon me! First, you re-created my father for me,
+    and I saw him as he really was, and not as I had been taught to
+    think of him. Then you gave me my soul, and I saw myself. Darling,
+    do not hate me. Your great heart could not be capable of a cruelty
+    like that if you knew what I suffered.
+
+    "Last of all love came, and I wanted to hold on to it. Oh, how I
+    wanted to hold on to it! That was how it came about that I went on
+    and on without telling you. It was a sort of gambling, a kind of
+    delirium. Everything that happened I took as a penance. Come
+    poverty, shame, neglect, what matter? It was only wiping out a
+    sinful past, and bringing me nearer to you. But when at last he
+    who had injured me threatened to injure you _through me_, I was in
+    despair. You could never imagine what mad notions came to me then.
+    I even thought of killing myself, to end and cover up everything.
+    But no, I could not break your heart like that. Besides, the very
+    act would have told you something, and it was terrible to think
+    that when I was dead you might find out all this pitiful story.
+
+    "Now you know everything, dearest. I have kept nothing back. As
+    you see, I am not only my poor friend, but some one worse--myself.
+    Can you forgive me? I dare not ask it. But put me out of suspense.
+    Write. Or better still, telegraph. One word--only one. It will be
+    enough.
+
+    "I would love to send you my love, but to-night I dare not. I have
+    loved you from the first, and I can never do anything but love
+    you, whatever happens. I think you would forgive me if you could
+    realise that I am in the world only to love you, and that the
+    worst of my offences comes of loving you more than reason or
+    honour itself. Whatever you do, I am yours, and I can only
+    consecrate my life to you.
+
+    "It is daybreak, and the cross of St. Peter's is hanging spectral
+    white above the mists of morning. Is it a symbol of hope, I
+    wonder? The dawn is coming up from the south-east. It would travel
+    quicker to the north-west if it loved you as much as I do. I have
+    been writing this letter over and over again all night long. Do
+    you remember the letter you made me burn, the one containing all
+    your secrets? Here is a letter containing mine--but how much
+    meaner and more perilous! Your poor unhappy girl,           ROMA."
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+Next day Roma removed into her new quarters. A few trunks containing her
+personal belongings, the picture of her father and Elena's Madonna, were
+all she took with her. A broker glanced at the rest of her goods and
+gave a price for the lot. Most of the plaster casts in the studio were
+broken up and carted away. The fountain, being of marble, had to be put
+in a dark cellar under the lodge of the old Garibaldian. Only one part
+of it was carried upstairs. This was the mould for the bust of Rossi and
+the block of stone for the head of Christ.
+
+Except for her dog, Roma went alone to the Piazza Navona, Felice having
+returned to the Baron and Natalina being dismissed. The old woman was to
+clean and cook for her and Roma was to shop for herself. It didn't take
+the neighbours long to sum up the situation. She was Rossi's wife. They
+began to call her Signora.
+
+Coming to live in Rossi's home was a sweet experience. The room seemed
+to be full of his presence. The sitting-room with its piano, its
+phonograph, and its portraits brought back the very tones of his voice.
+The bedroom was at first a sanctuary, and she could not bring herself to
+occupy it until she had set upon the little Madonna. Then it became a
+bower, and to sleep in it brought a tingling sense which she had never
+felt before.
+
+Living in the midst of Rossi's surroundings, she felt as if she were
+discovering something new about him every minute. His squirrels on the
+roof made her think of him as a boy, and his birds, which were nesting,
+and therefore singing from their little swelling throats the whole day
+long, made her thrill and think of both of them. His presents from other
+women were a source of almost feverish interest. Some came from England
+and America, and were sent by women who had never even seen his face.
+They made her happy, they made her proud, they made her jealous.
+
+It was Rossi, Rossi, always Rossi! Every night on going to bed in her
+poor quarters her last thought was a love-prayer in the darkness, very
+simple and foolish and childlike, that he would love her always,
+whatever she was, and whatever the world might say or evil men might do.
+
+This mood lasted for a week and then it began to break. At the back of
+her happiness there lay anxiety about her letter. She counted up the
+hours since she posted it, and reckoned the time it would take to
+receive a reply. If Rossi telegraphed she might hear from him in three
+days. She did not hear.
+
+"He thinks it better to write," she told herself. Of course he would
+write immediately, and in five days she would receive his reply. On the
+fifth day she called on the porter at the convent. He had nothing for
+"Sister Angelica."
+
+"There must be snow on the Alps, and therefore the mails are delayed,"
+she thought, and she went down to Piale's, where they post up telegrams.
+There _was_ snow in Switzerland. It was just as she imagined, and her
+letter would be delivered in the morning. It was not delivered in the
+morning.
+
+"How stupid of me! It would be Sunday when my letter reached London."
+She had not counted on the postal arrangements of the English Sabbath.
+One day more, only one, and she would hear from Rossi and be happy.
+
+But one day went by, then another and another, and still no letter came.
+Her big heart began to fail and the rainbow in the sky of her life to
+pale away. The singing of the birds on the roof pained her now. How
+could they crack their little throats like that? It was raining and the
+sky was dark.
+
+Then the Garibaldian and his old wife came upstairs with scared looks
+and with papers in their hands. They were summoned to give evidence at
+Bruno's trial. It was to take place in three days.
+
+"Well, I'm deaf, praise the saints! and they can't make much of me,"
+said the old woman.
+
+Roma put on her simple black straw hat with a quill through it and set
+off for the office of the lawyer, Napoleon Fuselli.
+
+"Just writing to you, dear lady," said the great man, dropping back in
+his chair. "Sorry to say my labour has been in vain. It is useless to go
+further. Our man has confessed."
+
+"Confessed?" Roma clutched at the lapel of her coat.
+
+"Confessed, and denounced his accomplices."
+
+"His accomplices?"
+
+"Rossi in particular, whom he has implicated in a serious conspiracy."
+
+"What conspiracy?"
+
+"That is not yet disclosed. We shall hear all about it the day after
+to-morrow."
+
+"But why? With what object?"
+
+"Pardon! Apparently they have promised the clemency of the court, and
+hence in one sense our object is achieved. It is hardly necessary to
+defend the man. The authorities will see to that for us."
+
+"What will be the result?"
+
+"Probably a trial in contumacy. As soon as Parliament rises for Easter
+Rossi will be summoned to present himself within ten days. But you will
+be the first to know all about it, you know."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"The summons will be posted upon the door of the house he lived in, and
+on the door of any other house he is known to have frequented."
+
+"But if he never hears of it, or if he takes no heed?"
+
+"He will be tried all the same, and when he is a condemned man his
+sentence will be printed in black and posted up in the same places."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then Rossi's life in Rome will be at an end. He will be interdicted
+from all public offices and expelled from Parliament."
+
+"And Bruno?"
+
+"He will be a free man the following morning."
+
+Roma went home dazed and dejected. A letter was waiting for her. It was
+from the Director of the Roman prisons. Although the regulations
+stipulated that only relations should visit prisoners, except under
+special conditions, the Director had no objection to Bruno Rocco's
+former employer seeing him at the ordinary bi-monthly hour for visitors
+to-morrow, Sunday afternoon.
+
+At two o'clock next day Roma set off for Regina C[oe]li.
+
+
+                                XV
+
+The visiting-room of Regina C[oe]li is constructed on the principle of a
+rat-trap. It is an oblong room divided into three compartments
+longitudinally, the partition walls being composed of wire and
+resembling cages. The middle compartment is occupied by the armed warder
+in charge who walks up and down; the compartment on the prison side is
+divided into many narrow boxes each occupied by a prisoner, and the
+compartment on the world side is similarly divided into sections each
+occupied by a visitor.
+
+When Roma entered this room she was deafened by a roar of voices. Thirty
+prisoners and as many of their friends were trying to talk at the same
+time across the compartment in the middle, in which the warder was
+walking. Each batch of friends and prisoners had fifteen minutes for
+their interview, and everybody was shouting so as to be heard above the
+rest.
+
+A feeling of moral and physical nausea took possession of Roma when she
+was shown into this place. After some minutes of the hellish tumult she
+had asked to see the Director. The message was taken upstairs, and the
+Director came down to speak to her.
+
+"Do you expect me to speak to my friend in this place and under these
+conditions?" she asked.
+
+"It is the usual place, and these are the usual conditions," he
+answered.
+
+"If you are unable to allow me to speak to him in some other place under
+some other conditions, I must go to the Minister of the Interior."
+
+The Director bowed. "That will be unnecessary," he said. "There is a
+room reserved for special circumstances," and, calling a warder, he gave
+the necessary instructions. He was a good man in the toils of a vicious
+system.
+
+A few minutes afterwards Roma was alone in a small bare room with Bruno,
+except for two warders who stood in the door. She was shocked at the
+change in him. His cheeks, which used to be full and almost florid,
+were shrunken and pale; a short grizzly beard had grown over his chin,
+and his eyes, which had been frank and humorous, were fierce and
+evasive. Six weeks in prison had made a different man of him, and, like
+a dog which has been changed by sickness and neglect, he knew it and
+growled.
+
+"What do you want with me?" he said angrily, as Roma looked at him
+without speaking.
+
+She flushed and begged his pardon, and at that his jaw trembled and he
+turned his head away.
+
+"I trust you received the note I sent in to you, Bruno?"
+
+"When? What note?"
+
+"On the day after your arrest, saying your dear ones should be cared for
+and comforted."
+
+"And were they?"
+
+"Yes. Then you didn't receive it?"
+
+"I was under punishment from the first."
+
+"I also paid for a separate cell with food and light. Did you get that?"
+
+"No, I was nearly all the time on bread and water."
+
+His sulkiness was breaking down and he was showing some agitation. She
+lifted her large dark eyes on him and said in a soft voice:
+
+"Poor Bruno! No wonder they have made you say things."
+
+His jaw trembled more than ever. "No use talking of that," he said.
+
+"Mr. Rossi will be the first to feel for you."
+
+He turned his head and looked at her with a look of pity. "She doesn't
+know," he thought. "Why should I tell her? After all, she's in the same
+case as myself. What hurts me will hurt her. She has been good to me.
+Why should I make her suffer?"
+
+"If they've told you falsehoods, Bruno, in order to play on your
+jealousy and inspire revenge...." "Where's Rossi?" he said sharply.
+
+"In England."
+
+"And where's Elena?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He wagged his poor head with a wag of wisdom, and for a moment his
+clouded and stupefied brain was proud of itself.
+
+"It was wrong of Elena to go away without saying where she was going to,
+and Mr. Rossi is in despair about her."
+
+"You believe that?"
+
+"Indeed I do."
+
+These words staggered him, and he felt mean and small compared to this
+woman. "If she can believe in them why can't I?" he thought. But after a
+moment he smiled a pitiful smile and said largely, "You don't know,
+Donna Roma. But _I_ do, and they don't hoodwink me. A poor fellow
+here--a convict, he works on the Gazette and hears all the news--he told
+me everything."
+
+"What's his name?" said Roma.
+
+"Number 333, penal part. He used to occupy the next cell."
+
+"Then you never saw his face?"
+
+"No, but I heard his voice, and I could have sworn I knew it."
+
+"Was it the voice of Charles Minghelli?"
+
+"Charles Ming...."
+
+"Time's up," said one of the warders at the door.
+
+"Bruno," said Roma, rising, "I know that Charles Minghelli, who is now
+an agent of the police, has been in this prison in the disguise of a
+prisoner. I also know that after he was dismissed from the embassy in
+London he asked Mr. Rossi to assist him to assassinate the Prime
+Minister."
+
+"Right about," cried the warder, and with a bewildered expression the
+prisoner turned to go. Roma followed him through the open courtyard, and
+until he reached the iron gate he did not lift his head. Then he faced
+round with eyes full of tears, but full of fire as well, and raising one
+arm he cried in a resolute voice:
+
+"All right, sister! Leave it to me, damn me! I'll see it through."
+
+The private visiting-room had one disadvantage. Every word that passed
+was repeated to the Director. Later the same day the Director wrote to
+the Royal Commissioner:
+
+"Sorry to say the man Rocco has asked for an interview to retract his
+denunciation. I have refused it, and he has been violent with the chief
+warder. But inspired by a sentiment of justice I feel it my duty to warn
+you that I have been misled, that my instructions have been badly
+interpreted, and that I cannot hold myself responsible for the document
+I sent you."
+
+The Commissioner sent this letter on to the Minister of the Interior,
+who immediately called up the Chief of Police.
+
+"Commendatore," said the Baron, "what was the offence for which young
+Charles Minghelli was dismissed from the embassy in London?"
+
+"He was suspected of forgery, your Excellency."
+
+"The warrant for his arrest was drawn out but never executed?"
+
+"That is so, and we still hold it at the office...."
+
+"Commendatore!"
+
+"Your Excellency?"
+
+"Let the papers that were taken at the domiciliary visitation in the
+apartments of Deputy Rossi and his man Bruno be gone through again--let
+Minghelli go through them. You follow me?"
+
+"Perfectly, Excellency."
+
+"Let your Delegate see if there is not a letter among them from Rossi to
+Bruno's wife--you understand?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"If such a letter can be found let it be sent to the Under Prefect to
+add to his report for to-morrow's trial, and let the Public Prosecutor
+read it to the prisoner."
+
+"It shall be done, your Excellency."
+
+
+                                XVI
+
+At eight o'clock the next morning Roma was going into the courtyard of
+the Castle of St. Angelo when she met the carriage of the Prime Minister
+coming out. The coachman was stopped from inside, and the Baron himself
+alighted.
+
+"You look tired, my child," he said.
+
+"I _am_ tired," she answered.
+
+"Hardly more than a month, yet so many things have happened!"
+
+"Oh, that! That's nothing--nothing whatever."
+
+"Why should you pass through these privations? Roma, if I allowed these
+misfortunes to befall you it was only to let you feel what others could
+do for you. But I am the same as ever, and you have only to stretch out
+your hand and I am here to lighten your lot."
+
+"All that is over now. It is no use speaking as you spoke before. You
+are talking to another woman."
+
+"Strange mystery of a woman's love! That she who set out to destroy her
+slanderer should become his slave! If he were only worthy of it!"
+
+"He is worthy of it."
+
+"If you should hear that he is not worthy--that he has even been untrue
+to you?"
+
+"I should think it is a falsehood, a contemptible falsehood."
+
+"But if you had proof, substantial proof, the proof of his own pen?"
+
+"Good-morning! I must go."
+
+"My child, what have I always told you? You will give the man up at last
+and carry out your first intention."
+
+With a deep bow and a scarcely perceptible smile the Baron turned to the
+open door of his carriage. Roma flushed up angrily and went on, but the
+poisoned arrow had gone home.
+
+The military tribunal had begun its session. A ticket which Roma
+presented at the door admitted her to the well of the court where the
+advocates were sitting. The advocate Fuselli made a place for her by his
+side. It was a quiet moment and her entrance attracted attention. The
+judges in their red armchairs at the green-covered horse-shoe table
+looked up from their portfolios, and there was some whispering beyond
+the wooden bar where the public were huddled together. One other face
+had followed her, but at first she dared not look at that. It was the
+face of the prisoner in his prison clothes sitting between two
+Carabineers.
+
+The secretary read the indictment. Bruno was charged not only with
+participation in the riot of the 1st of February, but also with being a
+promoter of associations designed to change violently the constitution
+of the state. It was a long document, and the secretary read it slowly
+and not very distinctly.
+
+When the indictment came to an end the Public Prosecutor rose to expound
+the accusation, and to mention the clauses of the Code under which the
+prisoner's crime had to be considered. He was a young captain of
+cavalry, with restless eyes and a twirled-up moustache. His long cloak
+hung over his chair, his light gloves lay on the table by his side, and
+his sword clanked as he made graceful gestures. He was an elegant
+speaker, much preoccupied about beautiful phrases, and obviously anxious
+to conciliate the judges.
+
+"Illustrious gentlemen of the tribunal," he began, and then went on
+with a compliment to the King, a flourish to the name of the Prime
+Minister, a word of praise to the army, and finally a scathing satire on
+the subversive schemes which it was desired to set up in place of
+existing institutions. The most crushing denunciation of the delirious
+idea which had led to the unhappy insurrection was the crude explanation
+of its aims. A universal republic founded on the principles enunciated
+in the Lord's Prayer! Thrones, armies, navies, frontiers, national
+barriers, all to be abolished! So simple! So easy! So childlike! But
+alas, so absurd! So entirely oblivious of the great principles of
+political economy and international law, and of impulses and instincts
+profoundly sculptured in the heart of man!
+
+After various little sallies which made his fellow-officers laugh and
+the judges smile, the showy person wiped his big moustache with a silk
+handkerchief, and came to Bruno. This unhappy man was not one of the
+greater delinquents who, by their intelligence, had urged on the
+ignorant crowd. He was merely a silly and perhaps drunken person, who if
+taken away from the wine-shop and put into uniform would make a valiant
+soldier. The creature was one of the human dogs of our curious species.
+His political faith was inscribed with one word only--Rossi. He would
+not ask for severe punishment on such a deluded being, but he would
+request the court to consider the case as a means of obtaining proof
+against the dark if foolish minds (fit subjects for Lombroso) which are
+always putting the people into opposition with their King, their
+constitution, and the great heads of government.
+
+The sword clanked again as the young soldier sat down. Then for the
+first time Roma looked over at Bruno. His big rugged face was twisted
+into an expression of contempt, and somehow the "human dog of our
+curious species," sitting in his prison clothes between the soldiers,
+made the elegant officer look like a pet pug.
+
+"Bruno Rocco, stand up," said the president. "You are a Roman, aren't
+you?"
+
+"Yes, I am--I'm a Roman of Rome," said Bruno.
+
+The witnesses were called. First a Carabineer to prove Bruno's violence.
+Then another Carabineer, and another, and another, with the same object.
+After each of the Carabineers had given his evidence the president asked
+the prisoner if he had any questions to ask the witnesses.
+
+"None whatever. What they say is true. I admit it," he said.
+
+At last he grew impatient and cried out, "I admit it, I tell you. What's
+the good of going on?"
+
+The next witness was the Chief of Police. Commendatore Angelelli was
+called to prove that the cause of the revolt was not the dearness of
+bread but the formation of subversive associations, of which the
+"Republic of Man" was undoubtedly the strongest and most virulent. The
+prisoner, however, was not one of the directing set, and the police knew
+him only as a sort of watch-dog for the Honourable Rossi.
+
+"The man's a fool. Why don't you go on with the trial?" cried Bruno.
+
+"Silence," cried the usher of the court, but the prisoner only laughed
+out loud.
+
+Roma looked at Bruno again. There was something about the man which she
+had never seen before, something more than the mere spirit of defiance,
+something terrible and tremendous.
+
+"Francesca Maria Mariotti," cried the usher, and the old deaf mother of
+Bruno's wife was brought into court. She wore a coloured handkerchief on
+her head as usual, and two shawls over her shoulders. Being a relative
+of the prisoner, she was not sworn.
+
+"Your name and your father's name?" said the president.
+
+"Francesca Maria Mariotti," she answered.
+
+"I said your father's name."
+
+"Seventy-five, your Excellency."
+
+"I asked you for your father's name."
+
+"None at all, your Excellency."
+
+A Carabineer explained that the woman was nearly stone deaf, whereupon
+the president, who was irritated by the laughter his questions had
+provoked, ordered the woman to be removed.
+
+"Tommaso Mariotti," said the president, after the preliminary
+interrogations, "you are porter at the Piazza Navona, and will be able
+to say if meetings of political associations were held there, if the
+prisoner took part in them, and who were the organising authorities. Now
+answer me, were meetings ever held in your house?"
+
+The old man turned his pork-pie hat in his hand, and made no answer.
+
+"Answer me. We cannot sit here all day doing nothing."
+
+"It's the Eternal City, Excellency--we can take our time," said the old
+man.
+
+"Answer the president instantly," said the usher. "Don't you know he can
+punish you if you don't?"
+
+At that the Garibaldian's eyes became moist, and he looked at the
+judges. "Generals," he said, "I am only an old man, not much good to
+anybody, but I was a soldier myself once. I was one of the 'Thousand,'
+the 'Brave Thousand' they called us, and I shed my blood for my country.
+Now I am more than threescore years and ten, and the rest of my days are
+numbered. Do you want me for the sake of what is left of them to betray
+my comrades?"
+
+"Next witness," said the president, and at the same moment a thick,
+half-stifled voice came from the bench of the accused.
+
+"Why the ---- don't you go on with the trial?"
+
+"Prisoner," said the president, "if you continue to make these
+interruptions I shall stop the trial and order you to be flogged."
+
+Bruno answered with a peal of laughter. The president--he was a
+bald-headed man with the heavy jaw of a bloodhound--looked at him
+attentively for a moment, and then said to the men below:
+
+"Go on."
+
+The next witness was the Director of Regina C[oe]li. He deposed that the
+prisoner had made a statement to him which he had taken down in writing.
+This statement amounted to a denunciation of the Deputy David Rossi as
+the real author of the crime of which he with others was charged.
+
+After the denunciation had been read the president asked the prisoner if
+he had any questions to put to the witness, and thereupon Bruno cried in
+a loud voice:
+
+"Of course I have. It is exactly what I've been waiting for."
+
+He had risen to his feet, kicked over a chair which stood in front of
+him, and folded his arms across his breast.
+
+"Ask him," said Bruno, "if he sent for me late at night and promised my
+pardon if I would denounce David Rossi."
+
+"It was not so," said the Director. "All I did was to advise him not to
+observe a useless silence which could only condemn him to further
+imprisonment if by speaking the truth he could save himself and serve
+the interests of justice."
+
+"Ask him," said Bruno, "if the denunciation he speaks of was not
+dictated by himself."
+
+"The prisoner," said the Director, "made the denunciation voluntarily,
+and I rose from my bed to receive it at his urgent request."
+
+"Ask him if I said one word to denounce David Rossi."
+
+"The prisoner had made statements to a fellow-prisoner, and these were
+embodied in the document he signed."
+
+The advocate Fuselli interposed. "Then the Court is to understand that
+the Director who dictated this denunciation knew nothing from the
+prisoner himself?"
+
+The Director hesitated, stammered, and finally admitted that it was so.
+"I was inspired by a sentiment of justice," he said. "I acted from
+duty."
+
+"This man fed me on bread and water," cried Bruno. "He put me in the
+punishment cells and tortured me in the strait-waistcoat with pains and
+sufferings like Jesus Christ's, and when he had reduced my body and
+destroyed my soul he dictated a denunciation of my dearest friend and my
+unconscious fingers signed it."
+
+"Don't shout so loud," said the president.
+
+"I'll shout as loud as I like," said Bruno, and everybody turned to look
+at him. It was useless to protest. Something seemed to say that no power
+on earth could touch a man in a mood like that.
+
+The next witness was the chief warder. He deposed that he was present at
+the denunciation, that it was made voluntarily, and that no pressure
+whatever was put upon the prisoner.
+
+"Ask him," cried Bruno, "if on Sunday afternoon, when I went into his
+cabinet to withdraw the denunciation, he refused to let me."
+
+"It is not true," said the witness.
+
+"You liar," cried Bruno, "you know it is true; and when I told you that
+you were making me drag an innocent man to the galleys I struck you, and
+the mark of my fist is on your forehead still. There it is, as red as a
+Cardinal, while the rest of your face is as white as a Pope."
+
+The president no longer tried to restrain Bruno. There was something in
+the man's face that was beyond reproof. It was the outraged spirit of
+Justice.
+
+The chief warder went on to say that at various times he had received
+reports that Rocco was communicating important facts to a
+fellow-prisoner.
+
+"Where is this fellow-prisoner? Is he at the disposition of the court?"
+said the president.
+
+"I'm afraid he has since been set at liberty," said the witness,
+whereupon Bruno laughed uproariously, and pointing to some one in the
+well, he shouted:
+
+"There he is--there! The dandy in cuffs and collar. His name is
+Minghelli."
+
+"Call him," said the president, and Minghelli was sworn and examined.
+
+"Until recently you were a prisoner in Regina C[oe]li, and have just
+been pardoned for public services?"
+
+"That is true, your Excellency."
+
+"It's a lie," cried Bruno.
+
+Minghelli leaned on the witness's chair, caressed his small moustache,
+and told his story. He had occupied the next cell to the prisoner, and
+talked with him in the usual language of prisoners. The prisoner had
+spoken of a certain great man and then of a certain great act, and that
+the great man had gone to England to prepare for it. He understood the
+great man to be the Deputy Rossi, and the great act to be the overthrow
+of the constitution and the assassination of the King.
+
+"You son of a priest," cried Bruno, "you lie!"
+
+"Bruno Rocco," said the president, "do not agitate yourself. You are
+under the protection of the law. Be calm and tell us your own story."
+
+
+                                XVII
+
+"Your Excellency," said Bruno, "this man is a witness by profession, and
+he was put into the next cell to torture me and make me denounce my
+friends. I didn't see his face, and I didn't know who he was until
+afterwards, and so he tore me to pieces. He said he was a proof-reader
+on the Official Gazette and heard everything. When my heart was bleeding
+for the death of my poor little boy--only seven years of age, such a
+curly-headed little fellow, like a sunbeam in a fog, killed in the
+riot, your Excellency--he poisoned my mind about my wife, and said she
+had run away with Rossi. It was a lie, but I was brought down by
+flogging and bread and water and I believed it, because I was mad and my
+soul was exhausted and dead. But when I found out who he was I tried to
+take back my denunciation, and they wouldn't let me. Your Excellency, I
+tell you the truth. Everybody should tell the truth here. I alone am
+guilty, and if I have accused anybody else I ask pardon of God. As for
+this man, he is an assassin and I can prove it. He used to be at the
+embassy in London, and when he was sacked he came to Mr. Rossi and
+proposed to assassinate the Prime Minister. Mr. Rossi flung him out of
+the house, and that was the beginning of everything."
+
+"This is not true," said Minghelli, red as the gills of a turkey.
+
+"Isn't it? Give me the cross, and let me swear the man a liar," cried
+Bruno.
+
+Roma was breathing hard and rising to her feet, but the advocate Fuselli
+restrained her and rose himself. In six sentences he summarised the
+treatment of Bruno in prison, and denounced it as worthy of the
+cruellest epochs of tyrannical domination, in which men otherwise
+honourable could become demons in order to save the dynasty and the
+institutions and to make their own careers.
+
+"Mr. President," he cried, "I call on you in the name of humanity to say
+that justice in Italy has nothing to do with a barbarous system which
+aims at obtaining denunciations through jealousy and justice through
+revenge."
+
+The president was deeply moved. "I have made a solemn promise under the
+shadow of that venerable image"--he pointed to the effigy above him--"to
+administer justice in this case, and to the last I will do my duty."
+
+The Public Prosecutor rose again and obtained permission to interrogate
+the prisoner.
+
+"You say the witness Minghelli told you that your wife had fled with the
+Honourable Rossi?"
+
+"He did, and it was a lie, like all the rest of it."
+
+"How do you know it was a lie?"
+
+Bruno made no answer, and the young officer took up a letter from his
+portfolio.
+
+"Do you know the Honourable Rossi's handwriting?"
+
+"Do I know my own ugly fist?"
+
+"Is that the Honourable Rossi's writing?" said the officer, handing the
+envelope to the usher to be shown to Bruno.
+
+"It is," said Bruno.
+
+"Sure of it?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You see it is a letter addressed to your wife?"
+
+"I see. But you needn't go on washing the donkey's head, Mister--I know
+what you are getting at."
+
+"You must not speak like that to him, Rocco," said the president.
+"Remember, he is the honourable representative of the law."
+
+"Mustn't I, Excellency? Then tell his honourableness that David Rossi
+and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of
+that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs."
+
+Saying this, Bruno flung the letter back on to the table.
+
+"Don't you want to read it?"
+
+"Not I! It's somebody else's correspondence, and I'm not an honourable
+representative of the law."
+
+"Then permit me to read it to you," said the Public Prosecutor, and
+taking the letter out of the envelope he began in a loud voice:
+
+"'Dearest Elena....'"
+
+"That's nothing," Bruno interrupted. "They're like brother and sister, I
+tell you."
+
+The Public Prosecutor went on reading:
+
+"'I continue to be overwhelmed with grief for the death of our poor
+little Joseph.'"
+
+"That's right! That's David Rossi. He loved the boy the same as if he
+had been his own son. Go on."
+
+"'... Our child--your child--my child, Elena.'"
+
+"Nothing wrong there. Don't try to make mischief of that," cried Bruno.
+
+"'But now that the boy is gone, and Bruno is in prison, perhaps for
+years, the obstacles must be removed which have hitherto prevented you
+from joining your life to mine and living for me, as I have always lived
+for you. Come to me then, my dear one, my beloved....'"
+
+Here Bruno, who had been stepping forward at every word, snatched the
+letter out of the Public Prosecutor's hand.
+
+"Stop that! Don't go reading out of the back of your head," he cried.
+
+No one protested, everybody felt that whatever he did this injured man
+must be left alone. Roma felt a roaring in her ears, and for some
+minutes she could scarcely command herself. In a vague way she was
+conscious of the same struggle in her own heart as was going on in the
+heart of Bruno. This, then, was what the Baron referred to when he spoke
+of Rossi being untrue to her, and of the proof of his disloyalty in his
+own handwriting.
+
+Bruno, who was running his eyes over the letter, read parts of it aloud
+in a low husky voice:
+
+"'And now that the boy is gone and Bruno is in prison ... perhaps for
+years ... the obstacles must be removed....'"
+
+He stopped, looked up, and stared about him. His face had undergone an
+awful change. Then he returned to the letter, and in jerky sentences he
+read again:
+
+"'Come to me then ... my dear one ... my beloved....'"
+
+Until that moment an evil spirit in Roma had been saying to her, in
+spite of herself: "Can it be possible that while you have been going
+through all those privations for his sake he has been consoling himself
+with another woman?" Impossible! The letter was a manifest imposture.
+She wouldn't believe a word of it.
+
+But Bruno was still in the toils of his temptation. "Look here," he
+said, lifting a pitiful face. "What with the bread and water and the
+lashes I don't know that my head isn't light, and I'm fancying I see
+things...."
+
+The paper of the letter was crackling in his hand, and his husky voice
+was breaking. Save for these sounds and the tramp--tramp--tramp of the
+soldiers drilling outside, there was a dead silence in the court.
+
+"You are not fancying at all, Rocco," said the Public Prosecutor. "We
+are all sorry for you, and I am sure the illustrious gentlemen of the
+tribunal pity you. Your comrade, your master, the man you have followed
+and trusted, is false to you. He is a traitor to his friend, his
+country, and his King. The denunciation you made in prison is true in
+substance and in fact. I advise you to adhere to it, and to cast
+yourself on the clemency of the court."
+
+"Here--you--shut up your head and let a man think," said Bruno.
+
+Roma tried to rise. She could not. Then she tried to cry out something,
+but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Would Bruno break down at
+the last moment?
+
+Bruno, whose face was convulsed with agony, began to laugh in a
+delirious way. "So my friend is false to me, is he? Very well, I'll be
+revenged."
+
+He reeled a little and the letter dropped from his hand, floated a
+moment in the air, and fell to the ground a pace or two farther on.
+
+"Yes, by God, I'll be revenged," he cried, and he laughed again.
+
+He stopped, lifted one leg, seemed to pull at his boot, and again stood
+erect.
+
+"I always knew the hour would come when I should find myself in a tight
+place, and I've always kept something about me to help me to get out of
+it. Here it is now."
+
+In an instant, before any one could be aware of what he was doing, he
+had uncorked a small bottle which he held in his hand and swallowed the
+contents.
+
+"Long live David Rossi!" he cried, and he flung the empty bottle over
+his head.
+
+Everybody was on his feet in a moment. It was too late. In thirty
+seconds the poison had begun its work, and Bruno was reeling in the arms
+of the Carabineers. Somebody called for a doctor. Somebody else called
+for a priest.
+
+"That's all right," said Bruno. "God is a good old saint. He'll look
+after a poor devil like me." Then he began to sing:--
+
+    "The tombs are uncovered,
+      The dead arise,
+    The martyrs are rising
+      Before our eyes."
+
+"Long live David Rossi!" he cried again, and at the next moment he was
+being carried out of court.
+
+In the tumult that ensued everybody was standing in the well of the
+judges' horse-shoe table. The deaf old woman, with her shawls slipping
+off her shoulders, was wringing her hands and crying. "God will think of
+this," she said. The Garibaldian was gazing vacantly out of his rheumy
+eyes and saying nothing. Roma, who had recovered control of herself, was
+looking at the letter, which she had picked up from the floor.
+
+[Illustration: "GOD WILL LOOK AFTER A POOR DEVIL LIKE ME."]
+
+"Mr. President," she cried over the heads of the others, "this letter is
+not in Mr. Rossi's handwriting. It is a forgery. I am ready to prove
+it."
+
+At that moment one of the Carabineers came back to tell the judges that
+all was over.
+
+"Gone!" said one after another, more often with a motion of the mouth
+than with the voice.
+
+The president was deeply agitated. "This court stands adjourned," he
+said, "but I take the Almighty to witness that I intend to ascertain all
+responsibility in this case and to bring it home to the guilty ones,
+whosoever and whatsoever they may be."
+
+
+                                XVIII
+
+    "MY DEAR DAVID ROSSI,--You will know all about it before this
+    letter reaches you. It is one of those scandals of the law that
+    are telegraphed to every part of the civilised world. Poor Bruno!
+    Yet no, not poor--great, glorious, heroic Bruno! He ended like an
+    old Roman, and killed himself rather than betray his friend. When
+    they played upon his jealousy, and tempted him by a forged
+    letter, he cried, 'Long live David Rossi!' and died. Oh, it was
+    wonderful. The memory of that moment will be with me always like
+    the protecting and strengthening hand of God. I never knew until
+    to-day what human nature is capable of. It is divine.
+
+    "But how mean and little I feel when I think of all I went through
+    in the court this morning! I was really undergoing the same
+    tortures as Bruno, the same doubt and the same agony. And even
+    when I saw through the whole miserable machination of lying and
+    duplicity I was actually in terror for Bruno lest he should betray
+    you in the end. Betray you! His voice when he uttered that last
+    cry rings in my ears still. It was a voice of triumph--triumph
+    over deception, over temptation, over jealousy, and over self.
+
+    "Don't think, David Rossi, that Bruno died of a broken heart, and
+    don't think he went out of the world believing that you were
+    false. I feel sure he came to that court with the full intention
+    of doing what he did. All through the trial there was something in
+    his bearing which left the impression of a purpose unrevealed.
+    Everybody felt it, and even the judges ceased to protest against
+    his outbursts. The poor prisoner in convict clothes, with
+    dishevelled hair and bare neck, made every one else look paltry
+    and small. Behind him was something mightier than himself. It was
+    Death. Then remember his last cry, and ask yourself what he meant
+    by it. He meant loyalty, love, faith, fidelity. He intended to
+    say, 'You've beaten me, but no matter; I believe in him, and
+    follow him to the last.'
+
+    "As you see, I am here in your own quarters, but I keep in touch
+    with 'Sister Angelica,' and still have no answer to my letter. I
+    invent all manner of excuses to account for your silence. You are
+    busy, you are on a journey, you are waiting for the right moment
+    to reply to me at length. If I could only continue to think so,
+    how happy I should be! But I cannot deceive myself any longer.
+
+    "It is perhaps natural that you should find it hard to forgive me,
+    but you might at least write and put me out of suspense. I think
+    you would do so if you knew how much I suffer. Your great soul
+    cannot intend to torture me. To-night the burden of things is
+    almost more than I can bear, and I am nearly heartbroken. It is my
+    dark hour, dearest, and if you had to say you could never forgive
+    me, I think I could easier reconcile myself to that. I have been
+    so happy since I began to love you; I shall always love you even
+    if I have to lose you, and I shall never, never be sorry for
+    anything that has occurred.
+
+    "Not receiving any new letters from you, I am going back on the
+    old ones, and there is a letter of only two months ago in which
+    you speak of just such a case as mine. May I quote what you say?
+
+    "'Yet even if she were not so (i.e. worthy of your love and
+    friendship), even if there were, as you say, a fault in her, who
+    am I that I should judge her harshly? ... I reject the monstrous
+    theory that while a man may redeem the past a woman never can....
+    And if she has sinned as I have sinned, and suffered as I have
+    suffered, I will pray for strength to say, 'Because I love her we
+    are one, and we stand or fall together.'
+
+    "It is so beautiful that I am even happy while my pen copies the
+    sweet, sweet words, and I feel as I did when the old priest spoke
+    so tenderly on the day I confessed, telling me I had committed no
+    sin and had nothing to repent of. Have I never told you about
+    that? My confessor was a Capuchin, and perhaps I should have
+    waited for his advice before going farther. He was to consult his
+    General or his Bishop or some one, and to send for me again.
+
+    "But all that is over now, and everything depends upon you. In any
+    case, be sure of one thing, whatever happens. Bruno has taught me
+    a great lesson, and there is not anything your enemies can do to
+    me that will touch me now. They have tried me already with
+    humiliation, with poverty, with jealousy, and even with the shadow
+    of shame itself. There is nothing left but death. _And death
+    itself shall find me faithful to the last._ Good-bye! Your poor
+    unforgiven girl,                                           ROMA."
+
+The morning after writing this letter Roma received a visit from one of
+the Noble Guard. It was the Count de Raymond.
+
+"I am sent by the Holy Father," he said, "to say that he wishes to see
+you."
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                       PART SEVEN--THE POPE
+
+
+                                I
+
+On the morning appointed for the visit to the Vatican, Roma dressed in
+the black gown and veil prescribed by etiquette for ladies going to an
+audience with the Pope.
+
+The young Noble Guard in civilian clothes was waiting for her in the
+sitting-room. When she came out of the bedroom he was standing with a
+solemn face before the bust of David Rossi, which she had lately cast
+afresh and was beginning to point in marble.
+
+"This is wonderful," he said. "Perfectly wonderful! A most astonishing
+study."
+
+Roma smiled and bowed to him.
+
+"Christ of course, and such reality, such feeling, such love! But shall
+I tell you what surprises me most of all?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"What surprises me most is the extraordinary resemblance between your
+Christ and the Pope."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Indeed yes! Didn't you know it? No? It is almost incredible. Younger
+certainly, but the same features, the same expression, the same
+tenderness, the same strength! Even the same vertical lines over the
+nose which make the shako dither on one's head when something goes wrong
+and His Holiness is indignant."
+
+Roma's smile was dying off her face like the sun off a field of corn,
+and she was looking sideways out of the window.
+
+"Has the Pope any relations?" she asked.
+
+"None whatever, not a soul. The only son of an only son. You must have
+been thinking of the Holy Father himself, and asking yourself what he
+was like thirty years ago. Come now, confess it!"
+
+Roma laughed. The soldier laughed. "Shall we go?" she said.
+
+A carriage was waiting for them, and they drove by the Tor di Nona, a
+narrow lane which skirts the banks of the Tiber, across the bridge of
+St. Angelo, and up the Borgo.
+
+Roma was nervous and preoccupied. Why had she been sent for? What could
+the Pope have to say to her?
+
+"Isn't it unusual," she asked, "for the Pope to send for any
+one--especially a woman, and a non-Catholic?"
+
+"Most unusual. But perhaps Father Pifferi...."
+
+"Father Pifferi?"
+
+"He is the Holy Father's confessor."
+
+"Is he a Capuchin?"
+
+"Yes. The General at San Lorenzo."
+
+"Ah, now I understand," said Roma. Light had dawned on her and her
+spirits began to rise.
+
+"The Pope is very tender and fatherly, isn't he?"
+
+"Fatherly? He is a saint on earth, that's what he is! Impetuous,
+perhaps, but so sweet and generous and forgiving. Makes you shake in
+your shoes if you've done anything amiss, but when all is over and he
+puts his arm on your shoulder and tells you to think no more about it,
+you're ready to die for him even at the stake."
+
+Roma's spirits were rising every minute, and her nervousness was fading
+away. Since things had fallen out so, she could take advantage of her
+opportunities. She would tell the Pope everything, and he would advise
+with her and counsel her. She would speak about David Rossi, and the
+Pope would tell her what to do.
+
+The great clock of the Basilica was striking ten with a solemn boom as
+the carriage rattled over the stones of the Piazza of St. Peter's--wet
+with the play of the fountains and bright with the rainbows made by the
+sun.
+
+They alighted at the bronze gate, ascended the grand staircase, crossed
+a courtyard, passed through many gorgeous chambers, and arrived finally
+at an apartment hung with tapestries and occupied by a Noble Guard, who
+wore a brass helmet and held a drawn sword. The next room was the throne
+room, and beyond it were the Pope's private apartments.
+
+A chaplain of the Pope's household came to say that by request of Father
+Pifferi the lady was to step into an anteroom; and Roma followed him
+into a small adjoining chamber, carpeted with cocoanut matting and
+furnished with a marble-topped table and two wooden chest-seats, bearing
+the papal arms. The little room opened on to a corridor overlooking a
+courtyard, a secret way to the Pope's private rooms, and it had a door
+to the throne room also.
+
+"The Father will be here presently," said the chaplain, "and His
+Holiness will not be long."
+
+Roma, who was feeling some natural tremors, tried to reassure herself by
+asking questions about the Pope. The chaplain's face began to gleam. He
+was a little man, with round red cheeks and pale grey eyes, and the
+usual tone of his voice was a hushed and reverent whisper.
+
+"Faint? Yes, ladies do faint sometimes--often, I may say--and they
+nearly always cry. But the Holy Father is so gentle, so sweet."
+
+The door to the throne room opened and there was a gleam of violet and
+an indistinct buzz of voices. The chaplain disappeared, and at the next
+moment a man in the dress of a waiter came from the corridor carrying a
+silver soup dish.
+
+"You're the lady the Holy Father sent for?"
+
+Roma smiled and assented.
+
+"I'm Cortis--Gaetano Cortis--the Pope's valet, you know--and of course I
+hear everything."
+
+Roma smiled again and bowed.
+
+"I bring the Holy Father a plate of soup every morning at ten, but I'm
+afraid it is going to get cold this morning."
+
+"Will he be angry?"
+
+"Angry? He's an angel, and couldn't be angry with any one."
+
+"He must indeed be good; everybody says so."
+
+"He is perfect. That's about the size of it. None of your locking up his
+bedroom when he goes into the garden and putting the key into the pocket
+of his cassock, same as in the old Pope's days. I go in whenever I like,
+and he lets me take whatever I please. At Christmas some rich Americans
+wanted a skull-cap to save a dying man, and I got it for the asking. Now
+an old English lady wants a stocking to cure her rheumatism, and I'll
+get that too. I've saved a little hair from the last cutting, and if you
+hear of anybody...."
+
+The valet's story of his perquisites was interrupted by the opening of
+the door of the throne room and the entrance of a friar in a brown
+habit. It was Father Pifferi.
+
+"Don't rise, my daughter," he said, and closing the door behind the
+valet, he gathered up the skirts of his habit and sat down on the
+chest-seat in front of her.
+
+"When you came to me with your confidence, my child, and I found it
+difficult to advise with you for your peace of mind, I told you I wished
+to take your case to a wiser head than mine. I took it to the Pope
+himself. He was touched by your story, and asked to see you for
+himself."
+
+"But, Father...."
+
+"Don't be afraid, my daughter. Pius the Tenth as a Pope may be lofty to
+sternness, but as a man he is humble and simple and kind. Forget that he
+is a sovereign and a pontiff, and think of him as a tender and loving
+friend. Tell him everything. Hold nothing back. And if you must needs
+reveal the confidences of others, remember that he is the Vicar of Him
+who keeps all our secrets."
+
+"But, Father...."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He is so high, so holy, so far above the world and its temptations...."
+
+"Don't say that, my daughter. The Holy Father is a man like other men.
+Shall I tell you something of his life? The world knows it only by
+hearsay and report. You shall hear the truth, and when you have heard it
+you will go to him as a child goes to its father, and no longer be
+afraid."
+
+
+                                II
+
+"Thirty-five years ago," said Father Pifferi, "the Holy Father had not
+even dreamt of being Pope. He was the only child of a Roman banker,
+living in a palace on the opposite side of the piazza. The old Baron had
+visions, indeed, of making his son a great churchman by the power of
+wealth, but these were vain and foolish, and the young man did not share
+them. His own aims were simple but worldly. He desired to be a soldier,
+and to compromise with his father's disappointed ambitions he asked for
+a commission in the Pope's Noble Guard."
+
+The old friar put his hands into the vertical pockets in the breast of
+his habit, and looked up at the ceiling as he went on speaking.
+
+"All this is no secret, but what follows is less known. The soldier, who
+had the charm of an engaging personality, led the life of an ordinary
+young Roman of his day, frequenting cafes, concerts, theatres, and
+balls. In this character he met a poor woman of the people, and came to
+love her. She was a good girl, with soft and gentle manners, but a heart
+of gold and a soul of fire. He was a good man and he meant to marry her.
+He did marry her. He married her according to the rites of the Church,
+which are all that religion requires and God calls for."
+
+Roma was leaning forward on her seat and breathing between
+tightly-closed lips.
+
+"Unhappily, then as now, a godless legislature had separated a religious
+from a civil marriage, and the one without the other was useless. The
+old Baron heard of what had happened and tried to defeat it. A cardinal
+had just been created in Australia, and an officer of the Noble Guard
+had to be sent with the Ablegate to carry the biglietto and the
+skull-cap. At the request of the Baron his son was appointed to that
+mission and despatched in haste."
+
+Roma could scarcely control herself.
+
+"The young husband being gone, the father set himself to deal with the
+wife. He had not yet relinquished his hopes of seeing his son a
+churchman, and marriage was a fatal impediment. A rich man may have many
+instruments, and the Baron was able to use some that were evil. He
+played upon the conscience of the girl, who was pure and virtuous; told
+her she was not legally married, and that the laws of her country
+thought ill of her. Finally, he appealed to her love for her husband,
+and showed her that she was standing in his way. He was not a bad man,
+but he loved his son beyond truth and to the perversion of honour, and
+was ready to sacrifice the woman who stood between them. She allowed
+herself to be sacrificed. She wiped herself out that she might not be an
+obstacle to her husband. She drowned herself in the Tiber."
+
+Roma could not control herself any longer, and made a half-stifled
+exclamation.
+
+"Then the young husband returned. He had been travelling constantly, and
+no letters from his wife had reached him. But one letter was waiting for
+him at Rome, and it told him what she had done. It was then all over;
+there was no help for it, and he was overwhelmed with horror. He could
+not blame the poor dead girl, for all she had done had been done in
+love; he could not blame himself, for he had meant no wrong in making
+the religious marriage, and had hastened home to complete the civil one;
+and he could not reproach his father, for if the Baron's conduct had led
+to fearful consequences, it had been prompted by affection for himself.
+But the hand of God seemed to be over him, and his soul was shaken to
+its foundations. From that time forward he renounced society and all
+worldly pleasures. For eight days he went into retreat and prayed
+fervently. On the ninth day he joined a religious house, the Novitiate
+of the Capuchins at San Lorenzo. The young soldier, so gay, so handsome,
+so fond of social admiration, became a friar."
+
+The old Capuchin looked tenderly at Roma, whose wet eyes and burning
+cheeks seemed to tell of sympathy with his story.
+
+"In those days, my daughter, the nuns of Thecla served the Foundling of
+Santo Spirito."
+
+Roma began to look frightened and to feel faint.
+
+"It was usual for a member of our house to live in the hospital in order
+to baptize the children and to confess the sick and the dying. We took
+it in turns to do so, staying one year, two years, three years, and then
+going back to the monastery. I was myself at Santo Spirito for this
+purpose at the time I speak about, and it was not until three or four
+years afterwards that I became Superior of our House and returned to San
+Lorenzo. There I found the young Noble Guard, and, wisely or unwisely, I
+told him a new phase of his own story."
+
+"There was a child?" said Roma, in a strange voice.
+
+The Capuchin bent his head. "That much he knew already by the letter his
+wife had left for him. She had intended that the child should die when
+she died, and he supposed that it had been so. But pity for the little
+one must have overtaken the poor mother at the last moment. She had put
+the babe in the rota of the hospital, and thus saved the child's life
+before carrying out her purpose upon her own."
+
+The Capuchin crossed his knees, and one of his bare feet in its sandal
+showed from under the edge of his habit.
+
+"We had baptized the boy by a name which the mother had written on a
+paper attached to his wrist, and the identity of that name with the name
+of the Noble Guard led to my revelation. Nature is a mighty thing, and
+on hearing what I told him the young brother became restless and
+unhappy. The instincts of the man began to fight with the feelings of
+the religious, and at last he left the friary in order to fulfil the
+duty which he thought he owed to his child."
+
+"He did not find him?"
+
+"He was too late. According to custom, the boy had been put out to nurse
+on the Campagna, by means of the little dower that was all his
+inheritance from the State. His foster parents passed him over to other
+hands, and thus by the abuse of a good practice the child was already
+lost."
+
+Roma tried to speak, but she could not utter a word.
+
+"What happened then is a long story. The old Baron was now dead and the
+young friar had inherited his princely fortune. Dispensations got over
+canonical difficulties, and in due course he took holy orders. His first
+work was to establish in Rome an asylum for friendless orphans. He went
+out into the streets to look for them, and brought them in with his own
+hands. His fame for charity grew rapidly, and he knew well what he was
+doing. He was looking for the little fatherless one who owned his own
+blood and bore his name."
+
+Roma was now sitting with drooping head, and her tears were falling on
+her hands.
+
+"Five years passed, and at length he came upon a trace of the boy and
+heard that he had been sent to England. The unhappy father obtained
+permission and removed to London. There he set up the same work as
+before and spent in the same way his great wealth. He passed five years
+more in a fruitless search, looking for his lost one day and night,
+winter and summer, in cold and heat, among the little foreign boys who
+play organs and accordions in the streets. Then he gave up hope and
+returned to Rome. His head was white and his heart was humble, but in
+spite of himself he rose from dignity to dignity until at length the old
+Baron's perverted ambitions were fulfilled. For his great and abounding
+charity, and still greater piety, he was promoted to be Bishop; seven
+years afterwards he was created Cardinal; and now he is Pope Pius the
+Tenth, the saint, the saviour of his people, once the storm-tossed,
+sorrowing, stricken man...."
+
+"David Leone?"
+
+The Capuchin bowed. "That was the Holy Father's name. He committed no
+sin and has nothing to reproach himself with, but nevertheless he has
+known what it is to fall and to rise again, to suffer and be strong.
+Tell me, my daughter, is there anything you would be afraid to confide
+to him?"
+
+"Nothing! Nothing whatever!" said Roma, with tears choking her voice and
+streaming down her cheeks.
+
+The door to the throne room opened again and a line of Cardinals came
+out and passed down the secret corridor, talking together as they
+walked, old men in violet, most of them very feeble and looking very
+tired. At the next moment the chaplain came in for Roma.
+
+"The Holy Father will be ready to receive you presently," he said in a
+hushed and reverent whisper, and she rose to follow him.
+
+A moment later Roma was at the door of the grand throne room. A
+chamberlain took charge of her there, and passed her to a secret
+chamberlain at the door of an anteroom adjoining. This secret
+chamberlain handed her on to a Monsignor in a violet cassock, and the
+Monsignor accompanied her to the door of the room in which the Pope was
+sitting.
+
+"As you approach," he said in a low tone, "you will make three
+genuflexions--one at the door, another midway across the floor, the
+third at the Holy Father's feet. You feel well?"
+
+"Yes," she faltered.
+
+The door was opened, the Monsignor stepped one pace into the room, and
+then knelt and said--
+
+"Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness."
+
+Roma was on her knees at the threshold; a soft, full, kindly voice,
+which she could have believed she had heard before, called on her to
+approach; she rose and stepped forward, the Monsignor stepped back, and
+the door behind her was closed.
+
+She was in the Presence.
+
+
+                                III
+
+The Pope, dressed wholly in white, was seated in a simple chair by a
+little table in a homely room, surrounded by bookcases and some busts of
+former pontiffs. There were little domesticities of intimate life about
+him, an empty soup-dish, a cruet-stand, a plate and a spoon. He had a
+face of great sweetness and spirituality, and as Roma approached he bent
+his head and smiled a fatherly smile. She knelt and kissed his ring, and
+continued to kneel by his chair, putting one hand on the arm. He placed
+his own mittened hand over hers and patted it tenderly, while he looked
+into her face.
+
+The little nervous perturbation with which Roma had entered the room
+began to leave her, and in the awful wearer of the threefold crown she
+saw nothing but a simple, loving human being. A feminine sense crept
+over her, a sense of nursing, almost of motherhood, and at that first
+moment she felt as if she wanted to do something for the gentle old man.
+Then he began to speak. His voice had that tone which comes to the voice
+of a man who has the sense of sex strong in him, when a woman is with
+him and his accents soften perceptibly.
+
+"My daughter," he said, "Father Pifferi has spoken about you, and by
+your permission, as I understand it, he has repeated the story you told
+him. You have suffered, and you have my sympathy. And though you are not
+among the number of my children, I sent for you, that, as an old man to
+a young woman, by God's grace I might strengthen you and support you."
+
+She kissed his ring again and continued to kneel by the arm of his
+chair.
+
+"Long ago, my child, I knew one who was in something like the same
+position, and perhaps it is the memory of what befell that poor soul
+which impels me to speak to you.... But she is dead, her story is dead
+too; let time and nature cover them."
+
+His voice had a slight tremor. She looked up. There was a hush, a
+momentary thrill. Then he smiled again and patted her hand once more.
+
+"You must not let the world weaken you, my child, or cause you to doubt
+the validity of your marriage. Whether it is a good marriage, in effect
+as well as intention (one of you being still unbaptized), it is for the
+Church, not the world, to decide."
+
+Again Roma kissed the ring of the Pope, and again he patted the hand
+that lay under his.
+
+"Nevertheless, there is something I wish you to do, my daughter," he
+said, in the same low tones. "I wish you to tell your husband."
+
+"Holy Father," said Roma, "I have already told him. I had done so before
+I spoke to Father Pifferi, but only under the disguise of another
+woman's story."
+
+"And what did your husband say?"
+
+"He said what your Holiness says. He was very charitable and noble; so I
+took heart and told him everything."
+
+"And what did he say then?"
+
+A cloud crossed her face. "Holy Father, he has not yet said anything."
+
+"Not anything?"
+
+"He is away; he has not replied to my letter."
+
+"Has there been time?"
+
+"More than time, your Holiness, but still I hear nothing."
+
+"And what is your conclusion?"
+
+"That my letter has awakened some pity, but now that he knows _I_ am the
+wife I spoke about and _he_ is the husband intended, he cannot forgive
+me as he said the husband would forgive, and his generous soul is in
+distress."
+
+"My daughter, could you wish me to speak to him?"
+
+The cloud fled from her face. "It is more than I deserve, far more, but
+if the Holy Father would do that...."
+
+"Then I must know the names--you must tell me everything."
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"Who is your father, my child?"
+
+"My father died in banishment. He was a Liberal--he was Prince Prospero
+Volonna."
+
+"As I thought. Who was the other man?"
+
+"He was a distant kinsman of my father's, and I have lately discovered
+that he was the principal instrument in my father's deportation. He was
+my guardian, a Minister and a great man in Italy. It is the Baron
+Bonelli, your Holiness."
+
+"Just so, just so!" said the Pope, tapping his foot in obvious heat.
+"But go on, my child. Who is your husband?"
+
+"My husband is a different kind of man altogether."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"He has done everything for me, Holy Father--everything. Heaven knows
+what I should have been now without him."
+
+"God bless him! God bless both of you!"
+
+"I came to know him by the strangest accident. He is a Liberal too, and
+a Deputy, and thinking of the corruptions of the Government, he pointed
+to me as the mistress of the Minister. It was not true, but I was
+degraded, and ... and I set out to destroy him."
+
+"A terrible vengeance, my child. Only the Minister could have thought of
+it."
+
+"Then I found that my enemy was one of my father's friends, and a true
+and noble man. Holy Father, I had begun in hate, but I could not hate
+him. The darkness faded away from my soul, and something bright and
+beautiful came in its place. I loved him, and he loved me. With all our
+hearts we loved each other."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then _he_ came back to me. I knew all the secrets I had set out to
+learn, but I could not give them up, and when I refused he threatened
+me."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"I married my husband and withstood every temptation. It wasn't so very
+hard, for I cared nothing for wealth and luxury now. I only wanted to be
+good. God Himself should see how good I could be."
+
+The Pope's eyes were moist. He was patting the young woman's trembling
+hand.
+
+"My blessing rest on you, my daughter, and may the man you have married
+be worthy of your love and trust."
+
+"Indeed, indeed he is," said Roma.
+
+"He was your father's friend, you tell me?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness, and although we met again so recently, I had known
+him in England when I was a child."
+
+"A Liberal, you say?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness."
+
+"The enmity of the Minister was the fruit of political warfare?"
+
+"Nothing but that at first, though now...."
+
+"I see, I see. And the secrets you speak of are only...."
+
+"Only the doings of twenty years ago, which are dead and done with."
+
+"Then your husband is older than you are?"
+
+The young woman broke into a sunny smile, which set the Pope smiling.
+
+"Only ten years older, your Holiness. He is thirty-four."
+
+"Where does he come from, and what was his father?"
+
+"He was born in Rome, but he does not know who his father was."
+
+"What is he like to look upon?"
+
+"He is like ... I have never seen any one so like ... will your Holiness
+forgive me?"
+
+The colour had mounted to her eyes, her two rows of pearly teeth seemed
+to be smiling, and the sunny old face of the Pope was smiling too.
+
+"Say what you please, my daughter."
+
+"I have never seen any one so like the Holy Father," she said softly.
+
+Her head was held down and there was a little nervous tremor at her
+heart. The Pope patted her hand affectionately.
+
+"Have I asked you his name, my child?"
+
+"His name is David Rossi."
+
+The Pope rose suddenly from his seat, and for the first time his face
+looked dark and troubled.
+
+"David Rossi?" he repeated in a husky voice.
+
+Roma began to tremble. "Yes," she faltered.
+
+"David Rossi, the Revolutionary?"
+
+"Indeed no, your Holiness, he is not that."
+
+"But, my child, my child, he is the founder of a revolutionary society
+which this very day the Holy Father has condemned."
+
+He walked across the room and she rose to her feet and looked after him.
+
+"One of the men who are conspiring against the peace of the
+Church--banded together to fight the Church and its head."
+
+"Don't say that, your Holiness. He is religious, deeply religious, and
+far more an enemy of the Government and the King."
+
+She began to talk wildly, almost aimlessly, trying to defend Rossi at
+all costs.
+
+"Holy Father," she said, "shall I tell you a secret? There is nobody
+else in the world to whom I could tell it, but I can tell it to you. My
+husband is now in England organising a great scheme among the exiles and
+refugees of Italy. What it is I don't know, but he has told me that it
+will lead to the conquest of the country and the downfall of the throne.
+Whether it is to be a conspiracy in the ordinary sense, or a
+constitutional plan of campaign, he has not said, but everything tells
+me that it is directed against the politics of Rome, and not against
+its religion, and is intended to overthrow the King, and not the Pope."
+
+The Pope, who had been standing with his back to Roma, turned round to
+her with a look of fright. His eyebrows had met over the vertical lines
+on his forehead, and this further reminder of another face threw Roma
+into still greater confusion.
+
+"'When I come back, it will be with such a force behind me as will make
+the prisons open their doors and the thrones of tyrants tremble.' That's
+what he said, your Holiness. The movement will come soon, too, I am sure
+it will, and then your Holiness will see that, instead of being
+irreligious men, the leaders of the people...."
+
+The Pope held up his hand. "Stop!" he cried. "Say no more, my child. God
+knows what I must do with what you have said already."
+
+Then Roma saw what she had done in the wild gust of her emotion, and in
+her terror she tried to take it back.
+
+"Holy Father, you must not think from what I say that David Rossi is for
+revolution and regicide...."
+
+"Don't speak, my child. You cannot know what an earthquake you have
+opened at my feet. Let me think!"
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then Roma gulped down the great
+lumps in her throat and said: "I am only an ignorant woman, Holy Father,
+and perhaps I have said too much, and do not understand. But what I have
+told your Holiness was told me in love and confidence. And the Holy
+Father is wise and good, and whatever he does will be for the best."
+
+The Pope returned to his chair with a bewildered look, and did not seem
+to hear. Roma sank to her knees by his side and said in a low, pleading
+tone:
+
+"My husband's faith in me is so beautiful, your Holiness. Oh, so
+beautiful. I am the only one in the world to whom he has told all his
+secrets, and if any of them should ever come back to him...."
+
+"Don't be afraid, my daughter. What you said in simple confidence shall
+be as sacred as if it had been spoken under the seal of the
+confessional."
+
+"If I could tell your Holiness more about him--who he is and where he
+comes from--a place so lowly and humble, your Holiness...."
+
+"Tell me no more, my child. It is better I should not know. Pity ought
+to have no place in what duty tells me to do. But I can love David Rossi
+for all that. I do love him. I love him as a lost and wayward son, whose
+hand is raised against his Father, though he knows it not."
+
+There was a bell button on the Pope's chair. He pressed it, and the
+Participante returned to the room without knocking. The Pope rose and
+took Roma's hand.
+
+"Go in peace and with my blessing, my child. I bless you! May my
+fatherly blessing keep you pure in heart, may it strengthen you in all
+temptations, comfort you in all trials, avert from you every evil omen,
+and bring you into the fold of Christ's children at the last."
+
+The Participante stepped forward and signed to Roma to withdraw. She
+rose and left the presence chamber, stepping backward and too much moved
+to speak. Not until the door had been closed did she realise that she
+was crossing the throne room, and that the Bussolante was walking beside
+her.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+When the Pope walked in his garden that afternoon as usual, the old
+Capuchin was with him. From the door of the Vatican they drove in the
+Pope's landau with two of the Noble Guard riding beside the carriage,
+and one of the chamberlains walking behind it, through lanes enshrouded
+in laurel and ilex, until they reached the summer-house on the top of
+the hill. There the old men stepped down, the Pope in his white cassock,
+white overcoat and red hat, the Capuchin in his brown habit, skull-cap
+and sandals. The Pope's cat, a creature of reddish coat, which followed
+him into the garden as a dog follows his master, leapt out of the
+carriage after them.
+
+The Pope was more than usually grave and silent. Once or twice the
+Capuchin said, "And how did you find my young penitent this morning?"
+
+"_Bene, bene!_" the Pope replied.
+
+But at length the Pope, scraping the gravel at his feet with the ferrule
+of his walking-stick, began to speak on his own initiative.
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Your Holiness?"
+
+"The inscrutable decree of God which made me your Pontiff has not
+altered our relations to each other as men?"
+
+The Capuchin took snuff and answered, "Your Holiness is always so good
+as to say so."
+
+"You are my master now just as you were thirty years ago, and there is
+something I wish to ask of you."
+
+"What is it, your Holiness?"
+
+"You have been a confessor many years, Father?"
+
+"Forty years, your Holiness."
+
+"In that time you have had many difficult cases?"
+
+"Very many."
+
+"Father, has it ever happened that a penitent, has revealed to you a
+conspiracy to commit a crime?"
+
+"More than once it has happened."
+
+"And what have you done?"
+
+"Persuaded him to reveal it to the civil authorities, or else tell it to
+me outside the confessional."
+
+"Has the penitent ever refused to do so?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But if ... if the case were such as made it difficult for the penitent
+to reveal the conspiracy to the civil authorities, having regard to the
+penalties the revelation would bring with it ... if by reason of ties of
+blood and affection such revelation were humanly impossible, and it
+would even be cruel to ask for it, what would you do then?"
+
+"Nothing, your Holiness."
+
+"Not even if the crime to be committed were a serious one, and it
+touched you very nearly?"
+
+The Capuchin shook out his coloured print handkerchief and said, "That
+could make no difference, your Holiness."
+
+"But suppose you heard in confession that your brother is to be
+assassinated, what is your duty?"
+
+"My duty to the penitent who reveals his soul to me is to preserve his
+secret."
+
+"And what is your duty to God?"
+
+The handkerchief dropped from the Capuchin's hand.
+
+The Pope paused, scraped the gravel with the ferrule of his stick, and
+said:
+
+"Father, I am in the position of the confessor who has guilty knowledge
+of a conspiracy against the life of his enemy."
+
+The Capuchin pushed his handkerchief into his sleeve and dropped back
+into his seat. After a moment the Pope told the story of what Roma had
+said of Rossi's plans abroad.
+
+"A conspiracy," he said, "plainly a conspiracy."
+
+"And what do you understand the conspiracy to be?"
+
+"Who can say? Perhaps a recurrence to the custom of the Middle Ages,
+when citizens who had been banished by their opponents used to apply
+themselves in exile to attempt the reconquest of their country by
+stirring up the factions at home."
+
+"You think that is Rossi's object?"
+
+"I do."
+
+The Capuchin shifted uneasily the skull-cap on his crown and said:
+
+"Holy Father, I trust your Holiness will leave the matter alone."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"In reading history I do not find that such enterprises have usually
+been successful. I see, rather, how commonly they have failed. And if it
+was so in the Middle Ages when the arts of war were primitive, how much
+less likely are the conspiracies of secret societies, the partial and
+superficial risings of refugees, to be serious now in the days of
+standing armies."
+
+"True. But is that a good reason for doing nothing in this instance?"
+
+"But, Holy Father, think. You cannot disclose the secrets this poor lady
+has revealed to you. Her confession was only a confidence, but your
+Holiness knows well that there is such a thing as a natural secret which
+it would be a great fault to reveal. Facts which of their own nature are
+confidential belong to this order. They are assimilated to the
+confessional, and as such they should be respected."
+
+"Indeed they should."
+
+"Then it is not possible for your Holiness to reveal what you heard this
+morning without bringing trouble to the penitent and wronging her in
+relation to her husband."
+
+"God forbid that I should do so, whatever happens. But is a priest
+forbidden to speak of a sin heard in confession if he can do so in such
+a way that the identity of the penitent cannot be discovered?"
+
+"Your Holiness intends to do that?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"The Holy Father knows best. For my own part, your Holiness, I think it
+a danger to tamper with the secrets of a soul, whatever the good end in
+view or the evil to be prevented."
+
+The Capuchin looked round to where the horses were pawing the path and
+the Guards stood by the carriage.
+
+"Thirty-five years ago we had a terrible lesson in such dangers, your
+Holiness."
+
+The Pope dropped his head and continued to scrape the gravel.
+
+"Your Holiness remembers the poor young woman who told her confessor she
+was about to marry a rich young man. The confessor thought it his duty
+to tell the young man's father in general terms that such a marriage was
+to be contracted. What was the result? The marriage took place in secret
+and ended in grief and death."
+
+The Pope rose uneasily. "We will not speak of that. It was a case of a
+father's pride and perverted ambition. This is a different case
+altogether. A man who is a prey to diabolical illusions, an enemy of the
+Church and of social order, is hatching a plot which can only end in
+mischief and bloodshed. The Holy Father knows it. Shall he keep this
+guilty knowledge locked in his own bosom? God forbid!"
+
+"Then you intend to warn the civil authorities?"
+
+"I must. It is my duty. How could I lay my head on my pillow and not do
+it? But I will do it discreetly. I will commit no one, and this poor
+lady shall remain unknown."
+
+The venerable old men, each leaning on his stick, walked down a path
+lined by clipped yews, shaded by cypresses, and almost overgrown with
+crocus, anemone, and violet. Suddenly from the bushes there came a
+flutter of wings, followed by the scream of a bird, and in a moment the
+Pope's cat had leapt on to a marble which stood in the midst of the
+jungle. It was an ancient sarcophagus, placed there as a fountain, but
+the spring that had fed it was dry, and in its moss-grown mouth a bird
+had made its nest. The cat was about to pounce down on the eggs when the
+Pope laid hold of it.
+
+"Ah, Meesh, Meesh," he said, "what an anarchist you are, to be sure!...
+Monsignor!"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness," said the chamberlain, coming up behind.
+
+"Take this _gatto rosso_ back to the carriage, and keep him in
+_domicilio coatto_ until we come."
+
+The Monsignor laughed and carried off the cat, and the Pope put his
+mittened hand gently on the little speckled eggs.
+
+"Poor things! they're warm. Listen! That's the mother bird screaming in
+the tree. Hark! She's watching us, and waiting for us to go. How snugly
+she thought she kept her secret."
+
+The Capuchin drew a long breath. "Yes, nature has the same cry for fear
+in all her offspring."
+
+"True," said the Pope.
+
+"It makes me think of that poor girl this morning."
+
+The Pope walked back to the carriage without saying a word. As he
+returned to the Vatican, the Angelus was ringing from all the church
+bells of Rome, the city was bathed in crimson light, the sun was sinking
+behind Monte Mario, and the stone pines on the crest of the hill,
+standing out against the reddening sky, were like the roofless columns
+of a ruined temple.
+
+
+                                V
+
+Next day Francesca came up with a letter. The porter from Trinita de'
+Monti had brought it and he was waiting below for a present. In a kind
+of momentary delirium Roma snatched at the envelope and emptied her
+purse into the old woman's hand.
+
+"Santo Dio!" cried Francesca, "all this for a letter?"
+
+"Never mind, godmother," said Roma. "Give the money to the good man and
+let him go."
+
+"It's from Mr. Rossi, isn't it? Yes? I thought it was. You've only to
+say three Ave Marias when you wake in the morning and you get anything
+you want. I knew the Signora was dying for a letter, so...."
+
+"Yes, yes, but the poor man is waiting, and I must get on with my work,
+and...."
+
+"Work? Ah, Signora, in paradise you won't have to waste your time
+working. A lady like you will have violins and celestial bread and...."
+
+"The man will be gone, godmother," said Roma, hustling the deaf old
+woman out of the room.
+
+But even when Roma was alone she could not at first find courage to open
+the envelope. There was a certain physical thrill in handling it, in
+turning it over, and in looking at the stamps and the postmark. The
+stamps were French and the postmark was of Paris. That fact brought a
+vague gleam of joy. Rossi had been travelling, and perhaps he had not
+yet received her letter.
+
+With a trembling kiss and a little choking prayer she broke the seal at
+last, and as the letter came rustling out of the envelope she glanced at
+the closing lines:
+
+"Your Faithful Husband."
+
+She caught her breath and waited a moment, tingling all over. Then she
+unfolded the paper and read:--
+
+    "DEAREST,--A telegram from Rome, published in the Paris newspapers
+    this morning, reports the trial and death of Bruno. To say that I
+    am shocked is to say little. I am shaken to my foundations. My
+    heart is bursting and my hand can with difficulty hold the pen.
+
+    "The news first reached me last evening, when I was in a
+    restaurant with a group of journalists. We were at dinner, but I
+    was compelled to rise and return to my lodgings. I must have been
+    almost in delirium the whole night long. More than once I started
+    from my sleep with the certainty that I heard Bruno's voice
+    calling to me. Once I went to the window and looked out into the
+    silent street. And yet I knew all the time that my poor friend lay
+    dead in prison.
+
+    "Poor Bruno! I do not hold with suicide under any circumstances. A
+    man's life does not belong to himself. Each of us is a soldier,
+    and no sentinel ought to kill himself at his post. Who knows what
+    the next turn of the battle will be? It is our duty to the General
+    to see the fight out. But when the sentinel dies rather than pass
+    a false watchword, suicide is sacrifice, death is victory, and God
+    takes His martyr under the wings of His mercy.
+
+    "The poor fellow died believing I had been false to him! I knew
+    him for eight years, and during that time he was more faithful to
+    me than my shadow. He was the bravest, staunchest friend man ever
+    had. And now he has left me, thinking I have wronged him at the
+    last. Oh, my brother, do you not know the truth at last? In the
+    world to which you are gone, does no heavenly voice tell you? Does
+    not death reveal everything? Can you not look down and see all,
+    tearing away the veil that clouded your vision here below? Is it
+    only vouchsafed to him who remains on earth to know that he was
+    true to the love you bore him? God forbid it! It cannot, cannot
+    be.
+
+    "Dearest, I came to Paris unexpectedly ten days ago...."
+
+Roma lifted her swimming eyes. "Then he hasn't received it," she
+thought.
+
+    "Called in haste, not only to organise our Italian people for the
+    new crusade, but to compose by a general principle the many groups
+    of Frenchmen who, under different names, have the same
+    aspirations--Marxists, Possibilists, Boulangists, Guesdists, and
+    Central Revolutionists, with their varying propaganda, co-operative,
+    trade-unionist, anti-semite, national, and I know not what--I had
+    almost despaired of any union of interests so pitifully subdivided
+    when the news of Bruno's death came like a trumpet-blast, and the
+    walls of the social Jericho fell before it. Everybody feels that
+    the moment of action has arrived, and  what I thought would be an
+    Italian movement is likely to become an international one. A great
+    outrage on the spirit of Justice breaks down all barriers of race
+    and nationality.
+
+    "God guide us now. What did our Master say? 'The dagger of the
+    conspirator is never so terrible as when sharpened on the
+    tombstone of a martyr.' With all the heat of my own blood I
+    tremble when I think what may be the effect of these tyrannies. Of
+    course the ruling classes at home will wash their hands of this
+    affair. When a Minister wants to play Macbeth he has no lack of
+    grooms to dabble with Duncan's blood. But the people will make no
+    nice distinctions. I wouldn't give two straws for the life of the
+    King when this crime has touched the conscience of the people. He
+    didn't do it? No, he does nothing, but he stands for all.
+    Anarchists did not invent regicide. It has been used in all ages
+    by people who think the spirit of Justice violated. And the names
+    of some who practised it are written on marble monuments in
+    letters of gold."
+
+Roma began to tremble. Had the Pope been right after all? Was it really
+revolution and regicide which Rossi contemplated?
+
+    "Dearest, don't think that because I am so moved by all this that
+    other and dearer things are not with me always. Never a day or an
+    hour passes but my heart speaks to you as if you could answer. I
+    have been anxious at not hearing from you for ten days, although I
+    left my Paris address in London for your letters to be sent on.
+    Sometimes I think my enemies may be tormenting you, and then I
+    blame myself for not bringing you with me, in spite of every
+    disadvantage. Sometimes I think you may be ill, and then I have an
+    impulse to take the first train and fly back to Rome. I know I
+    cannot be with you always, but this absence is cruel. Happily it
+    will soon be over, and we shall see an end of all sadness. Don't
+    suffer for me. Don't let my cares distress you. Whatever happens,
+    nothing can divide us, because love has united our hearts for
+    ever.
+
+    "That's why I'm sure of you, Roma, sure of your love and sure of
+    your loyalty. Otherwise how could I stay an hour longer after this
+    awful event, tortured by the fear of a double martyrdom--the
+    martyrdom of myself and of the one who is dearest to me in the
+    world?
+
+    "The spring is coming to take me home to you, darling. Don't you
+    smell the violets? Adieu!
+                                            "YOUR FAITHFUL HUSBAND."
+
+Roma slept little that night. Joy, relief, disappointment, but, above
+all, fear for Rossi, apprehension about his plans, and overpowering
+dread of the consequences kept her awake for hours. Early next day a man
+in a blue uniform brought a letter from the Braschi Palace. It ran:--
+
+     "DEAR ROMA,--I must ask you to come across to my office this
+     morning, and as soon as convenient. You will not hesitate to do
+     so when I tell you that by this friendly message I am saving you
+     the humiliation of a summons from the police. Yours, as always,
+     affectionately,
+                                                           BONELLI."
+
+
+                                VI
+
+The Minister of the Interior sat in his cabinet before a table covered
+with blue-books and the square sheets of his "projects of law," and the
+Commendatore Angelelli, with his usual extravagant politeness, was
+standing and bowing by his side.
+
+"And what is this about proclamations issued by Rossi?" said the Baron,
+fixing his eye-glasses and looking up.
+
+"We have traced the printer who published them," said Angelelli. "After
+he was arrested he gave the name of the person who paid him and provided
+the copy."
+
+The Baron bowed without speaking.
+
+"It was a certain lady, Excellency," said Angelelli in his thin voice,
+"so we thought it well to wait for your instructions."
+
+"You did right, Commendatore. Leave that part of the matter to me. And
+Rossi himself--he is still in England?"
+
+"In France, your Excellency, but we have letters from both London and
+Paris detailing all his movements."
+
+"Good."
+
+"The Chief Commissioner writes that during his stay in London Rossi
+lodged in Soho, and received visits from nearly all the representatives
+of revolutionary parties. Apparently he united many conflicting forces,
+and not only the Democratic Federations and the Socialist and Labour
+Leagues, but also the Radical organisations and various religious guilds
+and unions gathered about him."
+
+The Baron made a gesture of impatience. "It's a case of birds of a
+feather. London has always been the central home of anarchy under
+various big surnames. What does the Commissioner understand to be
+Rossi's plan?"
+
+"Rossi's plan, the Commissioner thinks, is to send back the Italian
+exiles, and to disperse them, with money and literature gathered abroad,
+among the excited millions at home."
+
+"Wonderful!" said the Baron.
+
+Angelelli laughed his thin laugh, like a hen cackling over its nest.
+Then he said:
+
+"But the Prefect of Paris has formed a more serious opinion, your
+Excellency."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That Rossi is conspiring to assassinate the King."
+
+The Baron blinked the glasses from his nose and sat upright.
+
+"Apparently he was having less success in Paris, where the moral plea
+has been overdone, when reports of the Rocco incident...."
+
+"A most unlucky affair, Commendatore."
+
+"Meeting at cafes in order to avoid the control of the police ... In
+short, although he has no exact information, the Prefect warns us to
+keep double guard over the person of his Majesty."
+
+The Baron rose and perambulated the hearthrug. "A pretty century, truly,
+for fools who pass for wise men, and for weaklings who threaten when the
+distance is great enough!... Commendatore, have you mentioned this
+matter to anybody else?"
+
+"To nobody whatever, Excellency."
+
+"Then think no more about it. It's nothing. The public mind must not be
+alarmed. Tighten the cord about our man in Paris. Adieu!"
+
+The Baron's next visitor was the Prefect of the Province, who looked
+more solemn and soldierly than ever.
+
+"Senator," said the Baron, "I sent for you to say that the Council has
+determined to put an end to the state of siege."
+
+The Prefect bowed again severely.
+
+"The insurrection has been suppressed, the city is quiet, and the
+severities of military rule begin to oppress the people."
+
+The Prefect bowed again and assented.
+
+"The Council has also resolved, dear Senator, that the country shall
+celebrate the anniversary of the King's accession with general
+rejoicings."
+
+"Excellent idea, sir," said the Prefect. "To wipe out the depression of
+the late unhappy times by a public festival is excellent policy. But the
+time is short."
+
+"Very short. The anniversary falls on Easter Monday. That is to say, a
+week from to-day. You will therefore take the matter in hand immediately
+and push it on without further delay. The details we will discuss later,
+and arrange all programmes of presentations and processions. Meantime I
+have written a proclamation announcing the event. Here it is. You can
+take it with you."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"The King will also sign a decree of amnesty to all the authors and
+accomplices of the late acts and attempts at rebellion who were not the
+organising and directing minds. That is also written. Here it is. But
+his Majesty has not yet signed it."
+
+The Prefect took a second paper from the Baron's hand, glanced his eyes
+over it, and read certain passages. "'Seeing that on a day of public
+rejoicing we could not restrain an emotion of grief ... turning a
+pitying eye upon the inexperienced youths drawn into a vortex of
+political disorder ... we therefore decree and command the following
+acts of sovereign clemency....' May I expect to receive this in the
+course of the day, your Excellency?"
+
+"Yes. And now for your own part of the enterprise, dear Senator. You
+will order all mayors of towns to assemble in Rome to complete the
+preparations. You will arrange a procession to the Quirinal, when the
+people will call the King on to the balcony and sing the National Hymn.
+You will order banners to be made bearing suitable watchwords, such as
+'Long live the King,' 'May he govern as well as reign,' 'Long live the
+Crown,' the 'Flag,' and (perhaps) the 'Army.' You will oppose these
+generating ideas to 'Atheism' and 'Anarchy.' The essential point is
+that the people must be caused by festivals, songs, bands of music, and
+processions to think of the throne as their bulwark and the King as
+their saviour, and to take advantage of every opportunity to attest
+their gratitude to both. You follow me?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Then lose no time, Senator.... One moment."
+
+The Prefect had risen and reached the door.
+
+"If you can double the King's guard and change the company every day
+until the festival is over...."
+
+"Easily, your Excellency. But wait; the Vatican Chief of Police has
+asked for help on Holy Thursday."
+
+"Give it him. Let the timid old man of the Sacred College have no excuse
+for saying we take more care of the King than of the Pope."
+
+The Minister of Justice was the next of the Baron's visitors. He was a
+short man with a smiling and rubicund face, and he wore yellow kid
+gloves.
+
+"All goes well and wisdom is justified of her children," said the Baron,
+rising again and promenading the hearthrug. "The national sentiment,
+dear colleague, is a sword, and either we must use it on behalf of the
+Government and the King, or stand by and see it used by the hostile
+factions."
+
+"Men like Rossi are not slow to use it, sir," said the little Minister.
+
+"Tut! It's not Rossi I'm thinking of now. It's the Church, the clergy,
+rich in money and in the faith of the populace. That's why I wanted to
+do something as set-off against those mourning demonstrations which the
+Pope has appointed."
+
+"Yes, the old gentleman of the Vatican knows the instincts and cravings
+of our people, doesn't he, sir? He knows they like a show, and the
+seasoning of their pleasures with a little religion."
+
+"It's the rustiest old weapon in the Pope's arsenal, dear colleague, but
+it may serve unless we do something. If the people can be persuaded that
+the Pope is their one friend in adversity, there couldn't be a better
+feather in the Papal cap. Happily our people love to sing and to dance
+as well as to weep and to pray. So we needn't throw up the sponge yet."
+
+Both laughed, and the little Minister said, "Besides, it is so easy to
+change religious processions into political ones. And then the Vatican
+is always intriguing with the powers of rebellion and preaching
+obedience to the Pope alone."
+
+The creaking of the Baron's patent-leather boots stopped, and he drew up
+before his colleague.
+
+"Watch that sharply," he said, "and if you see any sign on the part of
+the Vatican of intriguing with men like Rossi, any complicity with
+conspiracy, or any knowledge of plots pointing to revolution and
+regicide, let the Council hear of it immediately."
+
+The Baron's face had suddenly whitened with passion, and his little
+colleague looked at him in alarm. A secretary entered the room and
+handed the Baron a card. The Baron fixed his eye-glasses and read:
+"MONSIGNOR MARIO, Cameriere Segreto Partecipante di Sua Santita Pio X.
+Vaticano."
+
+"St. Anthony! Talk of the angels...." muttered the little Minister.
+
+"Will you perhaps...."
+
+"Certainly," said the Minister, and he left the room.
+
+"Show the Monsignor in," said the Baron.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+The Monsignor was young, tall, slight, almost fragile, and had thin
+black hair and large spiritual eyes. As he entered in the long black
+overcoat, which covered his cassock, he bowed and looked slowly round
+the room. His subdued expression was that of a sheep going through a
+gate where the dogs may be, and his manner suggested that he would fly
+at the first alarm.
+
+The Baron looked over his eye-glasses and measured his man in a moment.
+"Pray sit," he said, and at the next moment the young Monsignor and the
+Baron were seated at opposite sides of the table.
+
+"I am sent to you by a venerable and illustrious personage...."
+
+"Let us say the Pope," said the Baron.
+
+The young Monsignor bowed and continued, "to offer on his behalf a word
+of counsel and of warning."
+
+"It is an unusual and distinguished honour," said the Baron.
+
+"I am instructed to inform you that the Holy Father has reason to
+believe a further and more serious insurrection is preparing, and to
+warn you to take the necessary steps to secure public order and to
+prevent bloodshed."
+
+The Baron did not move a muscle. "If the Holy Father has special
+knowledge of a plot that is impending...."
+
+"Not special, only general, but sufficient to enable him to tell you to
+hold yourself in readiness."
+
+"How long has the Holy Father been aware of this?"
+
+"Not long. In fact, only since yesterday morning," said the Monsignor,
+and fearing he had said too much he added, "I only mention this to show
+you that the Holy Father has lost no time."
+
+"But if the Holy Father knows that a conspiracy is afoot, he can no
+doubt help us to further information."
+
+The Monsignor shook his head.
+
+"You mean that he will not do so?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Am I, then, to understand that the information with which his Holiness
+honours me came to him secretly?"
+
+"Yes, sir, secretly, and it is, therefore, not open to further
+explanation."
+
+"So it reached him by the medium of the confessional?"
+
+The Monsignor rose from his seat. "Your Excellency cannot be in
+earnest."
+
+"You mean that it did not reach him by the medium of the confessional?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Then he is able to tell me everything, if he will?"
+
+The Monsignor became agitated. "The Holy Father's information came
+through a channel that is assimilated to the confessional, and is almost
+as sacred and inviolate."
+
+"But obedience to the Pope obliterates from all other responsibility.
+His Holiness has only to say 'Speak,' and his faithful child must obey."
+
+The Monsignor became confused. "His informant is not even a Catholic,
+and he has, therefore, no right to command her."
+
+"So it is a woman," said the Baron, and the young ecclesiastic dropped
+his head.
+
+"It is a woman and a non-Catholic, and she visited the Holy Father at
+the Vatican yesterday morning; is that so?"
+
+"I do not assert it, sir, and I do not deny it."
+
+The Baron did not speak for a moment, but he looked steadily over his
+eye-glasses at the flushed young face before him. Then he said in a
+quiet tone:
+
+"Monsignor, the relations of the Pope and the Government are delicate,
+and if anything occurred to carry the disagreement further it might
+result in a serious fratricidal struggle."
+
+The Monsignor was trying to regain his self-possession, and he remained
+silent.
+
+"But whatever those relations, it cannot be the wish of the Holy Father
+to cover with his mantle the upsetters of order who are cutting at the
+roots of the Church as well as the State."
+
+"Therefore I am here now, sir, thus early and thus openly," said the
+Monsignor.
+
+"Monsignor," said the Baron, "if anything should occur to--for
+example--the person of the King, it cannot be the wish of his Holiness
+that anybody--myself, for instance--should be in a position to say to
+Parliament and to the Governments of Europe, 'The Pope knew everything
+beforehand, and therefore, not having revealed the particulars of the
+plot, the venerable Father of the Vatican is an accomplice of
+murderers.'"
+
+The young ecclesiastic lost himself utterly. "The Pope," he said, "knows
+nothing more than I have told you."
+
+"Yes, Monsignor, the Pope knows one thing more. He knows who was his
+informant and authority. It is necessary that the Government should know
+that also, in order that it may judge for itself of the nature of the
+conspiracy and the source from which it may be expected."
+
+The Monsignor was quivering like a limed bird. "I have delivered my
+message, and have only to add that in sending me here his Holiness
+desired to prevent crime, not to help you to apprehend criminals."
+
+The Baron's eye-glasses dropped from his nose, and he spoke sharply and
+incisively. "The Government must at least know who the lady was who
+visited his Holiness at the Vatican yesterday morning, and led him to
+believe that a serious insurrection was impending."
+
+"That your Excellency never will, or can, or shall know."
+
+The Monsignor was bowing himself out of the room when the Baron's
+secretary opened the door and announced another visitor.
+
+"Donna Roma, your Excellency."
+
+The Monsignor betrayed fresh agitation, and tried to go.
+
+"Bring her in," said the Baron. "One moment, Monsignor."
+
+"I have said all I am authorised to say, sir, and I feel warned that I
+must say no more."
+
+"Don't say that, Monsignor.... Ah, Donna Roma!"
+
+Roma, who had entered the room, replied with reserve and dignity.
+
+"Allow me, Donna Roma, to present Monsignor Mario of the Vatican," said
+the Baron.
+
+"It is unnecessary," said Roma. "I met the Monsignor yesterday morning."
+
+The young ecclesiastic was overwhelmed with confusion.
+
+"My respectful reverence to his Holiness," said the Baron, smiling, "and
+pray tell him that the Government will do its duty to the country and to
+the civilised world, and count on the support of the Pope."
+
+Monsignor Mario left the room without a word.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+The Baron pushed out an easy-chair for Roma and twisted his own to face
+it.
+
+"How are you, my child?"
+
+"One lives," said Roma, with a sigh.
+
+"What is the matter, my dear? You are ill and unhappy."
+
+She eluded the question and said, "You sent for me--what do you wish to
+say?"
+
+He told her the printer of certain seditious proclamations had been
+arrested, and in the judicial inquiry preparatory to his trial he had
+mentioned the name of the person who had employed and paid him.
+
+"You cannot but be aware, my dear, that you have rendered yourself
+liable to prosecution, and that nothing--nothing whatever--could have
+saved you from public exposure but the good offices of a powerful
+friend."
+
+Roma drew her lips tightly together and made no answer.
+
+"But what a situation for a Minister! To find himself ruled by his
+feelings for a friend, and thus weakened in the eyes of his servants,
+who ought to have no possible hold on him."
+
+Roma's gloomy face began to be compressed with scorn.
+
+"You have perhaps not realised the full measure of the indignity that
+might have befallen you. For instance--a cruel necessity--the police
+would have been making a domiciliary visitation in your apartment at
+this moment."
+
+Roma made a faint, involuntary cry, and half rose from her seat.
+
+"Your letters and most secret papers would by this time be exposed to
+the eyes of the police.... No, no, my child; calm yourself, be seated;
+thanks to my intervention, this will not occur."
+
+Roma looked at him, and found him more repulsive to her at that moment
+than he had ever been before. Even his daintiness repelled her--the
+modified perfume about his clothes, his waxed moustache, his rounded
+finger-nails, and all the other refinements of the man who loves himself
+and sets out to please the senses of women.
+
+"You will allow, my dear, that I have had sufficient to humiliate me
+without this further experience. A ward who persistently disregards the
+laws of propriety and exposes herself to criticism in the most ordinary
+acts of life was surely a sufficient trial. But that was not enough.
+Almost as soon as you have passed out of my legal control you join with
+those who are talking and conspiring against me."
+
+Roma continued to sit with a gloomy and defiant face.
+
+"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations you put upon me in
+your own mind? You give me no chance to defend myself. I cannot know
+what others have told you. I know no more than you repeat to me, and
+that is nothing at all."
+
+Roma was biting her compressed lips and breathing audibly.
+
+"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations I suffer in the
+minds of the public? There is only one way, and that is to allow it to
+be believed that, in spite of all appearances, you are still playing a
+part, that you are going to all lengths to punish the enemy who traduced
+you and publicly degraded you."
+
+Roma tried to laugh, but the laugh was broken in her throat by a rising
+sob.
+
+"I have only to whisper that, dear friend, and society, at all events,
+will credit it. Already it knows the very minute details of your life,
+and it will believe that when you threw away every shred of propriety
+and went to live in that man's apartment, it was only in order to play
+the old part--shall I say the Scriptural part?--of possessing yourself
+of _the inmost secrets of his soul_."
+
+The clear, sharp whisper in which the Baron spoke his last words cut
+Roma like a knife. She threw up her head with scorn.
+
+"Let it believe what it likes," she said. "If society cares to think
+that I have allowed my life to be turned upside down for the sake of
+hatred, let it do so."
+
+The Baron's secretary interrupted by opening the door.
+
+"Nazzareno, Excellency," said the secretary.
+
+"Ah! Let him come in," said the Baron. "You remember Nazzareno, Roma? My
+steward at Albano?"
+
+An elderly man with a bronzed face and shaggy eyebrows, bringing an
+odour of the fields and the farmyard, was ushered into the room.
+
+"Come in, Nazzareno! You've not forgotten Donna Roma? You planted a
+rosebush on her first Roman birthday, you remember. It's a great tree by
+this time, perhaps."
+
+"It is, Excellency," said the steward, bowing and smiling, "and nearly
+as full of bloom as the Signorina herself."
+
+"Well, what news from Albano?"
+
+The steward told a long story of operations on the estates--planting
+birch in the top fields, and eucalyptus in the low meadow, fencing,
+draining, and sowing.
+
+"And ... and the Baroness?" said the Baron, turning over some papers.
+
+"Ah! her Excellency is worse," said the old man. "The nurse and the
+doctor thought you had better be told exactly, and that is the object of
+my errand."
+
+"Yes?" The papers rustled in the Baron's fingers as he shuffled and
+sorted them.
+
+The steward told another long story. Her Excellency was weaker, or she
+would be quite ungovernable. And so changed! When he was called in
+yesterday she was so much altered that he would not have known her. It
+was a question of days, and all the servants were saying prayers to Mary
+Magdalene.
+
+"Have some dinner downstairs before you return, Nazzareno," said the
+Baron. "And when you see the doctor this evening, say I'll come out
+some time this week if I can. Good-morning!"
+
+The repulsion the Baron had inspired in Roma deepened to loathing when
+he began to speak affectionately the moment the door had closed on the
+steward.
+
+"Look at this, dearest. It's from his Majesty."
+
+She did not look at the letter he put before her, so he told her what it
+contained. It offered him the Collar of the Annunziata, the highest
+order in Italy, making him a cousin to the King.
+
+She could not contain herself any longer. "I want to tell you
+something," she said, "so that you may know once for all that it is
+useless to waste further thought on me."
+
+He looked at her with an indulgent smile.
+
+"I am married to Mr. Rossi," she said.
+
+"But that is impossible. There was no time."
+
+"We were married religiously, in the parish church, on the morning he
+left Rome."
+
+The indulgent smile gave way to a sarcastic one.
+
+"Then why did he leave you behind? If he thought _that_ was a good
+marriage, why didn't he take you with him? But perhaps he had his own
+reason, and the denunciation of the poor man in prison was not so far
+amiss."
+
+"That was an official lie, a cowardly lie," said Roma, and her eyes
+burned with anger.
+
+"Was it? Perhaps it was. But I have just heard something else about Mr.
+Rossi that is undoubtedly true. I have heard from the Prefect of Paris
+that he is organising a conspiracy for the assassination of the King."
+
+A look of fear which she could not restrain crossed Roma's face.
+
+"More than that, and stranger than that, I have just heard also that the
+Pope has some knowledge of the plot."
+
+Roma felt terror seizing her, and she said in a constrained voice, "Why?
+What has the Pope told you?"
+
+"Only that an insurrection is impending. It seems that his informant is
+a woman.... Who can she be, I wonder?"
+
+The Baron was fixing his eyes on her and she tried to elude his gaze.
+
+"Whoever she is she must know more," he said in a severe voice, "and
+whatever it is she must reveal it."
+
+Roma got up, looking very pale, and feeling very feeble. When she
+reached the door the Baron was smiling and holding out his hand.
+
+"Will you not shake hands with me?" he said.
+
+"What is the use?" she answered. "When people shake hands it means that
+they wish each other well. You do not wish me well. You are trying to
+force me to betray my husband.... _But I'll die first_," she said, and
+then turned and fled.
+
+When Roma was gone the Baron wrote a letter to the Pope:
+
+    "YOUR HOLINESS,--Providential accident, as your chamberlain would
+    tell you, has enabled his Majesty's Government to judge for itself
+    of that source of your Holiness's information which your Holiness
+    very properly refused to reveal. At the same time official
+    channels have disclosed to his Majesty's Government the nature of
+    the conspiracy of which your Holiness so patriotically forewarned
+    them. This conspiracy appears to be no less serious than an
+    attempt to assassinate the King, but as detailed knowledge of so
+    vile a plot is necessary in order to save the life of our august
+    sovereign, his Majesty's Government asks you to grant the Prime
+    Minister the honour of an audience with your Holiness in the cause
+    of order and public security. Hoping to hear of your Holiness's
+    convenience, and trusting that your Holiness will not disappoint
+    the hopes of those who are dreaming even yet of a reconciliation
+    of Church and State, I am, with all reverence, your Holiness's
+    faithful son and servant,                                BONELLI."
+
+
+                                IX
+
+Roma went home full of uncertainty, and wrote in a nervous and
+straggling hand a hasty letter to Rossi.
+
+"My dearest," she said, "your letter reached me safely last evening, and
+though I cannot answer it properly at the present moment, I must send a
+brief reply by mid-day's mail, because there are two or three things it
+is imperative I should say immediately.
+
+"The first is that I wrote you a very important letter to London twelve
+days ago, and it is clear that you have not yet received it. The
+contents were of the greatest seriousness and also of the greatest
+secrecy, and I should die if any other eye than yours were to read
+them; therefore do not lose a moment until you ask for the letter to be
+sent after you to Paris. Write to London by the first post, and when the
+letter has come to your hand, do telegraph to me saying so. 'Received,'
+that will be sufficient, but if you can add one other little word
+expressing your feeling on reading what I wrote--'Forgiven,' for
+instance--my feeling will not be happiness, it will be delirium.
+
+"The next thing I have to say, dearest, is about your letters. You know
+they are more precious to me than my heart's blood, and there is not a
+word or a line of them I would sacrifice for a queen's crown. But they
+are so full of perilous opinions and of hints of programmes for
+dangerous enterprises, that for your sake I am afraid. It is so good of
+you to tell me what you are thinking and doing, and I am so proud to be
+the woman who has the confidence as well as the love of the
+most-talked-of man in Europe, that it cuts at my heart to ask you to
+tell me no more about your political plans. Nevertheless, I must. Think
+what would happen if the police took it into their heads to make a
+domiciliary visitation in this house. And then think of what a fearful
+weapon it puts into the hands of your enemies, if, hearing that I know
+so much, they put pressure upon me that I cannot withstand! Of course,
+that is impossible. I would die first. But still....
+
+"My last point, dearest...."
+
+Her pen stopped. How was she to put what she wished to say next? David
+Rossi was in danger--a double danger--danger from within as well as
+danger from without. His last letter showed plainly that he was engaged
+in an enterprise which his adversaries would call a plot. Roma
+remembered her father, doomed to a life-long exile and a lonely death,
+and asked herself if it was not always the case that the reformer partly
+reformed his age, and was partly corrupted by it.
+
+If she could only draw David Rossi away from associations that were
+always reeking of revolution, if she could bring him back to Rome before
+he was too far involved in plots and with plotters! But how could she do
+it? To tell him the plain truth that he was going headlong to _domicilio
+coatto_ was useless. She must resort to artifice. A light shot through
+her brain, her eyes gleamed, and she began again:
+
+"My last point, dearest, is that I am growing jealous. Yes, indeed,
+jealous! I know you love me, but knowing it doesn't help me to forget
+that you are always meeting women who must admire and love you. I
+tremble to think you may be happy with them. I want you to be happy, yet
+I feel as if it would be treason for you to be happy without me. What an
+illogical thing love is! But where Love reigns jealousy is always the
+Prime Minister, and in order to banish my jealousy you must come back
+immediately...."
+
+Her pen stopped again. The artifice was too trivial, too palpable, and
+he would certainly see through it. She tore up the sheet and began
+afresh.
+
+"My last point, dearest, is that I fear you are forgetting me in your
+work. While thinking of the revolution you are making in Europe, you
+forget the revolution you have already made in this poor little heart.
+Of course I love your glory more than I love myself, yet I am afraid it
+is taking you away from me, and will end by leading you up, up, up, out
+of a woman's reach. Why didn't I give you my portrait to put in your
+watch-case when you went away? Don't let this folly disgust you,
+dearest. A woman is a foolish thing, isn't she? But if you don't want me
+to make a torment of everything you will hasten back in time to...."
+
+She threw down the pen and began to cry. Hadn't she promised him that,
+come what would, her love for him should never stand in his way? In the
+midst of her tears a little stab at her heart made her think of
+something else, and she took up the pen again.
+
+"My last point, dearest, is that I am ill, and very, very anxious to see
+you soon. My health has been failing ever since you left Rome. Perhaps
+the anxieties I have gone through have been partly the cause of this,
+but I am sure that your absence is chiefly responsible, and that no
+doctor and no medicine would be so good for me as one rush into your
+arms. Therefore come and give me back all my health and happiness. Come,
+I beg of you. Leave it to others to do your work abroad. Come at once
+_before things have gone too far_; come, come, come!"
+
+She hesitated, wanting to say, "Not that I am _very_ ill...." And then,
+"You mustn't come if there is any risk to yourself...." And again, "I
+would never forgive myself if...." But she crushed down her qualms,
+sealed her letter, and sent the Garibaldian to post it.
+
+Then she gathered up the entire body of David Rossi's letters, and
+putting some light firewood into the stove she sat on the ground to burn
+them. It was necessary to remove all evidence that could be used against
+him in the event of a domiciliary visitation. One by one as the letters,
+were passed into the fire she read parts of them, and some of the
+passages seemed to stand out afresh in the flames. "Your friend must be
+a true woman, and it was very sweet of you to be so tender with
+her." ... "There is always a little twinge when I read between the lines
+of your letters. Are you not dissimulating?... to keep up my
+spirits?" ... "You shall smile and recover all your girlish spirits....
+I shall hear your silvery laugh again as I did on that glorious day in
+the Campagna." ... "It shows how rightly I judged the moral elevation
+of your soul, your impeccability, your spirit of fire and your heart of
+gold."
+
+While the letters were burning she felt herself to be under the
+influence of a kind of delirium. It was almost as though she were
+committing murder.
+
+
+                                X
+
+The Pope had begun the day with the long task of administering the
+sacrament to the lay members of his household, yet at eight o'clock he
+was back in his library in the midst of his morning receptions
+surrounded by a bevy of camerieri, monsignori, and messengers. First
+came a Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda to report the doings of his
+congregation; then an ambassador from Spain to tell of the suppression
+of religious orders; and finally the majordomo to recite the official
+programme for the public ceremonies which the Pope had ordered for Holy
+Thursday.
+
+It was now ten o'clock, and Cortis, the valet, brought the usual plate
+of soup. Then came a large man with bold features and dark complexion,
+wearing a purple robe edged with red and a red biretta. It was the
+Cardinal Secretary of State.
+
+"What news this morning, your Eminence?" said the Pope.
+
+"The Government," said the Cardinal Secretary, "has just published a
+proclamation announcing a jubilee in honour of the King's accession. It
+is to begin on Monday next, and there are to be great feasts and
+rejoicings."
+
+"A jubilee at a time like this! What a wild mockery of the people's
+woes! How many poor women and children must go hungry before this royal
+orgy has been paid for! God be with us! Such injustice and tyranny in
+the Satanic guise of clemency and indulgence is almost enough to explain
+the homicidal theories of the demagogues and to justify men like
+Rossi.... Any further news of him?"
+
+"Yes. He is at present in Paris, in close intercourse with the leaders
+of every abominable sect."
+
+"You have seen this man Rossi, your Eminence?"
+
+"Once. I saw him on the morning of the jubilee of your Holiness, when he
+attempted to present a petition."
+
+"What is he like to look upon--the typical demagogue; no?"
+
+"No. I am bound to say no, your Holiness. And his conversation, though
+it is full of the jargon of modern Liberalism, has none of the
+obscenities of Voltaire."
+
+"Some one said ... who was it, I wonder?... some one said he resembled
+the Holy Father."
+
+"Now that you mention it, your Holiness, there is perhaps a remote
+resemblance."
+
+"Ah! who knows what service for God and humanity even such a man might
+have done if in early life his lines had been cast in better places."
+
+"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, your Holiness."
+
+"Then he never knew a father's care and guidance! Unhappy son! Unhappy
+father!"
+
+"Monsignor Mario," said the low voice of a chamberlain, and at the next
+moment the Pope's messenger to the Prime Minister was kneeling in the
+middle of the floor.
+
+In nervous tones and broken sentences the Monsignor told his story. The
+Pope listened intently, the vertical lines on his forehead deepening and
+darkening every moment, until at length he burst out impatiently:
+
+"But, my son, you do not say that you said all this in addition to your
+message?"
+
+"I was drawn into doing so in defence of your Holiness."
+
+"You told the Minister that my information came through the channel of a
+simple confidence?"
+
+"He insinuated that the Holy Father was perhaps breaking the seal of the
+confessional...."
+
+"That my informant was a non-Catholic and a woman?"
+
+"He implied that your Holiness had only to command her to reveal the
+conspiracy to the civil authorities, and therefore...."
+
+"And you said she was here on Saturday morning?"
+
+"He hinted that the Holy Father was an accomplice of criminals if he had
+known this without revealing it before, and that was why...."
+
+"And she came in at that moment, you say?"
+
+"At that very moment, your Holiness, and said she had met me on Saturday
+morning."
+
+"Man, man, what have you done?" cried the Pope, rising from his seat and
+pacing the room.
+
+The chamberlain continued to kneel in utter humility, until the Pope,
+recovering his composure, put both hands on his shoulders and raised him
+to his feet.
+
+"Forgive me, my son. I was more to blame than you were. It was wrong to
+trust any one with a verbal message in the cabinet of a fox. The Holy
+Father should have no intercourse with such persons. But this is God's
+hand. Let us leave everything to the Holy Spirit."
+
+At that moment the Papal Majordomo returned with a letter. It was the
+Baron's letter to the Pope. After the Pope had read it he stepped into a
+little adjoining room which contained nothing but a lounge and an
+easy-chair. There he lay on the lounge and turned his face to the wall.
+
+
+                                XI
+
+At four o'clock in the afternoon the Pope and Father Pifferi were again
+walking in the garden. The groves of Judas trees were shedding their
+crimson blossoms and the path had a covering of bloom; the atmosphere
+was full of the odour of honey-suckle and violet, and through the sunlit
+air the swallows were darting with shrill cries and the glitter of
+wings.
+
+"And what does your Holiness intend to do?" asked the Capuchin.
+
+"Providence will direct us," said the Pope with a sigh.
+
+"But your Holiness will refuse the request of the Government?"
+
+"How can I do so without exposing myself to misunderstanding? Suppose
+the King is assassinated, what then? The Government will tell the world
+that the Pope knew all and did nothing."
+
+"Let them. It will not be an incident without parallel in the history of
+the Church. And the world will only honour your Holiness the more for
+standing firm on your sanctity of the human soul."
+
+"Yes, if the confessional were in question. The world knows that the
+seal of the confessional is sacred, and must be observed at all costs.
+But this is not a case of the confessional."
+
+"Didn't your Holiness say you would observe it as such?"
+
+"And I shall. But what about the public? Accident has told the
+Government that this is not a case of the confessional, and the
+Government will tell the world. What follows? If I refuse to do anything
+the enemies of the Church will give it out that the Holy Father is an
+accomplice of a regicide, ready and willing to intrigue with the agents
+of rebellion to regain the temporal power."
+
+"Then you will receive the Prime Minister?"
+
+"No! Or if so, only in the company of his superior."
+
+"The King?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Capuchin removed his skull-cap with an uneasy hand, and walked some
+paces without speaking.
+
+"Will he come, your Holiness?"
+
+"If he thinks I hold the secret on which his life depends, assuredly he
+will come."
+
+"But you are sovereign as well as Pope--is it possible for you to
+receive him?"
+
+"I will receive him as the King of Sardinia, the King of Italy, if you
+will, but not as the King of Rome."
+
+The Capuchin took his coloured handkerchief from his sleeve and rolled
+it in his palms, which were hot and perspiring.
+
+"But, Holy Father," he said, "what will be the good? Say that all
+difficulties of etiquette can be removed, and you can meet as man to
+man, as David Leone and Albert Charles--why will the King come? Only to
+ask you to put pressure upon your informant to give more information."
+
+The Pope drew himself up on the gravel path and smote his breast with
+indignation. "Never! It would be an insult to the Church," he said. "It
+is one thing to expect the Holy Father to do his duty as a Christian
+even to his enemy, it is another thing to ask him to invade the sanctity
+of a private confidence."
+
+The Capuchin did not reply, and the two old men walked on in silence. As
+the light softened the swallows increased their clamour, and song-birds
+began to call from neighbouring trees. Suddenly a startled cry burst
+from the foliage, and, turning quickly, the Pope lifted up the cat
+which, as usual, was picking its way at his heels.
+
+"Ah, Meesh, Meesh! I've got you safely this time.... It was the poor
+mother-bird again, I suppose. Where is her nest, I wonder?"
+
+They found it in the old sarcophagus, which was now almost lost in
+leaves. The eggs had been hatched, and the fledglings, with eyes not yet
+opened, stretched their featherless necks and opened their beaks when
+the Pope put down his hand to touch them.
+
+"Monsignor," said the Pope over his shoulder, "remind me to-morrow to
+ask the gardener for some worms."
+
+The cat, from his prison under the Pope's arm, was watching the
+squirming nest with hungry eyes.
+
+"Naughty Meesh! Naughty!" said the Pope, shaking one finger in the cat's
+face. "But Meesh is only following the ways of his kind, and perhaps I
+was wrong to let him see the quarry."
+
+The Pope and the Capuchin walked back to the Vatican for joy of the
+sweet spring evening with its scent of flowers and song of birds.
+
+"You are sad to-day, Father Pifferi," said the Pope.
+
+"I'm still thinking of that poor lady," said the Capuchin.
+
+At the first hour of night the Pope attended the recitation of the
+rosary in his private chapel, and then returning to his private study, a
+room furnished with a table and two chairs, he took a light supper,
+served by Cortis in the evening dress of a civilian. His only other
+company was the cat, which sat on a chair on the opposite side of the
+table. After supper he wrote a letter. It ran:
+
+    "SIRE,--Your Minister informs us that through official channels he
+    has received warning of a plot against your life, and believing
+    that we can give information that will help him to defeat so vile
+    a conspiracy, he asks us for a special audience. It is not within
+    our power to promise more assistance than we have already given;
+    but this is to say that if your Majesty yourself should wish to
+    see us, we shall be pleased to receive you, with or without your
+    Minister, if you will come in private and otherwise unattended, at
+    the hour of 21-1/2 on Holy Thursday, to the door of the Canons'
+    House of St. Peter's, where the bearer of this  message will be
+    waiting to conduct you to the Sacristy.
+
+    "Nil timendum nisi a Deo.
+                                                        Pius P.P.X."
+
+
+                                XII
+
+The ceremonies in St. Peter's on Maundy Thursday exceeded in pomp and
+magnificence anything that could be remembered in Rome.
+
+It was a great triumph for the Church. In the face of the anti-religious
+Governments of Europe she had proved that the mightiest sentiment of the
+people was the sentiment of religion.
+
+The Papal Court was proud of itself. Some of its members made no effort
+to conceal their delight at the blow they had struck at the ruling
+classes. But there was one man in Rome who felt no joy in his triumph.
+It was the Pope.
+
+At nine o'clock at night he visited the "urn" called the "Sepulchre."
+Borne amid the light of torches on his _sedia_ with his _flabelli_
+waving on either hand, under a white canopy upheld by prelates, he
+passed through the glittering rooms of his own palace, along the dark
+corridors of the Vatican and down the marble stairs, accompanied by his
+guards in helmets and preceded by the papal cross covered with a violet
+veil, into the great Basilica, lit only by large candles in iron stands,
+and looking plain and barn-like and full of shadows in the gloom and the
+smoky air. But after he had visited the Sepulchre, gorgeously
+illuminated, while the cantors sang the _Verbum Caro_, after he had
+knelt in silence and had risen, and the torches of his procession had
+been put out, and he had returned to his chair to be borne into the
+Sacristy, and the poor people, lifted to a height of emotion not often
+reached by the human soul, had broken again into a last delirious shout
+of affection, he dropped his head and wept.
+
+At that moment the Sacristy was empty save for the custodian in black
+cassock and biretta, who was warming his hands over a large bronze
+scaldino; but in the Archpriest's room adjoining, with its gilt
+arm-chair and stools of red plush, Father Pifferi in his ordinary brown
+habit was waiting for the Pope. The bearers put down the chair, knelt
+and kissed the Pope's feet in spite of his protest, backed themselves
+out with deep obeisance, and left the two old men together.
+
+"Have they arrived?" asked the Pope.
+
+"Not yet, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Father, have you any faith in presentiments?"
+
+"Sometimes, your Holiness. When they continue and are persistent..."
+
+"I have had a presentiment which has been with me all my life--all my
+life as Pope, at all events. The blessed God who abases and lifts up has
+thought fit to raise my lowliness to the most sublime dignity that
+exists on earth, but I have always lived in the fear that some day I
+should be torn down from it, and the Church would suffer."
+
+"God forbid, your Holiness!"
+
+"That was why I refused every place and every honour. You know how I
+refused them, Father!"
+
+"Yes, but God knew better, your Holiness, and He preserved you to be a
+blessing and a comfort to His people."
+
+"His holy will be done! But the shadow which has been over me will not
+be lifted. Cause prayers to be said for me. Pray for me yourself,
+Father."
+
+"Your Holiness is in low spirits. And to-day of all days! Ah, how happy
+is the Church which has seen the hand of God place in the chair of St.
+Peter a soul capable of comprehending the necessities of His children
+and a heart desirous of satisfying them!"
+
+"I hardly know what is to come of this interview, Father, but I must
+leave myself in the hands of the Holy Spirit."
+
+"There is no help for it now, your Holiness."
+
+"Perhaps I should not have gone so far but for this wave of anarchy
+which is sweeping over the world.... You believe the man Rossi is
+secretly an anarchist?"
+
+"I am afraid he is, your Holiness, and one of the worst enemies of the
+Church and the Holy Father."
+
+"They say he was an orphan from his infancy, and never knew father, or
+mother, or home."
+
+"Pitiful, very pitiful!"
+
+"I have heard that his public life is not without a certain perverted
+nobility, and that his private life is pure and good."
+
+"His relation to the lady would seem to say so, your Holiness."
+
+"But the Holy Father may be sorry for a wayward son, and yet be forced
+to condemn him for all that. He must cut himself off from all such men,
+lest his adversaries should say that, while preaching peace and the
+moral law, he is secretly encouraging the devilish agents of atheism,
+anarchy, and rebellion."
+
+"Perhaps so, your Holiness."
+
+"Father, do you think the care of temporal things is ever a danger and
+temptation?"
+
+"Sometimes I think it is, your Holiness, and that the Holy Father would
+be better without lands or fleshly armies."
+
+"How late they are!" said the Pope; but at the same moment the door
+opened, and a Noble Guard knelt on the threshold.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The personages you expect have come, your Holiness."
+
+"Bring them in," said the Pope.
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+The young King, who wore the uniform of a cavalry officer, with sword
+and long blue cloak, knelt to the Pope and kissed his ring, while the
+Prime Minister, who was in ordinary civilian costume, bowed deeply, but
+remained standing.
+
+"Pray sit," said the Pope, seating himself in the gilded arm-chair, with
+the Capuchin on his left.
+
+The King sat on one of the wooden stools in front of the Pope, but the
+Baron continued to stand by his side. Between the Pope and the King was
+a wooden table on which two large candles were burning. The young King
+was pale, and the expression of his twitching face was one of pain.
+
+"It was good of your Holiness to see us," he said, "and perhaps the
+gravity of our errand may excuse the informality of our visit."
+
+The Pope, who was leaning forward on the arms of his chair, only bent
+his head.
+
+"His Excellency," said the King, indicating the Baron, "tells me he has
+gained proof of an organised conspiracy against my life, and he says
+that your Holiness holds the secret of the conspirators."
+
+The Pope, without responding, looked steadily into the face of the young
+King, who became nervous and embarrassed.
+
+"Not that I'm afraid," he said, "personally afraid. But naturally I must
+think of others--my family--my people--even of Italy--and if your
+Holiness...if your...your Holiness..."
+
+The Baron, who had been standing with one arm across his breast, and the
+other supporting his chin, intervened at this moment.
+
+"Your Majesty," he said, "with your Majesty's permission, and that of
+his Holiness," he bowed to both sovereigns, "it may be convenient if I
+state shortly the object of our visit."
+
+The young King drew a breath of relief, and the Pope, who was still
+silent, bent his head again.
+
+"Some days ago your Holiness was good enough to warn his Majesty's
+Government that from private sources of information you had reason to
+fear that an assault against the public peace was to be attempted."
+
+The Pope once more assented.
+
+"Since then the Government has received corroboration of the gracious
+message of your Holiness, coupled with very definite predictions of the
+nature of the revolt intended. In short, we have been told by our
+correspondents abroad that a conspiracy of European proportions,
+involving the subversive elements of England, France, and Germany, is to
+be directed against Rome as a centre of revolution, and that an attempt
+is to be made to assail constituted society by striking at our King."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Your Holiness may have heard that it is the intention of the Government
+and the nation to honour the anniversary of his Majesty's accession by a
+festival. The anniversary falls on Monday next, and we have reason to
+fear that Monday is the day intended for the outbreak of this vile
+conspiracy."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Your Holiness may have differences with his Majesty, but you cannot
+desire that the cry of suffering should mingle with the strains of the
+royal march."
+
+"If your Government knows all this, it has its remedy--let it alter the
+King's plans."
+
+"The advice with which your Holiness honours us is scarcely practicable.
+For the Government to alter the King's plans would be to alarm the
+populace, demoralise the services, and to add to the unhappy excitement
+which it is the object of the festival allay."
+
+"But why do you come to me?"
+
+"Because, your Holiness, our information, although conclusive, is too
+indefinite for effective action, and we believe your Holiness can supply
+the means by which we may preserve public order, and"--with an apologetic
+gesture--"save the life of the King."
+
+The Pope was moving uneasily in his chair. "I will ask you to be good
+enough to speak more plainly," he said.
+
+The Baron's heavy moustache rose at one corner to a fleeting smile.
+"Your Holiness," he said, "is already aware that accident disclosed to
+us the source of your information. It was a lady. This knowledge enabled
+us to judge who was the subject of her communication. It was the lady's
+lover. Official channels give us proof that he is engaged abroad in
+plots against public order, and thus..."
+
+"If you know all this, sir, what do you want with me?"
+
+"Your Holiness may not be aware that the person in question is a Deputy,
+and that a Deputy cannot be arrested without the fulfilment of various
+conditions prescribed by law. One of those conditions is that some one
+should be in a position to denounce him."
+
+The Pope half rose from his chair. "You ask me to denounce him?"
+
+The Baron bowed very low. "The Government does not presume so far," he
+said. "It only hopes that your Holiness will require your informant to
+do so."
+
+"Then you want me to outrage a confidence?"
+
+"It was not a confession, your Holiness, and even if it had been, as
+your Holiness knows better than we do, it would not be without precedent
+to reveal the facts which are necessary to be known in order to prevent
+crime."
+
+The Capuchin's sandals were scraping on the floor, but the Pope raised
+his left hand, and the friar fell back.
+
+"You are aware," said the Pope, "that the lady you speak of as my
+informant is married to the Deputy?"
+
+"We are aware that she thinks she is."
+
+"Thinks?" said the indignant voice of the Capuchin, but the Pope's left
+hand was raised again.
+
+"In short, sir, you ask me to require the wife to sacrifice her
+husband."
+
+"If your Holiness calls it so,--to perform an act that will preserve the
+public peace...."
+
+"I _do_ call it so."
+
+The Baron bowed, the young King was restless, and there was a moment's
+silence. Then the Pope said:
+
+"Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood that the lady knows more than
+she has said, and we have already communicated, what possible inducement
+do you expect us to offer her that she should sacrifice her husband?"
+
+"Her husband's life," said the Baron.
+
+"His life?"
+
+"Your Holiness may not know that the Governments of Europe, having
+ascertained the existence of a widespread plot against civil society,
+have joined in measures of repression. One of these is the extension to
+all countries of what is called the Belgian clause in treaties, whereby
+persons guilty of regicide or of plots directed against the lives of
+sovereigns are made liable to extradition."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The Deputy Rossi is now in Berlin. If he were denounced with the
+conditions required by law as conspiring against the life of the King,
+we might have him arrested to-night and brought back as a common
+murderer."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Your Holiness may not have heard that since the late unhappy riots the
+Parliament, in spite of the protests of his Majesty, has re-established
+capital punishment for all forms of high treason."
+
+"Therefore," said the Pope, "if the wife were to denounce her husband
+for participation in this conspiracy he would be sentenced to death."
+
+"For this conspiracy--yes," said the Baron. "But the present is not the
+only conspiracy the man Rossi has engaged in. Eighteen years ago he was
+condemned in contumacy for conspiracy against the life of the late King.
+He has not yet suffered for his crime, because of the difficulty of
+bringing it home. In that case, as in this, there is only one person
+known to the authorities who can fulfil the conditions required by law.
+That person is the informant of your Holiness."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If your Holiness can prevail upon the lady to identify her lover as the
+man condemned for the former conspiracy, you will be helping her to save
+her husband's life from the penalty due for the present one."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"His Majesty is willing to promise your Holiness that, whatever the
+result of a new trial in assize to follow the old one in contumacy, he
+will grant a complete pardon."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then the Deputy Rossi will be banished, the threatened conspiracy will
+be crushed, the public peace will be preserved, and the King's life will
+be saved."
+
+The Pope leaned forward on the arms of his chair, but he did not speak,
+and there was silence for some moments.
+
+"Thus your Holiness must see," said the Baron suavely, "that, in asking
+you to obtain the denunciation of the man Rossi, the Government is only
+looking to your Holiness to fulfil the mission of mercy to which your
+venerated position has destined you."
+
+"And if I refused to exercise this mission of mercy?"
+
+The Baron bowed gravely. "Your Holiness will not refuse," he said.
+
+"But if I do--what then?"
+
+"Then ... your Holiness.... I was about to say something."
+
+"I am listening."
+
+"The man we speak of is the bitterest enemy of the Church. Whatever his
+hypocrisies, he is at once an atheist and a freemason, sworn to allow no
+private interests or feelings, no bonds of patriotism or blood, to turn
+him aside from his purpose, which is to overthrow Society and the
+Church."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He is also a bitter personal enemy of the Holy Father, and knows no
+object so dear as that of tearing him from his place and shaking the
+throne of St. Peter."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"The police and the army of the Government are the only forces by which
+the Holy Father can be protected, and without them the bad elements
+which lurk in every community would break out, the Holy Father would be
+driven from Rome, and his priests assaulted in the streets."
+
+"But what will happen if I refuse to outrage the sanctity of an immortal
+soul in spite of all this danger?"
+
+"Your Holiness asks me what will happen if you refuse to obtain the
+denunciation of a man whom your Holiness knows to be conspiring against
+public order?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"What will happen will be ... your Holiness, I am speaking...."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"That, if the crime is committed and the King is killed, I, the Minister
+of his Majesty, will be in a position to say--and to call upon this
+friar to witness--that the Pope knew of it beforehand, and under the
+most noble sentiments about the sanctity of an immortal soul gave a
+supreme encouragement of regicide."
+
+"And then, sir?"
+
+"The world draws no nice distinctions, your Holiness, and the Vatican is
+now at war with nearly all the powers and peoples of Europe. In the
+presence of a monstrous crime against the most innocent and the most
+highly placed, the world would say that what the Pope did not prevent
+the Pope desired, what the Pope desired the Pope designed, and that the
+Vicar of the Prince of Peace attempted to rebuild his temporal power by
+means of the plots of conspirators and the daggers of assassins."
+
+The sandals of the Capuchin were scraping the floor again, and once more
+the Pope put up his hand.
+
+"You come to me, sir, when you have exhausted all other means of
+obtaining your end?"
+
+"Naturally the Government wishes if possible to spare your Holiness an
+unusual and painful ordeal."
+
+"The lady has resisted all other influences?"
+
+"She has resisted all influences which can be brought to bear upon her
+by the proper authorities."
+
+"I have heard of it, sir. I have heard what your 'authorities' have done
+to humble a helpless woman. She had been the victim of a heartless man,
+and by knowledge of that fact your 'authorities' have tempted and tried
+her. They tried her with poverty, with humiliation, with jealousy and
+the shadow of shame. But the blessed God upheld her in the love which
+had awakened her soul, and she withstood them to the last."
+
+The Baron, for the first time, looked confused.
+
+"I have also heard that in order to achieve the same end one of your
+gaols has been the scene of a scandal which has outraged every divine
+and human law."
+
+"Your Holiness must not accept for truth all that is printed in the
+halfpenny papers."
+
+"Is it true that in the cell where a helpless unfortunate was paying the
+penalty of his crime your 'authorities' introduced a police agent in
+disguise to draw him into a denunciation of his accomplice?"
+
+"These are matters of state, your Holiness. I do not assert them and I
+do not deny."
+
+"In the name of humanity I ask you are such 'authorities' punished, or
+do they sit in the cabinets of your Ministers of the Interior?"
+
+"No doubt the officials went too far, your Holiness; but shall we, for
+the sake of a miserable malefactor who told one story to-day and another
+to-morrow, drag our public service through courts of law? Pity for such
+persons is morbid sentimentality, your Holiness, unworthy of a strong
+and enlightened Government."
+
+"Then God destroy all such Governments, sir, and the bad and unchristian
+system which supports them! Allow that the man _was_ a miserable
+malefactor, it was not he alone that was offended, but in his poor,
+degraded person the spirit of Justice. What did your 'authorities' do?
+They tortured the man by his love for his wife, by the memory of his
+murdered child, by all that was true and noble and divine in him. They
+crucified the Christ in that helpless man, and you stand here in the
+presence of the Vicar of Christ to excuse and defend them."
+
+The Pope had risen in his chair and lifted one hand over his head with a
+majestic gesture. Involuntarily the young King, who had been ashen pale
+for some moments, dropped to his knees, but the Baron only folded his
+arms and stiffened his legs.
+
+"Have you ever thought, sir, of the end of the unjust Minister? Think of
+his dying hour, tortured with the memory of young lives dissolved,
+mothers dead, widows desolate, and orphans in tears. Think of the day
+after his death, when he who has passed through the world like the
+scourge of God lies at its feet, and no one so mean but he may spurn the
+dishonoured carcass. You are aiming high, your Excellency, but beware,
+beware!"
+
+The Pope sat, and the King rose to his feet.
+
+"Your Majesty," said the Pope, "the day will come when we must both
+present ourselves before God to render to Him an account of our deeds,
+and I, being far more advanced in years, will assuredly be the first.
+But I would not dare to meet the eye of my Judge if I did not this day
+warn you of the dangers in which you stand. Only God knows by what
+inscrutable decree of Providence one man is made a Pope or a King, while
+another man, his equal or superior, is made a beggar or a slave. But God
+who made Popes and Kings meant them to be the fathers, not the seducers
+of their subjects. A sovereign may be a man of good intentions, but if
+he is weak, and allows himself to fall into the hands of despotic
+Ministers, he is a worse affliction than the cruellest tyrant. Think
+well, your Majesty! A throne may be a quagmire, and a man may be buried
+in it, and buried alive."
+
+The young King began to falter some incoherent words, but without
+listening the Pope rose to end the audience.
+
+"You promise me," said the Pope, "that if--I say _if_--in order to avoid
+bloodshed and to prevent a crime, I obtain from this lady the
+identification of her husband as the person condemned for the former
+conspiracy, you will spare and pardon him whatever happens?"
+
+"Holy Father, I give you my solemn word for it."
+
+"Then leave me! Let me think!... Wait! If she consents, where must she
+go to?"
+
+"To the Procura by the Ponte Ripetta, and, as time presses, at ten
+o'clock on Saturday morning," said the Baron.
+
+"Leave me! Leave me!"
+
+The King knelt again and kissed the Pope's hand, but the Baron only
+bowed as he passed out behind his sovereign.
+
+The opening of the doors let in a wave of sound that was like the roll
+of a great wind in a cave. Tenebrae had been going on for some time in
+the Basilica, and the people were singing the Miserere.
+
+"Did you hear him, Father?" said the Pope. "Isn't it almost enough to
+justify a man like Rossi that he has to meet a despot like that?"
+
+"We'll talk of it to-morrow," said the Capuchin.
+
+The friar touched a bell, and the _palfrenieri_ returned with the
+chair.
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+Next day, being Good Friday, was passed by the Pope in religious
+retreat, which was interrupted by indispensable business only. After
+Mass of the Presanctified he sat in his study with his confessor, while
+his chaplain in black passed through on tiptoe from the private chapel,
+and his chamberlains, tired out by the ceremonies of yesterday, dozed on
+their stools in the outer hall.
+
+The day was bright but the room was darkened, and the hearts of the two
+old men were heavy. Over the face of the Pope there was a cloud of
+trouble, and the countenance of the Capuchin was solemn to the point of
+sternness. The friar sat in the old-fashioned easy-chair with his bare
+feet showing from under the edge of his brown habit; the Pope lay on the
+lounge with both hands in the vertical pockets of his white woollen
+cassock.
+
+"Your Holiness is not well this morning?"
+
+"Not very well, Father Pifferi."
+
+"Your Holiness was disturbed by the interview in the Sacristy. But you
+should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed
+was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a
+wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than
+the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness could
+never consider it."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Didn't your Holiness promise that whatever the nature of this poor
+lady's confidence you would hold it as sacred as the confessional?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What is the confessional, your Holiness? It is a tribunal in which the
+priest is judge and the penitent a prisoner who pleads guilty. Is the
+priest to call witnesses to prove other crimes? He has no right and no
+power to do so."
+
+"But where the penitent wittingly or unwittingly is in the position of
+an accomplice, what then, Father Pifferi?"
+
+"Even then it is expressly forbidden to demand the names of others upon
+the plea of preventing evil. How can you hold this lady's confidence as
+sacred and yet ask her to denounce her husband?"
+
+The Pope rose with a face full of pain, walked to the bookcase, and
+took down a book. "Listen, Father," he said, and he began to read:--
+
+"_If the penitent was obliged under pain of mortal sin to reveal his
+accomplices to repair a common injury, I have maintained against other
+theologians that even then the confessor cannot oblige him to do so._"
+
+"There!" cried the Capuchin. "What did I say? Gaume is wise, and the
+other theologians, who are they?"
+
+"_Only_," continued the Pope, turning a page and holding up one finger,
+"_he can and must oblige him to make known his accomplices to other
+persons who can arrest the scandal._"
+
+The Capuchin took a long breath. "Is that what the Holy Father intends
+to do in this instance?"
+
+"He _can_ and _must_."
+
+The Capuchin dropped his head, and there was a long pause, in which the
+Pope walked nervously about the room.
+
+"Poor child!" said the Capuchin. "But perhaps her heart has been too
+much set on human love."
+
+The Pope sighed.
+
+"Yet who are we, whose hearts are closed to earthly affection, to
+prescribe a limit to human love?"
+
+"Who indeed?" said the Pope.
+
+"Do you recall her resemblance to any one, your Holiness?"
+
+The Pope stopped in his walk and looked towards the curtained window.
+
+"The same soft voice and radiant smile, the same attitude of idolatry
+towards the husband she is devoted to, the same...."
+
+"The Sisters of the Sacred Heart will take her when all is over," said
+the Pope.
+
+"And the man, too, whatever his errors, has a certain grandeur of soul,
+that lifts him far above these chief gaolers and detectives who call
+themselves statesmen and diplomatists, these scavengers of
+civilisation."
+
+"He must go back to America and begin life again," said the Pope.
+
+Two hours later Father Pifferi went off to fetch Roma, and the Pope sat
+down to his mid-day meal. The room was very quiet, and in the absence of
+the church bells the city seemed to sit in silence. Cortis stood behind
+the Pope's chair, and the cat sat on a stool at the opposite side of the
+table.
+
+The chamberlains, lay and ecclesiastical, waited in the ante-camera, and
+the Swiss and Noble Guards, the Palatine Guards, and the _palfrenieri_
+dotted the decorated halls that led to the royal stairs.
+
+But the saintly old man, who had a palace yet no home, servants yet no
+family, an army yet no empire, who was the father of all men, yet knew
+no longer the ordinary joys and sorrows of human life, sat alone in his
+little plain apartment and ate his simple dish of spinach and beans.
+
+
+                                XV
+
+Good Friday's Ministerial paper announced in its official column that
+late the night before the King, attended by the Minister of the
+Interior, had paid a surprise visit to the Mint, which was in the Via
+Fondamenta, a lane approached by way of the silent passage which leads
+to the lodging of the Canons of St. Peter's. Roma was puzzling over the
+inexplicable announcement, when old John, one of Rossi's pensioners,
+knocked at her door. His face and his lips were white, and when Roma
+offered him money he put it aside impatiently.
+
+"You mustn't think a gold hammer can break the gate of heaven,
+Eccellenza," the old man said.
+
+Then he told his story. The King had seen the Pope in secret the night
+before, and there was something going on about the Honourable Rossi.
+John knew it because his grandson had left Rome that morning for
+Chiasso, and another member of the secret police had started for Modane.
+If Donna Roma knew where the Honourable was to be found, she had better
+tell him not to return to Italy.
+
+"Better be a wood-bird than a cage-bird, you know," the old man
+whispered.
+
+Roma thanked him for his news, and then warned him of the risk he ran,
+being dependent on his grandson and his grandson's wife.
+
+"That's nothing," he said, "nothing at all _now_."
+
+Last night he had dreamed a dream. He thought he was a strong man again,
+with his children about him, and beholden to no one. How happy he had
+been! But when he awoke, and found it was not true, and that he was old
+and feeble, he felt that he could hear it no longer.
+
+"I'm in the way and taking the food of the children, so it can't last
+long, Eccellenza," he said in a tremulous voice, smiling with his
+toothless mouth, and nodding slightly as he went away.
+
+In the uneasy depths of Roma's soul only one thing was now certain. Her
+husband was in danger, and he must not attempt to cross the frontier.
+Yet how was he to be prevented? The difficulty was enormous. If only
+Rossi had replied to her letter by telegram, as she had asked him to do,
+she might have found some means of communication. At length an idea
+occurred to her, and she sat down to write a letter.
+
+    "Dearest," she wrote, while her eyes shone with a kind of delirium
+    and tears trickled down her cheeks, "I am very ill, and as you
+    cannot come to me I must go to you. Don't think me too weak and
+    womanish, after all my solemn promises to be so strong and brave.
+    But I can only live by love, dearest, and your absence is more
+    than I can bear. You will think I ought to be content with your
+    letters, and certainly they have been very sweet and dear to me;
+    but they are so few, and they come at such long intervals, and now
+    they seem to have stopped altogether. Perhaps at the bottom of my
+    selfish heart, too, I think your letters might be a wee bit more
+    lover-like, but then men don't write real love letters, and nearly
+    every woman would confess, if she told the truth, and she is a
+    little disappointed in that regard.
+
+    "I know my husband has other things to think about, great things,
+    high and noble aims and objects, but I am only a woman in spite of
+    my loud pretences, and I must be loved, or I shall die. Not that I
+    am afraid of dying, because I know that if I die I shall be with
+    you in a moment, and this cruel separation will be at an end. But
+    I want to live, and I'm certain I shall begin to feel better after
+    I have passed a few moments at your side. So I shall pack up
+    immediately and start away on the wings of the morning.
+
+    "Don't be alarmed if you find me looking pale and thin and old and
+    ugly. How could I be anything else when the particular world I
+    live in has been sunless all these weeks? I know your work is very
+    pressing, especially now when so many things are happening; but
+    you will put it aside for a little while, won't you, and take me
+    up into the Alps somewhere, and nurse me back to health and
+    happiness? Fancy! We shall be boy and girl again, as in the days
+    when you used to catch butterflies for me, and then look sad when,
+    like a naughty child, I scrunched them!
+
+    "_Au revoir_, dearest. I shall fall into your hands nearly as soon
+    as this letter. I tremble to think you may be angry with me for
+    following you and interrupting your work. If you show it in your
+    face I shall certainly expire. But you will be good to your poor
+    pilgrim of love and comfort and strengthen her. All the time you
+    have been away she has never forgotten you for a moment--no, not
+    one waking moment. An ordinary woman who loved an ordinary man
+    would not tell him this, but you are not ordinary, and if I am I
+    don't care a pin to pretend.
+
+    "Expect me, then, by the fastest train leaving Rome to-morrow
+    morning, and don't budge from Paris until I arrive.
+
+    "ROMA."
+
+The strain of this letter, with its conscious subterfuge and its
+unconscious truth, put Roma into a state of fever; and when she had
+finished it and sent it to the post, her head was light, and she was
+aware for the first time that she was really ill.
+
+The deaf old woman, who helped her to pack, talked without ceasing of
+Rossi and Bruno and Elena and little Joseph, and finally of the King and
+his intended jubilee.
+
+"I don't take no notice of Governments, Signora. It's the same as it
+used to be in the old days. One Pope died, and his soul went into the
+next. First an ugly Pope, then a handsome one, but the soul was the same
+in all. Wet soup or dry--that's all I trouble about now; and I don't
+care who gets the taxes so long as I can pay.... What do you say,
+Tommaso?"
+
+The Garibaldian had come upstairs smiling and winking, and holding out a
+letter. "From Trinita de' Monti," he whispered. Flushing crimson and
+trembling visibly, Roma took the letter out of the old man's hands with
+as much apprehension as if he had tried to deal her a blow, and went off
+to her room.
+
+"What do I say, Francesca? I say it's a good thing to be a Christian in
+these days, and that's why I always carry a sharp knife and a rosary."
+
+
+                                XVI
+
+The letter bore the Berlin postmark.
+
+    "MY DEAR WIFE,--I left Paris rather unexpectedly three days ago
+    and arrived here on Tuesday. The reason of this sudden flight was
+    the announcement in the Paris papers of the festivities intended
+    in Rome in honour of the King's accession. Such a shameless
+    outrage on the people's sufferings in the hour of their greatest
+    need seemed to call for immediate and effectual protest, and it
+    was thought wise to push on the work of organisation with every
+    possible despatch...."
+
+"There is a train north at 9.30," thought Roma. "I must leave to-night,
+not in the morning."
+
+    "Oh, Roma, Roma, my dear Roma, I understand your father now, and
+    can sympathise with him at last. He held that even regicide might
+    become a necessary weapon in the warfare of humanity, and though I
+    knew that some of the greatest spirits had recourse to it, I
+    always thought this belief the defect of your father's quality as
+    a prophet and the limit of his vision. But now I see that the only
+    difference between us was that his heart was bigger than mine, and
+    that in those cruel crises where the people are helpless and can
+    do nothing by constitutional means, revolution, not evolution,
+    may _seem_ to be their only hope...."
+
+Roma felt hysterical. There could no longer be any doubt of Rossi's
+intention.
+
+    "I don't tell you anything definite about our plans, dearest,
+    partly because of the danger of this letter going astray, and
+    partly because I don't think it right to saddle my wife with the
+    responsibility of knowing a programme that is weighted with issues
+    of such immense importance to so many. I know there is not a drop
+    of blood in her veins that isn't ready to flow for me, but that is
+    no reason for exposing her to the danger of even the prick of her
+    little finger.
+
+    "Briefly our cry is 'Unite! Unite! Unite!' As soon as our scheme
+    is complete, and associates all over Europe receive the word to
+    commence concerted movement, the tyrants at the heads of the
+    States will find the old edifices riddled and honeycombed, and
+    ready to fall."
+
+Roma imagined she could see everything as it was intended to be--the
+signal, the rising, the regicide. "There is a train at 2.30; I must
+catch that one," she thought.
+
+    "Dearest, don't attempt to reply to this letter, for I may leave
+    Berlin at any moment, but whether for Geneva or Zuerich I don't yet
+    know. I can give you no address for letter or telegram, and
+    perhaps it is best that at the critical moment I should cut myself
+    off from all connection with Rome. Before many days I shall be
+    with you; my absence will be over, and, God willing, I shall never
+    leave your side again...."
+
+Roma was growing dizzy. Rossi was rushing on his death, and there was no
+help for him. It was like the awful hand of the Almighty driving him
+blindly on.
+
+    "Adieu, my darling. Keep well. A friend writes that letters from
+    Rome are following me from London. They must be yours, but before
+    they overtake me I shall be holding you in my arms. How I long for
+    it! I am more than ever full of love for you, and if I have filled
+    my letter with business I have other things to say to you the very
+    moment that we meet. Don't expect me until you see me in your
+    room. Be brave! Now is the moment for all your courage. Remember
+    you promised to be my soldier as well as my wife--'ready and waiting
+    when her captain calls.'   D."
+
+Roma was standing with Rossi's letter in her hand--her face and lips
+white, and her head full of a roaring noise--when a knock came to the
+bedroom door. Before answering she thrust the letter into the stove and
+set a match to it.
+
+"Donna Roma! Are you there, Signora?"
+
+"Wait ... come in."
+
+The old woman's head, in its coloured handkerchief, appeared through the
+half-opened door.
+
+"A Frate in the sitting-room to see you, Signora."
+
+It was Father Pifferi. The old man's gentle face looked troubled. Roma
+gave him a rapid, penetrating, and fearful glance.
+
+"The Holy Father wishes to see you again," he said.
+
+Roma thought for a moment; then she said, "Very well, let us go," and
+she went back to her room to make ready. The last of the letter was
+burning in the stove.
+
+
+                                XVII
+
+Roma returned to the Vatican with the Capuchin. There were the same
+gorgeous staircases and halls, the same soldiers, chamberlains,
+Bussolanti and Monsignori, the same atmosphere of the palace of an
+emperor. But in the little plain apartment which they entered, not as
+before by way of the throne room, but by a secret corridor with cocoanut
+matting and narrow frosted windows, the Pope stood waiting, like a
+simple priest, in a white woollen cassock.
+
+He smiled as Roma approached, a sad smile, and his weary eyes, when she
+looked timidly into his face, were full of the measureless pity that is
+in the eyes of the surgeon who is about to vivisect a dumb creature
+because it is necessary for the welfare of the human race.
+
+She knelt and kissed his ring. He raised her and put her to sit on the
+lounge, sitting in the arm-chair himself, and continuing to hold her
+hand. The Capuchin stood by the window, holding the curtain aside as if
+looking out on the piazza.
+
+"You believe the Holy Father would not send for you to injure you?" he
+said.
+
+"I am sure he would not, your Holiness," she answered.
+
+"And though I disapprove of your husband's doings, you know I would not
+willingly do him any harm?"
+
+"The Holy Father would not do harm to any one; and my husband is so
+good, and his aims are so noble, that nobody who really knew him could
+ever try to injure him."
+
+He looked into her face; it shone with a frightened joy, and pity grew
+upon him.
+
+"Your devotion to your husband is very sweet and beautiful, my daughter,
+and it grieves the Holy Father's heart to trouble it. But it seems to be
+his duty to do so, and he must do his duty."
+
+Again she looked up timidly, and again the sense came to him of dumb
+eyes full of entreaty.
+
+"My daughter, your husband's motives may not be bad. They may even be
+good and noble. It is often so with men of his sympathies. They see the
+disparity of wealth and poverty, and their hearts are torn with anger
+and with pity. But, my child, they do not know that true and lasting
+reforms, such as affect the whole human family, can only be
+accomplished by God and by the authority of His Holy Church and
+Pontificate, and that it must be the bell of St. Peter's which announces
+them to the world."
+
+As the Pope was speaking the colour ran up Roma's face like a flag of
+distress. She looked helplessly round at the Capuchin. The dumb eyes
+seemed to ask when the blow would fall.
+
+"As a consequence, what is he doing, my daughter? Ignoring the Church,
+which like a true mother is ever anxious to bear the burden of human
+weakness and suffering; he is setting up a new gospel, such as would
+reduce mankind to a worse barbarism than that from which Christ freed
+us. Is this conduct worthy of your devotion, my child?"
+
+Roma fixed her timid eyes on the Pope's face and answered:
+
+"I have nothing to do with my husband's opinions, your Holiness. I have
+only to be true to the friendship he gives me and the love I bear him."
+
+"My child," said the Pope, "ask yourself what your husband is doing at
+this moment. Not content with sowing the seeds of discord in Parliament
+and by the press, he is wandering through Europe, gathering up the
+adventurers who work in darkness in every country, and hatching a
+conspiracy which would lead to a state of anarchy throughout the world."
+
+Roma withdrew her hand from the hand of the Pope and made an exclamation
+of dissent.
+
+"Ah, I know what you would say, my daughter. He did not set out to
+produce anarchy. Such men never do. They begin with evolution and end
+with revolution. They begin with peace and end with violence. And the
+only sequel to your husband's aims must be the destruction of civil
+society, of Government, and of the Church."
+
+Roma's fingers were clasped convulsively in her lap. She lifted her
+timid but passionate face and said:
+
+"I know nothing about that, your Holiness. I only know that whatever he
+is doing his heart laid it upon him as a duty, and his heart is pure and
+noble."
+
+"My daughter, your husband may be the greatest of patriots in spirit and
+intention, but nevertheless he is one of the criminal and visionary
+teachers of this unhappy time who are deluding the ignorant crowd with
+promises that can never be realised. Anarchy, chaos, the uprooting of
+religion and morality, of justice, human dignity, and the purity of
+domestic life--these are the only possible fruits of the seed he is
+sowing."
+
+The timid eyes began to flash. "I did not come here to hear this, your
+Holiness." The Pope put his hand tenderly on her hands.
+
+"Remember, my child, what you said yourself on your former visit."
+
+Roma dropped her head.
+
+"The authorities know all about it."
+
+"Holy Father!"
+
+"It was necessary."
+
+"Then ... then somebody must have told them."
+
+"I told them. The Holy Father revealed no more than was necessary to
+relieve his conscience and to prevent crime. It was your own tongue that
+told the rest, my daughter."
+
+He recalled what had passed in the cabinet of the Prime Minister, and
+Roma felt as if something choked her. "No matter!" she said, with the
+same frightened but passionate face. "David Rossi is prepared for
+anything, and he will be prepared for this."
+
+"The authorities already knew more than I could tell them," said the
+Pope. "They knew where your husband was and what he was doing. They know
+where he is now, and they are preparing to arrest him."
+
+Roma's nerves grew more and more excited, the timid look gave place to a
+look of defiance.
+
+"They tell me that he is in Berlin at this moment. Is it true?"
+
+Roma did not reply.
+
+"They say their advices from official sources leave no doubt that he is
+engaged in conspiracy."
+
+Still Roma did not reply.
+
+"They say confidently that the conspiracy points to rebellion, and is
+intended to include regicide. Is it so?"
+
+Roma bit her lip and remained silent.
+
+"Can't you trust me, my child? Don't you know the Holy Father? Only give
+me some hope that these statements are untrue, and the Holy Father is
+ready to withstand all evil influences against you, and face the world
+in your defence."
+
+Roma felt as if something would snap within her brain. "I cannot say ...
+I do not know," she faltered.
+
+"But have you any uncertainty, my daughter? If you have the least reason
+to believe that these statements are slanders of malicious imaginations,
+tell me so, and I will give your husband the benefit of the doubt."
+
+Roma rose to her feet, but she held on to the edge of the table that
+stood by her side, rigid, quivering, frail and silent. The Pope looked
+up at her with weary eyes, and continued in a caressing tone:
+
+"If unhappily you have no doubt that your husband is engaged in
+dangerous enterprises, can you not dissuade him from them?"
+
+"No," said Roma, struggling with her tears, "that is impossible. Whether
+he is right or wrong, it is not for me to sit in judgment upon him.
+Besides, long ago, before we were married, I promised that I would never
+stand between him and his work, and I never can--never."
+
+"But if he loves you, my child, would he not wish for your sake to avoid
+the danger?"
+
+"I can't ask him. I told him to go on without thinking of me, and I
+would take care of myself whatever happened."
+
+Her eyes were now shining with her tears. The Pope patted the hand on
+the table.
+
+"Can you not at least go to him and warn him, and thus leave him to
+judge for himself, my daughter?"
+
+"Yes ... no, that is impossible also."
+
+"Why so, my child?"
+
+"Because I don't know where he is, and I shouldn't know where to find
+him. In his last letter he said it was better I should not know."
+
+"Then he has cut himself off from you entirely?"
+
+"Entirely. I am to see him next in Rome."
+
+"And meantime, that he may not run the risk of being traced by his
+enemies, he has stopped all channels of communication with his friends?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Pope's face whitened visibly, and an inward voice said to him, "This
+is God's hand. Death is waiting for the man in Rome, and he is walking
+blindly on to it."
+
+The weary eyes looked with compassion on Roma's quivering face. "There's
+no help for it," thought the Pope.
+
+"Suppose, my child ... suppose it were within your power to hinder evil
+consequences, would you do it?"
+
+"I am a woman, Holy Father. What can a woman do to hinder anything?"
+
+"In the history of nations it has sometimes happened that a woman has
+been able to save life and protect society by raising a little hand like
+this."
+
+The Pope lifted Roma's quivering fingers from the table.
+
+"If there is anything I can do, your Holiness, without breaking my
+promise or betraying my husband...."
+
+"It is a terrible ordeal, my child. For a wife, God knows how terrible."
+
+"No matter! If it will save my husband.... Tell me, your Holiness."
+
+He told her the proposal of the Prime Minister and the promise of the
+King. His voice vibrated. He was like a man who was wounding himself at
+every word. She looked at him until he had finished, without ability to
+speak.
+
+"You ask me to _denounce_ my husband?"
+
+"It is the only way to save him, my daughter."
+
+She looked round the room with helpless eyes, full of a dumb appeal for
+mercy or the chance of escape.
+
+"Holy Father," she said in a choking voice, "that is what his enemies
+have been asking me to do all this time, and because I have refused they
+have persecuted me with poverty and shame. And now that I come to you
+for refuge and shelter, thinking your fatherly arms will protect me,
+you ... even you...."
+
+She broke off as by a sudden thought, and said: "But it is impossible.
+He is my husband, therefore I cannot witness against him."
+
+"My heart bleeds for you, my child, and I am ashamed to gainsay you. But
+an oath is not necessary to a denunciation, and if it were so the law of
+this unchristian country would not recognise you as Rossi's wife."
+
+"But he will know who has denounced him. I am the only one in the world
+to whom he has told his secrets, and he will hate me and part from me."
+
+"You will have saved his life, my daughter."
+
+"What is it to me to have saved his life if he is lost to me for ever?"
+
+"Is it you that say that, my child--you that have sacrificed so much
+already? Doesn't the highest love remember first the welfare of the
+loved one and think of itself the last?"
+
+"Yes, yes; I didn't know what I was saying. But he will curse me for
+destroying his cause."
+
+"His cause will be destroyed in any case. It is doomed already. And when
+his visionary schemes are in the dust, and all is lost and vain, and
+your tears are powerless to bring back the past...."
+
+"But he will be banished, and I shall never see him again."
+
+"It will be the less of two evils, my child," said the Pope. And in the
+solemn, vibrating voice that rang in Roma's ears like the voice of
+Rossi, he added, "'Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be
+shed.'"
+
+Again Roma held on to the table, feeling at every moment as if she might
+fall with a crash.
+
+"That's what would come to your husband if he were arrested and
+condemned for a conspiracy to kill the King. And even if the humane
+spirit of the age snatched him from death--what then? A cell in a prison
+on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead,
+buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded,
+watched, tortured in body and soul--a figure of tremendous tragedy, the
+hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to
+the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him
+to escape into eternity and leave only his wasted body on the earth."
+
+Roma could bear the nervous tension no longer. "I'll do it," she said.
+
+"My brave child!" said the Capuchin, turning from the window, with a
+face broken up by emotion.
+
+"It is one thing to repeat a secret if it is to harm any one, and quite
+another thing if it is to do good, isn't it?" said Roma.
+
+"Indeed it is," said the Capuchin.
+
+"He will never forgive me--I know that quite well. He will never imagine
+I would have died rather than do it. But I shall know I have done it for
+the best."
+
+"Indeed you will."
+
+Roma's eyes were shining with fresh tears, and she was struggling to
+keep back her sobs. "When we parted on the night he went away he said
+perhaps we were parting for ever. I promised to be faithful to death
+itself, but I was thinking of my own death, not his, and I didn't
+imagine that to save his life I must betray his...."
+
+But at that moment she broke down utterly, and the Pope, who had
+returned to his seat, rose again to comfort her.
+
+"Calm yourself, my daughter," he said. "What you are going to do is an
+act of heroic self-sacrifice. Be brave and Heaven will reward you."
+
+She grew calmer after a while, and then Father Pifferi made arrangements
+for the visit to the Procura. He would call for her at ten in the
+morning.
+
+"Wait!" said Roma. A new light had come into her face--the light of a
+new idea.
+
+"What is it, my daughter?" said the Pope.
+
+"Holy Father, there is something I had forgotten. But I must tell you
+before it is too late. It may alter your view of everything. When you
+hear it you may say, 'You must not speak a word. You shall not speak. It
+is impossible.'"
+
+"Tell me, my child."
+
+Roma hesitated and looked from the Capuchin to the Pope. "How can I tell
+you," she said. "It is so difficult. I hadn't meant to tell any one."
+
+"Go on, my daughter."
+
+"My husband's name...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Rossi is not really his name, your Holiness. It is the name he took on
+returning to Italy, because the one he had borne abroad had been
+involved in trouble."
+
+"Just so," said the Pope.
+
+"Holy Father, David Rossi was a friendless orphan."
+
+"I have heard so," said the Pope.
+
+"He never knew his father--not even by name. His mother was a poor
+unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned
+herself in the Tiber."
+
+"Poor soul," said the Pope.
+
+"He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a
+straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."
+
+The Pope moved uneasily in his seat.
+
+"My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your
+Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of
+velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was
+all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's
+child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your
+Holiness?"
+
+The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes
+were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak.
+
+"My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that
+time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him
+to the public or even the police."
+
+The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at
+Roma.
+
+"But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have
+been a good man after all--one of those who have to suffer all their
+lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was
+walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and
+outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his
+name."
+
+The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms
+of his chair and his wrinkled hands were tightly clasped.
+
+Roma stopped. There was a prolonged silence. The atmosphere of the room
+seemed to be whirling round with frightful rapidity to one terrific
+focus.
+
+"Holy Father," said Roma at length, in a low tone, "if David Rossi were
+_your own son_, would you still ask me to denounce him?"
+
+The Pope lifted a face full of suffering and said in his deep, vibrating
+voice, "Yes, yes! More than ever for that--a thousand times more than
+ever."
+
+"Then _I will do it_," said Roma.
+
+The Pope rose up in great emotion, laid both hands on her shoulder, and
+said, "Go in peace, my daughter, and may God grant you at least a little
+repose."
+
+
+                                XVIII
+
+After recitation of the Rosary, the Pope, who had kept his religious
+retreat throughout the day, announced, to the astonishment of his
+chamberlains, his desire to walk in the garden at night. With Father
+Pifferi carrying a long Etruscan lamp he walked down the dark corridors
+with their surprised _palfrenieri_, and across the open courtyards with
+their startled sentinels, to where the arches of the Vatican opened upon
+the soft spring sky.
+
+The night was warm and quiet, and the moon, which had just risen and was
+near the full, shone with steady brilliance.
+
+The venerable old men walked without speaking, and only the beating of
+their sticks on the gravel seemed to break the empty air. At length the
+Pope stopped and said:
+
+"How strange it all was, Father Pifferi!"
+
+"Very strange, your Holiness," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Rossi is not his name, it seems."
+
+"'Not _really_ his name' was what she said."
+
+"His mother was deceived by every one, and she drowned herself in the
+Tiber."
+
+"That was so, your Holiness."
+
+"He was nursed in the Foundling, brought up in the Campagna, and then
+sold as a boy into England."
+
+"It is really extraordinary," said Father Pifferi.
+
+"Most extraordinary," repeated the Pope.
+
+They looked steadily at each other for a moment, and then walked on in
+silence. Little sparks of blue light pulsed and throbbed and floated
+before their faces, and the moon itself, like a greater firefly, came
+and went in the interstices of the thin-leaved trees. The Pope, who
+shuffled in his walking, stopped again.
+
+"Your Holiness?"
+
+"Who can he be, I wonder?"
+
+The Capuchin drew a deep breath. "We shall know everything to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Yes," said the Pope, "we shall know everything to-morrow morning."
+
+Some dark phantom of the past was hovering about them, and they were
+afraid to challenge it.
+
+At that moment the silence of the listening air was broken by a long
+clear call, which rang out through the night without any warning, and
+then stopped as suddenly.
+
+"The nightingale," said the Pope.
+
+A mighty flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying
+strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every
+phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of
+unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed
+to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed
+around, the world seemed to have become void.
+
+The Pope's feet shuffled on the gravel. "I shall never forget it," he
+said.
+
+"It was wonderful," said the Capuchin.
+
+"I was thinking of that poor lady," said the Pope. "Her pleading voice
+will ring in my ears as long as I live."
+
+"Poor child!" said the Capuchin.
+
+"After all, we could not have acted otherwise. Don't you think so,
+Father Pifferi? Considering everything, we could not possibly have acted
+otherwise."
+
+"Perhaps we could not, your Holiness."
+
+They turned the bend of an avenue, where the path under their feet
+rustled with the thick blossom shed from the overhanging Judas trees.
+
+"Surely this is where the little mother bird used to be," said the Pope.
+
+"So it is," said the friar.
+
+"Strange, she has not sprung out as usual. Ah, Meesh is not here, and
+perhaps that's the reason." And feeling for the old sarcophagus, the
+Pope put his hand gently down into it. A moment afterwards he said in
+another tone: "Father, the young birds are gone."
+
+"Flown, no doubt," said the friar.
+
+"No. See," said the Pope, and he brought up a little nest filled with a
+ruin of fluff and feathers.
+
+"Meesh has been here indeed," said the friar.
+
+The venerable old men walked on in silence until they re-entered the
+vaulted courtyards of the Vatican. Then the Pope turned to the Capuchin
+and said in a breaking voice, "You'll go with the poor lady to the
+Procura in the morning, Father Pifferi. If the magistrates ask questions
+which they should not ask, you will protect her, and even forbid her to
+reply, and if she breaks down at the last moment you will support and
+comfort her. After that ... we must leave all to the Holy Spirit. God's
+hand is in this thing ... it is in everything. He will bring out all
+things well--well for us, well for the Church, well for the poor lady,
+and even for her husband, whoever he may be."
+
+"Whoever he may be," repeated the Capuchin.
+
+
+                                XIX
+
+Early in the morning of Holy Saturday, Roma was summoned as a witness
+before the Penal Tribunal of Rome. The citation, which was signed by a
+magistrate, required that she should present herself at the Procura at
+ten o'clock the same day, "to depose about facts on which she would then
+be interrogated," and she was warned that if she did not appear, "she
+would incur the punishment sanctioned by Article 176 of the Code of
+Penal Procedure."
+
+Roma found Father Pifferi waiting for her at the door of the Procura.
+The old Capuchin looked anxious. He glanced at her pale face and
+quivering lips and inquired if she had slept. She answered that she was
+well, and they turned to go upstairs.
+
+On the landing of the first floor Commendatore Angelelli, who was
+wearing a flower in his button-hole, approached them with smiles and
+quick bows to lead them to the office of the magistrate.
+
+"Only a form," said the Questore. "It will be nothing--nothing at all."
+
+Commendatore Angelelli led the way into a silent room furnished in red,
+with carpet, couch, armchairs, table, a stove, and two large portraits
+of the King and Queen.
+
+"Sit down, please. Make yourselves comfortable," said the Chief of
+Police, and he passed into an adjoining room.
+
+A moment afterwards he returned with two other men. One of them was an
+elderly gentleman, who wore with his frockcoat a close-fitting velvet
+cap decorated with two bands of gold lace. This was the Procurator
+General, and the other, a younger man, carrying a portfolio, was his
+private secretary. A marshal of Carabineers came to the door for a
+moment.
+
+"Don't be afraid, my child. No harm shall come to you," whispered Father
+Pifferi. But the good Capuchin himself was trembling visibly.
+
+The Procurator General was gentle and polite, but he dismissed the Chief
+of Police, and would have dismissed the Capuchin also, but for vehement
+protests.
+
+"Very well, I see no objection; sit down again," he said.
+
+It was a strange three-cornered interview. Father Pifferi, quaking with
+fear, thought he was there to protect Roma. The Procurator General,
+smiling and serene, thought she had come to complete a secret scheme of
+personal revenge. And Roma herself, sitting erect in her chair, in her
+black Eton coat and straw hat, and with her wonderful eyes turning
+slowly from face to face, thought only of Rossi, and was silent and
+calm.
+
+The secretary opened his portfolio on the table and prepared to write.
+The Procurator General sat in front of Roma and leaned slightly forward.
+
+"You are Donna Roma Volonna, daughter of the late Prince Prospero
+Volonna?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"You were born in England and lived there as a child?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Although you were young when you lost your father, you have a perfect
+recollection both of him and of his associates?"
+
+"Of some of his associates."
+
+"One of them was a young man who lived in his house as a kind of adopted
+son?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are aware that your father was unhappily involved in political
+troubles?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"You know that he was arrested on a serious charge?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You also know that, when condemned to death by a military tribunal for
+conspiring against the person of the late sovereign, his sentence was
+commuted by the King, but that one of his associates, condemned at the
+same time, and for the same crime, escaped all punishment because he was
+not then at the disposition of the law?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That was the young man who lived with him as his adopted son?"
+
+"It was."
+
+There was a moment's pause during which nothing could be heard but the
+quick breathing of the Capuchin and the scratching of the secretary's
+pen.
+
+"During the past few months you have made the acquaintance in Rome of
+the Deputy David Rossi?"
+
+"I have."
+
+The Capuchin moved in his seat. "Acquaintance! The lady is married to
+the Deputy."
+
+The Procurator General's eyes rose perceptibly. "Married!"
+
+"That is to say religiously married, which is all the Church thinks
+necessary."
+
+"Ah, I see," said the Procurator General, suppressing a smile. "Still I
+must ask the lady to make her statement in her natal name."
+
+"Go on, sir," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Your intimacy with the Honourable Rossi has no doubt led him to speak
+freely on many subjects?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"He has perhaps told you that Rossi was not his father's name."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That it was his mother's name, and though strictly his legal name also,
+he has borne it only since his return to Rome?"
+
+"That is so."
+
+It was the Capuchin's turn to look surprised. His sandalled feet
+shuffled on the carpet, and he prepared to take snuff.
+
+"The Honourable Rossi has been some weeks abroad, and during his absence
+you have no doubt received letters from him?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Can you tell me if in any of these letters he has said anything of a
+certain revolutionary propaganda?"
+
+The Capuchin, with his finger and thumb half raised, stopped and said,
+"I forbid the question, sir."
+
+"Father General!"
+
+"I mean that I counsel the lady not to answer it."
+
+The Procurator General suppressed another smile, directed this time at
+Roma, and said, "_Bene!_"
+
+"Be calm, my daughter," whispered the Capuchin.
+
+"At least," said the Procurator General, "you can now be certain that
+you had seen the Honourable Rossi before you met him in Rome?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"In fact you recognise in the illustrious Deputy the young man condemned
+in contumacy eighteen years ago?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Perhaps in his letters or conversations he has even admitted the
+identity?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"Only one more question, Donna Roma," said the Procurator General, with
+another smile. "Your father's name in England was Doctor Roselli, and
+the name of his young confederate----"
+
+"Courage, my child," whispered the Capuchin, taking Roma's ice-cold hand
+in his own trembling one.
+
+"The name of his young confederate was----"
+
+"David Leone," said Roma, lifting her eyes to the face of Father
+Pifferi.
+
+"So David Leone and David Rossi are one and the same person?"
+
+"Yes," said Roma, and the Capuchin dropped back in his seat as if he had
+been dealt a blow.
+
+"Thank you. I need trouble you no more. My secretary will now prepare
+the _precis_."
+
+Commendatore Angelelli returned with the Carabineer, and there was some
+talking in low tones. "Report for the Committee of the Chamber, sir?"
+"That is unnecessary at this moment, the House having risen for Easter."
+"Warrant for the arrest, then?" "Certainly. Here is the form. Fill it
+up, and I will sign."
+
+While the secretary wrote his _precis_ at one side of the table, the
+Chief of Police prepared his _mandato_ at the other side, repeating the
+words to the Carabineer who stood behind his chair. "We ... considering
+the conclusions of the Public Minister ... according to Article 187 of
+the Code ... order the arrest of David Leone, commonly called David
+Rossi ... imputed guilty of attempted regicide in the year ... and tried
+and condemned in contumacy for the crime contemplated in Article.... And
+to such effects we require the Corps of the Royal Carabineers to conduct
+him before us to be interrogated on the facts above stated, and call on
+all officials and agents of the public force to lend a strong hand for
+the execution of the present warrant. Age, 34 years. Height, 1.79
+metres. Forehead, lofty. Eyes, large and dark. Nose, Roman. Hair, black
+with short curls. Beard and moustache, clean shaven. _Corporatura_,
+distinguished."
+
+When the secretary had finished his _precis_ he read it aloud to Roma
+and his superior.
+
+"Good! Give the lady the pen. You will sign this paper, Donna Roma--and
+that will do."
+
+Roma and Father Pifferi had both risen. "Courage," the Capuchin tried to
+say, but his quivering lips emitted no sound. Roma stood a moment with
+the pen in her fingers, and her great eyes looked slowly round the room.
+Then she stooped and wrote her name rapidly.
+
+At the same moment the Procurator General signed the warrant, whereupon
+the Chief of Police handed it to the Carabineer, saying, "Lose no
+time--Chiasso," and the soldier went out hurriedly.
+
+Roma held the pen a moment longer, and then it dropped out of her
+fingers.
+
+"Come," said the Capuchin, and they left the room.
+
+There was a crowd on the embankment by the corner of the Ripetta bridge.
+The body of a beggar had been brought out of the river, and it was lying
+there for the formal inspection of the officials who report on cases of
+sudden death. Roma stopped to look at the dead man. It was Old John. He
+had committed suicide.
+
+
+                                XX
+
+It was said at the Vatican that the Pope had not slept all night. The
+attendant whose duty it was to lie awake while the Holy Father expected
+to sleep said he heard him praying in the dark hours, and at one moment
+he heard him singing a hymn.
+
+To the Pope it had been a night of searching self-examination. Pictures
+of his life had passed before him in swift review, pulsing and throbbing
+out of the darkness like the light of a firefly, now come, now gone.
+
+First the Conclave, the three scrutators, and himself as one of them.
+The first scrutiny, the second scrutiny, the third scrutiny and his own
+name going up, up, up, as he proclaimed the votes in a loud voice so
+that all in the chapel might hear. One vote more to his own name,
+another, still another; his fear, his fainting; the gentle tones of an
+old Cardinal, saying, "Take your time, brother; rest, repose a while."
+Then the election, the awful sense of being God's choice, the almost
+unearthly joy of the supreme moment when he became the Vicar of Christ
+on earth.
+
+Then the stepping forth from the dim conclave into the full light of day
+to be proclaimed the representative of the Almighty, the living voice of
+God, the infallible one. The sunless chapel, the white and crimson
+vestments, the fisherman's ring, the vast crowd in the blazing light of
+the piazza, the sudden silence, and the clear cry of the Cardinal Deacon
+ringing out under the blue sky, "I announce to you joyful tidings--the
+Most Eminent and Reverend Cardinal Leone, having taken the name of Pius
+X., is elected Pope." Then the call of silver trumpets, the roar of ten
+thousand human throats, the surging mass of living men below the
+balcony, and the joy-bells ringing out the glad news from every church
+tower in Rome, that a new King and Pontiff had been given by God to His
+World.
+
+Somewhere in the dark hours the Pope dozed off, and then Sleep, the
+maker of visions, dispelled his dream. Another picture--a picture which
+had pursued him at intervals both in sleeping and waking hours, ever
+since the great day when he stepped out on to the balcony and was
+saluted as a god--came to him again that night. He called it his
+presentiment. The scene was always the same. A darkened room, a chapel,
+an altar, himself on his knees, with the sense of Someone bending over
+him, and an awful voice saying into his ears:--"You, the Vicar of Jesus
+Christ; you, the rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the
+living voice of God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most
+exalted dignity on earth--_remember you are but clay_!"
+
+The Pope awoke with a start, and to break the oppression of painful
+thoughts he turned on the light, propped himself up in bed, and taking a
+book from the night table, he began to read. It was the Catholic legend
+of a father doomed to destroy his son, or suffer the son to destroy the
+father. They had been separated early in the son's life, and now that
+they met again they met as foes, and the son drew his sword upon his
+father without knowing who he was!
+
+One by one the incidents of the history linked themselves with the
+incidents of the day before, and the lonely old man of the
+Vatican--childless, kinless, homeless for all his state, and cut off
+from every human tie--began to think of things that were still farther
+back than the conclave and the proclamation--things of the dead past
+which nature had seemed to bury with so kind a hand, covering the grave
+with grass and flowers.
+
+A sweet young face, timid and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the
+world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame,
+unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank
+period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest
+place in a religious house, the kitchen of the Noviciate. Then a great
+yearning, a great restlessness; coming out of the convent;
+dispensations; holy orders; works of charity; travels in foreign lands
+and searchings day and night in the streets of a cruel city for some one
+who had been lost and was never found.
+
+The Pope put down the book and turned out the light. It was then that he
+sang and prayed.
+
+When Cortis came with the Pope's breakfast in the frayed edge of the
+morning, the chamberlain outside the bedroom door whispered to the
+valet, "The Holy Father has been with the angels all night long."
+
+There was a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a
+procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection,
+but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with
+curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering
+the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of
+the Easter bells.
+
+The little door to the private corridor opened quietly, and Father
+Pifferi entered the room.
+
+"Well?" said the Pope.
+
+"It is all over," said the Capuchin.
+
+"Did the poor child ... did she bear up bravely?"
+
+"Very bravely, your Holiness."
+
+"No weakness, no hysteria? She did not faint or break down at the end?"
+
+"On the contrary, she was composed--perfectly composed and quiet."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+"It was most extraordinary. A woman denouncing her husband, and yet so
+calm, so terribly calm."
+
+"God helped her to bear her burden. God help all of us in our hour of
+need!"
+
+The Pope lifted the crucifix to his lips, and added, "And the man?"
+
+"Rossi?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"After she had signed the denunciation a warrant for his arrest was made
+out and given to the Carabineers."
+
+"It mentioned everything?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"Who he is and all about him?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness."
+
+The Pope fingered his crucifix again, and said, "Who is he, Father
+Pifferi?"
+
+The Capuchin did not reply.
+
+"Father Pifferi, I ask you who he is?"
+
+Still the Capuchin did not reply, and the Pope smiled a pitiful smile,
+touched the friar's arm with a caressing gesture, and said, "Don't be
+afraid for the Holy Father, carissimo. If that poor child, who would
+have died rather than sacrifice her husband, could be so calm and
+strong...."
+
+"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "when you asked the lady to denounce
+David Rossi you thought of him only as an enemy of the Church and of its
+head, trying to pull down both and destroy civil society--isn't that
+so?"
+
+The Pope bent his head.
+
+"Holy Father, if ... if you had known that he was something more than
+that ... something nearer ... if, for example, you had been told
+that ... that he was the relative of a priest, would you have asked for his
+denunciation just the same?"
+
+The old Capuchin had stammered, but the Pope answered in a firm voice,
+"That would have made no difference, my son. The blessed Scriptures do
+not conceal the sin of Judas, and shall we conceal the offences of those
+who come within the circle of our own families?"
+
+"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, "if you had been told that he was
+related to a prelate of your domestic household...."
+
+He stopped, and the Pope answered in a voice that trembled slightly,
+"Still it would have made no difference. The enemies of the Almighty are
+watching day and night, and shall His holy Church be imperilled and
+abased by the weakness of His servant?"
+
+"Holy Father, if ... if you had been told that ... that he was the
+kinsman of a Cardinal?"
+
+The Pope was struggling to control himself. "Even then it would have
+made no difference. I am old and weak, but God would have supported me,
+and though I had been called upon to cut off my right hand, or give my
+body to be burned, still...."
+
+His voice quivered and died in his throat, and there was a moment's
+pause.
+
+"Holy Father," said the Capuchin, turning his eyes away, "if you had
+been told that he was the nearest of kin to the Pope himself...."
+
+The Pope dropped the crucifix which was trembling in his hand, and half
+rose from his chair. "Then ... even then ... it would have ... but the
+will of God be done," he said, and he could not utter another word.
+
+At that moment the Easter bells began to ring. The deep-toned bells of
+St. Peter's came first with its joyful peal, and then the bells of the
+other churches of the city took up the rapturous melody. In the Basilica
+the veil before the altar had been rent with a loud crash, and the
+Gloria in Excelsis was being sung.
+
+At the same moment a prelate vested in a white tunic entered the Pope's
+room, and kneeling in the middle of the floor, he said, "Holy Father, I
+announce to you a great joy. Hallelujah! The Lord is risen again."
+
+The Pope tried to rise from his seat, but could not do so. "Help me,
+Monsignor," he said faintly, and the prelate raised him to his feet.
+Then leaning on the prelate's arm, he walked to the door of his private
+chapel. On reaching it he looked back at Father Pifferi, who was going
+silently out of the room.
+
+"Addio, carissimo," he said, in a pitiful voice, but the Capuchin could
+not reply.
+
+Some moments afterwards the Pope was quite alone. The arched windows of
+the little chapel were covered with heavy red curtains, but the clanging
+of the brass tongues in the cupola, the deep throb of the organ, and the
+rolling waves of the voices of the people singing the grand Hallelujah,
+found their way into the darkened chamber. But above all other sounds in
+the ears of the Pope as he lay prostrate on the altar steps was the
+sound of a voice which said, "You, the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you, the
+rock on which the Saviour built His Church; you, the living voice of
+God; you, the infallible one; you, who fill the most exalted dignity on
+earth--_remember you are but clay_."
+
+
+                                XXI
+
+"Acqua Acetosa!" "Roba Vecchia!" "Rannocchie!"
+
+The street cries were ringing through the Navona, the piazza was alive
+with people, and strangers were saluting each other as they passed on
+the pavement when Roma returned home. At the lodge the Garibaldian
+wished her a good Easter, and at the door of the apartment the curate of
+the parish, who in cotta and biretta was making his Easter call to
+sprinkle the rooms with holy water, gave her a smile and his blessing,
+while old Francesca, inside the house, laying the Easter sideboard of
+cakes, sausages, and eggs, put both hands behind her back, like a child
+playing a game, and cried--
+
+"Now, what does the Signora think I've got for her?"
+
+It was a letter, and as the old woman produced it she was glowing with
+happiness at the joy she was bringing to Roma.
+
+"The porter from Trinita de' Monti brought it," she said, "and he told
+me to tell you there's a lay sister called Sister Angelica at the
+convent now, and he is afraid that other letters may go astray....
+Aren't you glad you've got a letter, Signora? I thought Signora would
+die of delight, and I gave the man six soldi."
+
+Roma was turning the envelope over and over in her hands, thinking what
+a call to joy a letter of Rossi's used to be, and wondering if she ought
+to open this one.
+
+"Well, that was the way with me too when Tommaso was at the wars. But
+this is Easter, Signora, and the Blessed Virgin wouldn't bring you bad
+news to-day. Listen! That's the Gloria. I can always hear the church
+bells on Holy Saturday. The first time after I was deaf Joseph was a
+baby, and I took the wrappings off his little feet while the bells were
+ringing, and he walked straight away! Ah, my poor darling!... But I'm
+making the Signora cry."
+
+The letter was dated from Zuerich. It ran:--
+
+    "MY DEAR ROMA,--Your letters and I seem to be running a race which
+    shall return to you first. I was compelled to leave Berlin before
+    my long-delayed correspondence could arrive from London, and now
+    it seems probable that I must leave Zuerich before it can follow me
+    from Berlin. As a consequence I have not heard from you for
+    weeks--not since your letter about your friend, you remember--and
+    I am in agonies of impatience to know what has happened to you in
+    the interval.
+
+    "I came to Switzerland the day before yesterday, pushed on by the
+    urgency of affairs at home. Here we hold the last meeting of our
+    international committee before I go back to Italy. This will be
+    to-morrow (Friday) night, and according to present plans I set out
+    for Rome on Saturday morning.
+
+    "How different my return will be from my flight a few weeks ago!
+    Then I was plunged in despair, now I am buoyed up with hope; then
+    my soul was furrowed by doubts, now it is braced up with
+    certainties; then my idea was a dream, now it is a practical
+    reality.
+
+    "O Roma, my Roma, it is a good thing to live. After all, the world
+    is no Gethsemane, and when a man has a beautiful life like yours
+    belonging to him he may be forgiven if he forgets the voices which
+    assail him with fears. They have come to me sometimes, dearest, in
+    this long and cruel silence, and I have asked myself hideous
+    questions. What is happening to my dear one in the midst of my
+    enemies? What sufferings are being inflicted upon her for my sake?
+    She is brave, and will bear anything, but did I do right to leave
+    her behind? Bruno died rather than betray me, and she will do
+    more--infinitely more in her eyes--she will see _me_ die, rather
+    than imperil a cause which is a thousand times more dear to me
+    than my life.
+
+    "Addio, carissima! Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal
+    upon thine arm, for love is strong as death. If there were any
+    possibility of our love increasing it _would_ increase after going
+    through dangers like these. Keep well, dearest. Preserve that
+    sweet life which is so precious to me that I cannot live without
+    it. Do you remember, it was the 2nd of February when we parted in
+    the darkness at the church door, and now it is Easter, and the day
+    after to-morrow we shall hear the Easter bells! Spring is here,
+    and in the unchangeable changeableness of nature I see the
+    resurrection of humanity and listen to the Gloria of God.
+
+    "You cannot answer this letter, dear, because I shall already be
+    on the way to Rome before it reaches you, but you can send me a
+    telegram to Chiasso. Do so. I shall look out for the telegraph boy
+    the moment the train stops at the station. Say you are well and
+    happy and waiting for me, and it will be like a smile from your
+    lovely lips and eyes on the frontier of my native land.
+
+    "My train is due to arrive on Sunday morning at seven o'clock.
+    Meet me at the railway station, and let your face be the first I
+    see when the train draws up in Rome. Then ... let me hear your
+    voice, and let my heart become a King.
+
+    "D.R."
+
+Roma had grown paler and paler as she read this letter. The man's love
+and trust were crushing her. Tears filled her eyes and flooded her face.
+But her soul, which had been stunned and had fallen, recovered itself
+and arose.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      PART EIGHT--THE KING
+
+
+                                I
+
+Early on the morning of Holy Saturday a little crowd of Italians stood
+on the open space in front of the platform at the Bahnhof of Zuerich.
+Most of them wore the blue smocks and peaked caps of porters and
+street-sweepers, but in the centre of the group was a tall man in a
+frockcoat and a soft felt hat.
+
+It was Rossi. He was noticeably changed since his flight from Rome. His
+bronzed face was paler, his cheeks thinner, his dark eyes looked larger,
+his figure stooped perceptibly, and he had the air of a man who was
+struggling to conceal a consuming nervousness.
+
+The bell rang for the starting of a train and Rossi shook hands with
+everybody.
+
+"Going straight through, Honourable?"
+
+"No, I shall sleep at Milan to-night and go on to Rome in the morning."
+
+"_Addio, Onorevole!_"
+
+"_Addio!_"
+
+The moment the train started, Rossi gave himself up to thoughts of Roma.
+Where was she now? He closed his eyes and tried to picture her. She was
+reading his letter. He recalled particular passages, and saw the smile
+with which she read them. Peace be with her! The light pressure of her
+soft fingers was on his hands already, and through the _tran-tran_ of
+the train he could hear her softest tones.
+
+Nature as well as humanity seemed to smile on Rossi that day. He thought
+the lakes had never looked so lovely. It was early when they ran along
+the shores of Lucerne, and the white mists, wrapping themselves up on
+the mountains, were gliding away like ghosts. One after another the
+great peaks looked over each other's shoulders, covered with pines as
+with vast armies crossing the Alps, thick at the bottom and with thinner
+files of daring spirits at the top. The sun danced on the waters of the
+lake like fairies on a floor of glass, and when the train stopped at
+Fluelen the sound of waterfalls mingled with the singing of birds and
+the ringing of the church bells. It was the Gloria. All the earth was
+singing its Gloria. "Glory to God in the highest."
+
+Rossi's happiness became almost boyish as the train approached Italy.
+When the great tunnel was passed through, the signs of a new race came
+thick and fast. Shrines of the Madonna, instead of shrines of the
+Christ; long lines of field-workers, each with his hoe, instead of
+little groups with the plough; grey oxen with great horns and slow step,
+instead of brisk horses with tinkling bells.
+
+Signs of doubtful augury for the most part, but Rossi was in no mood to
+think of that. He let down the carriage window that he might drink in
+the air of his own country. In spite of his opinions he could not help
+doing that. The mystic call that comes to a man's heart from the soil
+that gave him birth was coming to him also. He heard the voice of the
+vine-dresser in the vineyard singing of love--always of love. He saw the
+oranges and lemons, and the roses white and red. He caught a glimpse of
+the first of the little cities high up on the crags, with its walls and
+tower, and Campo Santo outside. His lips parted, his breast swelled. It
+was home! Home!
+
+The day waned, the sky darkened, and the passengers in the train, who
+had been talking incessantly, began to doze. Rossi returned to his seat,
+and thought more seriously about Roma. All his soul went out to the
+young wife who had shared his sufferings. In his mind's eye he was
+reading between the lines of her letters, and beginning to reproach
+himself in earnest. Why had he imposed his life's secret upon her,
+seeing the risk she ran, and the burden of her responsibility?
+
+The battle with his soul was short. If he had not trusted Roma, he would
+never have loved her. If he had not stripped his heart naked before her,
+he would never have known that she loved him. And if she had suffered in
+his absence he would make it all up to her on his return. He thought of
+their joyous day on the Campagna, and then of the unalloyed hours before
+them. What would she be doing now? She would be sending off the telegram
+he was to receive at Chiasso. God bless her! God bless everybody!
+
+The thought of Roma's telegram filled the whole of the last hour before
+he reached the frontier. He imagined the words it would contain: "Well
+and waiting. Welcome home." But was she well? It was weeks since he had
+heard from her, and so many things might have happened. If he had
+managed his personal affairs with more thought for himself, he might
+have received her letters.
+
+Heavy clouds began to shut out the landscape. The temperature had fallen
+suddenly, and the wind must have risen, for the trees, as they flashed
+past, were being beaten about. Rossi stood in the corridor again,
+feeling feverish and impatient.
+
+At length the train slackened speed, the noise of the wheels and the
+engine abated, and there came a clap of thunder. After a moment there
+was a far-off sound of church bells which were being rung to avert the
+lightning, and then came a downpour of rain. It was raining in torrents
+when the train drew up at Chiasso, but the carriages were hardly under
+cover of the platform when Rossi was ready to step out.
+
+"All baggage ready!" "Hand baggage out!" "Chiasso!" "The Customs!"
+
+The station hands and porters were shouting by the stopping train, and
+Rossi's dark eyes with their long lashes were looking through the line
+of men for some one who carried a yellow letter.
+
+"Facchino!"
+
+"Signore?"
+
+"Seen the telegraph boy about?"
+
+"No, Signore."
+
+Rossi leapt down to the platform, and at the same moment three
+Carabineers, who had been working their heads from right to left to peer
+into the carriages as they passed, stepped up to him and offered a
+folded white paper.
+
+He took it without speaking, and for a moment he stood looking at the
+soldiers as if he had been stunned. Then he opened the paper and read:
+"_Mandate di Cattura...._ We ... order the arrest of David Leone,
+commonly called David Rossi...."
+
+A cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead. Again he looked
+into the faces of the soldiers. And then he laughed. It was a fearful
+laugh--the laugh of a smitten soul.
+
+The scene had been observed by passengers trooping to the Customs, and
+a group of English and American tourists were making apposite comments
+on the event.
+
+"It's Rossi." "Rossi?" "The anarchist." "Travelled in our train?"
+"Sure." "My!"
+
+The marshal of Carabineers, a man with shrunken cheeks and the eyes of a
+hawk, dressed in his little brief authority, strode with a lofty look
+through the spectators to telegraph the arrest to Rome.
+
+
+                                II
+
+When the train started again, Rossi was a prisoner sitting between two
+of the Carabineers with the marshal of Carabineers on the seat in front
+of him. His heart felt cold and his chin buried itself in his breast. He
+was asking himself how many persons knew of his identity with David
+Leone, and could connect him with the trial of eighteen years ago.
+_There was but one._
+
+Rossi leapt to his feet with a muttered oath on his lips. The thing that
+had flashed through his mind was impossible, and he was himself the
+traitor to think of it. But even when the imagined agony had passed
+away, a hard lump lay at his heart and he felt sick and ashamed.
+
+The marshal of Carabineers, who had mistaken Rossi's gesture, closed the
+carriage window and stood with his back to it until the train arrived at
+Milan. A police official was waiting for them there with the latest
+instructions from Rome. In order to avoid the possibility of a public
+disturbance in the capital on the day of the King's Jubilee, the
+prisoner was to be detained in Milan until further notice.
+
+"Seems you're to sleep here to-night, Honourable," said the soldier.
+Remembering that it had been his intention to do so when he left Zuerich,
+Rossi laughed bitterly.
+
+It was now dark. A prison van stood at the end of a line of hotel
+omnibuses, and Rossi was marched to it between the measured steps of the
+Carabineers. News of his arrest had already been published in Milan, and
+crowds of spectators were gathered in the open space outside the
+station. He tried to hold up his head when the people peered at him,
+telling himself that the arrest of an innocent man was not his but the
+law's disgrace; yet a sense of sickness surprised him again and he
+dropped his head as he buried himself in the van.
+
+On the dark drive to the prison in the Via Filangeri the Carabineers
+grumbled and swore at the hard fate which kept them out of Rome at a
+time of public rejoicing. There was to be a dinner on Monday night at
+the barracks on the Prati, and on Tuesday morning the King was to
+present medals.
+
+Rossi shut his eyes and said nothing. But half-an-hour later, when he
+had been put in the "paying" cell, and the marshal of Carabineers was
+leaving him, he could not forbear to speak.
+
+"Officer," he said, fumbling his copy of the warrant, "would you mind
+telling me where you received this paper?"
+
+"At the Procura, of course," said the soldier.
+
+"Some one had denounced me there--can you tell me who it was?"
+
+"That's no business of mine, Honourable. Still, as you wish to know...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"A lady was there when the warrant was made out, and if I had to guess
+who she was...."
+
+Rossi saw the name coming in the man's face, and he flung out at him in
+a roar of wrath.
+
+During the long hours of the night he tried to account for his arrest to
+the exclusion of Roma. He thought of every woman whom he had known
+intimately in England and America, and finally of Elena and old
+Francesca. It was useless. There was only one woman in the world who
+knew the secrets of his early life. He had revealed some of them
+himself, and the rest she knew of her own knowledge.
+
+No matter! There was no traitor so treacherous as circumstance. He would
+not believe the lie that fate was thrusting down his throat. Roma was
+faithful, she would die rather than betray him, and he was a
+contemptible hound to allow himself to think of her in that connection.
+He recalled her letters, her sacrifices, her brave and cheerful
+renunciation, and the hard lump that had settled at his heart rose up to
+his throat.
+
+Morning broke at last. As the grey dawn entered the cell the Easter
+bells were ringing. Rossi remembered in what other conditions he had
+expected to hear them, and again his heart grew bitter. A good-natured
+warder came with his breakfast of bread and water, and a smuggled copy
+of a morning journal called the _Perseveranza_. It contained an account
+of his arrest, and a leading article on his career as a thing closed
+and ruined. The public would learn with astonishment that a man who had
+attained to great prominence in Parliament and lived several years in
+the fierce light of the world's eye, had all the time masqueraded in a
+false character, being really a criminal convicted long ago for
+conspiring against the person of the late King.
+
+The sun shone, the sparrows chirped, the church bells rang the whole day
+long. Towards evening the warder came with another newspaper, the
+_Corriere della Sera_. It explained that the sensational arrest of the
+illustrious Deputy, which had fallen on the country like a thunderbolt,
+was not intended as punishment for an offence long past and forgotten,
+but as a means of preventing a political crime that was on the eve of
+being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of
+the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt
+whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined
+revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish
+imagination to break out on the festival of the King's Jubilee.
+
+Rossi slept as little on Sunday night as on the night before. The
+horrible doubts which he had driven away were sucking at his heart like
+a vampire. He tried to invent excuses for Roma. She was intimidated; she
+was a woman and she could not help herself. Useless, and worse than
+useless! "I thought the daughter of Joseph Roselli would have died
+first," he told himself.
+
+The good-natured warder brought him another newspaper in the morning,
+the _Secolo_, an organ of his own party. Its tone was the bitterest of
+all. "We have reason to believe that the unfortunate event, which cannot
+but have the effect of setting back the people's cause, is due to the
+betrayal of one of their leaders by a certain fashionable woman who is
+near to the person of the President of the Council. It is the old story
+over again, the story of man's weakness and woman's deception, with
+every familiar circumstance of humiliation, folly, and shame."
+
+There could be no doubt of it. It was Roma who had betrayed him.
+Whatever her reasons or excuse, the result was the same. She had given
+up the deepest secrets of his soul, and his life's work was in the dust.
+
+The marshal of Carabineers came to say that they were to go on to Rome,
+and at nine o'clock they were again in the train. People in holiday
+dress were promenading the platform and the station was hung with flags.
+A gentleman in a white waistcoat was about to step into the compartment
+with the Carabineers and their prisoner, when, recognising his
+travelling companions, he bowed and stepped back. It was the Sergeant of
+the Chamber, returning after the Easter vacation from his villa on one
+of the lakes. Rossi sent a ringing laugh after the man, and that brought
+him back.
+
+"I'm sorry for you, Honourable, very sorry," he said. "You've deceived
+us all, but now you are seen in your true colours, and apparently
+throwing off all disguise."
+
+The Sergeant was so far right that Rossi was another man. Whatever had
+been tender and sweet in him was now hard and bitter. The train started
+for Rome, and the soldiers drew the straws out of their Tuscan cigars
+and smoked. Rossi coiled himself up in his corner and shut his eyes.
+Sometimes a sneer curled his lips, sometimes he laughed aloud.
+
+They were travelling by the coast route, and when the train ran into
+Genoa a military band at the foot of the monument to Mazzini was playing
+the royal hymn. But the festivities of the King's Jubilee were eclipsed
+in public interest by the arrest of Rossi and the collapse of the
+conspiracy which it was understood to imply. The marshal of the
+Carabineers bought the local papers, and one of them was full of details
+of "The Great Plot." An exact account was given from a semi-military
+standpoint of the plan of the supposed raid. It included the capture of
+the arsenal at Genoa and the assassination of the King at Rome.
+
+The train ran through countless tunnels like the air through a flute,
+now rumbling in the darkness, now whistling in the light. Rossi closed
+his eyes and shut out the torment of passing scenes, and straightway he
+was seeing Roma. He could only see her as he had always seen her, with
+her golden complexion, her large violet eyes and long curved lashes, her
+mouth which had its own gift of smiling, and her glow of health and
+happiness. Whatever she had done he knew that he must always love her.
+This worked on him like madness, and once again he leapt to his feet and
+made for the corridor, whereupon the Carabineers, who had been sleeping,
+got up and shut the door.
+
+Night fell, and the moon rose, large and blood-red as a setting sun.
+When the train shot on to the Roman Campagna, like a boat gliding into
+open sea, the great and solemn desolation seemed more than ever
+withdrawn from the sights and sounds of the living world. Rossi
+remembered the joy of joys with which he had expected to cross the
+familiar country. Then he looked across at the soldiers who were snoring
+in their seats.
+
+When the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, the Carabineers opened the
+door to the corridor that their prisoner might stretch his legs. Some
+evening papers from Rome were handed into the carriage. Rossi put out
+his hand to pay for them, and to his surprise it was seized with an
+eager grasp. The newsman, who was also carrying a tray of coffee, was a
+huge creature, with a white apron and a paper cap.
+
+"Caffe, sir? Caffe?" he called, and then in an undertone, "Don't you
+know me, old fellow? Caffe, sir? Thank you."
+
+It was one of Rossi's colleagues in the House of Deputies.
+
+"Milk, sir? With pleasure, sir. Venti centesimi, sir.... All right, old
+chap. Keep your eyes open at the station at Rome.... Change, sir?
+Certainly sir.... Coupe, waiting on the left side. Look alive. Addio!...
+Caffe! Caffe!"
+
+The lusty voice died away down the platform, and the train started
+again. Rossi felt giddy. He staggered back to his seat and tried to read
+his evening papers.
+
+The _Sunrise_, the paper founded by Rossi himself, seemed to be full of
+the Prime Minister. He had that day put the crown on a career of the
+highest distinction; the King had conferred the Collar of the Annunziata
+upon him; and in view of the continued rumblings of unrest it was even
+probable that he would be made Dictator.
+
+The _Avanti_ seemed to Rossi to be full of himself. When the country
+recovered from the delirium of that day's ridiculous doings, it would
+know how to judge of the infamous methods of a Minister who had
+condescended to use the devices of a Delilah for the defeat and
+confusion of a political adversary.
+
+Rossi felt as if he were suffocating. He put a hand into a side-pocket,
+for his copy of the warrant crinkled there under his twitching fingers.
+If he could only meet with Roma for a moment and thrust the damning
+document in her face!
+
+When the train ran along the side of the Tiber, they could see a great
+framework of fireworks which had been erected on the Pincio. It
+represented a gigantic crown and was all ablaze. At length the train
+slowed down and entered the terminus at Rome. Rossi remembered how he
+had expected to enter it, and he choked with wounded pride.
+
+There were the thumpings and clankings and the blinding flashes of white
+light, and then the train stopped. The station was full of people. Rossi
+noticed Malatesta among them, the man whose life he had spared in the
+duel he had been compelled to fight.
+
+"Now, then, please!" said the marshal of Carabineers, and Rossi stepped
+down to the platform. A soldier marched on either side of him; the
+marshal walked in front. The people parted to let the four men pass, and
+then closed up and came after them. Not a word was spoken.
+
+With pale lips and a fixed gaze which seemed to look at nobody, Rossi
+walked to the end of the platform, and there the crush was greatest.
+
+"Room!" cried the marshal of Carabineers, making for the gate at which a
+porter was taking tickets. A black van stood outside.
+
+Suddenly the marshal was struck on the shoulder by a hand out of the
+crowd. He turned to defend himself, and was struck on the other side.
+Then he tried to draw a weapon, but before he could do so he was thrown
+to the ground. One of the two other Carabineers stooped to lift him up,
+and the third laid hold of Rossi. At the next instant Rossi felt the
+soldier's hand fall from his arm as by a sword cut, and somebody was
+crying in his ear:
+
+"Now's your time, sir. Leave this to me and fly."
+
+It was Malatesta. Before Rossi fully knew what he was doing, he crossed
+the lines to the opposite platform, passed through the barrier by means
+of his Deputy's medal permitting him to travel on the railways, and
+stepped into a coupe that stood waiting with an open door.
+
+"Where to, signore?"
+
+"Piazza Navona--_presto_."
+
+As the carriage rattled across the end of the Piazza Margherita a
+company of Carabineers was going at quick march towards the station.
+
+
+                                III
+
+At ten o'clock on Saturday night the screamers in the Piazza Navona were
+crying the arrest of Rossi. The telegrams from the frontier gave an ugly
+account of his capture. He was in disguise, and he made an effort to
+deny himself, but thanks to the astuteness of the Carabineer charged
+with the warrant the device was defeated, and he was now lodged in the
+prison at Milan, where it was probable that he would remain some days.
+
+Roma's feelings took a new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the
+degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an
+intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and
+triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past
+months and saw that the Baron was responsible for everything. He had
+intimidated her. His intimidation had worked upon her conscience and
+driven her to the confessional. The confessional had taken her to the
+Pope, and the Pope in love and loyalty and fatal good faith had led her
+to denounce her husband. It was a chain of damning circumstances, helped
+out by the demon of chance, but the first link had been forged by the
+Baron, and he was to blame for all.
+
+On Monday morning bands of music began to promenade the streets. Before
+breakfast the rejoicings of the day had begun. Towards mid-day drunken
+fellows in the piazza were embracing and crying, "Long live the King,"
+and then "Long live the Baron Bonelli."
+
+Roma's disgust deepened to contempt. Why were the people rejoicing?
+There was nothing to rejoice at. Why were they shouting and singing? It
+was all got-up enthusiasm, all false, all a lie. By a sort of
+clairvoyance, Roma could see the Baron in the midst of the scenes he had
+prearranged. He was sitting in the carriage with the King and Queen,
+smiling his icy smile, while the people bellowed by their side. And
+meantime David Rossi was lying in prison in Milan, in a downfall worse
+than death, crushed, beaten, and broken-hearted.
+
+Old Francesca brought a morning paper. It was the _Sunrise_, and it
+contained nothing that did not concern the Baron. His wife had died on
+Saturday--there were three lines for that incident. The King had made
+him a Knight of the Order of Annunziata--there was half a column on the
+new cousin to the royal family. A state dinner and ball were to be held
+at the Quirinal that night, when it might be expected that the President
+of the Council would be nominated Dictator.
+
+In another column of the _Sunrise_ she found an interview with the
+Baron. The journal called for exemplary punishment on the criminals who
+conspired against the sovereign and endangered the public peace; the
+Baron, in guarded words, replied that the natural tendency of the King
+would be to pardon such persons, where their crimes were of old date,
+and their present conspiracies were averted, but it lay with the public
+to say whether it was just to the throne that such lenity ought to be
+encouraged.
+
+When Roma read this a red light seemed to flash before her eyes, and in
+a moment she understood what she had to do. The Baron intended to make
+the King break his promise to save the life of David Rossi, casting the
+blame upon the country, to whose wish he had been forced to yield. There
+was no earthly tribunal, no judge or jury, for a man who could do a
+thing like that. He was putting himself beyond all human law. Therefore
+one course only was left--to send him to the bar of God!
+
+When this idea came to Roma she did not think of it as a crime. In the
+moral elevation of her soul it seemed like an act of retributive
+justice. Her heart throbbed violently, but it was only from the stress
+of her thoughts and the intensity of her desire to execute them.
+
+One thing troubled her, the purely material difficulties in the way. She
+revolved many plans in her mind. At first she thought of writing to the
+Baron asking him to see her, and hinting at submission to his will; but
+she abandoned the device as a kind of duplicity that was unworthy of her
+high and noble mission. At last she decided to go to the Piazza Leone
+late that night and wait for the Baron's return from the Quirinal.
+Felice would admit her. She would sit in the Council Room, under the
+shaded lamp, until she heard the carriage wheels in the piazza. Then as
+the Baron opened the door she would rise out of the red light--and do
+it.
+
+In the drawer of a bureau she had found a revolver which Rossi had left
+with her on the night he went away. His name had been inscribed on it by
+the persons who sent it as a present, but Roma gave no thought to that.
+Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely
+indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she
+would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of
+justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her
+only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to
+the supreme tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the
+responsibility of fixing the moral weight of her motive in the scales of
+human justice.
+
+With these sublime feelings she began to examine the revolver. She
+remembered that when Rossi had given it to her she had recoiled from the
+touch of the deadly weapon, and it had fallen out of her fingers. No
+such fear came to her now, as she turned it over in her delicate hands
+and tried to understand its mechanism. There were six chambers, and to
+know if they were loaded she pulled the trigger. The vibration and the
+deafening noise shook but did not frighten her.
+
+The deaf old woman had heard the shot, and she came upstairs panting and
+with a pallid face.
+
+"Mercy, Signora! What's happened? The Blessed Virgin save us! A
+revolver!"
+
+Roma tried to speak with unconcern. It was Mr. Rossi's revolver. She had
+found it in the bureau. It must be loaded--it had gone off.
+
+The words were vague, but the tone quieted the old woman. "Thank the
+saints it's nothing worse. But why are you so pale, Signora? What is the
+matter with you?"
+
+Roma averted her eyes. "Wouldn't you be pale too if a thing like this
+had gone off in your hands?"
+
+By this time the Garibaldian had hobbled up behind his wife, and when
+all was explained the old people announced that they were going out to
+see the illuminations on the Pincio.
+
+"They begin at eleven o'clock and go on to twelve or one, Signora.
+Everybody in the house has gone already, or the shot would have made a
+fine sensation."
+
+"Good-night, Tommaso! Good-night, Francesca!"
+
+"Good-night, Signora. We'll have to leave the street door open for the
+lodgers coming back, but you'll close your own door and be as safe as
+sardines."
+
+The Garibaldian raised his pork-pie hat and left the door ajar. It was
+half-past ten and the _piazza_ was very quiet. Roma sat down to write a
+letter.
+
+    "Dearest," she wrote, "I have read in the newspapers what took
+    place on the frontier and I am overwhelmed with grief. What can I
+    say of my own share in it except that I did it for the best? From
+    my soul and before God, I tell you that if I betrayed you it was
+    only to save your life. And though my heart is breaking and I
+    shall never know another happy hour until God gives me release, if
+    I had to go through it all again I should have to do as I have
+    done....
+
+    "Perhaps your great heart will be able to forgive me some day, but
+    I shall never forgive myself or the man who compelled me to do
+    what I have done. Before this letter reaches you in Milan a great
+    act will be done in Rome. But you must know nothing more about it
+    until it is done.
+
+    "Good-bye, dearest. Try to forgive me as soon as you can. I shall
+    know it if you do ... where I am going to--eventually ... and it
+    will be so sweet and beautiful. Your loving, erring, broken-hearted
+                                                                  ROMA."
+
+A noisy group of revellers were passing through the piazza singing a
+drinking song. When they were gone a church clock struck eleven. Roma
+put on a hat and a veil. Her impatience was now intense. Being ready to
+go out she took a last look round the rooms. They brought a throng of
+memories--of hopes and visions as well as realities and facts. The
+piano, the phonograph, the bust, the bed. It was all over. She knew she
+would never come back.
+
+Her heart was throbbing violently, and she was opening the bureau a
+second time when her ear caught the sound of a step on the stairs. She
+knew the step. It was the Baron's.
+
+She stopped, with an indescribable sense of terror, and gazed at the
+door. It stood partly open as the Garibaldian had left it.
+
+Through the door the Baron was about to enter. He was coming up, up,
+up--to his death. Some supernatural power was sending him.
+
+She grew dizzy and quaked in every limb. Still the step outside came on.
+At length it reached the top, and there was a knock at the door. At
+first she could not answer, and the knock was repeated.
+
+Then the free use of her faculties came back to her. There was more of
+the Almighty in all this than of her own design. It _was_ to be. God
+intended her to kill this guilty man.
+
+"Come in!" she cried.
+
+
+                                IV
+
+When the Baron awoke on Saturday he remembered Roma with a good deal of
+self-reproach, and everything that happened during the following days
+made him think of her with tenderness. During the morning an
+aide-de-camp brought him the casket containing the Collar of the
+Annunziata, and spoke a formal speech. He fingered the jewelled band and
+golden pendant as he made the answer prescribed by etiquette, but he was
+thinking of Roma and the joy she might have felt in hailing him cousin
+of the King.
+
+Towards noon he received the telegram which announced the death of his
+maniac wife, and he set off instantly for his castle in the Alban Hills.
+He remained long enough to see the body removed to the church, and then
+returned to Rome. Nazzareno carried to the station the little hand-bag
+full of despatches with which he had occupied the hour spent in the
+train. They passed by the tree which had been planted on the first of
+Roma's Roman birthdays. It was covered with white roses. The Baron
+plucked one of them, and wore it in his button-hole on the return
+journey.
+
+Before midnight he was back in the Piazza Leone, where the Commendatore
+Angelelli was waiting with news of the arrest of Rossi. He gave orders
+to have the editor of the _Sunrise_ sent to him so that he might make a
+tentative suggestion. But in spite of himself his satisfaction at
+Rossi's complete collapse and possible extermination was disturbed by
+pity for Roma.
+
+Sunday was given up to the interview with the journalist, the last
+preparations for the Jubilee, and various secular duties. Monday's
+ceremonials began with the Mass. The Piazza of the Pantheon was lined
+with a splendid array of soldiers in glistening breastplates and
+helmets, a tall bodyguard through which the little King passed to his
+place amid the playing of the national hymn. In the old Pantheon itself,
+roofed with an awning of white silk which bore the royal arms, flares
+were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary
+altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the
+choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden
+cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet
+canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators,
+deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state
+functions, and the Mass was a magnificent political demonstration
+carried out on lines arranged by the Baron himself. He had forgotten
+God, but he had remembered the King, and he had thought of Roma also.
+She wept at all religious ceremonies, and would have shed tears if she
+had been present at this one.
+
+From the Pantheon they passed to the Capitol, amid the playing of bands
+of music which showered through the streets their hail of sound. The
+magnificent hall was crowded by a brilliant company in silk dresses and
+decorations. An address was read by the Mayor, reciting the early
+misfortunes of Italy, and closing with allusions to the prosperity of
+the nation under the reigning dynasty. In his reply the King extolled
+the army as the hope of peace and unity, and ended with a eulogy of the
+President of the Council, whose powerful policy had dispelled the
+vaporous dreams of unpractical politicians who were threatening the
+stability of the throne and the welfare of its loyal subjects.
+
+The Baron answered briefly that he had done no more than his duty to his
+King, who was almost a republican monarch, and to his country, which was
+the freest in the world. As for the visionaries and their visions, a few
+refugees in Zuerich, cheered on by the rabble abroad, might dream of
+constructing a universal republic out of the various nations and races,
+with Rome as their capital, but these were the delirious dreams of weak
+minds.
+
+"Dangerous!" said the Baron, with a smile. "To think of the eternal
+dreamer being dangerous!"
+
+The King laughed, the senators cheered, the ladies waved their
+handkerchiefs, and again the Baron remembered Roma.
+
+The procession to the Quirinal was a prolonged triumph. Every house was
+hung with flags, every window with red and yellow damask. The clubs in
+the Corso were crowded with princes, nobles, diplomats, and
+distinguished foreigners. Civil guards by hundreds in their purple
+plumes lined the streets, and the pavements were packed with loyal
+people. It was a glorious pageant, such as Roma loved.
+
+The mayors of the province, followed by citizens under their appointed
+leaders and flags, came up to the Quirinal as the Baron had appointed,
+and called the King on to the balcony. The King accepted the call and
+made a sign of thanks.
+
+Returning to the house the King ordered that papers should be prepared
+immediately creating the Baron Bonelli by royal decree Dictator of Italy
+for a period of six months from that date. "If Roma were here now,"
+thought the Baron.
+
+Then night came, and the state dinner at the royal palace was a moving
+scene of enchantment. One princess came after another, apparently
+clothed in diamonds. The Baron wore the Collar of the Annunziata, and
+the foreign ambassadors, who as representatives of their sovereigns were
+entitled to precedence, gave place to him, and he sat on the right of
+the Queen.
+
+After dinner he led the Queen to an embroidered throne under a velvet
+baldachino in a gorgeous chamber which had been the chapel of the Popes.
+Then the ball began. What torrents of light! What a dazzling blaze of
+diamonds! What lovely faces and pure white skins! What soft bosoms and
+full round forms! What gleams of life and love in a hundred pairs of
+beautiful eyes! But there was a lovelier face and form in the mind of
+the Baron than any his eyes could see, and excusing himself to the King
+on the ground of Rossi's expected arrival, he left the palace.
+
+Fireflies in the dark garden of the Quirinal were emitting drops of
+light as the Baron passed through the echoing courts, and the big square
+in front, bright with electric light, was silent save for the footfall
+of the sentries at the gate.
+
+The Baron walked in the direction of the Piazza Navona. His
+self-reproach was becoming poignant. He remembered the threats he had
+made, and told himself he had never intended to carry them out. They
+were only meant to impress the imagination of the person played upon, as
+might happen in any ordinary affair of public life.
+
+The Baron's memory went back to the last state ball before this one, and
+he felt some pangs of shame. But the disaster of that night had not been
+due to the cold calculation to which he had attributed it. The cause was
+simpler and more human--love of a beautiful woman who was slipping away
+from him, the girding sense of being bound body and soul to a wife that
+was no wife, and the mad intoxication of a moment.
+
+No matter! Roma should not lose by what had happened. He would make it
+up to her. Considering her unconventional conduct, it was no little
+thing he intended to do, but he would do it, and she would see that
+others were capable of sacrifice.
+
+The people were on the Pincio and the streets were quiet. When the Baron
+reached the Piazza Navona there was hardly anybody about, and he had
+difficulty in finding the house. No one saw him enter, and he met with
+nobody on the stairs. So much the better. He was half ashamed.
+
+After he had knocked twice a voice which he did not recognise told him
+to come in. When he pushed the door open Roma, in hat and veil, stood
+before him, with her back to a bureau. He thought she looked frightened
+and ill.
+
+
+                                V
+
+"My dear Roma," said the Baron, "I bring you good news. Everything has
+turned out well. Nothing could have been managed better, and I come to
+congratulate you."
+
+He was visibly excited, and spoke rapidly and even loudly.
+
+"The man was arrested on the frontier--you must have heard of that. He
+was coming by the night train on Saturday, and to prevent a possible
+disturbance they kept him in Milan until this morning."
+
+Roma continued to stand with her back to the bureau.
+
+"The news was in all the journals yesterday, my dear, and it had a
+splendid effect on the opening of the Jubilee. When the King went to
+Mass this morning the plot had received its death-blow, and our anxiety
+was at an end. To-night the man will arrive in Rome, and within an hour
+from now he will be safely locked up in prison."
+
+Every nerve in Roma's body was palpitating, but she did not attempt to
+speak.
+
+"It is all your doing, my child--yours, not mine. Your clever brain has
+brought it all to pass. 'Leave the man to me,' you said. I left him to
+you, and you have accomplished everything."
+
+Roma drew her lips together and tried to control herself.
+
+"But what things you have gone through in order to achieve your purpose!
+Slights, slurs, insults! No wonder the man was taken in by it. Society
+itself was taken in. And I--yes, I myself--was almost deceived."
+
+"Shall it be now?" thought Roma. The Baron was on the hearthrug
+directly facing her.
+
+"But you knew what you were doing, my dear. It was all a part of your
+scheme. You drew the man on. In due time he delivered himself up to you.
+He surrendered every secret of his soul. And when your great hour came
+you were ready. You met it as you had always intended. 'At the top of
+his hopes he shall fall,' you said."
+
+Roma's heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds.
+
+"He _has_ fallen. Thanks to you, this enemy of civil society, this
+slanderer of women, is down. Then the Pope too! And the confession to
+the Reverend Father! Who but a woman could have thought of a thing like
+that?---making your denunciation so defensible, so pardonable, so
+plausible, so inevitable! What skill! What patience! What diplomacy! And
+what will and nerve too! Who shall say now that women are incapable of
+great things?"
+
+The Baron had thrown open his overcoat, revealing the broad expanse of
+his shirt-front, crossed by the glittering collar of the Annunziata, and
+was promenading the hearthrug without a thought of his peril.
+
+"The journals of half Europe will have accounts of the failure of the
+'Great Plot.' There was another plot, my dear, which did not fail.
+Europe will hear of that also, and by to-morrow morning the world will
+know what a woman may do to punish the man who traduces and degrades
+her!"
+
+"Why don't I do it?" thought Roma. She was fingering the revolver on the
+bureau behind her, and breathing fast and audibly.
+
+"You shall have everything back, my dear. Carriages, jewellery,
+apartments, exactly as you parted with them. I have kept all under my
+own control, and in a single day you can be reinstated."
+
+Roma's palpitating heart was hurting her.
+
+"But won't you sit down, my child? I have something to tell you. It is
+important news. The Baroness is dead. Yes, she died on Saturday, poor
+soul. Should I play the hypocrite and weep? Why should I? For fifteen
+years a cruel law, which I dare not attempt to repeal by divorce in a
+Catholic country, has tied me to a living corpse. Shall I pretend to
+mourn because my burden has fallen away?... Roma, sit down, my dear;
+don't continue to stand there.... Roma, I am free, and we can now carry
+out our marriage, as we always hoped and intended."
+
+"Now!" thought Roma, moving a little forward.
+
+"Ah, don't be afraid of anything. I am not afraid, and you needn't be
+afraid either. Certainly rumour has coupled our names already. But what
+matter about that? No one shall insult you, whatever has occurred.
+Wherever I go you shall go too. If they cannot do without me they shall
+not do without you, and in spite of everything you shall be received
+everywhere."
+
+"Is that all you had to say?" said Roma.
+
+"Not all. There is something else, and I couldn't wait for the
+newspapers to tell you. The King has appointed me Dictator for six
+months. That means that you will be more courted than the Queen. What a
+revenge! The women who have been turning their backs upon you will bend
+their backs before you. You will break down every barrier. You will...."
+
+"Wait," said Roma.
+
+The Baron had been approaching her, and she lifted her hand.
+
+"You expect me to acquiesce in this lie?"
+
+"What lie, my child?"
+
+"That I denounced David Rossi in order to destroy him. It is true that I
+did denounce him--unhappy woman that I am--but you know perfectly why I
+did it. I did it because I was forced to do it. _You_ forced me."
+
+At the sound of her own voice, her eyes had begun to fill.
+
+"And now you ask me to pretend that it was all done from an evil motive,
+and you offer me the rewards of guilt. Do you think I'm a murderer that
+you can offer me the price of blood? Have you any shame? You come here
+to ask me to marry you, knowing that I am married already--here of all
+places, in the house of my husband."
+
+Her eyes were blinded with tears, but her voice thickened with anger.
+
+"My child," said the Baron, "if I have asked you to acquiesce in the
+idea that what you did was from a certain motive it was only to spare
+you pain. I thought it would be easier for you to do so now, things
+being as they are. It was only going back to your original purpose,
+forgetting all that has intervened."
+
+His voice softened, and he said in a low tone: "If _I_ am so much to
+blame for what has been done, perhaps it was because you were first of
+all at fault! At the beginning my one offence consisted in agreeing to
+your proposal. It was the _statesman_ who committed that error, and the
+_man_ has suffered for it ever since. You know nothing of jealousy, my
+child--how can you?--but its pains are as the pains of hell."
+
+He tried to approach her once more.
+
+"Come, dear, try to be yourself again. Forget this moment of
+fascination, and rise afresh to your old strength and wisdom. I am
+willing to forget ... whatever has happened--I don't ask what. I am
+ready to wipe it all away, just as if it had never been."
+
+In spite of his soft words and gentle tones, Roma was gazing at him with
+an aversion she had never felt before for any human being.
+
+"Have no qualms about your marriage, my child. I assure you it is no
+marriage at all. In the eye of the civil law it is frankly invalid, and
+the Church could annul it at any moment, being no sacrament, because you
+are unbaptized and therefore not in her sense a Christian."
+
+He took another step towards her and said:
+
+"But if you have lost one husband another is waiting for you--a more
+devoted and more faithful husband--one who can give you everything in
+the place of one who can give you nothing.... And then that man has gone
+out of your life for good. Whatever happens now, it is impossible that
+you and he can ever come together again. But I am here still.... Don't
+answer hastily, Roma. Isn't it something that I am ready to face the
+opprobrium that will surely come of marrying the most criticised woman
+in Rome?"
+
+Roma felt herself to be suffocating with indignation and shame.
+
+"You see I am suing to you, Roma--I who have never sued to any human
+being. Even when I was a child I would not sue to my own mother. Since
+then I have done something in life--I have justified myself, I have
+given my country a place among the nations, I stand for it in the eye of
+the world--and yet--"
+
+"And yet I despise you," said Roma.
+
+There was a moment of silence, and then, recovering himself, the Baron
+tried to laugh.
+
+"As you will. I must needs accept the only possible interpretation of
+your words. I thought my devotion in spite of every provocation might
+burn away your bitterness. But if...." (he was getting excited) "if you
+have no respect for the past, you may have some regard for the future."
+
+She looked at him with a new fear.
+
+"Naturally, I have no desire to humiliate myself further by suing to a
+woman who despises me. It will be sufficient to punish the man who is
+responsible for my loss of esteem in the eyes of one who has so many
+reasons to respect me."
+
+"You mean that you will persuade the King to break his promise?"
+
+"The King need not be persuaded after he has appointed his Dictator."
+
+"So the King's promise to pardon Mr. Rossi will be set aside by his
+successor?"
+
+"If I leave this room without a better answer ... yes."
+
+Roma drew from behind the revolver she had held in her hand.
+
+"Then you will never leave this room," she said.
+
+The Baron stood perfectly still, and there was a moment of deadly
+silence.
+
+Then came the rattle of carriage wheels on the stones of the piazza,
+followed immediately by a hurried footstep on the stairs.
+
+Roma heard it. She was trembling all over.
+
+A moment afterwards there was a knock at the door. Then another knock,
+and another. It was imperative, irregular knocking.
+
+Roma, who had forgotten all about the Baron, was rooted to the spot on
+which she stood. The Baron, who had understood everything, was also
+transfixed.
+
+Then came a thick, vibrating voice, "Roma!"
+
+Roma made a faint cry, and dropped the revolver out of her graspless
+hand. The Baron picked it up instantly. He was the first to recover
+himself.
+
+"Hush!" he said in a whisper. "Let him come in. I will go into this
+room. I mean no harm to any one; but if he should follow me--if you
+should reveal my presence--remember what I said before about a
+challenge. And if I challenge him his shrift will have to be swift and
+sure."
+
+The Baron stepped into the bedroom. Then the voice came again, "Roma!
+Roma!"
+
+Roma staggered to the door and opened it.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+Flying from the railway station in the coupe, down the Via Nazionale and
+the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Rossi had seen by the electric light the
+remains of the day's festoons, triumphal arches, banners, embroideries,
+emblems, and flowers. These things had passed before his eyes like a
+flash, yet they had deepened the bitterness of his desire to meet with
+Roma that he might thrust the evidence of her treachery into her face.
+
+But when he came to his own house and Roma opened the door to him, and
+he saw her, looking so ill, her cheeks so pale, her beautiful eyes so
+large and timid, and her whole face expressing such acute suffering, his
+anger began to ebb away, and he wanted to take her into his arms in
+spite of all.
+
+Roma knew she was opening the door to Rossi, whatever the strange chance
+which had brought him there, and when she saw him she made a faint cry
+and a helpless little run toward him, and then stopped and looked
+frightened. The momentary sensation of joy and relief had instantly died
+away. She looked at his world-worn face, so disfigured by pain and
+humiliation, and the arms she had outstretched to meet him she raised
+above her head as if to ward off a blow.
+
+He saw under the veil she wore the terror which had seized her at sight
+of him, and by that alone he knew the depths of the abyss between them.
+But this only increased the measureless pity he felt for her. And he
+could not look at her without feeling that whatever she had done he
+loved her, and must continue to love her to the last.
+
+Tears rose to his throat and choked him. He opened his mouth to speak,
+but at first he could not utter a word. At length he fumbled at his
+breast, tore at his shirt front, so that his loose neckerchief became
+untied, and finally drew from an inner pocket a crumpled paper.
+
+"Look!" he said with a kind of gasp.
+
+She saw at a glance what the paper was, and dared not look at it a
+second time. It was the warrant. She dropped into a chair with bowed
+head and humble attitude, as if trying to sink out of sight.
+
+"Tell me you know nothing about it, Roma."
+
+She covered her face with both hands and was silent.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+She had expected that he would flame out at her, but his voice was
+breaking. She lifted her head and tried to look at him. His eyes were
+fixed on her with an expression she had never seen before. She wanted to
+speak, and could not do so. Her lip trembled, and she hung her head and
+covered her face again, unable to say a word.
+
+By this time he knew full well that she was guilty, but he tried to
+persuade himself that she was innocent, to make excuses for her, and to
+find her a way out.
+
+"The newspapers say that the warrant was made at your instruction,
+Roma--that you were the informer who denounced me. It cannot be true.
+Tell me it is not true."
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"Look at the name on it--David Leone. There was only one person in the
+world who knew me by that name--only one."
+
+She began to cry beneath her hands.
+
+"I told you everything myself, Roma. It was in this very room, you
+remember, the night you came here first. You asked me if I wasn't afraid
+to tell you, and I answered no. You couldn't deceive the son of your own
+father. It wasn't natural. I was right, wasn't I?"
+
+She felt him take hold of her hand and draw it down from her face.
+
+"Look at the ring on your hand, dear. And look at this one on mine. You
+are my wife, Roma. Does a man's wife betray him?"
+
+His voice cracked at every word.
+
+"When we parted you promised that as long as you lived, wherever you
+might be, and whatever the world might do with us, you would be faithful
+to me to the last. You have kept your promise, haven't you? It isn't
+true that you have denounced me to the police."
+
+He paused, but she did not reply, and he dropped her hand, and it fell
+like a lifeless thing to her side.
+
+"I know it isn't true, dear, but I want to hear it from your own lips.
+One word--only one. Why shouldn't you speak? Say you know nothing of
+this warrant. Say that somebody else knew David Leone. It may be so--I
+cannot remember. Say ... say anything. Don't you see I will believe you
+whatever you say, Roma?"
+
+Roma could control herself no longer.
+
+"I know quite well it is impossible for you to forgive me, David."
+
+"Forgive!"
+
+"But if I could explain...."
+
+"Explain? What can there be to explain? Did you denounce me to the
+magistrate?"
+
+"If you could only know what happened...."
+
+"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"
+
+She looked with frightened eyes at the bedroom door, and then dropped to
+her knees.
+
+"Have pity upon me."
+
+"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His pale face became ashen.
+
+"Then it's true," he said in a voice that hardly passed his throat.
+"What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me
+against you from the first, but I wouldn't believe them. I was a fool,
+and _this_ is my reward."
+
+So saying he crushed the warrant in his hand and flung it at her feet.
+
+Roma could bear no more. Making a great call on her resolution, she
+rose, turned towards the bedroom door, and, speaking in a loud voice in
+order that he who was within might hear, she said:
+
+"David, I don't want to excuse myself or to blame anybody else, whoever
+it may be, and however wickedly he may have acted. But, from my soul and
+before God, I tell you that if I denounced you I did it for the best."
+
+"The best!"
+
+He laughed bitterly, but she forced herself to go on.
+
+"When you went away you warned me that your enemies could be merciless.
+They _have_ been merciless. First, they tempted me with the fear of
+poverty. I had been accustomed to wealth, comfort, luxury. Look round
+you, David--they are gone. Did I ever regret them? Never! I was rich
+enough in your love, and I would not have sacrificed that for a queen's
+crown."
+
+She looked up at his tortured face and saw that it was full of scorn,
+but still she struggled on.
+
+"Then they tempted me with jealousy. The forged letter which killed
+Bruno was intended to poison me. Did I believe it? No! I knew you loved
+me, and if you didn't, if you had deceived me, that made no difference.
+_I_ loved _you_, and even if I lost you I should always love you,
+whatever happened."
+
+Again she looked up into his face with her glistening eyes. It was not
+anger she saw there now, but an expression of bewilderment and of pain.
+
+"Last of all, they tempted me with love itself. The treacherous tyrants
+deceived and intimidated the Pope--the good and saintly Pope--and
+through him they told me that your arrest was certain, your life in
+danger, and nothing could save you from your present peril but that I
+should denounce you for your past offences. The phantom of conspiracy
+rose up before me, and I remembered my father, doomed to life-long exile
+and a lonely death. It was my dark hour, dearest, and when they promised
+me--faithfully promised me--that your life should be spared...."
+
+A faint sound came from the bedroom. Roma heard it, but Rossi, in the
+tumult of his emotion, heard nothing.
+
+"I know what you will say, dear--that you would have given your life a
+hundred times rather than save it at the loss of all you hold so dear.
+But I am no heroine, David. I am only a woman who loves you, and I could
+not see you die."
+
+He felt his soul swell with love and forgiveness, and he wanted to sob
+like a child, but Roma went on, and without trying to keep back her
+tears.
+
+"That's all, dear. Now you know everything. It is not your fault that
+the love you have brought home to me is dead. I hoped that before you
+came home I might die too. I think my soul must be dead already. I do
+not hope for pardon, but if your great heart _could_ pardon me...."
+
+"Roma," said Rossi at last, while tears filled his eyes and choked his
+voice, "when I escaped from the police I came here to avenge myself; but
+if you say it was your love that led you to denounce me...."
+
+"I do say so."
+
+"Your love, and nothing but your love...."
+
+"Nothing! Nothing!"
+
+"Though I am betrayed and fallen, and may be banished or condemned to
+death, yet...."
+
+Her heart swelled and throbbed. She held out her arms to him.
+
+"David!" she cried, and at the next moment she was clasped to his
+breast.
+
+Again there was a faint sound from the adjoining room.
+
+"The woman lies," said a voice behind them.
+
+The Baron stood in the bedroom door.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+The Baron's impulse on going into the bedroom had been merely to escape
+from one who must be a runaway prisoner, and therefore little better
+than a madman, whose worst madness would be provoked by his own
+presence; but when he realised that Rossi was self-possessed, and even
+magnanimous in his hour of peril, the Baron felt ashamed of his
+hiding-place, and felt compelled to come out. In spite of his pride he
+had been forced to overhear the conversation, and he was humiliated by
+the generosity of the betrayed man, but what humbled him most was the
+clear note of the woman's love.
+
+Knight of the Annunziata! Cousin of the King! President of the Council!
+Dictator! These things had meant something to him an hour ago. What were
+they now?
+
+The agony of the Baron's jealousy was intolerable. For the first time in
+his life his ideas, usually so clear and exact, became confused. Roma
+was lost to him. He was going mad.
+
+He looked at the revolver which he had snatched up when Roma let it
+fall, examined it, made sure it was loaded, cocked it, put it in the
+right-hand pocket of his overcoat, and then opened the door.
+
+The two in the other room did not at first see him. He spoke, and their
+arms slackened and they stood apart.
+
+After a moment of silence Rossi spoke. "Roma," he said, "what is this
+gentleman doing here?"
+
+The Baron laughed. "Wouldn't it be more reasonable to ask what you are
+doing here, sir?" he asked.
+
+Then trying to put into logical sequence the confused ideas which were
+besieging his tormented brain, he said, "I understand that this
+apartment belongs now to the lady; the lady belongs to me, and when she
+denounced you to the police it was merely in fulfilment of a plan we
+concocted together on the day you insulted both of us in your speech in
+the piazza."
+
+Rossi made a step forward with a threatening gesture, but Roma
+intervened. The Baron gripped firmly the revolver in his pocket, and
+said:
+
+"Take care, sir. If a man threatens me he must be prepared for the
+consequences. The lady knows what those consequences may be."
+
+Rossi, breathing heavily, was trying to retain the mastery of himself.
+
+"If you tell me that the lady...."
+
+"I tell you that according to the law of nature and of reason the lady
+is my wife."
+
+"It's a lie."
+
+"Ask her."
+
+"And so I will."
+
+Roma saw the look of triumph with which Rossi turned to her. The
+terrible moment she had lived in fear of had come to pass. The letters
+she had written to Rossi had not yet reached him, and her enemy was
+telling his story before she had told hers.
+
+What was she to do? She would have said anything at that moment and
+believed herself justified before God. But even lying itself would be of
+no avail. She remembered the Baron's threat and trembled. If she told
+the truth her confession, coming at that moment, would be worse than
+vain. If she told a lie, Rossi would insult the Baron, the Baron would
+challenge Rossi, and they would fight with all the consequences the
+Baron had foretold.
+
+"Roma," said Rossi, "forgive me for putting the question, but a
+falsehood like this, affecting the character of a good woman, ought to
+be stopped in the slanderer's throat. Don't be afraid, dear. You know I
+will believe you before anybody in the world. What the man says is a
+lie, isn't it?"
+
+Roma stood for a moment looking in a helpless way from Rossi to the
+Baron, and from the Baron back to Rossi. She made an effort to speak,
+but at first she could not do so. At length she said:
+
+"Can't you trust me, David?"
+
+"Trust you? Answer me on this one point and I will trust you on all the
+rest. Say the man speaks falsely, and I will stake my life on your
+word."
+
+Roma did not reply, and the Baron tried to laugh.
+
+"If the lady can deny what I say, let her do so. If she cannot, you must
+come to your own conclusions."
+
+"Deny it, Roma! Deny it, and I will fling the man's insult in his face."
+
+"David, if I could tell you everything...."
+
+"Everything! It's only one thing I want to know, Roma."
+
+"If you had received my letters addressed to England...."
+
+"Letters? What matter about letters now. Don't you understand, dear?
+This gentleman says that before you married me you ... had already
+belonged to him. That's what he means, and it's false, isn't it?"
+
+"My mouth is closed. If I could say anything one way or other...."
+
+"Yes or no--that is all that is necessary."
+
+Roma looked up at him with a pleading expression, but seeing nothing in
+his face except the magistrate who was interrogating her, she turned her
+back and hung her head, and cried like a helpless child.
+
+Rossi laid hold of her arm, twisted her about, and looked into her eyes.
+
+"Crying, Roma? You don't mean to tell me that I am to believe what the
+man says? Deny it! For God's sake deny it!"
+
+"I ... I cannot ... I cannot speak," she stammered, and then there was a
+dead silence.
+
+When Rossi spoke again his face was dark as a thundercloud, and his
+voice hoarse as a raven's.
+
+"If that is so, there is nothing more to say."
+
+She looked up at him with a pathetic remonstrance, but he met her eyes
+with the gaze of a relentless judge who had tried and condemned her.
+
+"I was not to blame, David--I swear before God I was not."
+
+"Yet you allowed me to go on believing that falsehood. The woman who
+could do a thing like that could do anything. She could pretend to be
+poor, pretend to be tempted, pretend...."
+
+"David, what are you saying?"
+
+Rossi broke into a peal of mad laughter.
+
+"Saying? That you have deceived me from the beginning, when you
+undertook to betray me to your master and paramour."
+
+"David!"
+
+She tried to protest, but he bore her down with a laugh of scorn, and
+then wheeled round on the Baron, who had been standing in silence behind
+them.
+
+"That's why you are here to-night, I suppose. You didn't expect to be
+disturbed, did you? You didn't expect to see me. You thought I was
+stowed away in a cell, and you could meet in safety.... Oh, my brain! my
+brain! I shall go mad!"
+
+"It isn't true," cried Roma. And turning to the Baron with flame in her
+eyes she said, "Tell him it isn't true. You know it isn't true."
+
+"True?" Again the Baron tried to laugh. "Of course it's true. Every word
+the man has uttered is true. Don't ask me to lie to him as you have done
+from first to last." At that Rossi's mad laughter stopped suddenly, and
+he stepped up to the Baron with fury in his face.
+
+"You scoundrel!" he said. "You've succeeded, you've separated us, but I
+understand you perfectly. You have used this unhappy lady's shame to
+compel her to carry out your infamous designs, and now that she is done
+with, she must lose the man who played with her as well as the man she
+has played with."
+
+Roma saw that the Baron was feeling for something in the side pocket of
+his overcoat, and she called to Rossi to warn him.
+
+"One doesn't quarrel with an escaped criminal," said the Baron. "It is
+sufficient to call the police ... Police!" he cried, lifting his voice
+and taking a step forward.
+
+Rossi stood between the Baron and the door.
+
+"Don't stir," he said. "Don't utter a word, I warn you. I'm a hunted dog
+to-night, and a hunted dog is dangerous."
+
+"Let me pass," said the Baron.
+
+"Not yet, sir," said Rossi. "You have something to do before you go. You
+have to go down on your knees and beg the pardon of your victim...."
+
+Roma saw the Baron draw the revolver. She saw Rossi spring upon him, and
+seize him by the collar of the Annunziata which hung over his shirt
+front. She saw the men go struggling through the door of the
+sitting-room into the dining-room. She covered her ears with her hands
+to shut out the sounds from the outer chamber, but she heard Rossi's
+hoarse voice that was like the growl of a wild beast. Then came the
+deafening report of a pistol-shot, then the vibration of a heavy fall,
+and then dead silence.
+
+Roma was still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with
+terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the
+floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she
+turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down
+on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For
+one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and
+blistering words poured out of him in a torrent.
+
+"He's dead. D'you hear me? He's dead. But it's as much your work as
+mine, and you will never think of yourself henceforward without remorse
+and horror. I curse you by the love you've wronged and the heart you've
+broken. I curse you by the hopes you wasted and the truth you've
+outraged. I curse you by the memory of your father, the memory of a
+saint and martyr."
+
+Before his last words were spoken Roma had ceased to hear. With a feeble
+moan, interrupted by a faint cry, she had slowly retreated before him,
+and then fallen face downwards. Everything about her, Rossi, herself,
+the room, the lamp on the table and the shadows cast by it, had mingled
+and blended, and gone out in a complete obscurity.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+When Roma regained consciousness, there was not a sound in the
+apartment. Even the piazza outside was quiet. Somebody was playing a
+mandoline a long way off, and the thin notes were trembling through the
+still night. A dog was barking in the distance. Save for these sounds
+everything was still.
+
+Roma lay for some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was
+swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle
+the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and
+she wept bitterly.
+
+But when the first tenderness was over the one feeling which seized and
+held her was hatred of the Baron. Rossi had told her the man was dead,
+and she felt no pity. The Baron deserved his death, and if Rossi had
+killed him it was no crime.
+
+She was still lying where she had fallen when a noise as of some one
+moving came from the adjoining room. Then a voice called to her:
+
+"Roma!"
+
+It was the Baron's voice, broken and feeble. A great terror took hold of
+her. Then came a sense of shame, and finally a feeling of relief. The
+Baron was not dead. Thank God! O thank God!
+
+She got up and went into the dining-room. The Baron was on his knees
+struggling to climb to the couch. His shirt front was partly dragged out
+of his breast, and the Order of the Annunziata was torn away. There was
+a streak of blood over his left eyebrow, and no other sign of injury.
+But his eyes themselves were glassy, and his face was pale as death.
+
+"I'm dying, Roma."
+
+"I'll run for a doctor," she said.
+
+"No. Don't do that. I don't want to be found here. Besides, it's
+useless. In five minutes a clot of blood will have covered the lacerated
+brain, and I shall lose consciousness again. Stupid, isn't it?"
+
+"Let me call for a priest," said Roma.
+
+"Don't do that either. You can do me more good yourself, Roma. Give me a
+drink."
+
+Roma was fighting with an almost unconquerable repugnance, but she
+brought the Baron a drink of water, and with shaking hands held the
+glass to his trembling lips.
+
+"How do you feel?" she asked.
+
+"Worse," he answered.
+
+He looked into her eyes with evident contrition, and said, "I wonder if
+it would be fair to ask you to forgive me? Would it?"
+
+She did not answer, and he stretched himself and sighed. His breathing
+became laboured and stertorous, his skin hot, and his eyes dilated.
+
+"How do you feel now?" asked Roma.
+
+"I'm going," he replied, and he smiled again.
+
+The human soul was gleaming out of the wretched man at the last, and he
+was looking at her now with pleading eyes which plainly could not see.
+
+"Are you there, Roma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Promise that you will not leave me."
+
+"I will not leave you now," she answered in a low voice.
+
+After a moment he roused himself with an effort and said, "And this is
+the end! How absurd! They'll find me here in any case, and what a
+chatter there'll be! The Chamber--the journals--all the scribblers and
+speechifiers. What will Europe say? Another Boulanger, perhaps! But I'm
+sorry for Italy. Nobody can say I did not love my country. Where her
+interest lay I let nothing interfere. And just when everything seemed to
+triumph...."
+
+He attempted to laugh. Roma shuddered.
+
+"It was the star of the Annunziata that did it. The man threw it with
+such force. To think that it's been the aim of my life to win that Order
+and now it kills me! Ridiculous, isn't it?"
+
+Again he attempted to laugh.
+
+"There's a side of justice in that, though, and I'm not going to whine.
+The Pope tried to paint an awful end, but his nightmare didn't frighten
+me. We must all bow our heads to the law of compensation--the Pope as
+well as everybody else. But to die stupidly like this..."
+
+He was speaking with difficulty, and dragging at his shirt front. Roma
+opened it at the neck, and something dropped on to the floor. It was a
+lock of glossy black hair tied with a red ribbon such as lawyers used to
+bind documents together. Dull as his sight was, he saw it.
+
+"Yours, Roma! You were ill with fever when you first came to Rome, you
+remember. The doctors cut off your beautiful hair. This was some of it.
+I've worn it ever since. Silly, wasn't it?"
+
+Tears began to shine in Roma's eyes. The cynical man who laughed at
+sentiment had carried the tenderest badge of it in his breast.
+
+"I used to wear some of my mother's in the same place when I was
+younger. She was a good woman, too. When she put me to bed she used to
+repeat something: 'Hold Thou my hands,' I think.... May I hold your
+hands, Roma?"
+
+Roma turned away her head, but she held out her hand, and the dying man
+kissed it.
+
+"What a beautiful hand it is! I think I should know it among all the
+hands in the world. How stupid! People have been afraid of me all my
+life, Roma; even my mother was afraid of me when I was a child; but to
+die without once having known what it was to have some one to love
+you.... I believe I'm beginning to rave."
+
+The mournful irony of the words was belied by the tremulous voice.
+
+"My little comedy is played out, I suppose, and when the curtain is down
+it is time to go home. Death is a solemn sort of homegoing, Roma, and if
+those we've injured cannot forgive us before we go...."
+
+But the battle of hate in Roma's heart was over. She had remembered
+Rossi and that had swept away all her bitterness. As the Baron stood to
+her, so she stood to her husband. They were two unforgiven ones, both
+guilty and ashamed.
+
+"Indeed, indeed I do forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven," she said,
+whereupon he laughed again, but with a different note altogether.
+
+Then he asked her to lift up his head. She placed a cushion under it,
+but still he called on her to lift his head higher.
+
+"Can you lift me in your arms, Roma?... Higher still. So!... Can you
+hold me there?"
+
+"How do you feel now?" she asked.
+
+"It won't be long," he answered. His respirations came in whiffs.
+
+Roma began to repeat as much as she could remember of the prayers for
+the dying which she had heard at the deathbed of her aunt. The dying man
+smiled an indulgent smile into the young woman's beautiful and mournful
+face and allowed her to go on. As she prayed faster and faster, saying
+the same words over and over again, she felt his breathing grow more
+faint and irregular. At length it seemed to stop, and thinking it was
+gone altogether, she made the sign of the cross and said:
+
+"We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant Gabriel, that being
+dead to the world he may live to Thee, and those sins which through the
+frailty of human life he has committed, Thou by the indulgence of Thy
+most merciful loving-kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord.
+Amen."
+
+Then the glazed eyes opened wide and lighted up with a pitiful smile.
+
+"I'm dying in your arms, Roma."
+
+Then a long breath, and then:
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+He had tried to subdue all men to his will, and there was one man he had
+subdued above all others--himself. There is a greater man than the great
+man--the man who is too great to be great.
+
+
+                                IX
+
+There had been no light in the dining-room except the reflection from
+the lamp in the sitting-room, and now it fell with awful shadows on the
+whitening face turned upward on the couch. The pains of death had given
+a distorted expression, and the eyes remained open. Roma wished to close
+them, but dared not try, and the image of inanimate objects standing in
+the light was mirrored in their dull and glassy surface. The dog in the
+distance was still barking, and a company of tipsy revellers were
+passing through the piazza singing a drinking song with a laugh in it.
+When they were gone the clocks outside began to strike. It was one
+o'clock, and the hour seemed to dance over the city in single steps.
+
+Roma's terror became unbearable. Feeling herself to be a murderer, she
+acted on a murderer's impulse and prepared to fly. When she recalled the
+emotions with which she had determined to kill the Baron and then
+deliver herself up to justice, they seemed so remote that they might
+have existed only in a dream or belonged to another existence.
+
+Trembling from head to foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she
+fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last
+fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to
+the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something
+might touch her on the shoulder.
+
+The door was open. No doubt Rossi had left it so, and she had not
+noticed the circumstance until now. She had got as far as the first
+landing when a poignant memory came to her--the memory of how she had
+first descended those stairs with Rossi, going side by side, and almost
+touching. The feeling that she had been fatal to the man since then
+nearly choked and blinded her, but it urged her on. If she remained
+until some one came, and the crime was discovered, what was she to say
+that would not incriminate her husband?
+
+Suddenly she became aware of sounds from below--the measured footsteps
+of soldiers. She knew who they were. They were the Carabineers, and they
+were coming for Rossi, who had escaped and was being pursued.
+
+Roma turned instantly, and with a noiseless step fled back to the door
+of the apartment, opened it with her latch-key, closed it silently, and
+bolted it on the inside. This was done before she knew what she was
+doing, and when she regained full possession of her faculties she was in
+the sitting-room, and the Carabineers were ringing at the electric bell.
+
+They rang repeatedly. Roma stood in the middle of the floor, listening
+and holding her breath.
+
+"Deuce take it!" said a voice outside. "Why doesn't the woman open the
+door if she doesn't want to get herself into trouble? She's at home, at
+all events."
+
+"So is he, if I know anything," said a second voice. "He drove here
+anyway--not a doubt about that."
+
+"Let's see the porter--he'll have another key."
+
+"The old fool is out at the illuminations. But listen...." (the door
+rattled as if some one was shaking it). "This door is fastened on the
+inside."
+
+There was a chuckling laugh, and then, "All right, boys! Down with it!"
+
+A moment afterwards the door was broken open and four Carabineers were
+in the dining-room. Roma awaited their irruption without a word. She
+continued to stand in the middle of the sitting-room looking straight
+before her.
+
+"Holy saints, what's this?" cried the voice she had heard first, and she
+knew that the Carabineers were bending over the body on the couch.
+
+"His Excellency!"
+
+"Lord save us!"
+
+Roma's head was dizzy, and something more was said which she did not
+follow. At the next moment the Carabineers had entered the sitting-room;
+she was standing face to face with them, and they were questioning her.
+
+"The Honourable Rossi is here, isn't he?"
+
+"No," she answered in a timid voice.
+
+"But he has been here, hasn't he?"
+
+"No," she answered more boldly.
+
+"Do you mean to say that the Honourable Rossi has not been here
+to-night?"
+
+"I do," she said, with exaggerated emphasis.
+
+The marshal of the Carabineers, who had been speaking, looked
+attentively at her for a moment, and then he called on his men to search
+the rooms.
+
+"What's this?" said the marshal, taking up a sealed letter from the
+bureau and reading the superscription: "L'on, Davide Rossi, Carceri
+Giudiziarie, di Milano."
+
+"That's a letter I wrote to my husband and haven't yet posted," said
+Roma.
+
+"But what's this?" cried a voice from the dining-room. "Presented to the
+Honourable David Rossi by the Italian colony in Zuerich."
+
+Roma sank into a seat. It was the revolver. She had forgotten it.
+
+"That's all right," said the marshal, with the same chuckle as before.
+
+Dizzy and almost blind in her terror, Roma struggled to her feet. "The
+revolver belongs to me," she said. "Mr. Rossi left it in my keeping
+when he went away two months ago, and since that time he has never
+touched it."
+
+"Then who fired the shot that killed his Excellency, Signora?"
+
+"_I_ did," said Roma.
+
+Instinctively the man removed his hat.
+
+Within half-an-hour Roma had repeated her statement at the Regina
+C[oe]li, and the Carabineers, to prevent a public scandal, had smuggled
+the body of the Baron, under the cover of night, to his office in the
+Palazzo Braschi, on the opposite side of the piazza.
+
+
+                                X
+
+One thought was supreme in David Rossi's mind when he left the Piazza
+Navona--that the world in which he had lived was shaken to its
+foundations and his life was at an end. The unhappy man wandered about
+the streets without asking himself where he was going or what was to
+become of him.
+
+Many feelings tore his heart, but the worst of them was anger. He had
+taken the life of the Baron. The man deserved his death, and he felt no
+pity for his victim and no remorse for his crime. But that he should
+have killed the Minister, he who had twice stood between him and death,
+he who had resisted the doctrine of violence and all his life preached
+the gospel of peace, this was a degradation too shameful and abject.
+
+The woman had been the beginning and end of everything. "How I hate
+her!" he thought. He was telling himself for the hundredth time that he
+had never hated anybody so much before, when he became aware that he had
+returned to the neighbourhood of the Piazza Navona. Without knowing what
+he was doing, he had been walking round and round it.
+
+He began to picture Roma as he had seen her that night. The beautiful,
+mournful, pleading face, which he had not really seen while his eyes
+looked on it, now rose before the eye of his mind. This caused a wave of
+tenderness to pass over him against his will, and his heart, so full of
+hatred, began to melt with love.
+
+All the cruel words he had spoken at parting returned to his memory, and
+he told himself that he had been too hasty. Instead of bearing her down
+he should have listened to her explanation. Before the Baron entered
+the room she had been at the point of swearing that her love, and
+nothing but her love, had caused her to betray him.
+
+He told himself she had lied, but the thought was hell, and to escape
+from it he made for the bank of the river again. This time he crossed
+the bridge of St. Angelo, and passed up the Borgo to the piazza of St.
+Peter's. But the piazza itself awakened a crowd of memories. It was
+there in a balcony that he had first seen Roma, not plainly, but vaguely
+in a summer cloud of lace and sunshades.
+
+Then it occurred to him that it must have been on this spot that Roma
+was inspired with the plot which had ended with his betrayal. At that
+thought all the bitterness of his soul returned. He told himself she
+deserved every word he had said to her, and blamed himself for the
+humiliation he had gone through in his attempt to make excuses for what
+she had done. To the curse he had hurled at her at the last moment he
+added words of fiercer anger, and though they were spoken only in his
+brain, or to the dark night and the rolling river, they intensified his
+fury.
+
+"Oh, how I hate her!" he thought.
+
+The _piazza_, was quiet. There was a light in the Pope's windows, and a
+Swiss Guard was patrolling behind the open wicket of the bronze gate to
+the Vatican. A porter in gorgeous livery was yawning by the door of the
+Prime Minister's palace. The man was waiting for his master. He would
+_have_ to wait.
+
+The clock of St. Peter's struck one, and the silent place began to be
+peopled with many shadows. The scene of the Pope's jubilee returned to
+Rossi's mind. He saw and heard everything over again. The crowd, the
+gorgeous procession, the Pope, and last of all his own speech. A
+sardonic smile crossed his face in the darkness as he thought of what he
+had said.
+
+"Is it possible that I can ever have believed those fables?"
+
+He was tramping down the Trastevere, picturing his trial for the murder
+of the Baron, with Roma in the witness-box and himself in the dock. The
+cold horror of it all was insupportable, and he told himself that there
+was only one place in which he could escape from despair.
+
+The unhappy man had begun to think of taking his own life. He had always
+condemned suicide. He had even condemned it in Bruno. But it was the
+death grip of a man utterly borne down, and there was nothing else to
+hold on to.
+
+The day began to break, and he turned back towards the piazza of St.
+Peter's, thinking of what he intended to do and where he would do it. By
+the end of the Hospital of Santo Spirito there was a little blind alley
+bounded by a low wall. Below was the quick turn of the Tiber, and no
+swimmer was strong enough to live long in the turbulent waters at that
+point. He would do it there.
+
+The streets were silent, and in the grey dawn, that mystic hour of
+parturition when the day is being born and things are seen in places
+where they do not exist, when ships sail in the sky and mountains rise
+around lowland cities, David Rossi became aware in a moment that a woman
+was walking on the pavement in front of him. He could almost have
+believed that it was Roma, the figure was so tall and full and upright.
+But the woman's dress was poorer, and she was carrying a bundle in her
+arms. When he looked again he saw that her bundle was a child, and that
+she was weeping over it.
+
+"Taking her little one to the hospital," he thought.
+
+But on turning into the little Borgo he saw that the woman went up to
+the Rota, knelt before it, kissed the child again and again, put it in
+the cradle, pulled the bell, and then, crying bitterly, hastened away.
+
+Rossi remembered his own mother, and a great tide of simple human
+tenderness swept over him. What he had seen the woman do was what his
+mother had done thirty-five years before. He saw it all as by a mystic
+flash of light, which looked back into the past.
+
+Suddenly it occurred to him that the Rota had been long since closed,
+and therefore it was physically impossible that anybody could have put a
+child into the cradle. Then he remembered that he had not heard the
+bell, or the woman's footsteps, or the sound of her voice when she wept.
+
+He stopped and looked back. The woman was returning in the direction of
+the piazza of St. Peter's. By an impulse which he could not resist he
+followed her, overtook her, and looked into her face.
+
+Again he thought he was looking at Roma. There was the same nobility in
+the beautiful features, the same sweetness in the tremulous mouth, the
+same grandeur in the great dark eyes. But he knew perfectly who it was.
+It was his mother.
+
+It did not seem strange that his mother should be there. From her home
+in heaven she had come down to watch over her son on earth. She had
+always been watching over him. And now that he too was betrayed and
+lost, now that he too was broken-hearted and alone....
+
+He was utterly unmanned. "Mother! Mother! I am coming to you! Every door
+is closed against me, and I have nowhere to go to for refuge. I am
+coming!... I am coming!"
+
+Then the spirit paused, and pointing to the bronze gate of the Vatican,
+said, with infinite tenderness:
+
+"Go there!"
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      PART NINE--THE PEOPLE
+
+
+                                I
+
+The Pope awoke next morning in the dreary hour of cock-crow, and rang
+for his valet while he was still in bed. When the valet came he was
+greatly agitated.
+
+"What's amiss, Gaetanino?" said the Pope.
+
+"A madman, your Holiness," said the valet. "They wanted me to awaken
+your Holiness, and I wouldn't do it. A madman is down at the bronze
+gate, and insists on seeing you."
+
+At this moment the Maestro di Camera came into the room. He also was
+greatly agitated.
+
+"What is this about some poor madman at the bronze gate?" asked the
+Pope.
+
+"I have come to tell your Holiness," said the master of the household.
+"The man declares he is pursued, and demands sanctuary."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"He says he will give his name to the Holy Father only; but his
+face...."
+
+"The man's mad," said the valet.
+
+"Be quiet, Gaetanino."
+
+"His face," continued the Maestro di Camera, "is known to the Swiss
+Guard, and when they sent up word...."
+
+The Pope sat up and said, "Is it perhaps..."
+
+"It is, your Holiness."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He has forced his way in as far as the Sala Clementina, and nothing but
+physical force...."
+
+Sounds of voices raised in dispute could be heard in a distant room. The
+Pope listened and said:
+
+"Let the man come up immediately."
+
+"Here, your Holiness?"
+
+"Here."
+
+The Maestro di Camera had hardly gone from the Pope's bedroom when the
+Secretary of State entered it with hasty steps.
+
+"Your Holiness," he said, "you will not allow yourself to receive this
+person? It is sufficiently clear that he must have escaped from the
+police during the night, probably by the help of confederates, and to
+shelter him will be to come into collision with the civil authorities."
+
+"The young man demands sanctuary, your Eminence, and whatever the
+consequences we have no right to refuse it."
+
+"But sanctuary is obsolete, your Holiness."
+
+"Nothing can be obsolete that is of divine institution, your Eminence."
+
+"But, your Holiness, it can only exist by virtue of concession from the
+State, and the present relation of the Church to the State of Italy..."
+
+"Your Eminence, I will ask you to let the young man come in."
+
+"Your Holiness, I beg, I pray, reflect..."
+
+"Let the young man come in, your Em..."
+
+The Pope had not finished when the words were struck out of his mouth by
+an apparition which appeared at his bedroom door. It was that of a young
+man, whose eyes were wild, whose nostrils were quivering, and whose
+clothes hung about him in rags as if they had been torn in a recent
+struggle. He had a look of despair and suffering, yet it was the same to
+the Pope at that moment as if he were looking at his own features in a
+glass.
+
+The young man was surrounded by Swiss Guards, and the Maestro di Camera
+pushed in ahead of him. Coming face to face with the Pope propped up in
+his bed, the loud tones on which he was protesting died in his throat,
+and he stood in silence on the threshold of the room.
+
+The Pope was the first to speak.
+
+"What is it you wish to say to me, my son?"
+
+The young man seemed to recover his self-possession, but without a
+genuflexion or even a bow of the head, and with a slightly defiant
+manner, he said, "My name is David Leone. They call me Rossi, because
+that was my mother's name, and they said I had no right to my father's.
+I am a Roman, and I have been two months abroad. For ten years I have
+worked for the people, and now I am denounced and betrayed to the
+police. Three days ago I was arrested on returning to Italy, and
+to-night by the help of friends I have escaped from the Carabineers. But
+every gate is closed against me, and I cannot get out of Rome. This is
+the Vatican, and the Vatican is sanctuary. Will you take me in?"
+
+The Pope looked at the Swiss Guard, and said in a tremulous voice,
+"Gentlemen, you will take this young man to your own quarters, and see
+that no Carabineer lays hand on him without my knowledge and consent."
+
+"Your Holiness!" protested the Cardinal Secretary, but the Pope raised
+his hand and silenced him.
+
+Rossi's defiant manner left him. "Wait," he said. "Before you decide to
+take me in you must know more about me, and what I am charged with. I am
+the Deputy Rossi who is said to have instigated the late riots. The
+warrant for my arrest accuses me of treason and an attempt on the person
+of the late King. It is false, but you must look at it for yourself.
+Here it is."
+
+So saying he plunged into his pocket for the paper, and then said, "It
+is gone! I remember now--I flung it at the feet of my betrayer."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Pope, still addressing the Swiss Guard, "if the
+civil authorities attempt to arrest this young man, you may tell them
+they can only do so by giving a written promise of safety for life and
+limb."
+
+Rossi's wild eyes began to melt. "You are very good," he said, "and I
+will not deceive you. Although I am innocent of the crime they charge me
+with, I have broken the law of God and of my country, and if you have
+any fear of the consequences you must turn me out while there is still
+time."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Pope, "instead of taking this young man to your
+quarters, let him be lodged in the empty apartment below my own, which
+was formerly occupied by the Secretary of State."
+
+Rossi broke down utterly and fell to his knees. The Pope raised two
+fingers and blessed him.
+
+"Go to your room and rest, my son, and God grant you a little repose."
+
+"Father!"
+
+By an impulse he could not resist, Rossi had risen from his knees, taken
+two or three steps forward, knelt again by the side of the bed, and put
+his lips to the Pope's hand.
+
+With wet eyes that gleamed under his grey brows the Pope followed the
+young man out until, surrounded by the Swiss Guard, he had passed from
+the room. Then he rose and turned into his private chapel for his early
+Mass.
+
+
+                                II
+
+Less than half-an-hour afterwards a rumour swept through the Vatican
+like the gust of whistling wind that goes before a storm. The Pope met
+it as he was coming from Mass.
+
+"What is it, Gaetanino?" he asked.
+
+"Something about an assassination, your Holiness," said the valet, and
+the Pope stood as if thunderstruck, for he thought of Rossi and the
+King.
+
+After a while the vague report became more definite. It was not the King
+but the Prime Minister who had been assassinated.
+
+The Pope's private room began to fill with pallid faces. The Cardinal
+Secretary was there, the Maestro di Camera, and at length the little
+Majordomo. By this time a special message had reached the Vatican from
+one of its watchers outside, and they were able to discuss the
+circumstances. The Prime Minister had been found dead in his official
+palace in the Piazza Navona. He had dined at the Quirinal and remained
+there for the opening of the State Ball, therefore he could not have
+reached the Palazzo Braschi before eleven or twelve o'clock. Two shots
+had been heard about midnight, and the body had been discovered in the
+early morning.
+
+The Pope listened and said nothing.
+
+The Cardinal Secretary told another story. The Deputy Rossi, who had
+been brought to Rome by the train from Genoa, which arrived punctually
+at 11.45, had been rescued by a gang of ruffians at the station. The
+rescue had been prearranged, and the man had jumped into a coupe and
+driven off at a gallop. The coupe had gone down the Via Nazionale, and a
+few minutes before twelve o'clock it had been seen to turn into the
+Piazza Navona. It was by the accident that the Carabineers had followed
+in pursuit of the escaped prisoner that the murder had been discovered.
+
+Still the Pope said nothing. But his head was held down, and his soul
+was full of trouble.
+
+The group of prelates looked into each other's faces with suspicion and
+terror. A storm was gathering round the Vatican, and who could say what
+would happen if the Pope persisted in the course he had just taken? At
+length the Cardinal Secretary approached his Holiness, and said, with a
+deep genuflexion:
+
+"Holy Father, I fear the tenderness of your fatherly heart has betrayed
+you into sheltering a criminal. It is not merely that the man Rossi is a
+revolutionary accused of an attempt to overthrow the Government of his
+country. There cannot be a question that he is a murderer also, and if
+you keep him here you will violate the law of every civilised State and
+expose yourself to the condemnation of the world."
+
+The Pope did not reply. Other words in another voice were drumming in
+his ears with a new and terrible meaning: "I have broken the law of God
+and of my country, and if you have any fear of the consequences you must
+turn me out while there is still time."
+
+"Your Holiness will also remember," said the Cardinal Secretary, "that
+by the regulation of the civil authorities which guarantees to the Holy
+Father the rights of sovereignty, it is expressly stated that he holds
+no powers which are contrary to the laws of the State and of public
+order. Therefore to conceal and protect a criminal would be of itself to
+commit a crime, and God alone can say what the consequence might be to
+the Vatican and to the Church."
+
+"Oh, silence! silence!" cried the Pope, lifting a face full of
+suffering. "Leave me! leave me!"
+
+The Cardinal Secretary and his colleagues bowed to the Pope and backed
+out of the room. A moment afterwards the young Monsignor entered. He was
+bringing a newspaper in his hand, for as Cameriere Participante he was
+one of the Pope's readers.
+
+"Holy Father," he said in his nervous voice, "I bring you bad news."
+
+"What is it, my son?" said the Pope, with a pitiful expression.
+
+"The assassin of the Prime Minister turns out to be some one..."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Some one known to your Holiness."
+
+"Don't be afraid for the Holy Father.... Tell me, Monsignor."
+
+"It is a lady, your Holiness."
+
+"A lady?"
+
+"She has been arrested and has confessed."
+
+"Confessed?"
+
+"It is Donna Roma Volonna, your Holiness. She shot the Prime Minister
+with a revolver, and her motive was revenge."
+
+The Pope lifted his head, and looked at the young Monsignor with an
+expression which no language can describe. Relief, joy, shame, and
+remorse were mingled in one flash on his broken and bankrupt face. He
+was silent for a moment, and then he said:
+
+"Say nothing of this to the young man in the room below. If he is in
+sanctuary let him also be in peace. Whatever he is to hear of the world
+without must come through me alone. Give that as my order to everybody.
+And may God who has had mercy on His servant be good to us all!"
+
+
+                                III
+
+In penance for the joy he had felt on learning that Roma, not Rossi, had
+assassinated the Minister, the Pope became her advocate in his own mind,
+and watched for an opportunity to save her. Every day for a week
+Monsignor Mario read the newspapers to the Pope that he might be fully
+abreast of what occurred.
+
+The first morning the journals merely reported the crime. The headless
+one with the fearful hands had stalked over the city in the middle of
+night in the shape of incarnate murder, and the citizens of Rome would
+awake to hear the news with consternation, horror, and shame.
+
+The evening journals contained obituary articles and appreciations of
+the dead man's character. He was the Richelieu of Italy, the chivalrous
+and devoted servant of his country, and one of the noblest figures of
+the age.
+
+"Extras" were published giving descriptions of the city under the first
+effects of the terrible news. Rome was literally draped in mourning. It
+was a forest of flags at half-mast. All public buildings, embassies,
+cafes, and places of public amusement were closed.
+
+The Pope was puzzled, and calling a member of his Noble Guard (it was
+the Count de Raymond) he sent him out into the city to see.
+
+When the Count de Raymond returned he told another story. The people,
+while deploring the crime, were not surprised at it. Baron Bonelli had
+refused to understand the wants of the nation. He had treated the people
+as slaves and shed their blood in the streets. Where such opinions were
+not openly expressed there was a gloomy silence. Groups could be seen
+under the great lamps in the Corso reading the evening papers. Sometimes
+a man would mount a chair in front of the Cafe Aragno and read aloud
+from the latest "extra." The crowd would listen, stand a moment, and
+then disperse.
+
+Next day the journals were full of the assassin. Many things were
+incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the
+right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great
+coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin,
+she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous
+intrigue, and her last victim had been her first friend.
+
+Once more the Pope was puzzled, and he sent out his Noble Guard again.
+The Count de Raymond returned to say that in corners of the cafes people
+spoke of the Baron as a dead dog, and said that if Donna Roma had killed
+him she did a good act, and God would reward her.
+
+Parliament opened after its Easter vacation, and the Count de Raymond
+was sent in plain clothes to its first sitting. The galleries and
+lobbies were filled, and there was suppressed but intense excitement.
+Rumour said the Government had resigned, and that the King, who was in
+despair, had been unable to form another ministry. A leader of the Right
+was heard to say that Donna Roma had done more for the people in a day
+than the Opposition could have accomplished in a hundred years. "If
+these agitators on the Left have any qualities of statesmen, now's their
+time to show it," he said. But what would Parliament say about the dead
+man? The President entered and took his chair. After the minutes had
+been read there was a moment's silence. Not a word was uttered, not a
+voice was raised. "Let us pass on to the next business," said the
+President.
+
+The assizes happened to be in session, and the opening of the trial was
+reported on the following day. When the prisoner was asked whether she
+pleaded guilty or not guilty, she answered guilty. The court, however,
+requested her to reconsider her plea, assigned her an advocate, and went
+through all the formalities of an ordinary case. A principal object of
+the prosecution had been to discover accomplices, but the prisoner
+continued to protest that she had none. She neither denied nor
+extenuated the crime, and she acknowledged it to have been premeditated.
+When asked to state her motive, she said it was hatred of the methods
+adopted by the dead man to wipe out political opponents, and a
+determination to send to the bar of the Almighty one who had placed
+himself above human law.
+
+The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the next day's hearing of the trial,
+and when the Count de Raymond came back his eyes were red and swollen.
+The beautiful and melancholy face of the young prisoner sitting behind
+iron bars that were like the cage of a wild beast had made a pitiful
+impression. Her calmness, her total self-abandonment, the sublime
+feelings that even in the presence of a charge of murder expressed
+themselves in her sweet voice, had moved everybody to tears. Then the
+prosecution had been so debasing in its questions about her visits to
+the Vatican and in its efforts to implicate David Rossi by means of a
+letter addressed to the prison at Milan.
+
+"But _I_ did it," the young prisoner had said again and again with
+steadfast fervour, only deepening to alarm when evidence concerning the
+revolver seemed to endanger the absent man.
+
+There had been some conflicting medical evidence as to whether the death
+could have been due to a pistol-shot, and certain astounding disclosures
+of police corruption and prison tyranny. A judge of the Military
+Tribunal had given startling proof of the Prime Minister's complicity in
+an infamous case, ending with the suicide of the prisoner's man-servant
+in open court, and an old Garibaldian among the people, packed away
+beyond the barrier, had cried out:
+
+"He was just a black-dyed villain, and God Almighty save us from such
+another."
+
+This laying bare of the machinery of statecraft had made a great
+sensation, and even the judge on the bench, being a just man, had
+lowered his eyes before the accused at the bar. As the prisoner was
+taken back to prison past the Castle of St. Angelo and the Military
+College, the crowds had cheered her again and again, and sitting in an
+open car with a Carabineer by her side, she had looked frightened at
+finding herself a heroine where she had expected to be a malefactor.
+
+"Poor child!" said the Pope. "But who knows the hidden designs of
+Providence, whether manifest in the path of His justice or His mercy?"
+
+Next day, when the Noble Guard returned to the Vatican, he could
+scarcely speak to tell his story. The trial had ended and the prisoner
+was condemned. Reluctantly the judge had sentenced her to life-long
+imprisonment. She had preserved the same lofty demeanour to the last,
+thanked her advocate, and even the judge and jury, and said they had
+taken the only true view of her act. Her great violet eyes were
+extraordinarily dilated and dark, and her face was transparent as
+alabaster.
+
+"You have done right to condemn me," she said, "but God, who sees all,
+will weigh my conduct in the scale of His holy justice." The entire
+court was in tears.
+
+When the time came to remove the lady the crowd ran out to see the last
+of her. There was a van and a company of Carabineers, but the emotion of
+the people mastered them and they tried to rescue the prisoner. This was
+near the Castle of St. Angelo, and the gates being open, the military
+rushed her into the fortress for safety. She was there now.
+
+The Pope sent his Noble Guard to the Castle of St. Angelo to inquire
+after the prisoner, and the young soldier brought back a pitiful tale.
+Donna Roma was ill and could not be removed at present. Her nervous
+system was completely exhausted and nobody could say what might not
+occur. Nevertheless, she was very brave, very sweet and very cheerful,
+and everybody was in love with her. The Castle was occupied by a brigade
+of Military Engineers, and the Major in command was a good Catholic and
+a faithful son of the Holy Father. He had lodged his prisoner in the
+bright apartments that used to be the Pope's, although the prison for
+persons committed by the Penal Tribunals was a dark cell in the middle
+of the Maschio. She had expressed a desire to be received into the
+Church, and had asked the Major to send for Father Pifferi.
+
+"Go back and tell the Major that I will go instead," said the Pope.
+
+"Holy Father!"
+
+"Ask him if the secret passage between the Vatican and the Castle of St.
+Angelo can still be opened up."
+
+Count de Raymond returned to say that the Major would open it. In the
+present political crisis no one could tell what a day would bring forth,
+and in any case he would take the consequences.
+
+The Noble Guard held four unopened letters in his hand. They were
+addressed to the Honourable Rossi in a woman's writing, and had been
+re-addressed to the Chamber of Deputies from London, Paris, and Berlin.
+
+"An official from the post-office gave me these letters, and asked me if
+I could deliver them," said the young soldier.
+
+"My son, my son, didn't you see that it was a trap?" said the Pope. "But
+no matter! Give them to me. We must leave all to the Holy Spirit."
+
+
+                                IV
+
+"The dress of a simple priest to-day, Gaetanino," said the Pope, when
+his valet came to his bedroom on the following morning.
+
+After Mass and the usual visit of the Cardinal Secretary, the Pope
+called for the young Count de Raymond.
+
+"We'll go down to our guest first," he said, putting into the
+side-pocket of his cassock the letters which the Noble Guard had given
+him.
+
+They found Rossi sitting in a large, sparsely furnished room, by an
+almost untouched breakfast. He lifted his head when he heard steps, and
+rose as the Pope entered. His pale face was a picture of despair.
+"Something has died in him," thought the Pope, and an aching sadness,
+which had been gnawing at his heart for days, returned.
+
+"They make you comfortable in this old place, my son?"
+
+"Yes, your Holiness."
+
+"And you have everything you wish for?"
+
+"More than I deserve, your Holiness."
+
+"You have suffered, my son. But, in the providence of God, who knows
+what may happen yet? Don't lose heart. Take an old man's word for
+it--life is worth living. The Holy Father has found it so in spite of
+many sorrows."
+
+A kind of pitying smile passed over the young man's miserable face.
+"Mine is a sorrow your Holiness can know nothing about--I have lost my
+wife," he said.
+
+There was a moment of silence. Then the Pope said in a voice that shook
+slightly, "You don't mean that your wife _is_ dead, but only...."
+
+"Only," said Rossi, with a curl of the lip, "that it was she who
+betrayed me."
+
+"It's hard, my son, very hard. But who knows what influences...."
+
+"Curse them! Curse the influences, whatever they were, which caused a
+wife to betray her husband."
+
+The Pope, who was sitting with both hands on the knob of his stick,
+quivered perceptibly. "My son," he said, "you have much to justify you,
+and it is not for me to gainsay you altogether. But God rules His world
+in righteousness, and if this had not happened, who knows but what worse
+might have befallen you?"
+
+"Nothing worse _could_ have befallen me, your Holiness."
+
+There was another moment of silence, and then the Pope said, "Yes, I
+understand what it is to build one's faith on a human foundation. The
+foundation fails, and then the heart sinks, the soul totters. But bad as
+this ... this betrayal is, you do very wrong if you refuse to see that
+it saved you from the consequences--the awful consequences before God
+and man--of your intended conduct."
+
+"What conduct, your Holiness?"
+
+"The terrible conduct which formed the basis of your plans on returning
+to Rome."
+
+"You mean ... what the newspapers talked about?"
+
+The Pope bent his head.
+
+"A conspiracy to kill the King?"
+
+Again the Pope bent his head.
+
+"You believed that, your Holiness?"
+
+"Unhappily I was compelled to do so."
+
+"And she ... do you suppose she believed it?"
+
+"She believed you were engaged in conspiracies. There was nothing else
+she could believe in the light of what you had said and written."
+
+After a moment Rossi began to laugh. "And yet you say the world is ruled
+in righteousness!" he said.
+
+The Pope's face was whitening. "Do you tell me it was a mistake?" he
+asked.
+
+"Indeed I do. The only conspiracies I was engaged in were conspiracies
+to found associations of freedom which had been forbidden by the
+tyrannical new decree. But what matter? If an error like that can lead
+to results like these, what's the good of trying?" And he laughed again.
+
+The Pope, who was deeply moved, looked up into the young man's tortured
+face, without knowing that his own tears were streaming. Old memories
+were astir within him, and he was carried back into the past of his own
+life. He was remembering the days when he too had reeled beneath the
+blow of a terrible fate, and all his hopes and beliefs had been mown
+down as by a scythe. But God had been good. His gracious hand had healed
+the wound and made all things well.
+
+Taking the letters from the pocket of his cassock, the Pope laid them on
+the table.
+
+"These are for you, my son," he said, and then he turned away.
+
+Going down the narrow roofed-in passage to the Castle of St. Angelo,
+with shafts of morning sunshine slanting through its lancet windows, and
+the voices of children at play coming up from the street below, the Pope
+told himself that he must be severe with Roma. The only thing
+irremediable in all that had happened was the assassination, and though
+that, in God's hands, had teen turned to the good of the people, yet it
+raised a barrier between two unhappy souls that might never in this life
+be passed.
+
+"Poor child! Poor flower broken by the storms of fate! But I must
+reprove her. Before I give her the Blessed Sacrament she must confess
+and show a full contrition."
+
+
+                                V
+
+Roma was lying on a bed-chair in the frescoed room which had once been
+the Pope's salon. She was wearing a white dress, and it made her
+unruffled brow look like alabaster. Her large eyes, which were closed,
+had blue rings on the lids, and her mouth, once so rosy and so gay with
+laughter and light words, was colourless as marble.
+
+A lay Sister, in a black and white habit, moved softly about the room.
+It was Bruno's widow, Elena. She was the Sister Angelica who had entered
+the convent of the Sacred Heart. It was there she had buried her own
+trouble until, hearing of Roma's, she had begged to be allowed to nurse
+her.
+
+A door opened and an officer, in a mixed light and dark blue uniform,
+entered. It was the doctor of the regiment.
+
+"Sleeping, Sister?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Poor soul! Let her sleep as long as she can."
+
+But at that moment Roma opened her eyes, and held out her white hand.
+"Is it you, doctor?" she said with a smile.
+
+"And how is my patient this morning? Better, I think."
+
+"Much better. In fact, I feel no pain at all to-day."
+
+"She never does. She never feels anything if you believe her," said
+Elena.
+
+"Tired, Sister?"
+
+"Why should I be tired, I wonder?"
+
+"Sitting up all night with me. Your big burden is very troublesome,
+doctor."
+
+"Tut! You mustn't talk like that."
+
+"If all jailors were as good to their prisoners as mine are to me!"
+
+"And if all prisoners were as good to their jailors.... But I forbid
+that subject. I absolutely forbid it.... Ah, here comes your breakfast."
+
+A soldier in uniform trousers and a linen jacket and cap had come in
+with a tray on which there was a smoking basin.
+
+"You are from Sicily, aren't you, cook?"
+
+"Yes, from Sicily, Signora."
+
+Roma leaned back to Elena and said in an undertone, "That's where _he_
+has gone to, isn't it?"
+
+"Some people say so, but nobody knows where he is."
+
+"No news yet?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"Sicily must be a lovely place, cook?"
+
+"It is, Signora. It's the loveliest place in the world."
+
+"Last night I had such a beautiful dream, doctor. Somebody who had been
+away came back, and all the church bells rang for him. I thought it was
+noon, I remember, for the big gun of the Castle had just been fired. But
+when I awoke it was quite dark, yet there was really something going on,
+for I could hear people singing in the city and bands of music playing."
+
+"Ah, that ... I'm afraid that was only ... only the sequel to the Prime
+Minister's funeral. Rome is not sorry that Baron Bonelli is dead, and
+last night a procession of men and women marched along the streets with
+songs and hymns, as on a night of carnival.... But I must be going.
+Sister, see she takes her medicine as usual, and lies quiet and does not
+excite herself. Good-morning!"
+
+When the cook also had gone Roma raised herself on her elbow. "Did you
+hear what the doctor said, Elena? The death of the Baron has altered
+everything. It was really no crime to kill that man, and by rights
+nobody should suffer for it."
+
+"Donna Roma!"
+
+"Ah! no, I didn't mean that. Yet why shouldn't I? And why shouldn't you?
+Didn't he kill Bruno and our poor dear little Joseph?..."
+
+Elena was crying. "I'm not thinking of myself," she said.
+
+"I'm not thinking of myself, either," said Roma, "and I'm not going to
+give in at the eleventh hour. But David Rossi will come back. I am sure
+he will, and then..."
+
+"And then... _you_, Donna Roma?"
+
+"I?"
+
+Roma fell back on her bed-chair. "No, _I_ shall not be here, that's
+true. It's a pity, but after all it makes no difference. And if David
+Rossi has to come back... over... over my dead body, as you might say...
+who is to know... or care... except perhaps... some day... when he..."
+
+Roma struggled on, but Elena broke down utterly.
+
+The door opened again, and a sentry on guard outside announced the
+English Ambassador.
+
+"Ah! Sir Evelyn, is it you?"
+
+The English gentleman held down his head. "Forgive me if I intrude upon
+your trouble, Donna Roma."
+
+"Sit! Give his Excellency a chair, Sister.... Times have changed since I
+knew you first, Sir Evelyn. I was a thoughtless, happy woman in those
+days. But they are gone, and I do not regret them."
+
+"You are very brave, Donna Roma. Too brave. Only for that your trial
+must have gone differently."
+
+"It's all for the best, your Excellency. But was there anything you
+wished to say to me?"
+
+"Yes. The report of your condemnation has been received with deep
+emotion in my country, and as the evidence given in court showed that
+you were born in England, I feel that I am justified in intervening on
+your behalf."
+
+"But I don't want you to intervene, dear friend."
+
+"Donna Roma, it is still possible to appeal to the Court of Cassation."
+
+"I have no desire to appeal--there is nothing to appeal against."
+
+"There might be much if you could be brought to see that--that.... In
+fact so many pleas are possible, and all of them good ones. For
+instance...."
+
+The Englishman dropped both eyes and voice.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Donna Roma, you were tried and condemned on a charge of going to the
+Prime Minister's cabinet with the intention of killing him, and of
+killing him there. But if it could be proved that _he_ came to _your_
+house, and that, to shield _another person not now in the hands of
+justice_, you...."
+
+"What are you saying, your Excellency?"
+
+"Look!"
+
+The Englishman had drawn from his breast-pocket a crumpled sheet of
+white paper.
+
+"Last night I visited your deserted apartment in the Piazza Navona, and
+there, amid other signs that were clear and convincing--the marks of two
+pistol-shots--I found--this."
+
+"What is it? Give it to me," cried Roma. She almost snatched it out of
+his hand. It was the warrant which Rossi had rolled up and flung away.
+
+"How did that warrant come there, Donna Roma? Who brought it? What other
+person was with you in those rooms that night? What does he say to this
+evidence of his presence on the scene of the crime?"
+
+Roma did not speak immediately. She continued to look at the Englishman
+with her large mournful eyes until his own eyes fell, and there was no
+sound but the crinkling of the warrant in her hand. Then she said, very
+softly:
+
+"Excellency, you must please let me keep this paper. As you see, it is
+nothing in itself, and without my testimony you can make nothing of it.
+I shall never appeal against my sentence, and therefore it can be no
+good to me or to anybody. But it may prove to be a danger to somebody
+else--somebody whose name should be above reproach."
+
+She stretched out a sweet white hand and touched his own.
+
+"Haven't I done enough wrong to him already, and isn't this paper a
+proof of it? Must I go farther still, and bring him to the galleys? You
+cannot wish it. Don't you see that the police would have to deny
+everything? And I--if you forced me to speak, I should deny everything
+also."
+
+A gentle, brave dauntlessness rang in her voice, and the Englishman
+could with difficulty keep back his tears.
+
+"Excellency, Sir Evelyn, friend ... tell me I may keep the paper."
+
+The Englishman rose and turned his head away. "It is yours, Donna
+Roma--you must do as you please with it."
+
+She kissed the paper and put it in her breast.
+
+"Good-bye, dear friend."
+
+He tried to answer, "Good-bye! God bless you!" But the words would not
+come.
+
+"The Major!" said the voice of the sentry. The Commandant of the Castle
+came into the room.
+
+"Ah! Major!" cried Roma.
+
+"The doctor tells me you are better this morning."
+
+"Much better."
+
+"It is my duty--my unhappy duty--to bring you a painful message. The
+authorities, thinking your presence in Rome a cause of excitement to the
+populace, have decided to send you to Viterbo."
+
+"When is it to be, Major?"
+
+"To-morrow about mid-day."
+
+"I shall be quite-ready. But have you sent for Father Pifferi?"
+
+"I came to speak about that also. Sister, return to your room for the
+present."
+
+Elena went out.
+
+"Donna Roma, a great personage has asked to see you in the place of the
+Father General. He will come in through that doorway. It leads by a
+passage long sealed up to the apartment of the Pope in the Vatican, and
+he who comes and goes by it must be unknown and unseen by any one except
+yourself."
+
+"Major!"
+
+But the Major was going hurriedly out of the room. A moment afterwards
+the Pope entered in his black cassock as a priest.
+
+
+                                VI
+
+"Rise, my child! God knows if the Holy Father ought to give you his
+blessing. Far be it from me to add bitterness to your remorse in finding
+yourself in this place and guilty of this sin, but.... Are we alone?"
+
+"Quite alone, your Holiness."
+
+"Sit down. The Holy Father will sit beside you."
+
+He was trying to be severe with her, but it was very difficult. His hand
+strayed down to hers, and at every hard word there was a tender
+pressure.
+
+"The Baron is dead. He was a cruel, heartless tyrant, without mercy or
+humanity. His death has altered everything, and the load that lay on
+Italy has been lifted away. But none the less you did wrong, very, very
+wrong, and by the mad act of a moment.... My child! My poor child! God
+help you! God help this little lost one!"
+
+He patted the hand that lay in his as if he had been quieting a crying
+child.
+
+"My child, I cannot save you from the consequences of your sin. You must
+go where I cannot follow you. But since the Holy Father induced you to
+make that cruel denunciation--but let us be calm--let us be calm!"
+
+Roma was perfectly calm, but the Pope could barely control himself.
+
+"I see now that we made a mistake. The conspiracies of David Rossi were
+not criminal, and his aims were not unrighteous. I have been instructed
+on this subject, and now I see everything in a different light. Yes, a
+great mistake, although a natural and excusable one, and if that was the
+cause and origin of this terrible event, the Holy Father who led you so
+far...."
+
+"Your Holiness!"
+
+"Nay, you must not expect too much. It is little I can do. But now that
+governments are falling and parliaments are being dissolved, David Rossi
+must come back...."
+
+Roma made a cry of joy, and the Pope raised a warning finger.
+
+"Ah, you must never think of that, my child--you must never think of it.
+It is a pity, a great pity, but, alas! it cannot be otherwise now. If
+your husband is to come back, his name must be kept clean and
+unblemished, and you can never rejoin him whatever happens."
+
+Dizzy with a sense of the Pope's awful error, Roma turned away her face.
+
+"But if you tell me that what you did was due to the compulsion that was
+put upon you to denounce David Rossi, he must come forward, whatever the
+consequences, to defend you and plead for you. He must say to the world
+and to your judges: 'It is true that this poor lady has committed a
+crime--an awful crime, such as shuts the guilty one out of the fold of
+the human family--but she was provoked to it by a falsehood. The dead
+man deceived her. He was her betrayer, her assassin, for he tried to
+slay her soul. Therefore you will have mercy upon her as you hope for
+mercy, you will forgive her as you hope for forgiveness, and in the
+peace and penance of some holy convent she will wipe out the past of her
+unhappy life as Mary wiped out her sins in the tears with which she
+washed her Master's feet.'"
+
+He had risen in the exaltation of his emotion, and raised one hand over
+his head, but Roma, in the toils of the terrible error, had dropped to
+her knees at his feet.
+
+"Oh, I cannot die with a lie on my lips. Holy Father, let me make my
+confession."
+
+A vague foreshadowing of the coming revelation seemed to light on the
+Pope, and he sat down again without a word. Mechanically he prepared to
+receive the penitent into the Church, questioning her, instructing her,
+calling on her to repeat the profession of faith, and finally baptizing
+her conditionally.
+
+"Baptism wipes out all your sins, my daughter," he said, "but if for
+your soul's comfort you wish to make a full confession before I give you
+the Blessed Sacrament...."
+
+"I do. I have wished it ever since the end of my trial, and that was why
+I asked for Father Pifferi."
+
+"Then take care--accuse nobody else, my daughter."
+
+Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said:
+
+"Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court
+with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another."
+
+"My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet.
+
+There was a moment of painful silence, and then the Pope sat down again
+with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice:
+
+"Go on, my daughter."
+
+Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came
+to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her
+husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the
+incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out
+on her awful errand.
+
+"But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness,
+and then...."
+
+"In ... your own rooms?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Somebody else came afterwards."
+
+"Somebody else?"
+
+"A friend."
+
+"A ... friend?"
+
+She hesitated for a moment, and then put her hand into her breast and
+drew out the warrant.
+
+"This one," she said, in a voice that was scarcely audible.
+
+The Pope took the paper, and it rustled as he opened it. There was no
+other sound in the prison cell except the rasping noise of his rapid
+breathing.
+
+"David Leone! You don't mean to say--to imply...."
+
+The Pope's eyes wandered vaguely around, but they came back to the face
+at his feet, and he said:
+
+"No, no! You cannot mean that, my child. Tell me I have misunderstood
+you and come to a wrong conclusion."
+
+Roma did not reply. Her head sunk lower and lower, and seeing this, the
+Pope rose again, and standing over her he cried:
+
+"Tell me! Tell me, I command you! You wish me to believe that it was he,
+not you, who committed the crime! Out on you! out on you!"
+
+But having said this in a hoarse and angry voice, he passed his arm over
+his eyes as if to brush away the clouds that had gathered there, and
+muttered in a broken and feeble way, "O God, Thou knowest my
+foolishness. I am poor and needy. Make haste unto me, O God! Hide not
+Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble."
+
+Roma was crying at the Pope's feet, and after a moment he became aware
+of it, and stooped to lift her up.
+
+"My child! My poor, poor child! You must bear with me. I am an old man
+now. Only a weak old man. My brain is confused. Things run together in
+it. But I understand. I think I understand."
+
+She rose and kissed his trembling hand. He was still holding the
+warrant.
+
+"Where did this paper come from?"
+
+"The English Ambassador brought it this morning. He had found it in our
+rooms in the Piazza Navona."
+
+"The place where the crime was committed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Pope straightened himself up, and said in a firm voice:
+
+"My daughter, you must permit me to keep this warrant."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Yes, yes! If I said before that your husband should come out and defend
+you, I say now that he shall come out and accuse himself."
+
+"Your Holiness!"
+
+"He shall go to the courts and say: 'This lady is innocent. She
+sacrificed herself to save my life. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for
+justice. Liberate her and arrest me.'"
+
+Roma had knelt again, and was fingering the skirt of the Pope's cassock.
+
+"But, Holy Father," she said, "there is something I have not told you.
+He who killed the Minister did so in self-defence...."
+
+"In self-defence!"
+
+"His act was an accident, and if it had not happened the Minister would
+have killed him, whereas I...."
+
+"In self-defence, you say?"
+
+"I am really guilty of the crime, because I intended to commit it."
+
+"But if it was done in self-defence it was no crime, and you must not
+and shall not suffer."
+
+Roma dropped the Pope's cassock and took hold of his hand.
+
+"Holy Father," she said, "how can I wish to live when he who loved me
+loves me no longer? I know quite well it is better that I should go, and
+that when he comes it should be all over. I dreamt of it last night,
+your Holiness. I thought my husband had come back and all the church
+bells were ringing. Only a dream, and perhaps you do not believe in such
+foolishness. But it was very sweet to think that if I could not live for
+my love I could die for him, and so wipe out everything."
+
+The Pope's white head was bent very low.
+
+"And then I cannot suffer very much, your Holiness. I am ill, really
+ill, and my trouble will not last very long. And if God is using what
+has happened to bring out all things well, perhaps He intends that I
+shall give myself in the place of some one who is better and more
+necessary."
+
+The Pope could bear no more. His lip quivered and his voice shook, but
+his eyes were shining.
+
+"It is not for me to gainsay you, my daughter. I came here to see Mary
+Magdalene, and find the soul of the saints themselves. The world's
+judgment on a woman who has sinned is merciless and cruel, but if David
+Rossi is worthy of his mother and his name, he will come back to you on
+his knees."
+
+"Bless me, your Holiness."
+
+"I bless you, my daughter. May He in whose hands are the issues of life
+and death cover your transgressions with the vast wings of His gracious
+pardon and bring you joy and peace."
+
+The Pope went out with a brightening face, and Roma staggered back to
+her couch.
+
+
+                                VII
+
+David Rossi sat all day in his room in the Vatican reading the letters
+the Pope had left with him. They were the letters which Roma had
+addressed to him in London, Paris, and Berlin.
+
+He read them again and again, and save for the tick of the clock there
+was no sound in the large gaunt room but his stifled moans. The most
+violently opposed feelings possessed him, and he hardly knew whether he
+was glad or sorry that thus late, and after a cruel fate had fallen,
+these messages of peace had reached him.
+
+A spirit seemed to emanate from the thin transparent sheets of paper,
+and it penetrated his whole being. As he read the words, now gay, now
+sad, now glowing with joy, now wailing with sorrow, a world of fond and
+tender emotions swelled up and blotted out all darker passions.
+
+He could see Roma herself, and his heart throbbed as of old under the
+influence of her sweet indescribable presence. Those dear features,
+those marvellous eyes, that voice, that smile--they swam up and tortured
+him with love and with remorse.
+
+How bravely she had withstood his enemies! To think of that young,
+ardent, brilliant, happy life sacrificed to his sufferings! And then her
+poor, pathetic secret--how sweet and honest she had been about it! Only
+a pure and courageous woman could have done as she did; while he, in his
+blundering passion and mad wrath, had behaved like a foul-minded tyrant
+and a coward. What loud protestations of heroic love he had made when he
+imagined the matter affected another man! And when he had learned that
+it concerned himself, how his vaunted constancy had failed him, and he
+had cursed the poor soul whose confidence he had invited!
+
+But above all the pangs of love and remorse, Rossi was conscious of an
+overpowering despair. It took the form of revolt against God, who had
+allowed such a blind and cruel sequence of events to wreck the lives of
+two of His innocent children. When he took refuge in the Vatican he must
+have been clinging to some waif and stray of hope. It was gone now, and
+there was no use struggling. The nothingness of man against the
+pitilessness of fate made all the world a blank.
+
+Rossi had rung the bell to ask for an audience with his Holiness when
+the door opened and the Pope himself entered.
+
+"Holy Father, I wished to speak to you."
+
+"What about, my son?"
+
+"Myself. Now I see that I did wrong to ask for your protection. You
+thought I was innocent, and there was something I did not tell you. When
+I said I was guilty before God and man, you did not understand what I
+meant. Holy Father, I meant that I had committed murder."
+
+The Pope did not answer, and Rossi went on, his voice ringing with the
+baleful sentiments which possessed him.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Holy Father, I hardly thought of it myself. What
+I had done was partly in self-defence, and I did not consider it a
+crime. And then, he whose life I had taken was an evil man, with the
+devil's dues in him, and I felt no more remorse after killing him than
+if I had trodden on a poisonous adder. But now I see things differently.
+In coming here I exposed you to danger at the hands of the State. I ask
+your pardon, and I beg you to let me go."
+
+"Where will you go to?"
+
+"Anywhere--nowhere--I don't know yet."
+
+The Pope looked at the young face, cut deep with lines of despair, and
+his heart yearned over it.
+
+"Sit down, my son. Let us think. Though you did not tell me of the
+assassination, I soon knew all about it.... Partly in self-defence, you
+say?"
+
+"That is so, but I do not urge it as an excuse. And if I did, who else
+knows anything about it?"
+
+"Is there nobody who knows?"
+
+"One, perhaps. But it is my wife, and she could have no interest in
+saving me now, even if I wished to be saved.... I have read her
+letters."
+
+"If I were to tell you it is not so, my son--that your wife is still
+ready to sacrifice herself for your safety...."
+
+"But that is impossible, your Holiness. There are so many things you do
+not know."
+
+"If I were to tell you that I have just seen her, and, notwithstanding
+your want of faith in her, she still has faith in you...."
+
+The deep lines of despair began to pass from Rossi's face, and he made a
+cry of joy.
+
+"If I were to say that she loves you, and would give her life for
+you...."
+
+"Is it possible? Do you tell me that? In spite of everything? And
+she--where is she? Let me go to her. Holy Father, if you only knew! I'll
+go and beg her pardon. I cursed her! Yes, it is true that in my blind,
+mad passion I.... But let me go back to her on my knees. The rest of my
+life spent at her feet will not be enough to wipe out my fault."
+
+"Stay, my son. You shall see her presently."
+
+"Can it be possible that I shall see her? I thought I should never see
+her again; but I counted without God. Ah! God is good after all. And
+you, Holy Father, you are good too. I will beg her forgiveness, and she
+will forgive me. Then we'll fly away somewhere--we'll escape to Africa,
+India, anywhere. We'll snatch a few years of happiness, and what more
+has anybody a right to expect in this miserable world?"
+
+Exalted in the light of his imaginary future, he seemed to forget
+everything else--his crime, his work, his people.
+
+"Is she at home still?"
+
+"She is only a few paces from this place, my son."
+
+"Only a few paces! Oh, let me not lose a moment more. Where is she?"
+
+"In the Castle of St. Angelo," said the Pope.
+
+A dark cloud crossed Rossi's beaming face and his mouth opened as if to
+emit a startling cry.
+
+"In ... in prison?"
+
+The Pope bowed.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"The assassination of the Minister."
+
+"Roma?... But what a fool I was not to think of it as a thing that might
+happen! I left her with the dead man. Who was to believe her when she
+denied that she had killed him?"
+
+"She did not deny it. She avowed it."
+
+"Avowed it? She said that she had...."
+
+The Pope bowed again.
+
+"Then ... then it was ... was it to shield me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Rossi's eyes grew moist. He was like another man.
+
+"But the court ... surely no court will believe her."
+
+"She has been tried and sentenced, my son."
+
+"Sentenced? Do you say sentenced? For a crime she did not commit? And to
+shield me? Holy Father, would you believe that the last words I spoke to
+that woman ... but she is an angel. The authorities must be mad, though.
+Did nobody think of me? Didn't it occur to any one that I had been there
+that night?"
+
+"There was only one piece of evidence connecting you with the scene of
+the crime, my son. It was this."
+
+The Pope drew from his breast the warrant he had taken from Roma.
+
+"_She_ had it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Rossi's emotions whirled within him in a kind of hurricane. The despair
+which had clamoured so loud looked mean and contemptible in the presence
+of the mighty passion which had put it to shame. But after a while his
+swimming eyes began to shine, and he said:
+
+"Holy Father, this paper belongs to me and you must permit me to keep
+it."
+
+"What do you intend to do, my son?"
+
+"There is only one thing to do now."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"_To save her._"
+
+There was no need to ask how. The Pope understood, and his breast
+throbbed and swelled. But now that he had accomplished what he came for,
+now that he had awakened the sleeping soul and given it hope and faith
+and courage to face justice, and even death if need be, the Pope became
+suddenly conscious of a feeling in his own heart which he struggled in
+vain to suppress.
+
+"Far be it from me to excuse a crime, my son, but the merciful God who
+employs our poor passions to His own great purposes has used your acts
+to great ends. The world is trembling on the verge of unknown events and
+nobody knows what a day may bring forth. Let us wait a while."
+
+Rossi shook his head.
+
+"It is true that a crime will be the same to-morrow as to-day, but the
+dead man was a tyrant, a ferocious tyrant, and if he forced you in
+self-defence..."
+
+Again Rossi shook his head, but still the Pope struggled on.
+
+"You have your own life to think about, my son, and who knows but in
+God's good service..."
+
+"Let me go."
+
+"You intend to give yourself up?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Pope could say no more. He rose to his feet. His saintly face was
+full of a dumb yearning love and pride, which his tongue might never
+tell. He thought of his years of dark searching, ending at length in
+this meeting and farewell, and an impulse came to him to clasp the young
+man to his swelling and throbbing breast. But after a moment, with
+something of his old courageous calm of voice, he said:
+
+"I am not surprised at your decision, my son. It is worthy of your blood
+and name. And now that we are parting for the last time, I could wish to
+tell you something."
+
+David Rossi did not speak.
+
+"I knew your mother, my son."
+
+"My mother?"
+
+The Pope bowed and smiled.
+
+"She was a great soul, too, and she suffered terribly. Such are the ways
+of God."
+
+Still Rossi did not speak. He was looking steadfastly into the Pope's
+quivering face and making an effort to control himself.
+
+The Pope's voice shook and his lip trembled.
+
+"Naturally, you think ill of your father, knowing how much your mother
+suffered. Isn't that so?"
+
+Rossi put one hand to his forehead as if to steady his reeling brain,
+and said, "Who am I to think ill of any one?"
+
+The Pope smiled again, a timid smile.
+
+"David...."
+
+Rossi caught his breath.
+
+"If, in the providence of God, you were to meet your father somewhere,
+and he held out his hand to you, would you ... wherever you met and
+whatever he might be ... would you _shake hands with him_?"
+
+"Yes," said Rossi; "if I were a King on his throne, and he were the
+lowest convict at the galleys."
+
+The Pope fetched a long breath, took a step forward, and silently held
+out his hand. At the next moment the young man and the old Pope were
+hand to hand and eye to eye.
+
+They tried to speak and could not.
+
+"Farewell!" said the Pope in a choking voice, and turning away he
+tottered out of the room.
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+The doctor of the Engineers, not entirely satisfied with his diagnosis
+of Roma's illness, prescribed a remedy of unfailing virtue--hope. It was
+a happy treatment. The past of her life seemed to have disappeared from
+her consciousness and she lived entirely in the future. It was always
+shining in her eyes like a beautiful sunrise.
+
+The sunrise Roma saw was beyond the veil of this life, but the good
+souls about her knew nothing of that. They brought every piece of
+worldly intelligence that was likely to be good news to her. By this
+time they imagined they knew where her heart lay, and such happiness was
+in her white face when as soldiers of the King they whispered treason
+that they thought themselves rewarded.
+
+They told her of an attempted attack on the Vatican, with all its
+results and consequences--army disorganised, the Borgo Barracks shut up,
+soldiers wearing cockades and marching arm in arm, the Government
+helpless and the Quirinal in despair.
+
+"I'm sorry for the young King," she said, "but still...."
+
+It was the higher power working with blind instruments. Rossi would come
+back. His hopes, so nearly laid waste, would at length be realised. And
+if, as she had told Elena, he had to return over her own dead body, so
+to speak, there would be justice even in that. It would be pitiful, but
+it would be glorious also. There were mysteries in life and death, and
+this was one of them.
+
+She was as gentle and humble as ever, but every hour she grew more
+restless. This conveyed to her guards the idea that she was expecting
+something. Notwithstanding her plea of guilty, they thought perhaps she
+was looking for her liberty out of the prevailing turmoil.
+
+"I will be very good and do everything you wish, doctor. But don't
+forget to ask the Prefect to let me stay in Rome over to-morrow. And,
+Sister, do please remember to waken me early in the morning, because I'm
+certain that something is going to happen. I've dreamt of it three
+times, you know."
+
+"A pity!" thought the doctor. "Governments may fall and even dynasties
+may disappear, but judicial authorities remain the same as ever, and the
+judgment of the court must be carried out."
+
+Nevertheless he would speak to the Prefect. He would say that in the
+prisoner's present condition the journey to Viterbo might have serious
+consequences. As he was setting out on this errand early the following
+morning, he met Elena in the anteroom, and heard that Roma was paying
+the most minute attention to the making of her toilet.
+
+"Strange! You would think she was expecting some one," said Elena.
+
+"She is, too," said the doctor. "And he is a visitor who will not keep
+her long."
+
+The soldier who brought Roma her breakfast that morning brought
+something else that she found infinitely more appetising. Rossi had
+returned to Rome! One of the men below had seen him in the street last
+night. He was going in the direction of the _Piazza_ Navona, and nobody
+was attempting to arrest him.
+
+Roma's eyes flashed like stars, and she sent down a message to the
+Major, asking to be allowed to see the soldier who had seen Rossi.
+
+He was a big ungainly fellow, but in Roma's eyes who shall say how
+beautiful? She asked him a hundred questions. His dense head was utterly
+bewildered.
+
+The doctor came back with a smiling face. The Prefect had agreed to
+postpone indefinitely the transfer of their prisoner to the
+penitentiary. The good man thought she would be very grateful.
+
+"Ah, indefinitely? I only wished to remain over to-day! After that I
+shall be quite ready."
+
+But the doctor brought another piece of news which threw her into the
+wildest excitement. Both Senate and Chamber of Deputies had been
+convoked late last night for an early hour this morning. Rumour said
+they were to receive an urgent message from the King. There was the
+greatest commotion in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament, and
+the public tribunes were densely crowded. The doctor himself had
+obtained a card for the Chamber, but he was unable to get beyond the
+corridors. Nevertheless, the doors being open owing to the heat and
+crush, he had heard something. Vaguely, for five minutes, he had heard
+one of their great speakers.
+
+"Was it ... was it, perhaps...."
+
+"It was."
+
+Again the big eyes flashed like stars.
+
+"You heard him speak?"
+
+"I heard his voice at all events."
+
+"It's a wonderful voice, isn't it? And you really heard him? Can it be
+possible?"
+
+Elena, the sad figure in the background of these bright pathetic scenes,
+thought Roma was hoping for a reconciliation with Rossi. She hinted as
+much, and then the fierce joy in the white face faded away.
+
+"Ah, no! I'm not thinking of that, Elena."
+
+Her love was too large for personal thoughts. It had risen higher than
+any selfish expectations.
+
+They helped her on to the loggia. The day was warm, and the fresh air
+would do her good. She looked out over the city with a loving gaze,
+first towards the Piazza Navona, then towards the tower of Monte
+Citorio, and last of all towards Trinita de' Monti and the House of the
+Four Winds. But she was seeing things as they would be when she was
+gone, not to Viterbo, but on a longer journey.
+
+"Elena?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Do you think he will ever learn the truth?"
+
+"About the denunciation?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should think he is certain to do so."
+
+"Why I did it, and what tempted me, and ... and everything?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, everything."
+
+"Do you think he will think kindly of me then, and forgive me and be
+merciful?"
+
+"I am sure he will."
+
+A mysterious glow came into the pallid face.
+
+"Even if he never learns the truth here, he will learn it hereafter,
+won't he? Don't you believe in that, Elena--that the dead know all?"
+
+"If I didn't, how could I bear to think of Bruno?"
+
+"True. How selfish I am! I hadn't thought of that. We are in the same
+case in some things, Elena."
+
+The future was shining in the brilliant eyes with the radiance of an
+unseen sunrise.
+
+"Dear Elena?"
+
+"Ye-s."
+
+"Do you think it will seem long to wait until he comes?"
+
+"Don't talk like that, Donna Roma."
+
+"Why not? It's only a little sooner or later, you know. Will it?"
+
+Elena had turned aside, and Roma answered herself.
+
+"_I_ don't. I think it will pass like a dream--like going to bed at
+night and awaking in the morning. And then both together--there."
+
+She took a long deep breath of unutterable joy.
+
+"Oh," she said, "that I may sleep until he comes--knowing all, forgiving
+everything, loving me the same as before, and every cruel thought dead
+and gone and forgotten."
+
+She asked for pen and paper and wrote a letter to Rossi:
+
+    "DEAREST,--I hear the good news, just as I am on the point of
+    leaving Rome, that you have returned to it, and I write to ask you
+    not to try to alter what has happened. Believe me, it is better
+    so. The world wants you, dear, and it doesn't want me any longer.
+    Therefore return to life, be brave and strong and great, and think
+    of me no more until we meet again.
+
+    "You will know by what I have done that what you thought was quite
+    unfounded. Whatever people say of me, you must always believe that
+    I loved you from the first, and that I have never loved anybody
+    but you.
+
+    "You were angry with me when we parted, but more than ever I love
+    you now. Don't think our love has been wasted. ''Tis better to
+    have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' How beautiful!
+                                                                  ROMA."
+
+Having written her letter, and put her lips to the enclosure, she
+addressed the envelope in a bold hand and with a brave flourish: "All'
+Illustrissimo Signor Davide Rossi, Camera dei Deputati."
+
+"You'll post this immediately I am gone, Sister," she said.
+
+Elena pretended to put the letter away for that purpose, but she really
+smuggled it down to the Major, who despatched it forthwith to the
+Chamber of Deputies.
+
+"And now I'll go to sleep," said Roma.
+
+She slept until mid-day with the sun's reflection from the white plaster
+of the groined ceiling of the loggia on her still whiter face. Then the
+twelve o'clock gun shook the walls of the Castle, and she awoke while
+the church bells were ringing.
+
+"I thought it was my dream coming true, Sister," she said.
+
+The doctor came up at that moment in a high state of excitement.
+
+"Great news, Donna Roma. The King...."
+
+"I know!"
+
+"Failing to form a Government to follow that of the Baron, appealed to
+Parliament to nominate a successor...."
+
+"So Parliament...."
+
+"Parliament has nominated the Honourable Rossi, the King has called for
+him, the warrant for his arrest has been cancelled, and all persons
+imprisoned for the recent insurrection have been set at liberty."
+
+Roma's trembling and exultant eyelids told a touching story.
+
+"Is there anything to see?"
+
+"Only the flag on the Capitol."
+
+"Let me look at it."
+
+He helped her to rise. "Look! There it is on the clock tower."
+
+"I see it.... That will do. You can put me down now, doctor."
+
+An ineffable joy shone in her face.
+
+"It _was_ my dream after all, Elena."
+
+After a moment she said, "Doctor, tell the Prefect I am quite ready to
+go to Viterbo. In fact I wish to go. I should like to go immediately."
+
+"I'll tell him," said the doctor, and he went out to hide his emotion.
+
+The Major came to the open arch of the loggia. He stood there for a
+moment, and there was somebody behind him. Then the Major disappeared,
+but the other remained. It was David Rossi. He was standing like a man
+transfixed, looking in speechless dismay at Roma's pallid face with the
+light of heaven on it.
+
+Roma did not see Rossi, and Elena, who did, was too frightened to speak.
+Lying back in her bed-chair with a great happiness in her eyes, she
+said:
+
+"Sister, if he should come here when I am gone ... no, I don't mean
+that ... but if you should see him and he should ask about me, you will
+say that I went away quite cheerfully. Tell him I was always thinking
+about him. No, don't say that either. But he must never think I
+regretted what I did, or that I died broken-hearted. Say farewell for
+me, Elena. _Addio Carissima!_ That's his word, you know. _Addio
+Carissimo!_"
+
+Rossi, blinded with his tears, took a step into the loggia, and in a low
+voice, very soft and tremulous, as if trying not to startle her, he
+cried:
+
+"Roma!"
+
+She raised herself, turned, saw him, and rose to her feet. Without a
+word he opened his arms to her, and with a little frightened cry she
+fell into them and was folded to his breast.
+
+[Illustration: WITH A FRIGHTENED CRY, SHE WAS FOLDED TO HIS BREAST.]
+
+
+                                IX
+
+It was ten days later. Rossi had surrendered to Parliament, but
+Parliament had declined to order his arrest. Then he had called for the
+liberation of Roma, but Roma had neither been liberated nor removed. "It
+will not be necessary," was the report of the doctor at the Castle to
+the officers of the Prefetura. The great liberator and remover was on
+his way.
+
+At Rossi's request Dr. Fedi had been called in, and he had diagnosed the
+case exactly. Roma was suffering from an internal disease, which was
+probably hereditary, but certainly incurable. Strain and anxiety had
+developed it earlier in life than usual, but in any case it must have
+come.
+
+At first Rossi rebelled with all his soul and strength. To go through
+this long and fierce fight with life, and to come out victorious, and
+then, when all seemed to promise peace and a kind of tempered happiness,
+to be met by Death--the unconquerable, the inevitable--it was terrible,
+it was awful!
+
+He called in specialists; talked of a change of air; even brought
+himself, when he was far enough away from Roma, to the length of
+suggesting an operation. The doctors shook their heads. At last he bowed
+his own head. His bride-wife must leave him. He must live on without
+her.
+
+Meantime Roma was cheerful, and at moments even gay. Her gaiety was
+heart-breaking. Blinding bouts of headache were her besetting trouble,
+but only by the moist red eyes did any one know anything about that.
+When people asked her how she felt, she told them whatever she thought
+they wished to hear. It brought a look of relief to their faces, and
+that made her very happy.
+
+With Rossi, during these ten days, she had carried on the fiction that
+she was getting better. This was to break the news to him, and he on his
+part, to break the news to her, had pretended to believe the story. They
+made Elena help the little artifice, and even engaged the doctors in
+their mutual deception.
+
+"And how is my darling to-day?"
+
+"Splendid! There's really nothing to do with me. It's true I have
+suffered. That's why I look so pale. But I'm better now. Elena will tell
+you how well I slept last night. Didn't I sleep well, Elena? Elena....
+Poor Elena is going a little deaf and doesn't always speak when she is
+spoken to. But I'm all right, David. In fact, I'll feel no pain at all
+before long, and then I shall be well."
+
+"Yes, dear, you'll feel no pain at all before long, and then you'll be
+well."
+
+It was pitiful. All their words seemed to be laden with double meanings.
+They could find none that were not.
+
+But the time had come when Roma resolved she must speak plainly. Rossi
+had lifted her into the loggia. He did so every day, carrying her, not
+on his arm as a woman carries a child, but against his breast, as a man
+carries his wife when he loves her. She always put her arms around his
+neck, pretending it was necessary for her safety, and when he had laid
+her gently in the bed-chair she pulled down his head and kissed him. The
+two little journeys were the delight of the day to Roma, but to Rossi
+they were a deepening trouble.
+
+It was the sweetest day of the sweet Roman spring, and Roma wore a light
+tea-gown with a coil of white silk about her head such as is seen in the
+portraits of Beatrice Cenci. The golden complexion was quite gone, there
+was a hard line along the cheek, a deep shadow under the chin, the
+nostrils were pinched and the mouth was drawn. But the large eyes,
+though heavy with pain, were full of joy. They did not weep any more,
+for all their tears were shed, and the light of another world was
+reflected in their depths.
+
+Rossi sat by her side, and she took one of his hands and held it on her
+lap between both her own. Sometimes she looked at him and then she
+smiled. She, who had lost him for a little while, had got him back at
+last. It was only just in time. A little break, and they would continue
+this--there. Ah, she was very happy!
+
+Rossi's free hand was supporting his head, and he was trying to look
+another way. Do what he would to conquer it, the spirit of rebellion was
+rising in his heart again. "O God, is this just? Is this right?"
+
+They were alone on the loggia. Above was the cloudless blue sky, below
+was the city, hardly seen or heard.
+
+"David," she began, in a faint voice.
+
+"Dearest?"
+
+"I have been so happy in having you with me again that there is
+something I have forgotten to tell you."
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"Promise me you will not be shocked or startled."
+
+"What is it, dearest?" he repeated, although he knew too well.
+
+"It is nothing.... Yes, hold my hands tight. So!... Really it's nothing.
+And yet it is everything. It is ... it is death."
+
+"Roma!"
+
+Her eyelids trembled, but she tried to laugh.
+
+"Yes, dear. True! Not immediately. Oh, no! not immediately. But signed
+and sealed, you know, and not to be put aside that anybody may be happy
+much longer."
+
+She was laughing almost gaily. But all the same she was watching him
+closely, and now that her word was spoken she suddenly became conscious
+of a secret desire which she had not suspected. She wanted him to
+contradict her, to tell her she was quite wrong, to convince and defeat
+her.
+
+"Poor little me! Pity, isn't it? It would have been so sweet to go on a
+little longer--especially after this reconciliation. And when one has
+kept one's heart under bolt and bar so long...."
+
+Her sad gaiety was breaking down. "But it's better so, isn't it?"
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Ah, yes, it's better so when you come to think of it."
+
+"It's terrible!" said Rossi.
+
+"Don't say that. It's a thing of every day. Here, there, everywhere. God
+wouldn't allow it to go on if it were terrible."
+
+"It's bitterly cruel for all that."
+
+"Not so cruel as life. Not nearly. For instance, if I lived you would
+have to put me away, and that would be harder to bear than death--far
+harder."
+
+"My darling! What are you saying?"
+
+"It's true, dear. You know it's true. God can forgive a woman even if
+she's a sinner, but the world can't if she's only a victim of sin. It's
+part of the cruelty of things, but there's no use repining."
+
+"Roma," said Rossi, "I take God to witness that if that were all that
+stood between us nothing and nobody should separate you and me. I should
+tell the world that you had every virtue and every heroism, and without
+you I could do nothing."
+
+Her eyes filled with a fresh joy.
+
+"You set me too high still, dear. Yet you know that I was far too small
+and weak for your great work. That was why I failed you at the end. It
+wasn't my fault that I betrayed you..."
+
+"Don't speak of my betrayal. I thank God for it, and see now that it was
+the best that could have happened."
+
+She closed her eyes. "Is it your own voice, dearest? Really yours? Hush!
+I shall wake and the dream will pass."
+
+A little jet from his heart of flame burst out in spite of his warning
+brain, and he was carried away for the moment.
+
+"My poor darling, you must get well for my sake. You must think of
+nothing but getting well. Then we'll go away somewhere--to Switzerland,
+as you said in your letter. Or perhaps to England, where you were born,
+and where your father lived his years of exile. Dear old England!
+Motherland of liberty! I'll show you all the places."
+
+She was dizzy with the beautiful vision.
+
+"Oh, if I could only go on like this for ever! But I mustn't listen to
+you, dearest. It's no use, you know. Now, is it?"
+
+The spirit which had exalted him for a moment took flight, and his heart
+rose into his throat.
+
+"Now, is it?" she repeated.
+
+He did not answer, and she dropped back with a sigh. Ah, it was cruel
+fencing. Every word was a sword, and it was cutting a hundred ways.
+
+At that moment a band of music passed down the street. Roma, who loved
+bands of music, asked Rossi to lift her up that she might look at it. A
+little drummer boy was marching at the head of a procession, gaily
+rolling his rataplan.
+
+"He reminds me of little Joseph," she said, and she laughed heartily.
+Strange mystery of life that robs death of all its terrors!
+
+He put his arm about her to support her as they stood by the parapet,
+and this brought a new tremor of affection, as well as a little of the
+old physical thrill and a world of fond and tender memories. She looked
+into his eyes, he looked into hers; they both looked across to Trinita
+de' Monti, and in the eye-asking between them she said plainly, "Do you
+remember--over there?"
+
+Roma was assisted back to the bed-chair, and then, conversation being
+impossible, Rossi began to read. Every day he had read something. Roma
+had made the selections. They were always about the great
+lovers--Francesca and Paolo, Dante and Beatrice, even Alfred de Musset
+and poor John Keats, with the skull cap which burnt his brain. To-day it
+was Roma's favourite poem:
+
+    "Teach me, only teach, Love!
+      As I ought
+    I will speak thy speech, Love,
+      Think thy thought...."
+
+His right hand held the book. His left was between Roma's hands, lying
+blue-veined in her lap. She was looking out on the sunlit city as if
+taking a last farewell of it. He stopped to stroke her glossy black hair
+and she reached up to his lips and kissed them. Then she closed her eyes
+to listen. His voice rose and swelled with the ocean of his love, and he
+felt as if he were pouring his life into her frail body.
+
+    "Meet, if thou require it,
+      Both demands,
+    Laying flesh and spirit
+      In thy hands."
+
+Her blanched lips moved. She took a deep breath and made a faint cry. He
+rose softly, and bent over her with a trembling heart. Her breathing
+seemed to have ceased. Had sleep overtaken her? Or had the tender flame
+expired?
+
+"Roma!"
+
+She opened her eyes and smiled.
+
+"Not yet, dear--soon," she said.
+
+
+                                  THE END
+
+
+The illustrations in this book are from scenes of the play as produced
+by Messrs. LIEBLER & COMPANY, and photographed by Mr. BYRON.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+                     New, Clever, Entertaining.
+
+
+GRET: The Story of a Pagan. By Beatrice Mantle. Illustrated by C. M.
+Relyea.
+
+The wild free life of an Oregon lumber camp furnishes the setting for
+this strong original story. Gret is the daughter of the camp and is
+utterly content with the wild life--until love comes. A fine book,
+unmarred by convention.
+
+
+OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle.
+
+A vivid yet delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town.
+Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of
+all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine,
+healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the
+books that abide.
+
+
+THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY. By Josephine Daskam. Illustrated by F. Y. Cory.
+
+The dawning intelligence of the baby was grappled with by its great
+aunt, an elderly maiden, whose book knowledge of babies was something at
+which even the infant himself winked. A delicious bit of humor.
+
+
+REBECCA MARY. By Annie Hamilton Donnell. Illustrated by Elizabeth
+Shippen Green.
+
+The heart tragedies of this little girl with no one near to share them,
+are told with a delicate art, a keen appreciation of the needs of the
+childish heart and a humorous knowledge of the workings of the childish
+mind.
+
+
+THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
+Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.
+
+An Irish story of real power, perfect in development and showing a true
+conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the
+tragic as well as the tender phases of life.
+
+
+THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+Illustrated by Harrison Fisher.
+
+An island in the South Sea is the setting for this entertaining tale,
+and an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most
+complicated plot. One of Mr. McCutcheon's best books.
+
+
+TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illustrated by A. B.
+Frost, J. M. Conde and Frank Verbeck.
+
+Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another
+little boy to that non-locatable land called "Brer Rabbit's Laughing
+Place," and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play
+their parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience.
+
+
+THE CLIMBER. By E. F. Benson. With frontispiece.
+
+An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman's soul--a woman who believed
+that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds instead
+the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away.
+
+
+LYNCH'S DAUGHTER. By Leonard Merrick. Illustrated by Geo. Brehm.
+
+A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful
+and simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings
+of her father, "Old Man Lynch" of Wall St. True to life, clever in
+treatment.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. A Picture of New England Home Life. With
+illustrations by C. W. Reed, and Scenes Reproduced from the Play.
+
+One of the best New England stories ever written. It is full of homely
+human interest * * * there is a wealth of New England village character,
+scenes and incidents * * * forcibly, vividly and truthfully drawn. Few
+books have enjoyed a greater sale and popularity. Dramatized, it made
+the greatest rural play of recent times.
+
+
+THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF QUINCY ADAMS SAWYER. By Charles Felton Pidgin.
+
+Illustrated by Henry Roth.
+
+All who love honest sentiment, quaint and sunny humor, and homespun
+philosophy will find these "Further Adventures" a book after their own
+heart.
+
+
+HALF A CHANCE. By Frederic S. Isham. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.
+
+The thrill of excitement will keep the reader in a state of suspense,
+and he will become personally concerned from the start, as to the
+central character, a very real man who suffers, dares--and achieves!
+
+
+VIRGINIA OF THE AIR LANES. By Herbert Quick. Illustrated by William R.
+Leigh.
+
+The author has seized the romantic moment for the airship novel, and
+created the pretty story of "a lover and his lass" contending with an
+elderly relative for the monopoly of the skies. An exciting tale of
+adventure in midair.
+
+
+THE GAME AND THE CANDLE. By Eleanor M. Ingram. Illustrated by P. D.
+Johnson.
+
+The hero is a young American, who, to save his family from poverty,
+deliberately commits a felony. Then follow his capture and imprisonment,
+and his rescue by a Russian Grand Duke. A stirring story, rich in
+sentiment.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                          GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                          DRAMATIZED NOVELS
+
+              A Few that are Making Theatrical History
+
+
+MARY JANE'S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes from the play.
+
+Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find
+himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he
+wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most
+humorous bits of recent fiction.
+
+
+CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford.
+
+"Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man, is brought in
+touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a
+merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more
+than ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the
+flock.
+
+
+A WOMAN'S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with scenes from the
+play.
+
+A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her
+husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently
+tragic situation into one of delicious comedy.
+
+
+THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks.
+
+With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little
+village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to
+train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets
+love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she
+works, how she studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.
+
+
+A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated by Edmund
+Magrath and W. W. Fawcett.
+
+A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the
+influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on,
+how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make
+a story of unflinching realism.
+
+
+THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin Milton Royle.
+Illustrated with scenes from the play.
+
+A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine
+courageous hero and a beautiful English heroine.
+
+
+THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated with scenes from the
+play.
+
+A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a
+venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities.
+
+
+THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated with scenes from
+the play.
+
+A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in
+dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring,
+mysterious as the hero.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+BRUVVER JIM'S BABY. By Philip Verrill Mighels.
+
+An uproariously funny story of a tiny mining settlement in the West,
+which is shaken to the very roots by the sudden possession of a baby,
+found on the plains by one of its residents. The town is as disreputable
+a spot as the gold fever was ever responsible for, and the coming of
+that baby causes the upheaval of every rooted tradition of the place.
+Its christening, the problems of its toys and its illness supersede in
+the minds of the miners all thought of earthy treasure.
+
+
+THE FURNACE OF GOLD. By Philip Verrill Mighels, author of "Bruvver Jim's
+Baby." Illustrations by J. N. Marchand.
+
+An accurate and informing portrayal of scenes, types, and conditions of
+the mining districts in modern Nevada.
+
+The book is an out-door story, clean, exciting, exemplifying nobility
+and courage of character, and bravery, and heroism in the sort of men
+and women we all admire and wish to know.
+
+
+THE MESSAGE. By Louis Tracy. Illustrations by Joseph C. Chase.
+
+A breezy tale of how a bit of old parchment, concealed in a figurehead
+from a sunken vessel, comes into the possession of a pretty girl and an
+army man during regatta week in the Isle of Wight. This is the message
+and it enfolds a mystery, the development of which the reader will
+follow with breathless interest.
+
+
+THE SCARLET EMPIRE. By David M. Parry. Illustrations by Hermann C. Wall.
+
+A young socialist, weary of life, plunges into the sea and awakes in the
+lost island of Atlantis, known as the Scarlet Empire, where a social
+democracy is in full operation, granting every man a living but limiting
+food, conversation, education and marriage.
+
+The hero passes through an enthralling love affair and other adventures
+but finally returns to his own New York world.
+
+
+THE THIRD DEGREE. By Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow. Illustrations by
+Clarence Rowe.
+
+A novel which exposes the abuses in this country of the police system.
+
+The son of an aristocratic New York family marries a woman socially
+beneath him, but of strong, womanly qualities that, later on, save the
+man from the tragic consequences of a dissipated life.
+
+The wife believes in his innocence and her wit and good sense help her
+to win against the tremendous odds imposed by law.
+
+
+THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT. By Brand Whitlock.
+
+A realistic western story of love and politics and a searching study of
+their influence on character. The author shows with extraordinary
+vitality of treatment the tricks, the heat, the passion, the tumult of
+the political arena, the triumph and strength of love.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. Illustrated by John Rae.
+
+This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a German
+musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has well
+portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied experiences in
+endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained to an
+appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in the
+rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, now a
+beautiful young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit of
+fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The play in
+which David Warfield scored his highest success.
+
+
+DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE. By Margaret Deland.
+
+Illustrated by Lucius Hitchcock.
+
+Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales that this
+volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lovable doctor is
+more ripened in this later book, and the simple comedies and tragedies
+of the old village are told with dramatic charm.
+
+
+OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated by Howard Pyle.
+
+Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint people in a
+sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable "preacher," is
+the connecting link between these dramatic stories from life.
+
+
+HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E. P. Roe.
+
+With frontispiece.
+
+The hero is a farmer--a man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft
+of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of
+varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source,
+comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his
+respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance,
+revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties and
+survives the censure of friends as well as the bitterness of enemies.
+
+
+THE YOKE. By Elizabeth Miller.
+
+Against the historical background of the days when the children of
+Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has sketched
+a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great as any since
+"Ben Hur."
+
+
+SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by Andre Castaigne.
+
+The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome and
+Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod Agrippa and the
+Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the mighty figures that move
+through the pages. Wonderful descriptions, and a love story of the
+purest and noblest type mark this most remarkable religious romance.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                              A FEW OF
+                         GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
+                    GREAT BOOKS AT LITTLE PRICES
+
+
+HAPPY HAWKINS. By Robert Alexander Wason. Illustrated by Howard Giles.
+
+A ranch and cowboy novel. Happy Hawkins tells his own story with such a
+fine capacity for knowing how to do it and with so much humor that the
+reader's interest is held in surprise, then admiration and at last in
+positive affection.
+
+COMRADES. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Illustrated by C. D. Williams.
+
+The locale of this story is in California, where a few socialists
+establish a little community.
+
+The author leads the little band along the path of disillusionment, and
+gives some brilliant flashes of light on one side of an important
+question.
+
+
+TONO-BUNGAY. By Herbert George Wells.
+
+The hero of this novel is a young man who, through hard work, earns a
+scholarship and goes to London.
+
+Written with a frankness verging on Rousseau's, Mr. Wells still uses
+rare discrimination and the border line of propriety is never crossed.
+An entertaining book with both a story and a moral, and without a dull
+page--Mr. Wells's most notable achievement.
+
+
+A HUSBAND BY PROXY. By Jack Steele.
+
+A young criminologist, but recently arrived in New York city, is drawn
+into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his
+interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and
+again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling detective story.
+
+
+LIKE ANOTHER HELEN. By George Horton. Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.
+
+Mr. Horton's powerful romance stands in a new field and brings an almost
+unknown world in reality before the reader--the world of conflict
+between Greek and Turk on the Island of Crete. The "Helen" of the story
+is a Greek, beautiful, desolate, defiant--pure as snow.
+
+There is a certain new force about the story, a kind of
+master-craftsmanship and mental dominance that holds the reader.
+
+
+THE MASTER OF APPLEBY. By Francis Lynde.
+
+Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup.
+
+A novel tale concerning itself in part with the great struggle in the
+two Carolinas, but chiefly with the adventures therein of two gentlemen
+who loved one and the same lady.
+
+A strong, masculine and persuasive story.
+
+
+A MODERN MADONNA. By Caroline Abbot Stanley.
+
+A story of American life, founded on facts as they existed some years
+ago in the District of Columbia. The theme is the maternal love and
+splendid courage of a woman.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                            The Novels Of
+                        GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
+
+
+GRAUSTARK.
+
+A story of love behind a throne, telling how a young American met a
+lovely girl and followed her to a new and strange country. A thrilling,
+dashing narrative.
+
+
+BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK.
+
+Beverly is a bewitching American girl who has gone to that stirring
+little principality--Graustark--to visit her friend the princess, and
+there has a romantic affair of her own.
+
+
+BREWSTER'S MILLIONS.
+
+A young man is required to spend _one_ million dollars in one year in
+order to inherit _seven_. How he does it forms the basis of a lively
+story.
+
+
+CASTLE CRANEYCROW.
+
+The story revolves round the abduction of a young American woman, her
+imprisonment in an old castle and the adventures created through her
+rescue.
+
+
+COWARDICE COURT.
+
+An amusing social feud in the Adirondacks in which an English girl is
+tempted into being a traitor by a romantic young American, forms the
+plot.
+
+
+THE DAUGHTER OF ANDERSON CROW.
+
+The story centers about the adopted daughter of the town marshal in a
+western village. Her parentage is shrouded in mystery, and the story
+concerns the secret that deviously works to the surface.
+
+
+THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S.
+
+The hero meets a princess in a far-away island among fanatically hostile
+Musselmen. Romantic love making amid amusing situations and exciting
+adventures.
+
+
+NEDRA.
+
+A young couple elope from Chicago to go to London traveling as brother
+and sister. They are shipwrecked and a strange mix-up occurs on account
+of it.
+
+
+THE SHERRODS.
+
+The scene is the Middle West and centers around a man who leads a double
+life. A most enthralling novel.
+
+
+TRUXTON KING.
+
+A handsome good natured young fellow ranges on the earth looking for
+romantic adventures and is finally enmeshed in most complicated
+intrigues in Graustark.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+                               LOUIS TRACY'S
+                    Captivating And Exhilarating Romances
+
+
+THE STOWAWAY GIRL. Illustrated by Nesbitt Benson.
+
+The story of a shipwreck, a lovely girl who shipped stowaway fashion, a
+rascally captain, a fascinating young officer and thrilling adventure
+enroute to South America.
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS.
+
+A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians--of desperate fighting and a tender romance.
+A story of extraordinary freshness.
+
+
+THE MESSAGE. Illustrated by Joseph Cummings Chase.
+
+A bit of parchment many, many years old, telling of a priceless ruby
+secreted in ruins far in the interior of Africa is the "message" found
+in the figurehead of an old vessel. A mystery develops which the reader
+will follow with breathless interest.
+
+
+THE PILLAR OF LIGHT.
+
+The pillar thus designated was a lighthouse, and the author tells with
+exciting detail the terrible dilemma of its cutoff inhabitants and
+introduces the charming comedy of a man eloping with his own wife.
+
+
+THE RED YEAR: A Story of the Indian Mutiny.
+
+The never-to-be-forgotten events of 1857 form the background of this
+story. The hero who begins as lieutenant and ends as Major Malcolm, has
+as stirring a military career as the most jaded novel reader could wish.
+A powerful book.
+
+
+THE WHEEL O'FORTUNE. With illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg.
+
+The story deals with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars
+of the hiding of some of the treasures of the Queen of Sheba. The
+glamour of mystery added to the romance of the lovers, gives the novel
+an interest that makes it impossible to leave until the end is reached.
+
+
+THE WINGS OF THE MORNING.
+
+A sort of Robinson Crusoe _redivivus_, with modern settings and a very
+pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of
+a wreck, and have adventures on their desert island such as never could
+have happened except in a story.
+
+
+              GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+1. Punctuation normalized to comtemporary standards.
+
+2. All illustrations in the text bear the credits: "By courtesy of
+   Liebler & Co; from photographs by Byron."
+
+3. Typographical errors corrected:
+   p. 139 "Fod" replaced with "God": "For Fod's sake let us bury it!"
+   p. 146 "use" repaced with "us": "what is best for both of use."
+   p. 377 "donwpour" replaced with "downpour": "donwpour of rain"
+   p. 409 "sittting-room" replaced with "sitting-room"
+
+4. The oe ligature as used in C[oe]li is shown as "[oe]" in this
+   document. It appears only in this proper name.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eternal City, by Hall Caine
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ETERNAL CITY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19732.txt or 19732.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+
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